5 ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ Characters We Need To See in the Peacock Series
Michael Hein has been covering entertainment, fandom news, and trending topics since 2016 on outlets including Rogues Portal, PopCulture.com, and ComicBook.com. He has provided live coverage of red carpet premieres, conventions, and up-fronts, and has interviewed major stars including Charles Dance, Patrick Stewart, and Chloe Sevigny. An avid fiction reader and writer, Michael has been diving deep into all the biggest book-to-screen adaptations of the last decade, from Game of Thrones to Foundation.
It's almost impossible that Peacock will adapt every sentence of Dungeon Crawler Carl into a live-action TV show. The series is massive in scale, defying the laws of physics and entropy to generate an alien game show out of the very substance of the earth. The TV show will definitely introduce us to Carl and his ex-girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut (Jeff Hays) as they delve into the dungeon, as well as the close allies they meet along the way. However, some characters will inevitably be skipped or combined with others. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, although chances are every reader will miss a quirky favorite that stuck in their memory in the books. There are some stand-out characters that must be brought to screen and given their moment in the spotlight.
Dungeon Crawler Carl takes place in a procedurally generated world with pocket dimensions and teleportation. In other words, the game's world is as big as it needs to be — though the System AI routinely reminds us that there are rules. So far, all eight books in the series have gradually unveiled the nature of this world and the broad rules governing it. Getting to know the massive cast of characters inside the dungeon is essential to these big worldbuilding reveals, because it gives the story stakes. From dungeon-born NPCs to near-immortal aliens, these are five of the characters that the TV show simply cannot skip.
5 Kandy 'Bigs' Newton
In the sixth book, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride, carl is afflicted with a magical illness called SlugPox. It causes painful boils on the skin, and when they burst they release enemy monsters which are initially called Pox Slugs. However, because this game show is a twisted parody of earth culture, the slugs exhibit a parody of Juggalo culture, and are eventually known as "Sluggalos" and "Sluggalettes." They vary wildly in size, have razor sharp teeth, and grow weapons from their own skin — most commonly hatchets.
Rather than curing this illness immediately, Carl finds a way to suppress it. Eventually, he and his allies are able to conscript the Sluggalos to fight with them, and they become valuable allies. At this point, Kandy Newton — a.k.a. Bigs — becomes a true character in her own right. The slugs come and go from the story pretty often, and are even referred to as "cannon fodder" many times. However, Bigs is around enough for us to see that she has her own personality, and the ability to bond with others. She reminds us that these Sluggalos are just as alive as everything in the dungeon, and that's part of the horror.
It would be easy for the TV adaptation to either disperse Bigs into the endless carousel of slugs, or to go in the opposite direction and make her the only Sluggalo with speaking lines on the show. Either would be a mistake. Bigs should be adapted faithfully so that the audience sees how each Sluggalo is a complete person in their own right. She should also be allowed to espouse the core values of the Juggalo subculture — as she does in the books — ensuring that the Juggalos are in on the joke, not the butt of it.
4 The Hoarder
Many Dungeon Crawler Carl fans consider The Hoarder boss fight to be the most important choke point of the story. It's not uncommon to see reviews on social media where readers say they dropped the series after Carl and Donut's encounter with The Hoarder in the first book, and commenters will often encourage them to push through and think critically about the fight. Like the series as a whole, it looks at first like it might be a crude, shallow joke, but it turns out to be a unique blend of sci-fi horror and raw social commentary.
The Hoarder is the first boss that Carl and Donut face on the first floor of the dungeon. She is reconstructed from a real human who was killed in the creation of the dungeon itself, but she is a mean-spirited parody designed by the alien showrunners and the System AI. She is a middle-aged woman who struggled with compulsive behavior in real life, and the showrunners have exaggerated her features to mock her. In the process, they mean to mock all of humanity, and to justify their conquest of the planet.
It can be hard to read the description of 15-foot tall woman jealously guarding a pile of trash, but this is where it becomes clear that there's a point to the shock factor in Dungeon Crawler Carl. It's never just one person's life at stake — it's the symbolic dignity of all earthlings. The anti-propaganda message of the series starts here, and it should not be softened or abbreviated in the TV adaptation. The Hoarder may turn away some viewers, but it's worth it to get the show started on the right track.
3 Miriam Dom
The show will inevitably give Miriam Dom some screen time, but when and how much is an open-ended question. For starters, nothing from the books should be cut, but this may actually be a case where some changes are in order for TV. In the books, we don't meet Miriam Dom in person until the end of the third book, and we don't actually spend any time with her until the fifth book. Before that, everything Carl and Donut know about Miriam Dom and her party comes from the recap show, which is notoriously inaccurate.
The books keep a close focus on Carl's first-person perspective, but the TV show as an opportunity to brand-out. Post-credit scenes and cold opens would be a great chance for characters like Miriam Dom and Prepotente to get some screen time early on. We could even see these moments objectively before zooming out to a TV screen, revealing the warped view Carl and his friends have gotten. This would be particularly fitting for Miriam Dom, but would also work well for other crawlers like Florin, Li Na, and Sister Ines.
2 Justice Light
Wishing for Justice Light on TV is admittedly jumping the gun a little bit, as he doesn't make an appearance until the seventh book, This Inevitable Ruin. Assuming the show gets that far into the story, Justice Light could be overlooked in this fast-paced story, but that would be a mistake. This former crawler is a man of few words, but his backstory flashback is a heartbreaking glimpse into life as an indentured worker. His unique obsession with the nature of NPCs is a glimmer of hope that one truly can learn to understand this setting and manipulate it in some ways — even without compromising one's own morals entirely.
Justice Light is not he most active of the former crawlers and authors that turn up later in the story, and that might put him on the chopping block when the adaptation reaches that point. Hopefully that won't be the case, as Justice Light stands out for his humanity and conviction in the later books. The fact that he isn't as enamored of Carl as others are is a bonus, especially since he doesn't let Carl in on all of his plans. This would make Justice Light perfect for some B-plots when these chapters become episodes.
1 Louis
Finally, there's no doubt that the TV show will adapt Louis Santiago 2, but they need to get this fan-favorite crawler right above all others. Louis is the heart and soul of the earth crawlers by this point in the story, and unlike Carl, he did not start out as likable at all. Louis seemed to pitiful when he first appeared in the fifth book, yet it turned out that he only needed the slightest amount of prompting from a strong support system to rise to the challenges he was facing. The TV show should not soften Louis' abysmal first impression, and it should definitely not skimp on his redemption arc.
How Louis is going to look and sound on the TV show is also a matter of some confusion right now. Carl's first physical description of Louis has given many readers a skewed impression of his age. Although he is balding and overweight, Louis is only 27 years old, and he clearly regains some of his youthful vigor once he quits drinking and takes an active role in the guild. We should expect Louis' gear and outfits to look pretty frumpy at first, then get an upgrade once he starts putting in some effort. However, the books don't describe Louis' physical composition changing, so hopefully the TV show won't slim him down during this glow up.
Louis is a great embodiment of the perils that come with adapting a series that isn't finished yet. As it is, Louis stands to be a pivotal character in the final two books, but we won't know how until they are released. In the meantime, the TV show will need to set him up just right for a perfect endgame. Dungeon Crawler Carl is in production now, but there's no word yet on when it will premiere on Peacock. There are eight books in the series available now in print, digital, and audiobook formats. The ninth book is on the way, with no release date yet.
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