Tally Youngblood

Tally and Peris grew up together on the Ugly side. They share a matching scar on their hands and make a pact: stay friends and keep the mark after the surgery.

Peris's birthday comes first, and he crosses over to the Pretty side. Missing him, Tally sneaks into the city to see him. She finds a handsome, distant Peris with no scar. The promise went away with his old face.

On her own, Tally befriends Shay, another Ugly who has doubts about the surgery. Shay wants to run away to the Smoke, a free community outside the city led by a guy named David. She asks Tally to come. Tally says no: all she wants is to be Pretty.

Shay leaves. On her 16th birthday, Tally is taken to Dr. Cable, who makes it plain: no operation unless she says where Shay is. With no way out, Tally agrees to go after her friend as a spy.

At the Smoke, Tally sees another way to live. She learns that the orchids powering the city are harming nature and that the surgery does more than change faces: it limits free will and makes Pretties easy to control.

David's parents, scientists who fled the city, are working on a cure. Tally decides she won't give anyone up and throws her tracker into the fire. Cable's troops attack the Smoke anyway, and she is exposed as a traitor in front of everyone.

Tally talks David into helping her rescue the captured rebels. The rescue works, but Shay has already been operated on and no longer remembers what she fought for. Peris, now a soldier, gets in the way, and Tally tries to reach the friend he used to be. There's no time: David throws him off a building.

David's mother has the last piece of the cure but won't test it on Shay. Tally volunteers. She has the surgery and promises that being Pretty won't dull her drive for justice. In the end she lives with every comfort the city offers, and the scar on her hand is still there. It's the sign that the Tally who came back from the Smoke didn't vanish with her old face.

In Scott Westerfeld's books, Tally leads the original trilogy and comes back later in Extras and the Impostors series. In the Netflix movie she is played by Joey King, who is also an executive producer.