Meet the Main Characters of Midnight Burger

The real restaurant at the end of the universe (and everywhere else)

Back in 2020 the world was in a state of pure hell. Many of us in America were at the mercy of an incredibly powerful and terrible thing that loved spreading it's sickness. And that man, our president at the time, helped promote the spread of Covid-19, an equally powerful sickness that kept most of us locked in our homes, desperate for new escapes.

I was one of those people. I spent month after month on my property. Groceries coming in by mail and having to be sanitized, communications and my kids classes done over the internet. I needed something. I needed an escape from the nightmare. Then, when all seemed lost, on October of 2020, suddenly...there was a diner.

Midnight Burger has, hands down become my favorite piece of science fiction of all time. And I'm saying this as a journalist who once had Neil Gaiman help me with my homework (an essay on his early work) and interviewed Rhianna Pratchett. I mean it, all time.

If you haven't heard it, firstly, shame on you. But secondly, I'm going to break down the wheres and whats as spoiler-free as I can. Strap in.

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What is Midnight Burger about?

Midnight Burger is an audio podcast about a diner named, surprise, Midnight Burger. It's an old school diner, bell on the door and everything. Just, don't mind the one booth covered in papers, the astrophysicist there does not wish to talk right now.

The diner itself is as much a character to the show as Gotham is to Batman or, more accurately, the TARDIS is to Doctor Who. Especially considering the fact that every now and then the diner and its parking lot (complete with whatever or whoever is on the property) teleports through time and space and takes up a brand new plot of land.

More often than not, the diner shows up at a specific place where there are people in need of help. Many times it's just a warm plate of food and a hot cup of coffee, other times it requires the help of the crew of the diner to help save them from some sort of insane bizarre bugaboo that is terrorizing them or the entirety of the galaxy.

I don't want to spoil too much but that's the long and short of it.

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Who is the crew of the diner?

Gloria Mendoza - Voiced by Siouxsie Suarez

Gloria is our "audience proxy" when we first start off. Much like the companions from Doctor Who, Gloria walks into the diner on the first episode and needs just as much of an explanation as we, the audience, do.

She joins us at a particularly hard point in her life as she just shut down her own restaurant. Her dream job that very quickly became a victim of the financially depleting nature of the Covid shutdown. Crushed, she needed something new in her life and she found herself at a diner she never noticed before.

Caspar Scott - Voiced by Joe Fisher

Caspar is, for the most part, the boss of the diner though VERY reluctantly. He's also the person who spent the most time at the diner. By FAR.

Formerly a clerk at the DMV, Caspar was fairly defeated. His relationship has soured, his son wants nothing to do with him, and his life is just in a loop. Then, one day he finds himself in need of a phone and finds an abandoned diner that just happens to have the door unlocked. That diner then takes him out of his reality and into a strange new one.

Zebulon and Effie Mucklewain - Voiced by Neil Starbird and Julie Cowden-Starbird (respectively)

Caspar isn't alone in the diner for long though as soon the old timey radio that's been sitting there seemingly comes to life as a radio show hosted by Zebulon Mucklewain there with his wife Effie Mucklewain starts to play.

Over time Caspar comes to the realization that the two of them can not only communicate with him but can see everything around the radio. In fact, over time, as more is discovered about this loving group of surprisingly accepting ministers, the more we come to realize that they are far more than anyone could ever understand.

Ava Maddox - Voiced by Finley Stevenson

Few science fiction vessels are complete without the dark and sarcastic character and/or the person who sees everything via science terms. Ava, wonderfully, exist as both.

The aforementioned astrophysicist that has taken up a spot at the corner booth. She is there heavily because she wants to observe anything and everything bizarre time can throw at her. Her views are often dark and often cause a bit of a rift between her and others but over time she softens to them. Not really soft, per-say, but at least slightly less coarse. She is often the first person that visitors to the diner meet as she can be often found at her booth up front or out in the parking lot chain smoking.

Lief Thorvaldson - Voiced by Tom Moorman

If ever there was evidence that your children are destined to become the opposite of you, it is Lief Thorvalson, the diner's main engineer and tech head. He's also the son of a father who is about as emotionally distant as Pluto is physically distant and a caring mother who, despite Lief's love of tech, believes she cannot be anywhere near it without getting horribly ill (despite constantly being around tech).

After escaping Earth and living on the road as a roving space pirate, hacker, line cook, and more, Lief eventually needed a way to escape from the people after him and...found a diner. Now he makes sure that the diner is always kept to code, that all the fryers are working, and...occasionally that the diner can be heavily weaponized in a pinch.

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Together these characters work together at Midnight Burger saving lives and taking food orders as they deal with the likes of overpowered galactic corporations, chaotic space pirates, science priests, bigots, and, occasionally, malevolent super-beings that border on godhood.

As Midnight Burger tears into it's 4th season there is plenty for a newcomer to listen to. And over time you ever get to experience some really cool spinoffs including:

• Young Lief - A show about how Lief got to space and got where he was

• Welcome to the Horizon - A show about a hotel that Midnight Burger once saved, but only before fundamentally altering the logic of the air around the town.

But there is more than enough to get into here and I could not suggest this show harder to you. Get into it here on Spotify (or find it anywhere else you listen to podcasts).