Hollyoaks is a British television soap opera that was first broadcast on 23 October 1995. The following is a list of characters that first appear in the show in 2021, by order of first appearance. All characters are introduced by the show's executive producer Bryan Kirkwood, or by his successor, Lucy Allan. Brad King (Tom Benedict Knight) made his debut in January as the boyfriend of Trish Minniver (Denise Welch). Shaq Qureshi (Omar Malik), the step-cousin of Sami Maalik (Rishi Nair), made his first appearance in March, as well as Fergus Collins (Robert Beck). AJ and Curtis Pritchard also made guest appearances as Marco and Jacob, respectively. Timmy Simons (Sam Tutty) debuted in June as somebody working for Fergus. July saw the arrival of Becky Quentin (Katie McGlynn), a friend of Diane Hutchinson (Alex Fletcher). Cathy Shipton joined the cast in August as Lydia Smith, the aunt of Luke Morgan (Gary Lucy). She was followed by Ali Shahzad (Raji James), the father of Shaq. After Allan's episodes began airing, she announced her plans to introduce numerous black characters to the series.[1] These include Nate Denby, now Saul Reeves (Chris Charles), Olivia Bradshaw (Emily Burnett), Pearl Anderson (Dawn Hope) and DeMarcus Westwood (Tomi Ade). In October, Natalie Anderson joined the soap as police detective Lexi Calder and Serena Chen-Williams joined the soap as a love interest for Sid Sumner (Billy Price). In November, Ethan Williams (Matthew James-Bailey) and his girlfriend Maya Harkwell (Ky Discala) debuted as part of a storyline where the pair kidnap Darren Osborne (Ashley Taylor Dawson). In December, Serena's family, the Chen-Williams, are introduced and became the first East Asian family in a soap opera.[2] The family includes Honour (Vera Chok) and her husband Dave (Dominic Power), as well as their children, Sam Chen-Williams (Matthew McGivern), Lizzie Chen-Williams (Lily Best) and Mason Chen-Williams (Frank Kauer). Additionally, multiple other characters appear throughout the year.
Lizzie was invoked but never defined (see the help page).