I think it also contributes to the hopelessness that people can feel once they realize they've done something wrong. The prevalence of the trope kind of suggests that once you have that realization, your story ends, but that's not how real life works. You then have to figure out how to become a better person - not necessarily to earn forgiveness, because no one's owed that - but to be able to live with yourself. And the trope seems to imply that living with yourself is too difficult, so it's easier and better for everyone around you for you to go out in a blaze of glory.
When you frame it like that, I realize this trope may have origins with the concept of "finding God on your deathbed". This fallacious idea that when nonbelievers are faced with the near and certainty of death, they will find faith and seek repentance. In turn, this concept is further expanded to "there are no atheists in foxholes" which has spurred some veteran groups to put up the "memorial to atheists in foxholes".
@@GiantButterKnife Of course, deathbed conversion has two significant factors that don't apply to a more general redemption-through-death: that God is all knowing, so can judge how sincere your conversion is; and that God is benevolent and merciful, so accepts sincere repentance no matter how little and late it is. For mere mortals dealing with other people, more evidence is needed to establish a genuine change of heart, and more work is needed to balance the scales of past wrongs.
Keep in mind redemption and forgiveness are two different things. Forgiveness can happen without redemption, and says more about the character forgiving than the one being forgiven. I never saw Luke’s reaction to his father’s death as the story “redeeming” him, but as Luke getting closure about his family and showing how the dark side doesn’t get the last day in that. But that’s just my reaction to it, it still works for me.
You make an excellent point. I've never really read that scene in quite the same way because of how Vader came back as a force ghost beside Obi Wan and Yoda, and even looking as he did as Anakin. I'm going to try and look at it the way you do next time I watch that movie, I think it may help me recontextualize the scene in a way I can enjoy more.
@@AtodaK Sidenote: keep in mind that in the original cut of return of the jedi, Vader's force ghost was played by actor Sebastian Shaw and not Hayden Christensen. Just a little FYI lol.
@@CLDJ227 I knew that it was someone other than Hayden Christensen, what was important to me was that it Anakin rather than Vader as the force ghost. Thanks for letting me know the actor's name, it took me a minute to process the name because OMG he has the same name as one of my favourite X-Men villains. My mind is kind of blown by that.
When you said you had to cover this topic before Overly Sarcastic Productions got to it I was convinced that they already had talked about it at least tangentially in relation to another trope but after re-watching both their Reformed Villains and Character Death Trope Talks I couldn't find it even mentioned, so I guess you really did beat them to it.
@@casualcraftman1599 Oooh! That's where it was! Still, as part of a video about a different trope it wouldn't have been covered as in depth as it was here, so there's that.
Movies in particular are obsessed with death. It's the only method of redemption, it's the only punishment for any villain (unless it's a comedy), it's far too frequently the only motivator for the hero to do the heroic thing ("They killed my mom/dad/sibling/spouse/bestie/dog/love interest I met like two days ago!). And more than anything it's the only way writers seem to be able to get out of the corners they write themselves into with the need for ever escalating threats. Okay, the last point tends to be more of an issue with long running series than movies.
The position I agree with most is that a redemption arc isn't even about forgiveness, it's about recognising the damage you've done and trying to fix it / do better. It's not something you earn, it's about changing your behaviour. Which makes this trope even more frustrating, because the character doesn't acually get to do that. If Darth Vader had survived he might have changed for good. Or he might have just decided that his son was the one person he wouldn't kill and gone right back to murdering everyone else. We'll never know. It also interestingly means that any character can potentially be redeemed (whether it can be done plausibly is another question), because whether they can "make up" for their previous actions isn't the point, the point is that they try.
Haven’t seen “Dante’s Peak.” I didn’t see the point after seeing and really enjoying “Volcano.” This trope is why I like “Flight” as the movie ends with the protagonist in jail for having flown while impaired. The fact that he landed the plane and saved lives didn’t redeem the fact that he was still drunk while in the plane. “Legends of Tomorrow” has a habit of incorporating villains into the main cast. They point it out and the stated reason is that none of them are angels so as long as people are trying, they are given a chance.
"Dante's Peak" is to "Volcano" what "Deep Impact" was to "Armageddon". While similar in concept disaster films, the formers are more solidly based in the actual sciences, requiring much less suspension of disbelief that the laters. Plus Peirce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton were very easy on the eyes.
"Flight" sounds terrible in that it's realistic. Dude screws up (intoxicated while flying), dude saves people from incident that is not directly caused by his screw up (mechanical failure doesn't happen when the pilot gets intoxicated, only the engine, so don't stash your Vodka-and-cocaine cocktail in the engine, my dudes!), dude's life is completely destroyed (instead of mostly destroyed, AKA losing his job) because of systemic garbage that doesn't acknowledge any kind of shade of gray and instead of just losing him his job also lands him life in prison. That's realism, unfortunately, because our legal system is a joke, but it's also shitty and should be framed as such.
as someone from an abusive childhood the "theyre family, forgive them" really irks me. I get it usually comes from writers and fictional scenarios where both sides care enough to make it work, but its overabundance can feel like it's being said to unhealthy examples too. At least for my experiences the particularly abusive parent didn't love me unless I fit into certain boxes. It was control disguised as love. As a counter I would say family is more about behavior and feelings than blood relation. Also I have seen the family, thus forgive attitude crop up in real life too. Even close friends, at least inailrionly, seemed confused how I wouldn't want my parents in my life since they're family. It isn't just in fiction I mean.
Some types of people are incapable of comprehending the experiences of others. To them, every other person's life is like theirs. Other people just aren't as aware as these people are. They've had fights with their family and forgiven them, so everybody should be able to do that. They are Christian and straight, so everybody that claims otherwise is lying to hurt people. These people are scary. when I recognize this, I stay as far away as possible. Personally, I've seen enough that I believe people when they say that there is too much bad blood to forgive their family.
What you said about Vader being redeemed in Luke's eyes struck a chord. Luke didn't know the full extent of what Vader had done, and when RotJ was released, neither did the audience. Would Luke, or the fans, be so quick to forgive if we had known about the slaughtering of the Younglings? Methinks not.
Going by the current expanded universe, in my opinion, Vader is a tragic character. His entire arc is one giant sunk cost fallacy and his inner-psychology in dealing with that. In a way, Palpy's greatest power is convincing others that his evil ideas are worth it in the long run.
Vader casually killed his own coworkers and was a superior commander in a regime that blew up planets. The movies definitely showed he's evil. Not to mention he gets a force ghost, which is the movie essentially telling killing one bad guy balances out killing thousands of innocent people. People STILL count Vader as a redemption story even after seeing the prequels. They still think Vader was redeemed. Some comics showed Vader considered killing the Emperor so he could rule the Empire himself meaning he would do it for evil and selfish purposes. Star Wars is so ingrained in people's minds you can literally show him killing children and he's still redeemed in people's eyes.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 Wow. I can't believe I totally forgot about Alderaan! Then again, so did Leah. Maybe it would have been more memorable if the moment was given any actual emotional weight.
I can forgive Anakin cause he's a tragic case of a young boy/man being groomed by one of the most powerful evils in the galaxy, he didn't really have much say in the matter when you examine things. The choice Anakin had to make was whether to follow his destiny with the force at the end of stand by his actions and stay with Palpatine, he allowed the force to take control of his life and became one with it and then they never made another film.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 Vader gets a Force Ghost because he becomes one with the light side of the force and follows his destiny. That's basically it. He's not forgiven for his crimes by anyone really. He just plays his part in the prophecy to destroy the sith.
One that I was quite pleasantly surprised by was Sunset Shimmer in the Equestria Girls films. After the first one seriously dropped the ball and gave her an absurdly rushed "What have I done?" moment after she's already defeated, the next THREE movies are all about the long, hard process of proving to everyone else and herself that she really is a hero now.
I feel like a good example of "good acts to balance out bad ones is not redemption/forgiveness" is the Todoroki Family subplot in My Hero Academia. Without going too much into spoilers, the series has so far handled the father's realization and attempts to "make up" for his lifetime of abuse with a surprising amount of grace and empathy for every party involved. By clearly showing the audience that what the father wants and is actively working towards is atonement not "trying to earn forgiveness" makes us root for him while never demanding anything from the injured parties. The author allows the rest of the family to react to the father's heel turn in varying and personal ways from cautious willingness, optimistic hopes of a reunited family to outright rejection without ever invalidating anyone for their responses. The story is not done yet so there is always the chance of the author dropping the ball in the future but so far, I really love how compassionately he's engaged with the subject of domestic abuse.
Very much agreed. When he was first introduced, Endeavor was a *very* easy character to hate, and while the story has been doing a lot of heavy lifting to make him more sympathetic, it doesn't really sugarcoat just how bad he has been... Hell, *he himself* (at least as far as the anime has come) seems to pretty much have accepted that he has probably damaged his relationship to his family beyond repair and that the only way for them to move forward probably is... without him. It's a really interesting and compelling angle that somehow manages to make me want to see more of what was initially one of the most loathsome characters in the show.
