#Altered carbon cast ms prescott series#

Followed by another ten minutes, and another ten… By the end of the season, we can’t help but want another ten minutes of time with Martha Higareda’s Ortega. Even though Kovacs may have difficulty admitting it, he begins to love her, and so do we. Little by little, she wins us over with a smile here, a simple facial expression there, or an incredibly rude comment with just the right amount of force in Spanish (or English). While Higareda does an amazing job selling Ortega in action scenes and through the more intense experiences her character goes through, it’s often in the quieter scenes with the character’s mother, abuela, partner, or Kovacs where her natural charm really shines through. Ortega: “For just a few hours, stay out of trouble, okay? Saving your ass is not my only job.” Ortega’s tenaciousness and relentless pursuit of solving the murder of Mary Lou Henchy regardless of the cost to herself begin to show that she isn’t just a hot-headed detective out for blood. There’s a subtle shift in the way she carries herself that is easy to miss.įrom there, Ortega is set up as a potential antagonist for Kovacs but the two soon become allies when their interests align. The transformation happens incredibly quickly and Martha Higareda handles it brilliantly. Ortega’s politeness and kindness evaporate and she immediately starts hurling curses. That continues until Kovacs discovers that she’s interrogating him. Kristin Ortega initially comes across as a calm and collected character.

Ortega’s initial introduction is somewhat harsh but Higareda forces us to love the character through her natural charm and layered portrayal Without a doubt, that makes her Altered Carbon’s scene stealer and an indispensable member of the cast. Higareda deftly balances all of these seemingly conflicting qualities and helps bring Ortega to life in a manner that makes her performance and character highly memorable. The loss of her boyfriend Ryker and the constant reminder of that loss through Kovacs’ current sleeve is heartbreaking yet decidedly human. Her relentless pursuit of the truth regarding the death of Mary Lou Henchy is admirable. Ortega is smart, tough, down-to-earth, and funny ‒ sometimes all at the same time. Ortega: “I wasn’t trying to be nice, you b–ch.” Higareda skillfully adds nuance and depth that makes Ortega an unmistakably human and relatable character despite the futuristic technology on display. Kovacs himself is placed in the sleeve of Ortega’s former partner and lover, which complicates things further.

She’s caught between embracing the cortical stack technology and her Neo-Catholic upbringing that forbids bringing people back from the dead in new sleeves. The character has an underlying toughness and fierceness that serves as a reminder that Ortega won’t take any nonsense from anyone but she’s also deeply conflicted. Despite that apparent abrasiveness, it’s revealed that Ortega deeply cares about other grounders and will go to great lengths to help them at considerable personal risk to herself. She has a potty mouth (good luck finding a scene without her dropping f-bombs in English and Spanish) and a seemingly abrasive personality. Ortega starts off as an unlikely ally for Takeshi Kovacs ( Joel Kinnaman). Kristin Ortega’s role (and by extension, Higareda’s) throughout the first season of Altered Carbon may seem straightforward on the surface. RELATED | Altered Carbon Season 1: 4 Episode Challenge She manages to steal every scene she’s in despite the amount of talent the show has at its disposal, and that is no small feat. So when we say that Martha Higareda’s portrayal of Detective Kristin Ortega stands out among the rest of the cast, we don’t say that lightly. To play those characters, Netflix assembled an incredibly talented and diverse group of actors. From godlike Meths who are so wealthy they can live forever to clingy artificial intelligences to Envoy terrorists that are accustomed to changing sleeves for each mission, the futuristic Bay City is populated with many unique characters. Human bodies, or “sleeves,” have become discardable vessels for the human consciousness to inhabit.

#Altered carbon cast ms prescott series#

Netflix’s Altered Carbon has a highly talented cast, but it’s Martha Higareda’s remarkable performance that sticks with usĪt the center of Netflix’s Altered Carbon, a sci-fi/cyberpunk series set on Earth in 2384, is the concept of humanity being able to live forever through the use of advanced cortical stack technology.