Character

Vir Cotto

Vir Cotto in Babylon 5 (1993), played by Stephen Furst.

Vir Cotto arrives on Babylon 5 as attaché to the Centauri ambassador, Londo Mollari — nervous, awkward, and visibly out of his depth among the station's diplomats. He fumbles introductions, gets flustered easily, and seems more suited to paperwork than politics. But under the bumbling there's a plain decency, a discomfort with cruelty that his more ambitious countrymen don't share.

Stephen Furst plays Vir as pure comic relief at first — the stammering junior aide who can't hold his liquor or his composure — and that lulls you into underestimating him exactly as the show wants. The writing then uses his squeamishness about Centauri ruthlessness as a moral compass, so his awkwardness starts reading less like weakness than conscience.

Played by

Appears in

Babylon 51993