Endeavour's character arc is amazing and I sincerely hope he survives the whole manga, even if his family never forgives him. I love the arcs him and All Might have been gives about having to rebuild their whole lives and I hope they pay off for them in a way that's not death. And I used to hate the shit out of Endeavour... I feel like MHA does a really good job with all the villain and hero characters, except AFO they could all redeem themselves and readers would totally get it, because they are so well written.
I am sure this trope existed for a while, but I think the Hayes codes really brought it to the forefront. After all, one of the codes was something along the lines of that fact that "criminals should not be made to be heroes", therefore you couldn't have a redemption arc for a character that resulted in anything other than their immediate death. The problem with a lot of tropes is that all of people, both in front of and behind the camera don't take the time to examine why these tropes exist, or became popular. Like you said, using this trope basically means that you can buy morality. (side note: which is essentially what the Church told rich people since forever, but that is another discussion). Great video!
I never really cared for this trope either, and it's one reason I really liked what they did in Endgame with Hawkeye and Black Widow. She understood from her own life that redemption takes effort and refused to let him take the easy way out. Really great video, well said.
You just articulated why I hated Rise of Skywalker's decision to kill Ben Solo. It would have been so much more entertaining to see him work for redemption. And, with the current comics, TV shows and books as cannon now, they would have had the time to do it, unlike most films. Killing him was repetitive, empty (he was redeemed WITHOUT needing to die by just coming to save Rey), and cheap.
I hated that too. For that reason. I wanted to see how he lived with himself having killed his father; and how those who knew Han reacted to him. And how he integrated back in society with that baggage. I assume everyone knew. They could have done a whole other series on that journey.
@@maurinet2291 In particular, I would have liked to see his interplay with Finn and Poe now. He tortured them both, in his way. But at the same time, he was really just hating himself, believing that if everyone including Luke thought he was destined for evil (and of course he believed that, since Luke tried to kill him), he must be meant for evil. Now, knowing the truth, he has to forgive his parents and Luke while forgiving himself and seeking forgiveness from Poe and Finn. That could have been wonderful in Adam Driver's hands.
I agree with you 100%. I am still so mad at the writers for killing Ben. His story wasn't finished. There was so much potential with Ben, so many things to explore with his character.
You really put a pin in my soul with this dissection. My life has closely felt akin to Katra in that I kept making excuses for pushing people away. I hope it's not too late in my life (59) for the work needed to redeem myself. Death can wait.
I always hated the 'easy way out' feeling of redemptive deaths (for character and story writers), and you've really explored it so well here. I wish we could focus more on growth and the slow repairs that a person needs to make to themselves and to the world. Feels like both She-Ra and Avatar both understood that realizing the problem is the START of an arc, not the end of one. (and Damn, that point about "in Luke's eyes)
One of the best 'redemption through life' arcs that always came to my mind was Teal'c from Stargate SG1. True, his arc started with the series, but the first few seasons didn't waist time reminding us that he was once the enemy and the evil things he had done. But what was more important was that even though he had freed his people from evil, connected with friends and family and became a hero, he never let go of the burden of his evil deeds, all the way to a movie AFTER the show ended after 10 seasons. When talking to a character who was JUST starting his own redemption he had this to say. Teal'c: "One day others may try to convince you they have forgiven you. That is more about them than you. For them, imparting forgiveness is a blessing." Tomin: "How do you go on?" Teal'c: "It is simple. You will never forgive yourself. Accept it. You hurt others… many others. That cannot be undone. You will never find personal retribution. But your life does not have to end. That which is right, just, and true can still prevail. If you do not fight for what you believe in, all may be lost for everyone else. But do not fight for yourself. Fight for others - others that may be saved through your effort. That is the least you can do." He didn't play it soft or kind either. He was intense and weighed down with the burden of his own past. It is a VERY difficult process to write someone who was evil from the start (with no signs of changing) and put them on the path of redemption thru life, but it can be done. They did it in Star Trek, Buffy, Xena Warrior Princess, Dragonball Series, hell, I even think the Fast and the Furious made it work. (this is top of my head, i know there's more) It's a difficult puzzle to assemble. So much has to come together for an acceptable pay off. I understand the reluctance to let them live and take the easy way out. Fans are more forgiving and may want a redemption more than the writer, but some pieces (at least at the time) may not come together for the writer to morally allow the person to live.
Yes, the advantage of long form media. "NYPD Blue" became years of Andy Sipowicz struggling to become a better human. [Yes, I am old.] And "Xena" was designed as a series about working toward atonement.
Okay, this whole trope starts really with Bushido, ancient Japanese history, mostly during the warring states period. If you go watch the old Samurai dramas, it's a different thing altogether. The way the trope is supposed to go is that the villain realizes that they've done the wrong thing, taken the wrong path, whatever. The death is not a redemption, but an atonement. It's meant to be them dying for their crimes, while trying to make some sort of amends for their actions. It's not meant to make the heroes forgive them, it's a personal choice to stop the bad thing that they set in motion. Anime and Tokusatsu (live action suit shows) take up this cultural trope and use it to make the villains more complex and give them an arc. It's still not an 'all is forgiven' sort of thing, it's a direct punishment for their earlier actions. Remember that in Bushido, it's only in the moment of death that Bushido is perfected. It's meant to be the individual recognizing that their selfishness hurt the society and others and they therefore atone through suicide. It's a form of seppuku, or ritual suicide. It's the apology, but it doesn't insist on forgiveness. A lot of Western writers watched a ton of anime but never really got the underlying cultural understanding. That's why we get the actions without the substance. Anyway. lecture done. XD
I really enjoy this discussion. Great point about Anakin's redemption through Luke's eyes. I would add that I think/hope Anakin isn't redeemed through death. In ROTS he learned about training he could do to come back as a force being. Obi-Wan (and presumably Yoda) began similar training with Force Ghost Qui-Gon. The fact that the three of then were together at the end of ROTJ is because they all had a vested interest in Luke and Leia. Yoda and Obi-Wan are clearly happy that Anakin turned back to the light side but I don't think that implies redemption through death but more of people who loved him happy to see him return to the light. I like to think if he had lived that the Rebels would have put him on trial for his numerous war crimes. Ps Love She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
I mean, Hordak did kind of have a redemption arc back in season 3, it's just that Catra showed up right at the end, sent Entrapta to Beast Island, and sent him on a big time villain relapse.
Thank you for this! Redemption as a concept is really, really complicated once you start to really think about it, and unfortunately we tend to just gloss over it with easy answers and convenient shorthands a lot of the time. Agreed very much on the heroic sacrifice high note being aesthetically pleasing because it's uncomplicated, and therefore gets used a lot. But like you say here, real redemption is a process, not a one-time action. Depending on the severity of the deeds done before, one deed at the end doesn't undo the harm done already, and it doesn't necessarily mean that those who were harmed get their trauma wrapped up with a neat bow. Human beings are complicated, and we are not defined by one single choice-- real redemption takes time and effort, it is multiple choices, again and again, and there are valid arguments to be made that, like addiction recovery, this is not a linear process. (Really fast, your top in this video is really great! Needed to mention it!) So, okay, I'm going to take the Jaime Lannister example here and make a controversial argument that his story is not and never was a redemption arc. From the perspective of his storyline, he was a man pulled between his selfish impulses and practical self-preservation (personified by Cersei) and his higher ideals and personal moral compass (personified by Brienne). We see this to be true of him even before the series starts when he finally tells his version of the events that sealed his reputation forever afterward, but then what exactly is he redeeming himself for, then? If the infamous thing that he did that was so vile turned out instead to be the thing that we morally agree with, and we see that, yes he does horrible things in the story, but his moral complexity is still in place before he ever meets Brienne. Looking at him through the series as a whole he's never truly a villain, nor is he ever truly a hero. He's a complex, morally grey character whose arc is being torn between his cynical pragmatism and his desire for true knightly ideals. Nothing about his arc is redemptive, really-- killing his king isn't something he feels he needs to atone for, it's something that he feels was right and is angry that it's the thing he's reviled for. On a personal note, I also really, deeply love and appreciate the course of his arc (well, on paper-- in execution it was rushed too much to land properly). I have a big, big problem with "beauty and the beast" stories a lot of the time, not because they are inherently bad or anything, but just because of personal baggage from life experience. This one, though, this says all the things I feel like we as a culture do not say nearly enough. Not from Jaime's perspective (and yeah, I will argue that everything he does in that season makes complete sense about the things he's done that he actually does feel guilty for and how that shapes his self-image and what he feels he deserves), but from Brienne's. Because as un-romantic as it is to admit, the reality is that we cannot save other people from themselves. No matter the potential we see in them, no matter how badly we wish or how hard we try, or how decent a person we are, at the end of the day, that person is going to make their own choices. It has no bearing on how good we are, or how worthy we are, or even how worthy they are. We cannot force them to make the choice we want. This happens with mental illness, it happens with addiction, it happens with trauma, it happens all the time. No matter how beautiful of a person you are, you cannot force a beast to become a prince-- that is their choice to make and their work to do. This ending is sad, tragic, even, because Jaime could have made the choice to build a better life for himself and continue to try and live up to the nobility he wished he could have, that he sees Brienne living-- but in Winterfell, looking the Starks in the eye, looking Bran in the eyes, and saying, "yes I am deserving of good things now, I feel perfectly fine with all of this, sorry about the terrible things I and my family did to you, but I did some good things so we're good now." That's not the mindset of someone who truly understands what they did, and that's not someone who fits the redemption role, no matter how badly we as the audience may wish otherwise. To call this character arc a redemptive one does it a disservice and over-simplifies who Jaime is, what real people go through in recovery, what the people who love them go through, and ultimately what this story is trying to say about human nature. It's complicated. Really great video! Talking in more depth about the concept and nature of redemption would be really great. Thank you for this discussion!
