Russ
Russ is a walrus and the ferry operator who works the channels around Marsh Market in the Marshlands. He originates in Zootopia 2 and makes his first appearance in We Can Fix Pawbert in the W-Series, carrying the pack out to the market on a weekend away.
Background
Russ runs a ferry service on his stretch of water and does it with his own body. A bell hangs from a post at the end of the campground dock; two rings bring him up out of the channel. Payment is a fish, thrown and caught and swallowed in two chews, after which he sinks, rolls, and resurfaces belly-up in working configuration: wide cushioned seats strapped across his stomach, a wired speaker, a cap sitting crooked between his ears, and a corncob pipe that lets out a low toot through his whiskers as he goes. A pull-chain near his left flipper controls a string of fairy lights that loops along the seat edges and trails in the water behind him. He backstrokes his route, and the lights are reserved for couples.
Personality
Russ is enormous, slow, and entirely without judgment. His vocabulary runs to one syllable at a time, and most of his conversation consists of variations on "Hey, bub" traded back and forth with Nibbles in a volley the two of them have clearly been running for years, with pitch and cadence and volume doing all the work, and they follow it exactly while everyone within earshot is lost. He does not follow the news either, and has no idea who anyone is beyond the fact that they turned up with a friend, which is all the information he wants. What he does have is a romantic streak the size of the rest of him: told that two mammals in his seats are married, he reaches for the pull-chain without needing to be asked, and then stares at them, unblinking and content, for the length of the song.
Series History
W-Series
In "Touch Grass", Nibbles rings the bell at the glamping dock and Russ comes up to meet the pack. He recognizes Nick and Judy from a ferry ride years earlier and engulfs both of them in a hug that lifts them off the boards. Nibbles introduces Pawbert and Luther and announces that both couples are married; Russ looks at Pawbert for half a second, finds nothing in the name and nothing in the face, and offers a flipper. Once the pack is aboard he turns on the fairy lights and plays "Bella Notte" through the speaker, and the ride belongs to Pawbert and Luther, who receive the same gift Nick and Judy were given on the same walrus in the same water years before. He surfaces one last time on the Sunday as the loaded car pulls out, breaking the water long enough to say goodbye.
What If
The What-If episodes are alternate timelines and do not affect the main continuity.
In "What If... a Guardian Fell from the Sky?", Russ surfaces at the Marsh Market dock while the pack collects a lantern from the lost and found, and meets Rocket with the same blank, warm incuriosity he gives everyone. Rocket asks what he does and gets one word back. The encounter lands harder than the walrus will ever know: Teefs, one of the three friends the High Evolutionary made alongside Rocket and killed, was a walrus, and Rocket is looking at what Teefs might have been allowed to be.
Key Relationships
Nibbles Maplestick
Nibbles and Russ are old friends who talk almost entirely in one syllable and understand each other completely. She summons him with the bell, pays him in fish she brought for the purpose, and vouches for whoever she has with her, which is the only credential Russ requires. Her standing offer to the pack is that the ferry is free if you know Russ.
Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps
Nick and Judy rode Russ's ferry years before the pack's trip and got the fairy lights and the song for themselves. They remember it well enough to take the front seats without being told, and they watch from there while the same thing happens to somebody else.
Pawbert Pawthorne and Luther Pawthorne
Russ has no idea what Pawbert did or who his family were, and the ignorance is a kindness he does not know he is giving. He meets a friend of Nibbles, learns that the lynx is married to the wolf beside him, and treats that as the only relevant fact about either of them.