Lucy Carter Maxwell is the first-person narrator of The Light We Lost. At the beginning of the novel, Lucy is a college student in her senior year. She is young, idealistic, and unsure what she wants to do as a career. She makes light of stories she tells to her roommates that are meant more for children than adults, but then she makes a career producing children’s television shows. This shows Lucy’s habit of underplaying the things that matter most to her to accommodate the opinions of those around her. Despite this, Lucy is a highly intelligent young woman and a graduate of Columbia University with a career that matters deeply to her.

As Lucy tells her story, she initially appears to be the protagonist. She is the center of the story, the heroine caught up in a love triangle. However, as the novel progresses, an argument can be made for Lucy as the antagonist of her own story. Lucy wants to play the victim at the end of her relationship with Gabe, but in truth she did not fight to keep him in her life. She did not attempt to consider alternatives to ending their relationship.