I love your analysis of this trope, especially when you mention that it empowers the perpetrator. I was reminded of Jimmy Saville, pdf file and life-long Catholic, who seemed to be under the impression that if he did enough "good" in his life, it would make up for the abuse he perpetrated against thousands. A counter balance if you will. That's why he was so involved in charity work and fundraising for the needy : his goal was to redeem his evildoing by having a positive impact in other areas of his life. On a smaller scale, this is how people learn to view abusers : complex and nuanced. How many people have been told "But they were always nice to me", or "But they volunteered at church and helped people pay their bills" when exposing their abuser? It isn't lost on me that this way of thinking is deeply transactional in nature, much like the religious view of "good deeds". Good deeds are done to buy our way into heaven, to buy our redemption out of sin. It's absurd, but that's how many people live their lives. This transactional view of morality has also bled into our justice systems, where consequences for crimes are often farcically at odds with the consequences in the victims' lives. I also greatly appreciated your reminder that forgiveness is not owed but rather earned. Some people believe that expressing remorse should be enough to qualify for forgiveness, which I feel strongly against. While it is true that forgiveness may be a healing path for some, it should never be seen as a given or an inevitability. People who cannot forgive are not "bitter". You can move on from harm that was done to you without forgiving your abuser, simply because the blame lay at their feet, not yours. I'll get off my soapbox now ;)
I think another factor is that she was in a no win situation anyway. If she fights the monster she'll probably die. If she doesn't Adora will instead, the heart will detonate and everyone including her dies. She had the choice of dying on the winning side and having Adora achieve her goal after she dies or dying on the losing side and achieving nothing.
I don't think she intended it that way. It's just that she doesn't know how not to be that way. Her mask is literally and figuratively off. It's not manipulation, it's just who she is.
Thank you ... THANK YOU! I always thought I was alone on this one ... :P I'm a sucker for redemption arcs, partly because I think few people are evil for the sake of being evil, and partly because it satisfies my buddhist longings (oxymoron duly noted). But I'm always very anxious during such arcs, because they usually end in the death of the redeemed. And. I. Don't. Like. It. For similar reasons you stated, but also for another one: Imagine all the good someone like that could have done with the rest of their life. Someone willing to sacrifice their own life for someone else, or at least risk it. Someone potentially willing to change themselves, admitting to their own sins, paying for what they did. It's not just the cheap way out for both the character and the writer, but in my opinion also cheats the world out of some potential good. Let that frecking behind-opening work hard to at least try to balance out all the bad they've done. Heck, have them do it despite people still HATING them, despite not getting that forgiveness they are longing for. I don't care, just let them actually work for it! :P
Yeah i never understood how one death some how undoes a whole heap of bad stuff, wouldn't them being alive and using the rest of their lives to do good make more sense?
Yes it would make more sense but time is a factor in some media and as Joe Espin says, redemption through death is quick, easy (and I'll add cheap). It's one of the reasons I liked the Evil Queen's arc in Once Upon A Time. Even when she started to do good, it took time for most people to accept it, she faltered on the way but ultimately came through in the end. Although that doesn't include the death part of the trope, so it may not count.
It's not so much that death undoes any of those wrongs, more so that death prevents them from doing any more wrongs. It's easier to forgive a person if they are dead and you know they can't ever hurt anyone again.
@@tyronechillifoot5573 : To be clear, I am in know way saying that forgiveness is mandatory just because some one perform one last ostensibly "heroic" sacrifice. All I'm saying is that when a former villain is dead there is less baggage involved in forgiving them. Arguably it doesn't even have to be true forgiveness, just letting any lingering grudges die with the perpetrator and moving on with our lives.
You should watch Bojack Horseman. I don't think it specifically deals with redemption through death trope, but it does talk about many related subjects that you touched on, such as not being owed forgiveness and people thinking that making a single grand gesture every once in a while is enough to be considered a good person. It's a really great series that deconstructs alot of our societal views on morality.
Good point about the narrative arc being done, which makes me glad that real life doesn't automatically kill people who change their evil ways, or there'd be no motivation to do so.
Cool, nuanced new video - can't wait to see more trope dissections in the future :) Like the satellite love interest, fridge-ing, romantic plot tumors, deliberate values dissonance, etc.
My favourite Redemption Arc in all of fiction is probably Megatron in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, and its sequel series, Lost Light. One of the weird things about it is that, all along, Megatron's entire plan seems to be to perform this specific subset of the trope. He realises how far gone he is from his original goal, and opts to save Cybertron from Shockwave's universe-ending plan and then let the Autobots execute him for his millions of years of war crimes. And while he does get inspired enough to dodge the fate at his initial trial (Starscream decided to grandstand and Megs refused to let Screamer be the one to write his epitaph), the plan is still basically the same: Do a good deed (find Cyberutopia so the Transformers can have a home that isn't ravaged by the war) and then accept his fate. And then throughout the comic's second season, Megatron's resolve is tested repeatedly. It's shown that slapping a red badge on his chest and going "Not evil anymore, want to be loved now" didn't automatically make him a good person, he's still kind of an arse to the rest of the crew of the Lost Light, he still has moments where he lashes out at others due to stress, he still has a heavy disregard for other species, particularly organic ones, and he has to learn to follow the values of the Autobots, rather than simply stopping his previous actions. The chance that he could relapse, and return to his warmongering ways, is a very real fear for not just the Autobots, but also for himself: He's so afraid of returning to who he was before that he initially refuses to fight when the Decepticon Justice Division come to execute him for treason, he tries to surrender to spare his comrades and it takes the brutal murder of his closest friend, Ravage, to motivate him to pick up his Fusion Cannon and stride out to meet Tarn on the battlefield. And while it sticks, he's never truly validated. Team Rodimus, the core cast of the book, gradually come to trust him and accept him as their friend and co-leader. But not all of the Lost Light's crew do, in fact most of them want him gone and eventually mutiny against him and Rodimus to achieve that goal. Optimus believes in him, but a lot of others heavily question his judgement on the matter, and regard his acceptance of Megatron's change to be a bridge too far, a failing in Prime's character. And of course, the wider galactic community still wants the guy's head on a pike. And while Megatron is ultimately redeemed in the eyes of Rodimus, Magnus, and the other protagonists, he's _never_ redeemed in the eyes of himself. Whenever people talk about the good he's done, he can only say that he could've done more. When he's facing the certain fate of either being executed or imprisoned in a slow cell for the rest of his life, he believes its deserved in spite of Rodimus' desperate attempts to save him. And during the final battle with the Functionists, he can't bypass the Morality Lock to open one of Rung's Matrices (Morality Locks stop anyone who hasn't accepted and found peace with themselves from activating Guiding Hand tech), and has to pass it back to a one-handed Rodimus, who opens it with his teeth. It's a complex and very emotional story, that takes a character that many would've regarded as irredeemable prior to 2014, and makes it work.
When Vera spoke of transactional morality, I remembered a story from a 70s era show, "Rod Serling's Night Gallery." It was an anthology show that many regard as a successor to "The Twilight Zone", but where "Twilight Zone" emphasized science fiction, "Night Gallery" emphasized horror. The story came in the show's second season and was called"The Sin Eater". Set in Wales during a time of plague and famine, where only the rich could gorge themselves, but when they knew they were dying or had died, a Sin Eater was ordered. The corpse would be surrounded by food, and the Sin Eater would perform the ceremony which would transfer that person's sins to the food, to be eaten by the one performing the duties. Thus, the Sin Eater, in the eyes of Heaven, would bear the sins, and the dead rich person could rise to Heaven. But the area's Sin Eater is himself ill, so his son is ordered to perform the rites. There's a lot more to it, and a horrific twist at the end. It's a gut punch, but like good dystopian stories, a lesson for the audience.
@@grinnylein Okay... Spoilers. The boy (son) is told by his mother to recite the ritual but instead of eating the food to hide it within his cloak (must have TARDIS pockets). But he has to spend hours reciting the ritual while sitting with the corpse and despite his extreme hunger not eating. It's harrowing to watch. He gets away with it because he's alone for the ceremony, lest anyone else bear the sins. When the ceremony is completed, he runs away, not even taking the money offered as payment. He gets home, and his mother takes the food into another room... which she lays around the dead body of her husband, the boy's father. He's told that the only way his father can go to Heaven is if he, the son, actually properly performs the ritual this time. Tears streaming down his face, the boy closes the door and picks up a loaf of bread, as he starts chanting, and bites the loaf. It's melodramatic as heck, but dang it makes me sob.
