MacKenzie “Mac” Coyle, is a 12-year-old girl and one of the main protagonists of Paper Girls. She appears in every issue of the comic series. In the 2022 Amazon Prime series, she is portrayed by Sofia Rosinsky.
Biography[]
Overview[]
Mac comes from a blue-collar Irish-Catholic family, In which her father is apparently pretty abusive to Mac and her brother, he was also said to be an alcoholic as well as Mac’s stepmother Alice. She is also shown to deeply admire her older brother, Dylan. She was the first girl to become a papergirl in Stony Stream, following in her brother’s footsteps. She rides a BMX and often is seen with a cigarette behind her ear. Her brother was the one who taught her how to smoke and win a fight by playing dirty. She's a tomboy who's very tough and stands up for herself.
Storyline[]
On Hell Day, Mac rides up to warn Tiff about Wally Becker and some guys trying to harass a paper girl (KJ). She and the other girls all ride off together to provide back up to each other.
Mac, Tiffany, and Erin confront the boys who are harassing KJ. Mac lights a firework in their direction and the girls go running. Mac sticks together with the others to survive Hell Day.
When the sky turns pink and power goes out, Mac and the others believe they are being attacked. She grabs her dad's gun and accidentally shoots Erin. The girls rush to the hospital but get found by two guys -Heck #2 and Naldo- who tell them to hide for their safety. They warn the girls they are farther away from home than they think. A group of people, including Marcus and Prioress, start shooting at the girls who run for their lives. They run to Erin's house and find another Erin- but all grown up. This Erin tries to help the girls solve the mystery of how to get back to 1988. She shows them the internet and Mac looks up her brother- thinking he'd be a dead beat, but instead he's a doctor. Mac shows up at the hospital to see Dylan, who is shocked because his sister Mac died when she was 16. Mac proves to him that he's his sister and he even takes a DNA sample to prove it. Dylan brings Mac back to his house, pretending she's the child of his cousin, and plans to take care of her and help her get treatment for her cancer. However, when Prioress shows up at Dylan's house, KJ convinces Mac to run because they found a way to time travel back to 1988.
Larry helps the girls time travel, but instead of bringing them back to 1988, he tricks them and leads them to 1999. There, Erin, Larry, and the girls get in a fight with the Old Watch. Adult Erin dies in the fight but the girls run away.
Mac and the girls look for help and another way to time travel back to 1988. She and the girls visit adult Tiff and adult KJ, looking for answers. They hang out at adult Tiffany's apartment and go to 1999 Larry's farm, where he is still alive. A time rip occurs at Larry's farm. The Old Watch tracks the girls back to the farm and show up, insisting that they don't want to hurt the girls but they just want to bring them back to 1988. Erin and the girls agree to go on the time traveling ship but Prioress changes the plan and wants to send them to talk to Dr. Quilkin in the future. She sends them on another time traveling ship but the girls get separated - Mac and KJ take off in their own ship to 1988.
Personality[]
Mac is hot-headed and emotionally restrictive. She is a cigarette-smoking tomboy who frequently swears. In the comics, Mac displays an openly homophobic attitude at the beginning of the series, hurling insensitive slurs and expressing disgust at the thought of homosexuality. However, she loosens these thoughts when she learns about KJ's orientation. In the T.V. series, Mac is more open minded, she then goes on to discover things about her own orientation #25 in the comic books
Quotes[]
You know, I knew I got the f*ck out of Dodge.
Gallery[]
Photos[]
Trivia[]
- Mac likes the song Mother by Danzig, as she is frequently listening to it on her brothers walkman
- Although she doesn’t yet realise it, Mac is a lesbian, as shown near the end of the comics mac shows romantic feelings for fellow paper girl, KJ Brandman
- When Mac was four years old, she dressed up as a carebear for halloween
- She dressed up as Miss Hannigan for Halloween the year Annie came out
- Mac was originally thought to have died of brain cancer at the age of sixteen in 1992, though in the comics, it is later revealed that she dies of 4DC, a disease which is described by a doctor in the year 2171 AD as "A rare group of cancers that only afflicts a small percentage of certain professionals," that being time travellers.
- Macs’ style is very punk, she is shown listening to Danzig and wearing leather jacket
- Mac says insensitive slurs in the comics but not in the TV series
- Mac usually steals cigarettes from her stepmother Alice and steals her older brother Dylan’s walkman
- Mac has a disliking of her future niece, Wilder, and mocks her in the restaurant
- Mac is shown to enjoy the series "Sweet Valley High" as she is shown borrowing the second book in that series during the dream sequence at the beginning of Issue #21
- She is a girl scout
- The character associated with this character is pink/red, as the comic covers she was on were red in the instances of both issue #2, and issue #29, and in the paper girls promo, she was shown under a hot pink/light red. also in promotional content she is displayed under hot pink lighting.