Russel Thrush

Russel Thrush is a former student of Beacon Academy, and a member of Team CRDL. His weapons are a pair of daggers. He first appeared in "The First Step".

Appearance
Russel is a slim boy of average height. He stands at the same height as all of his teammates except for Cardin Winchester. His head is shaved with a light-green mohawk on the top of it.

He wears a hoodie with the sleeves cut off, and two bracers on his arms extending from the wrist to just below the elbow. These bracers have his silver-colored emblem printed on them.

Beneath the hoodie, Russel wears a pale-green, long-sleeved shirt. He wears a brown strap around his chest holding a spiked spaulder to his left shoulder. He also wears dark-gray pants. His boots seem to be made of a thick brown material and go up to his knees.

Personality
Although he has not had a substantial speaking role, Russel can be seen as a "school bully", just like his leader Cardin, where he calls Velvet Scarlatina a freak because of her rabbit ears.

Just like his team, Russel is seen to be somewhat of a coward, as he fled from an attacking Ursa.

Abilities and Powers
In "Extracurricular", Russel was shown to have some skill with his daggers, demonstrating remarkable swordsmanship, although it was nowhere near to that of Pyrrha Nikos. In his fight against Pyrrha, he and his team were able to hold their ground for a respectable amount of time; Russel was even able to deflect several of her shots. However, he was overpowered in the end, thus losing the battle. Russel also displayed impressive acrobatic capability as he flipped and cartwheeled around to evade Pyrrha's attacks and even used a multiple somersault to attack her.

Trivia

 * The English name Russel also means "red".
 * He is named after a family of birds called turdidae or, more commonly, thrushes.
 * The thrush (also Turdus philomelos "throstle") is a songbird symbolic of solitude and poetry. Poets are identified with the Thrush by the semantic double meaning of the verb 'to sing,' which literally means to utter sounds and to write poems as well; a symbol of concord.
 * Taking his given name into account, he is likely an allusion to the Turdus ruficollis or "red-throated thrush".
 * He was originally going to be named "Russell Crow", but this was changed, due to it being too similar to another character, Qrow Branwen.
 * Russel's eyes changed from blue to brown in Volume 2.
 * His bracers each bear the symbol of his namesake.
 * He is the only member of his team that does not wear full body armor.
 * Russel stars in an official non-canon video, That's a Big Ursa. The video consists of Thrush dancing to a heavily auto-tuned version of his lines from "Forever Fall, Pt.2". This makes him one of two characters to appear in an official non-canon video.
 * This video appears as an Easter Egg on the RWBY Volume 1 DVD. It can be accessed by going to episode selection and holding up while on Chapter 1 for about 3–5 seconds, followed by enter/select, depending on the remote control.
 * Shane Newville, Russel's original voice actor, left Rooster Teeth and the show in January 2016. It is currently unknown who will voice Russel in future volumes.