While I really enjoy your discussion videos any time I’m sorry to say overly sarcastic productions already did the the trope talk a year and a half ago Please don’t let this discourage more videos like this I love hearing it from any writer’s perspective Thank you
as someone who loves entrapta and hordak and entrapdak.... youre right it wasnt handled the best but at the very least it leaves off on a note where i (dunno about others) can imagine the two of them keeping each other accountable and actively working to become better together. shame its not an idea that couldve been explored in the show proper tho :C maybe in a spin-off comic? id read that
What makes Hordak's redemption work for me is the revelation that he was another of the show's abused children/child soldiers, like Catra and Adora - Adora got the easiest redemption of anyone: "Oh, you have the magic sword? You must be good now!", but all the "victims" in the series got their own redemptions. It also helps that, by the end of the show, only Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime - the two abusers who created all the other villains - aren't redeemed, and pretty much everyone has had a turn at being evil (except Bow). After accepting Shadow Weaver as an ally, teaming up with every other former resident of the Fright Zone, redeeming Catra, and forgiving everyone who was mind-controlled by Horde Prime, giving Hordak a pass after he overcame repeated mind-wipes in order to help defeat Prime doesn't seem like so much of a stretch.
I can relate to a lot of what you've said about moral transactionalism within society. Your explanations made me think back to past situations in my life when I've been wronged and yet the perpetrators have expected me to forgive them instantly following nothing more than a quick apology on their part and yet, when I've explained that it may take me some time, they've been quick to disappear from my life.
I really appreciated this critical take on an all-too-common and, frankly, lazy trope. Also, in addition to obligating people to accept a transactional morality, it also trains us to tolerate abuse in anticipation of a grand redemption after the harm has been done. Truly, Redemption Through Death needs to be retired and, hopefully, replaced with Redemption Through Accountability.
You raise an intriguing point with the “moral framework” and it’s real world expectations because the use of tropes in any story or narrative creates perhaps the implied impression that there is an objective “framing” to an individual actions. That’s a person who have done a single good dead is absolve from the harm and hurt that they cause to others. However, this is a dramatic convention or construction and not something that “exist” in reality because reality has no “dramatic convention” or “construction,” in which there is no obligation of the person who have been wronged, hurt or, harmed to absolve that person who hurt him, her, them, or they. Furthermore, the transactional nature you describe can be found in tropes where characters are “punished” because of the “moral framework” within the narrative. For example, the “Entitled to Have You” trope where often but not always a woman rejects a man and she gets “punish for it.” She is “punished” for transgressing the “moral framework” of the story.
I definitely read Loki’s Infinity War death completely different- based solely on the look on his face when he decides to goes after Thanos and his last words to Thor (‘sun will shine on us again’ sounds like a really fancy goodbye) completely read it as the second version. He didn’t think he was getting out of it, in my opinion. Also, I completely forgot that Dante’s Peak exists. And how much that scene with the acid lake messed up child me lol.
I would add a concern that romanticizing sacrificing oneself to be redeemed in the eyes of others could have some dark consequences. Probably has had. In Star Wars morality is simple and Vader's wrongs are undeniable, but what about someone whose family has told them something about them is immoral. Stories are powerful, we have to be careful with that power.
Redemption isn't owed, but I wouldn't say it's earned either, because how do we measure good and bad doings? Do they have one fixed value that we can say at certain point they were "paid off"? Or does the weight of acts ultimately differ in our eyes? Throw the economics through the window, it doesn't apply to morality. What redemption is, is a grace. It's completely up to the victim where, when, why and whether they're going to have that grace.
You're a very interesting person with a lot to talk about. I found this video in particular the most interesting! In terms of Redemption through death I find I agree with you where it should be handled carefully and be consistent with the narrative. Where as I prefer the redemption through change and seeing a villain find the error of their ways and strive to become better. Again with this one it should be handled carefully and explore the character's psychological state
Yes!! This trope has annoyed me to no end for so many years! it DOES feel cheap. There is of course other related tropes that I've seen such as what I like to call "the a-hole redemption" which is when a character who is generally an a-hole suddenly starts acting nice only to be killed of moments later by something completely unrelated. And the worst part is that you see it coming a mile away.. Because it is just that... a trope! However.. I have seen a property where a villain redeemed herself without dying.. only to become the annoying, comedic sidekick for the hero.. that was almost worse..
I think redemption should come down to 2 components: changing internally in terms of values, intentions and motivations, and external impact. In the redemption through death trope they usually change internally, but the one big good act is unlikely to counterbalance all of the bad they did. I don’t think redemption has to mean they undid all of the harm, but they realized the harm they have caused and they changed internally as a person. Of course, that redemption doesn’t mean they are entitled to the forgiveness of every person they hurt.
It`s often a lazy trope but it`s also quite real. Someone dies all of the sudden all the bad things they`ve done are forgotten and they are fondly remembered. As long as they weren`t only evil.
Also, I will say, one problem that I have with this trope is actually sort of the inverse of yours. It sort of implies that, short of a massive self destructive act of goodness, it’s almost impossible to redeem yourself for your moral failings.
TBH the idea of redemption through a single act, and then death, is something that really irked me without even knowing why (but in a very few cases), until I read a meta on tumblr about it that said something along the lines of it being a very christian-catholic idea that has been permeating western society and has the effect of putting a lot of pressure on the victim(s ). It has been enlightening... just like this video! I too feel like it's a very cheap way to fix things.
This is a wonderful video. I hate the trope as well, not because it's over used or used poorly. I hate it because it conditions people to think that one dramatic action can redeem a pattern of terrible behaviour. How many abusers look to their sporadic acts of kindness to "prove" they're better than they are. I believe it's a harmful trope I'd like to see less of. It's not much different from what you said, and it's not as well thought out a position as your explanation but it's where my mind went to.
I have wondered for years what movie included a grandma die from the volcano lake since I watched that movie as a child. Hearing the name of the movie and knowing it wasn’t a fever dream was fantastic!
I remember years (decades) ago an editorial in the newspaper about how the author felt the Catholic Church made up for its crimes of the past. He used the phrase "balance sheet". I remembered this when you said how morality wasn't transactional. The letter writer was acting like moral actions had some kind of measurable value and you could total and compare good to bad; like murdering a person for worshiping "wrong" somehow equals teaching 10 kids to read and giving a war widow $40. I was outraged and tempted to write back asking which exactly good deeds the church had done to counter the 20k+ deaths of Béziers, France in 1209 (400k when adjusted for population increases), the atrocity that gave us the phrase "Kill them all, let God sort them out." (Originally it was, "Slaughter them all for the Lord shall know His own." because the city was protecting Jews and since there wasn't a way to tell who was faithful and who wasn't they just killed everyone.) You're right about Vader. It was about redeeming himself to his son. In Legends books, Vader appeared to Leia asking forgiveness and she refused demanding he never see her again. It makes sense, Vader hurt Leia more. He destroyed her home and tortured her and the man she loved while she was forced to watch. To Luke, Vader cut off his hand, killed (kind of) his mentor, tortured his best friend when he wasn't around, and threatened his sister. Big difference.
Forgiveness is a choice, not something owed. Luke chose to seek opportunities to forgive Vader, and ultimately found them - in the end, Anakin's Light Side triumphed - and that is a worthwhile message in itself: that, no matter how terrible a thing you've done, you can still choose to do the right thing now, and possibly find forgiveness. Saying someone has crossed some sort of moral event horizon and is now unforgivable, is equivalent to saying that they might as well continue to do evil things because they can never make things better.
Something in real life that always bothers me which is adjacent to this topic (and possibly contributing to it) is the idea that once someone dies you can’t talk bad about them. How often when someone dies people are encouraged to only look at the positives of that person because otherwise it’s in bad taste or otherwise wrong. Which never sits well with me. That thought does lean heavily into this trope because the narrative wants us to only view that positive act and forget all the bad that happened before it which is not how it works. The story will often twist this idea and give it to the characters having them morn and occasionally even look back fondly on a character who hasn’t earned it which again doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not quite sure what my point here was but those are some thoughts I have about the trope and some of the real life repercussions of it.
Spoilers, but I feel like Radiant Historia's true ending had a stellar example of redemption through death. Heiss was a jackass to the very end, but it was his love for his nephew that motivated him from the get-go, so it made sense in a way that he'd sacrifice himself for Stocke. Also, they really subverted the Heroic Sacrifice endgame trope by making Stocke NOT have to sacrifice himself to save the world, but having the villain do this instead. RH is a great game, if anyone has a chance to play it, it's the best JRPG on the DS/3DS.
As easy on writers is this trope I would say for characters that die to make up from wrong doings isn't. They often don't live to be forgiven. Sure they don't have to deal with people having against them those evil things they did....but they don't get anything at all. They are dead. But to address transactional morality worry touched here I think we need to look sister tropes to redemption by death, like "she can fix him" . And it's mostly in romances when one of characters does horrible things to person they "love". But because of one big act this characters is forgiven things like stalking, lying, breaking-and-entering, getting into fights, invading privacy, attempting isolate and control, abuse of all types, impulsive outbursts of anger, killing loved ones of their 'love interest', insults, saying things to humiliate/break down their victim ect. The big one of them is also going after somebody who already is married or is about to get married or just are in happy relationship with somebody else. But because of one big romantic act or showing the slightest signs of improvement the victim of their actions is not only expected to forgive them... But also get together with them, and even get married to them instead of much more healthier options... Or at least give cancelation prize to them. No matter how horrible, cruel or just disrespectful and insulting this person was to them.
