Not to be confused with a certain record-breaking Marvel movie, NBC’s The Endgame is a unique, mind-binding crime series that is one-part The Blacklist, one part Law Abiding Citizen, a sprinkle of Money Heist, and all high-stakes thrills. It stars Morena Baccarin as a brilliant international arms dealer who meets her match in a top-notch FBI agent (Ryan Michelle Bathe) trying to figure out how she is able to orchestrate several bank robberies while in captivity.
Watching the premiere episode (airing Monday, February 21 at 10/9c on NBC), which was directed by Justin Lin of the Fast and Furious movies fame, we imagine you might be able to recognize the two main leads pretty easily from their previous work. However, we will still start by recalling some of their most notable credits in our breakdown of who plays who on the The Endgame game cast and what else they are known for.
Morena Baccarin (Elena Fedorova)
As criminal mastermind Elena Fedorova, we have Morena Baccarin, whose “Geek Goddess” reign began with her breakout role as Inara Serra on the Firefly cast. It would continue with her lead role on ABC’s 2009 V reboot, playing Vanessa in the Deadpool movies, and numerous other sci-fi series and DC TV shows - such as when she joined the Gotham cast alongside her real-life husband, Ben McKenzie.
She made her acting debut in the 2001 drama Perfume, earned an Emmy nomination in 2013 for her performance as the wife of a terrorist suspect on the Homeland cast, and, in 2019, the Brazilian native was cast in her first Portuguese-language role on the soap opera Sessão de Terapia. Following the premiere season of The Endgame, Baccarin is slated to reprise her role as Alison Garrity in the upcoming disaster movie sequel, Greenland: Migration.
Ryan Michelle Bathe (Agent Valerie Turner)
Playing Elena Fedorova’s rival, Agent Valerie Turner, is Ryan Michelle Bathe, who also has a few things in common with her The Endgame co-star Morena Baccarin. She has also worked with her own real-life spouse, Sterling K. Brown, on the This is Us cast and on Army Wives in recurring roles and made a guest appearance on How I Met Your Mother as Lily Aldrin’s high school friend, Michelle, in Season 3.
Bathe’s earliest major TV show was Boston Legal, which she followed with a long stretch of impressive recurring and guest spots on hit TV shows like Bones or Empire and, later, a starring role on Lifetime’s series adaptation of First Wives Club, most recently. Her cinematic credits include the 2007 romance All About Us, 2012’s Katherine Heigl-led crime dramedy One for the Money, and the Amazon Prime original period romance Sylvie’s Love in 2020.
Costa Ronin (Sergey Vodianov)
Like his character on The Endgame, Sergey Vodianov, Costa Ronin was born in Russia. He made hisd feature-length screen acting debut in the made-for-TV movie Fatal Contact: Bird Flu in America in 2006. Marvel fans might recognize him from an episode of Agent Carter in 2015, although he had already scored his first starring role on a TV series on FX’s Cold War-era drama The Americans as Oleg Burovn by then.
Ronin also has a few credits in common with Morena Baccarin, having appeared on two episodes of Gotham as Luka Volk and 17 episodes of Homeland as Yevgeny Gromov. In 2019, he appeared in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as real-life Polish actor and Manson Family victim Voytek Frykowski.
Jordan Johnson-Hinds (Anthony Flowers)
Starring on The Endgame as Agent Turner’s colleague, Anthony Flowers, is Jordan Johnson-Hinds, whose acting career began in his homeland of Canada on the shows like the teen dramedy Life with Derek or The CW’s The LA Complex. After making his big screen debut in the 2014 RoboCop remake, he landed recurring roles in major hit series like Suits as Oliver Grady and Letterkenny as a hockey player named Fisky.
In 2020, Johnson-Hinds appeared on Amazon Prime’s Upload cast as Robbie Amell’s friend, Jamie, and joined the cast of the Canadian-based medical drama Nurses. You may have also seen him pop up in movies like The Rainbow Kid and the Netflix original family film Yes Day as a security guard.
Kamal Bolden (Elgin Turner)
Elgin Turner on The Endgame is only the latest character on a TV drama to be played by Kamal Bolden. He previously had a recurring role on AMC’s short-lived Low Winter Sun, another on Chicago Fire, a guest spot on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and has a part in producer Michael B. Jordan’s upcoming thriller 61st Street.
His first major movie role was in the 2015 holiday comedy The Night Before, followed by Amazon Prime’s historical comedy Elvis & Nixon the next year. After appearing in the 2018 horror-comedy Ravers, Bolden led the cast of the feature-length political drama Keys to the City (which premiered on BET in 2019) and later joined Hulu’s Vacation Friends cast in 2021.
Noah Bean (Jonathan Doak)
As Jonathan Doak on The Endgame, we have Noah Bean, who made his debut in the 1998 supernatural drama Williamstowne before appearing on the NBC dramedy Ed in a recurring role. This was the first of many notable TV roles that also include a CIA analyst on Nikita, a political strategist on Syfy’s series adaptation of 12 Monkeys, and David Bowie on HBO’s biographical music industry series Vinyl.
He has showed up on the big screen in movies like the 2005 thriller Stay, the 2010 dramedy Morning Glory, and Amazon Prime’s fact-based political thriller The Report in 2019. He starred alongside Academy Award nominee Will Smith in King Richard as a professional tennis player.
Mark Damon Espinoza (Rogelio Réal)
On The Endgame, Rogelio Réal is played by Mark Damon Espinoza, who made his feature film debut in The Fugitive in 1993. That same year, he joined the original Beverly Hills 90210 cast as Jesse Vasquez.
Outside of numerous guest spots on other notable series like NYPD Blue and Psych, the actor’s biggest claim to fame in the 21st Century has been mostly recurring roles on soap operas, such as The Young and the Restless or The Bold and the Beautiful. More recently, he appeared in the Dane Cook-led crime drama American Exit in 2019, three episodes of the Sons of Anarchy spin-off Mayans M.C., and the hauntingly relevant 2020 movie Paper Tiger.
With talent like this involved, I imagine that audiences will have no trouble deciphering NBC’s The Endgame (which is also available to stream on Peacock) from a certain synonymous comic book movie in no time.