The bigger discussion here will always be framing and not redemption necessarily. Redemption doesn't require characters or audience to forgive any villain who is going through it, it just requires the character to do the thing because they want to change. I enjoy redemption arcs to be honest because I generally enjoy the villainous characters more, but sometimes some writers can't handle the Challenge of keeping the story believable to the others' reactions to the reformed person.
I think the second critique might be why I tend to like the “abused henchperson” twist to the trope better than most of the others. Because the henchperson’s not actually doing their “heroic” act to be redeemed, but rather for revenge, it makes more sense, character-wise. That they’re also abused by the Big Bad gives it a little feeling of justice as well. All around a little more satisfying, I think.
Vader's sacrifice in Return of the Jedi I'd say more or less worked... but when JJ pulled basically the same thing with Kylo Ren in Rise of Skywalker, it *really* rubbed me the wrong way. Well admittedly, that movie had already rubbed me the wrong way before it even started by pulling one of the three very specific things I *really* wanted the Sequel Trilogy to avoid, (those three things being "Don't have Luke turn evil," "Don't revive Darth Vader" and "Don't revive Palpatine"... And in a way, them managing to avoid these for two movies straight only to abruptly pull the third in the *finale* made it extra annoying) but even just going into the movie, I had a very specific hope that whatever happened with Kylo Ren, it *not* just be a straight-up repeat of Darth Vader. I wanted him to *either* stay a villain the whole way through and die, *or* do a Heel Face Turn and live to try and atone for all the evil shit he'd done. But, nope, once again the fallen hero character ends up performing one good act and then dying immediately afterwards.
I agree. This is the reason why I like TLJ the most from the new trilogy (even though it is hated by so many people), because at least it tried to do something different. When JJ came back he again copied the original trilogy, and it didn't work at all for me.
@@sigyn27 The Last Jedi is in my top 3 favorite Star Wars movies. I don't love everything about it. I think its handling of Snoke was frustrating at best. But when it was good, it was PHENOMENAL. tbf though, the death of Kylo Ren can't even be entirely blamed on JJ. Like, we have Colin Trevorrow's initial script for Episode 9, and while I do think that said script sounded better (not great by any means, but better), it too had Kylo Ren turn good again and then die shortly after...
@@thelordstarfish That's really interesting you like TLJ that much. I like it a lot as well, perhaps not enough for it to be in my top 3, but I think TLJ really had potential. At same time I need to acknowledge it failed as a sequel to TFA, because they were just too different. This whole "trilogy" is such a disjointed mess, I still can't understand how they managed to screw it up so much. As much as I like Kylo Ren, I think after TLJ it was really difficult to have a good redemption arc for him. He had a chance at redemption in TLJ after he killed Snoke, but he chose power instead and became the Supreme Leader. If there had been more films, then maybe, but with only one it was really tricky and they didn't do it right. I think in the last film Kylo Ren should have been the main villain. He, the First Order and the Knights of Ren (whoever they are, because based on the films alone I only know they like masks and black clothes), they would have been threat enough without bringing Palpatine back. Especially if Kylo Ren would have tapped more into the Dark Side.
Perfect points made, honestly. There's a whole lot to redemption arcs that isn't close to explored in any kind of depth in favor of the really surface level big gestures. It's used very cheaply, especially as you say in movies. I was actually thinking of Bucky Barnes for a bit there, and the vacuum of potential in his redemption that's taken for granted in a lot of ways (I know they've explored it a bit but it's also like oh he took off the kohl everything's fine now as far as the other heroes are concerned). There's also sometimes issues when long form media take on redemption arcs where eventually it's all just forgotten and their former villainy is a goofy in joke or something (i.e. Vegeta, I love him but good god). But hey, long form shows also go the movie route a LOT; any monster of the week shows that try and tie up their storyline in a single episode are doing it sometimes 10 times in a 20 episode season, just cause it's an easy way to tie up those loose ends. I do honestly hate this trope so much. I think it's cheap, I think it's sad, a waste of potential, a bad example to set. There is almost nothing good about it. It's so rarely done well that it's hard to find good examples of it, and especially good examples where the alternative (the person surviving) wouldn't be way more fascinating. Re. Stranger Things, my impression of the show was that Billy was a stand in character for things they realized they couldn't do with Steve (because they liked Joe Keery too much) and Will (because they realized having a 14 year old murder a bunch of people might be bad actually). We did pretty well out of it imo cause I loved his story, but honestly I would find FAR more entertainment value in Billy being alive in season 4, how his character might change or be affected by the memories of the things he did while possessed by the monster etc. and how other people act around him. I like stories about the effects of trauma. I like characters to have to work for their redemption and live with the consequenses and the extra work that comes with every small step they manage to take; and I like it when they have to come to terms with the possibility that they might never be fully forgiven. Nobody's ever watched it to the end, but there's always Heroes. It's basically a meme, but Sylar did a reverse heal turn about six times. I think he's mentioned on the TV tropes page specifically for it. It makes sense that nobody would trust his efforts to be good by the end. So what they do in the final heel turn is call massive attention to that fact. The episode is called The Wall. It's a psychological masterpiece imo. Sylar gets trapped in his own mind, just locked in there alone. Peter enters his mind telepathically and gets trapped in there as well, because while Sylar is the only person with the power to stop the season's big bad, he has NO desire to leave this prison. He knows he's a monster, he's punishing himself, he's had more than enough chances to be a better person already and he's come to terms with the fact that it isn't happening. He's also kind of convinced he's hallucinating Peter to punish himself some more. Peter has reason to loath Sylar, who not only was responsible for his brother's death but impersonated him for months too. So there's this huge wall that's stopping them from getting out, right? To cut a long story short, despite Peter basically throwing himself at the wall to try and beat it down, it isn't until he accepts that Sylar has changed (after years trapped together) that the brick of the wall begins to shatter; i.e. maybe Sylar put the wall up, but despite the pretence of trying to tear it down, Peter was in fact the one who was keeping it there. It's a really beautifully handled approach in a show that messed up redemption a million times, and it kinda makes me sad that so few people have ever stuck it out long enough to see it. Love letter to that episode, honestly, it was a jewel in the rough.
I have only just seen this video but I completely agree with you I enjoy all your videos but ones like this that make people think are so important to be able to get across messages like this
I really appreciate your remarks on She Ra; you articulate things about Catra's redemption that my mind had never fully articulated. Though I've always loved Catra's redemption, your breakdown of it helped me better understand some layers of *why*. Also I really appreciate your remarks on Hordak as well, since that's always bothered me [Edit: your take on Shadow Weaver was also excellent]
I do not think Zuko was actually a redemption arc, at least if being a proper villain voluntarily is the requirement. It seemed like that in the first half of S1 but with the backstory in mind he's just a poor abused kid who's fundamentally good but was forced on the wrong path by toxic influences in his life. In other words, to be good he didn't need to change who he is but STOP trying to change who he is.
There are plenty of villains who started out as poor abused kids forced onto the wrong path by toxic influences. I think this quote summarizes it nicely. "She's like us now isn't she? She's a monster." "She's an innocent victim." "So were we, once upon a time." Many villains begin as victims. Azula did. She was broken by her father's abusive parenting. She dove into the path of villainy full throttle.
@@quinnsinclair7028 There's nature AND nurture though, that make us who we are. Azula and Zuko endured the same abuse, Zuko's might have actually been worse because he was the heir, Azula was very much second in their father's eyes. The difference was, Zuko knew right from wrong. He cared deeply, and wanted to do what was right even if he was conflicted about it and made different choices. In Season 1, you saw it with all his blue spirit stuff. Azula never did. She only cared about power, and enjoyed hurting people. Experiences can develop tendencies like that, but they start somewhere innate. To assume a person's experience is solely responsible for their behavior is to deny their agency.
@@drawingsticks5333 True. Largely Zuko was supported by his mother while Azula was scolded by her. Not to mention Azula didn't have an Uncle Iroh figure. All she had was the Fire Lord rewarding her for cruelty.
@@drawingsticks5333 No, she had her little girl gang. She manipulated and used them so eventually they turned against her, but that was her choice. And Iroh might have had a similar relationship to her as he did with Zuko, but he recognized the sort of person she was. That was evident in some of the remarks he made, And she had nothing but contempt for him anyway for his actions after his son died. Azula didn't have a support system because she refused to have one.
It’s a good, well thought out point. For my frame of Master of DW, I ask, ‘were the writers aware or not?’ Because ultimately, while the master a) fought rascalon to save the doctor in the End of Time, b) tried to do a good thing in their own twisted mind in Death in Heaven (this is highly debatable, I know) and c) ultimately betrayed her former self in The Doctor Falls, the narrative crafted ultimately puts the redemption in the eyes of the Master themselves. And ultimately, all I can do is try to read the scene, because three writers have now had a major hand in the Master’s plot. In the case of The Doctor Falls, my read is that yes, its a good act, but it doesn’t redeem the master. Rather, the master is someone who might seek the approval for doing the right thing (see Lindsay Ellis’ video on narcissism), and that is not enough to justify a character redemption - and no one gets to know what the master did in that episode,because it is NOT a redemption to anyone outside of the master themself. Just my rambling thoughts.
I strongly feel that in The End of Time The Master fought Rassilon not because he wanted to save The Doctor, but because he really, really wanted to murder Rassilon.
I'm also just wary of how broadly the 'redemption arc' framework gets applied to any story dealing with character change. Like one of my favourite comic stories is the Death of Harry Osborn arc by DeMatteis in the pages of Spectacular Spider-man. It begins where Harry Oborn, gentle family-man starts being tormented by visions of Norman Osborn aka. abusive proponent of toxic masculinity, murderer and the Green Goblin. Since Harry still loves and idolises his father, the hallucinations start bullying and guilting him for not being the man Norman wanted him to be untill Harry breaks and gives in. However because he can't be ok with Norman's abuse and murders, he starts blaming all of Norman's bad actions on Peter/Spider-man or accusing him of framing and uses that as justification for tormenting him per the Green Goblin legacy. Throughout the story Harry is in internal conflict over the love he has for the people around him and his desire not to harm them, against the the guilt he has for "failing" Norman and not being like him. The story concludes when Harry sets up a bomb trap to kill Spider-man and Norman's enemies (and in the end, himself, rather than continue the torment) but realises his son and friend are in the building. Forgoing putting on the Goblin mask he rushes to save them before going back to save his best friend as well. However out in the street, he collapses after the Goblin formula he was on turns out to be toxic and he dies reconciling with Peter. It's generally regarded as one of the best Spider-man stories, but I've seen one or two try to argue that the ending is a "bad redemption", since Harry's final change is marked by one grand gesture of heroism before dying. It's not even that gesture that kills him. But 'redemption' or fixing Harry's soul is not the point or focus of the story. Yes the story looks at self-destruction but while Peter wonders if Harry is beyond help, the framing never really entertains the notion that he's too far gone. Harry dies because he consumes his fathers poison literally but remains himself because he can't bring himself to wholly accept his father's ideology that hurts his loved ones. The grand gesture is about holding on to love rather than making amends. If you're looking at it through a framework of redemption it doesn't work because it's not a story about redemption or putting things right, it's about protecting what's already right. That's just one example but seeing everything through the lense of redemption arcs can really limit your ability to experience and enjoy other narratives. Funnily enough there was recently a story that attempted to revisit the plot and bought in concepts of souls and hell and it was just the worst.
I'm younger than you and I do remember Dante's Peak. When I saw you were going to talk about the film I thought you'd also mention Pierce Brosnan's boss who initially impedes the volcano investigation because he doesn't take Brosnan's concerns seriously. After he's conclusively proven wrong he apologises then spends the rest of the film working to help the evacuation but still dies horribly. I wonder where he would fit in this whole scale.
I'm broadly in agreement with your views on this. Bravely Default 2 has an interesting example, though (I really enjoyed the game, but considering what you've said about starting to play games again and finding time for them I'm not about to recommend you play an 80 hour or so JRPG. With 2 false endings. That you have to experience in order to get the actual final ending.) . . Spoiler gap . . There's an interesting example (maybe) in Gladys in Bravely Default 2. It looked like they were doing a death = redemption thing right up until you start talking to NPCs after she dies, and... It is very clear that their feelings about her are at this point at best complicated, I think even at the end of the sidequest where some of them visit her grave. Death wasn't enough, but there is an acknowledgement that she made the first step and saved everyone by doing so even if that doesn't lead to either redemption or even forgiveness for her acting as the executioner in a witch hunt (And this is made more complicated due to acknowledgement that the actual villain of the chapter had manipulated her, and that... It takes an entire city to do a witch hunt, which the game does acknowledge that part fairly well) - There's at least enough there acknowledging that death on its own is not redemption, and being suckered into doing something does not excuse your actions to lead me to not be annoyed at the game for... Brushing up against it like I normally am. There's also indication that she wasn't intending and was intending to put the work in had she survived, and of the various characters who serve as secondary villains in the game, she's the only one who doesn't survive her chapter, with the rest... Working for that redemption, in various ways (Not so much Chapter 3, but everyone working for Chapter 3's villain is under literal mind control), and it's only Gladys who's redemption feels... Ambiguous... Which definitely helps the game avoid the implications your talking about. Meanwhile that game gives redemption to the first two villains in the game - two mercenaries who are introduced by taking a child hostage and threatening to kill him if their target doesn't hand herself over to them via a series of side quests which they're in the background of and have a lovely comedic interplay between them. Which... I don't know how the game managed to do a redemption arc for a man who's first instinct on 'how to kidnap a princess with a body guard' was 'hold a child at knife point and hope she hands herself over' and his boss but they managed it.
Star Wars: Bloodline acknowledges the point you were making with Vader and Luke. The novel is is told from Leia's perspective (about six years before The Force Awakens) and has her reflect on how she has never been able to forgive Vader's actions, which includes his torturing her in A New Hope. She can accept Luke's account of events and his feelings, but that doesn't change her view on the matter.
This has a lot of food for thought, and I admit I kind of love this trope although it is in execution. Philosophically I think when done well it isn't so much saying "you can do lots of bad things and then do one good thing and everyone has to like you" but more "if you think you're doing the right thing but then realise you are actually doing harm, the realisation isn't enough but you have to actually do the work to undo what you did no matter the sacrifice". But again it's all subjective and I think it depends on how it is done.
“long form media like TV” We’re what, 20 years into the Prestige TV era and I still had to think about this for a minute because TV still means a 30-minute self-contained episode airing at the same bat time every week.
I frickin’ loved Shadow Weaver’s death. Well, “loved” because she was a total monster. She spent so much of her life emotionally manipulating Catra and Adora, OF COURSE she was going to go for the ultimate emotional manipulation gut punch. And seriously, what else was she going to do? Like, that monster would cut through Catra, and if she had any “redemption” at all (in the sense of realizing she was ever incorrect), I think she knew at some level that Adora was stronger with Catra. She doesn’t let Catra go to Adora, she dies anyway, and at least this gives her the emotional one-up. Or so she thinks, anyway. It was just SO consistent with how her character had been established. I was willing to forgive Hordak being waved off because the whole concept of redemption was explored so strongly with Catra and Shadoweaver (and my absolute favorite, Wrong Hordak). Scorpia and Entrapta to a lesser extent as well. Like, I dunno, in the context of Shadow Weaver’s death, I feel like Hordak getting the redemption = death treatment wouldn’t have worked either. And I really liked the Hordak/Entrapta “your imperfections make you beautiful” dynamic, and it foreshadowed Season 5 so well. So I don’t think he should have stayed bad either. I guess I’m willing to give it a pass because they acknowledged it, and hey, Catra had to put in the work, so presumably Hordak will have to put in the work too. I can easily see a spinoff/fanfiction where he and Entrapta go to deal with all the shit on Beast Island because that way he doesn’t have to be around people he hurt, and he has to actually emotionally deal with his shit.
also an example of a villian 100% redeemed is the evil queen (Regina) from Once Upon a Time....the evil queen of Snow White was 100% redeemed over the 7 seasons of the show...she finally realized and understood that the Love between Snow White and Prince Charming was the most powerful magic of all time....she was powerless to destroy it and then she began to understand it and she saw how valuable it is, that same LOVE Snow and Charming had extended to their entire family....their Daughter, their Grandson, and Snow's step mother (Regina herself)....she became what i call a "Dark Hero"....she still used dark magic, but she used it for good purposes....just like how Batman was, he used dark tactics to bring in the bad guy...but Regina did not die....villians being redeemed don't always have to die
Not gonna lie, I had forgotten Dante's Peak existed until you mentioned that specifc scene, and it's the only scene I actually remember from that movie
As I find common, I find myself agreeing with you in most of these thoughts. Of the shows that I've seen, the one that surprised me was the grandma in Dante's Peak. Granted, I haven't seen that in years, but I never thought of that as a redemption arc. I guess I didn't catch or remember the part about it being her fault. I'm pretty sure you're right, though. Now I want to watch Pierce Brosnan trying to be a volcanologist again. LOL. The part that tickled me most, however was "If you want to hear me mispronounce YOUR name ..." Because that made me chuckle.
if you make this trope discussion a series I will gladly watch it alongside Trope talks 😁 you watch enough sci-fi to know that multiple shows with the same basic premise can all have different advantages and coexist.
I don't think Snape fits here. He didn't turn on Voldemort in the last moment and redeemed himself by dying. He had turned sides years earlier. It was only revealed to the readers after his death.
@@megan88 Hmm... I don't think he did. He was a bully and at the same time someone fighting for the good side and risking his life for the right cause. He never stopped being a bully and he had joined "the good guys" many years prior to his death. He seems to fit in this trope only because the readers' perspective changes after he dies and his memories are revealed. (To be clear, I do think that Snape was a positive character overall, despite all the awful things he had done.)
In regards to TV shows, the most glaring example I can think of with this trope is season 3 of 13 Reasons Why where after they spent the first two seasons showcasing what an absolute MONSTER Bryce Walker was, they try to turn an about face. The entire season is about the mystery of his death and after spending the first two seasons with him, the writers had to know that everyone’s initial reaction would be “who cares?” But it’s actually pretty disgusting how they handle it by trying to make us care about him just because he’s dead when he’s done nothing to atone for his actions
I know this was 3 weeks ago but as someone who has been through abuse and trauma (by a member of my own family) this really rings true for me. They're not part of my life anymore, and there is basically no way I can forgive them. I'm in a much better place, and I've come to terms with it (as much as I possibly can). However no one thing, or anything really, can forgive what they did.
I think Angel had the right idea in that redemption is less about one act or even if you achieve it (because in some stories people are not gonna forgive you or they're dead) but simply striving to be better...every day. I saw a reaction to Orpheus recently so the timing of this was pretty good. I figured you probably didn't want to mention that show cause of all the controversy with the creator (fair enough) but that show definitely had some strong examples.
I agree with all of your main points. To add to your last point; the abuser who demands forgiveness is continuing to center themselves rather than those they've harmed in the narratives they've created to justify the abuse. I've experienced it a lot with people going through 12-Step programs where being forgiven just something on a checklist on the way to their recovery. (Forgive me so that I can stop being a drunk.) This needs to be called out more often. The one minor point I disagree with is listing Nux (Fury Road) as this trope. He's more of a Finn character than a Darth Vader, a duped victim rather than a deliberate abuser.
"Death=Redemption" is honestly a cheap way writers avoid any consequences for a character while pretending they become good. Vader spent more than 2 decades murdering innocent people and hunting children and killed thousands in the tyrannical regime he helped created. He only saved Luke because his emotions got the better of him for a moment. This wasn't planned, it was a momentary lapse in judgement. The only reason why he ever even considered killing the emperor was so he could be a tyranical ruler himself. He was evil and selfish through and through. One good thing doesn't redeem someone of decades of monstrous behaviour. People who think Vader was redeemed have bad morality. I give a pass to Shadow Weaver because her death wasn't redemption. Her death didn't redeem her, HOWEVER she was responsible for Adora and Catra's trauma, her very presence was bad for their health and her leaving means Adora and Catra can start healing. One of the best examples of this trope is Fullmetal Alchemist where a problematic character offers to die for another character but a hero tells them "no", downright pointing out how this trope doesn't redeem them and only serves to avoid consequences.
I don't know the latter two entities you mention but I agree with almost all of your points about Vader. I can see how you got to it but the one point I disagree with is Vader's reason for killing the Emperor. It was not so he could become ruler himself, although that was the way of the Sith. Vader's offer of ruling with Luke was turned down and Luke also turned down the Emperor, something Vader hadn't seen before as nobody directly stood up to the Emperor. Vader being ruler was off the table at that point. He killed the Emperor because Luke was his son. It was that one finial bit of good that Luke felt in him. It's not like Luke was beating the Emperor, or was even holding level and Vader tipped the balance. The Emperor was massively kicking Luke's arse and was about to kill him. Vader had to choose whether to let that happen to Luke's death, or stop the Emperor and he chose to stop the Emperor and save his son. If that had been any other person in the galaxy (aside from maybe Leia), Vader wouldn't have been in any doubt and the idea of stopping the Emperor would not have come up. To get back to agreeing with your points, do his actions redeem him? Most definitely not and it's why I never liked Vader becoming Anakin's force ghost at the end of ROTJ. Luke might feel some kind of redemption for him but that's a very personal thing to him and it doesn't diminish all the evil Vader did and would have done had he not died. We are in full agreement there. :-)
But isn't saying that there are good and bad kinds of people already narratively cheap? I agree that from a given framing, _acts_ can be relatively good or bad, but I don't tie those to any sort of persistent "personal identity", and think that any person ultimately IS only whatever they are doing at the moment.
In the original comics Dark Phoenix Saga, Marvel editorial dictated that Phoenix had to die, because she had, y'know... destroyed an inhabited planet. No having to deal with consequences there (although maybe they've touched on it since? idfk.)
The Star Wars Infinities version of Return of the Jedi showed a good version of Vader surviving. In this take, the Emperor escapes and Vader lives. Vader doesn't get imprisoned because they need him to track down and bring the Emperor to justice. There's a reason to keep him around, and he has time to work towards redemption like Catra did. However, it's not an ending the movie could have gone with, because as you noted, it was the end of a movie and the franchise (at that point).
I really want to dig deeper on this one. You managed to reference Dante’s Peak without mentioning it’s other redemption through death: Paul who dies on the bridge. It’s because he delayed leaving long enough to be sure everyone else got out. For me it more than redeems his earlier errors, after all, he wasn’t entirely wrong. I knew Star Wars was going to try to pull a redemption arc for Kylo Ren but for me he was irredeemable. Maybe if they had Leia in that last movie it might have worked but I don’t think so. And here’s my truly controversial point: this is why Tony Stark should have died at the end of the first Avengers movie. He was an anti- hero at that point and I honestly felt cheated when he was saved. If nothing else, that battle should have had a cost. And think how much good he would have done by just not existing! No Ultron, no Sokovia Accords… that’s a heroic death 😉
You and OSP make different kinds of videos that I watch for different reasons. They explain why things do or don't work in terms of broad appeal, but they wouldn't touch the discussion about transactional morality that you went into. They don't talk about the lager implications, just how things behave in a literary context. More views does not equal higher quality. (Nothing against OSP, I adore their videos, they're just not filling the same need)
There's also the trope where the heroes get hated by the people they save so many times by just one bad act, whether they were mind-controlled or they were doing something they thought was the right thing to do to save them.
I think it also contributes to the hopelessness that people can feel once they realize they've done something wrong. The prevalence of the trope kind of suggests that once you have that realization, your story ends, but that's not how real life works. You then have to figure out how to become a better person - not necessarily to earn forgiveness, because no one's owed that - but to be able to live with yourself. And the trope seems to imply that living with yourself is too difficult, so it's easier and better for everyone around you for you to go out in a blaze of glory.
The biggest problem I have with the trope: it creates a subtle lie that if you have messed up beyond fixing, it can all be ok, if you die.
When you frame it like that, I realize this trope may have origins with the concept of "finding God on your deathbed". This fallacious idea that when nonbelievers are faced with the near and certainty of death, they will find faith and seek repentance. In turn, this concept is further expanded to "there are no atheists in foxholes" which has spurred some veteran groups to put up the "memorial to atheists in foxholes".
@@GiantButterKnife Of course, deathbed conversion has two significant factors that don't apply to a more general redemption-through-death: that God is all knowing, so can judge how sincere your conversion is; and that God is benevolent and merciful, so accepts sincere repentance no matter how little and late it is.
For mere mortals dealing with other people, more evidence is needed to establish a genuine change of heart, and more work is needed to balance the scales of past wrongs.
There's a quote from Wheel of Time "Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather" that I think sums this up pretty well
Keep in mind redemption and forgiveness are two different things. Forgiveness can happen without redemption, and says more about the character forgiving than the one being forgiven. I never saw Luke’s reaction to his father’s death as the story “redeeming” him, but as Luke getting closure about his family and showing how the dark side doesn’t get the last day in that. But that’s just my reaction to it, it still works for me.
You make an excellent point. I've never really read that scene in quite the same way because of how Vader came back as a force ghost beside Obi Wan and Yoda, and even looking as he did as Anakin. I'm going to try and look at it the way you do next time I watch that movie, I think it may help me recontextualize the scene in a way I can enjoy more.
@@AtodaK Sidenote: keep in mind that in the original cut of return of the jedi, Vader's force ghost was played by actor Sebastian Shaw and not Hayden Christensen. Just a little FYI lol.
Birdiejett I agree with everything you've said. 😎
@@CLDJ227 I knew that it was someone other than Hayden Christensen, what was important to me was that it Anakin rather than Vader as the force ghost.
Thanks for letting me know the actor's name, it took me a minute to process the name because OMG he has the same name as one of my favourite X-Men villains.
My mind is kind of blown by that.
Stannis said it best.
"A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward."
When you said you had to cover this topic before Overly Sarcastic Productions got to it I was convinced that they already had talked about it at least tangentially in relation to another trope but after re-watching both their Reformed Villains and Character Death Trope Talks I couldn't find it even mentioned, so I guess you really did beat them to it.
Red talk about in the fallen heroes trope talk video.
@@casualcraftman1599 Oooh! That's where it was!
Still, as part of a video about a different trope it wouldn't have been covered as in depth as it was here, so there's that.
“But wait! There’s someone you forgot to convince! It’s your audience!”
I really enjoy your trope discussions and the way you look at narrative.
Movies in particular are obsessed with death. It's the only method of redemption, it's the only punishment for any villain (unless it's a comedy), it's far too frequently the only motivator for the hero to do the heroic thing ("They killed my mom/dad/sibling/spouse/bestie/dog/love interest I met like two days ago!). And more than anything it's the only way writers seem to be able to get out of the corners they write themselves into with the need for ever escalating threats. Okay, the last point tends to be more of an issue with long running series than movies.
The position I agree with most is that a redemption arc isn't even about forgiveness, it's about recognising the damage you've done and trying to fix it / do better. It's not something you earn, it's about changing your behaviour. Which makes this trope even more frustrating, because the character doesn't acually get to do that.
If Darth Vader had survived he might have changed for good. Or he might have just decided that his son was the one person he wouldn't kill and gone right back to murdering everyone else. We'll never know.
It also interestingly means that any character can potentially be redeemed (whether it can be done plausibly is another question), because whether they can "make up" for their previous actions isn't the point, the point is that they try.
Haven’t seen “Dante’s Peak.” I didn’t see the point after seeing and really enjoying “Volcano.”
This trope is why I like “Flight” as the movie ends with the protagonist in jail for having flown while impaired. The fact that he landed the plane and saved lives didn’t redeem the fact that he was still drunk while in the plane.
“Legends of Tomorrow” has a habit of incorporating villains into the main cast. They point it out and the stated reason is that none of them are angels so as long as people are trying, they are given a chance.
"Dante's Peak" is to "Volcano" what "Deep Impact" was to "Armageddon". While similar in concept disaster films, the formers are more solidly based in the actual sciences, requiring much less suspension of disbelief that the laters. Plus Peirce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton were very easy on the eyes.
It's funny, Volcano also had a death redemption in the jackass bureaucrat that sacrificed himself to save the train driver.
"Flight" sounds terrible in that it's realistic. Dude screws up (intoxicated while flying), dude saves people from incident that is not directly caused by his screw up (mechanical failure doesn't happen when the pilot gets intoxicated, only the engine, so don't stash your Vodka-and-cocaine cocktail in the engine, my dudes!), dude's life is completely destroyed (instead of mostly destroyed, AKA losing his job) because of systemic garbage that doesn't acknowledge any kind of shade of gray and instead of just losing him his job also lands him life in prison. That's realism, unfortunately, because our legal system is a joke, but it's also shitty and should be framed as such.
Legends of Tomorrow is such a good show.
as someone from an abusive childhood the "theyre family, forgive them" really irks me. I get it usually comes from writers and fictional scenarios where both sides care enough to make it work, but its overabundance can feel like it's being said to unhealthy examples too. At least for my experiences the particularly abusive parent didn't love me unless I fit into certain boxes. It was control disguised as love. As a counter I would say family is more about behavior and feelings than blood relation.
Also I have seen the family, thus forgive attitude crop up in real life too. Even close friends, at least inailrionly, seemed confused how I wouldn't want my parents in my life since they're family. It isn't just in fiction I mean.
Some types of people are incapable of comprehending the experiences of others. To them, every other person's life is like theirs. Other people just aren't as aware as these people are. They've had fights with their family and forgiven them, so everybody should be able to do that. They are Christian and straight, so everybody that claims otherwise is lying to hurt people.
These people are scary. when I recognize this, I stay as far away as possible.
Personally, I've seen enough that I believe people when they say that there is too much bad blood to forgive their family.
What you said about Vader being redeemed in Luke's eyes struck a chord. Luke didn't know the full extent of what Vader had done, and when RotJ was released, neither did the audience. Would Luke, or the fans, be so quick to forgive if we had known about the slaughtering of the Younglings? Methinks not.
Going by the current expanded universe, in my opinion, Vader is a tragic character. His entire arc is one giant sunk cost fallacy and his inner-psychology in dealing with that. In a way, Palpy's greatest power is convincing others that his evil ideas are worth it in the long run.
Vader casually killed his own coworkers and was a superior commander in a regime that blew up planets. The movies definitely showed he's evil. Not to mention he gets a force ghost, which is the movie essentially telling killing one bad guy balances out killing thousands of innocent people.
People STILL count Vader as a redemption story even after seeing the prequels. They still think Vader was redeemed. Some comics showed Vader considered killing the Emperor so he could rule the Empire himself meaning he would do it for evil and selfish purposes. Star Wars is so ingrained in people's minds you can literally show him killing children and he's still redeemed in people's eyes.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 Wow. I can't believe I totally forgot about Alderaan! Then again, so did Leah. Maybe it would have been more memorable if the moment was given any actual emotional weight.
I can forgive Anakin cause he's a tragic case of a young boy/man being groomed by one of the most powerful evils in the galaxy, he didn't really have much say in the matter when you examine things. The choice Anakin had to make was whether to follow his destiny with the force at the end of stand by his actions and stay with Palpatine, he allowed the force to take control of his life and became one with it and then they never made another film.
@@HotDogTimeMachine385 Vader gets a Force Ghost because he becomes one with the light side of the force and follows his destiny. That's basically it. He's not forgiven for his crimes by anyone really. He just plays his part in the prophecy to destroy the sith.
One that I was quite pleasantly surprised by was Sunset Shimmer in the Equestria Girls films. After the first one seriously dropped the ball and gave her an absurdly rushed "What have I done?" moment after she's already defeated, the next THREE movies are all about the long, hard process of proving to everyone else and herself that she really is a hero now.
I feel like a good example of "good acts to balance out bad ones is not redemption/forgiveness" is the Todoroki Family subplot in My Hero Academia. Without going too much into spoilers, the series has so far handled the father's realization and attempts to "make up" for his lifetime of abuse with a surprising amount of grace and empathy for every party involved. By clearly showing the audience that what the father wants and is actively working towards is atonement not "trying to earn forgiveness" makes us root for him while never demanding anything from the injured parties. The author allows the rest of the family to react to the father's heel turn in varying and personal ways from cautious willingness, optimistic hopes of a reunited family to outright rejection without ever invalidating anyone for their responses. The story is not done yet so there is always the chance of the author dropping the ball in the future but so far, I really love how compassionately he's engaged with the subject of domestic abuse.
Very much agreed. When he was first introduced, Endeavor was a *very* easy character to hate, and while the story has been doing a lot of heavy lifting to make him more sympathetic, it doesn't really sugarcoat just how bad he has been... Hell, *he himself* (at least as far as the anime has come) seems to pretty much have accepted that he has probably damaged his relationship to his family beyond repair and that the only way for them to move forward probably is... without him. It's a really interesting and compelling angle that somehow manages to make me want to see more of what was initially one of the most loathsome characters in the show.
Endeavour's character arc is amazing and I sincerely hope he survives the whole manga, even if his family never forgives him. I love the arcs him and All Might have been gives about having to rebuild their whole lives and I hope they pay off for them in a way that's not death.
And I used to hate the shit out of Endeavour...
I feel like MHA does a really good job with all the villain and hero characters, except AFO they could all redeem themselves and readers would totally get it, because they are so well written.
I am sure this trope existed for a while, but I think the Hayes codes really brought it to the forefront. After all, one of the codes was something along the lines of that fact that "criminals should not be made to be heroes", therefore you couldn't have a redemption arc for a character that resulted in anything other than their immediate death. The problem with a lot of tropes is that all of people, both in front of and behind the camera don't take the time to examine why these tropes exist, or became popular. Like you said, using this trope basically means that you can buy morality. (side note: which is essentially what the Church told rich people since forever, but that is another discussion). Great video!
I never really cared for this trope either, and it's one reason I really liked what they did in Endgame with Hawkeye and Black Widow. She understood from her own life that redemption takes effort and refused to let him take the easy way out. Really great video, well said.
When you had the spoilers disclaimer, I felt called out for how much media I’ve consumed
You just articulated why I hated Rise of Skywalker's decision to kill Ben Solo. It would have been so much more entertaining to see him work for redemption. And, with the current comics, TV shows and books as cannon now, they would have had the time to do it, unlike most films. Killing him was repetitive, empty (he was redeemed WITHOUT needing to die by just coming to save Rey), and cheap.
I hated that too. For that reason. I wanted to see how he lived with himself having killed his father; and how those who knew Han reacted to him. And how he integrated back in society with that baggage. I assume everyone knew. They could have done a whole other series on that journey.
@@maurinet2291 In particular, I would have liked to see his interplay with Finn and Poe now. He tortured them both, in his way. But at the same time, he was really just hating himself, believing that if everyone including Luke thought he was destined for evil (and of course he believed that, since Luke tried to kill him), he must be meant for evil. Now, knowing the truth, he has to forgive his parents and Luke while forgiving himself and seeking forgiveness from Poe and Finn. That could have been wonderful in Adam Driver's hands.
I agree with you 100%. I am still so mad at the writers for killing Ben. His story wasn't finished. There was so much potential with Ben, so many things to explore with his character.
You really put a pin in my soul with this dissection. My life has closely felt akin to Katra in that I kept making excuses for pushing people away. I hope it's not too late in my life (59) for the work needed to redeem myself. Death can wait.
I always hated the 'easy way out' feeling of redemptive deaths (for character and story writers), and you've really explored it so well here. I wish we could focus more on growth and the slow repairs that a person needs to make to themselves and to the world. Feels like both She-Ra and Avatar both understood that realizing the problem is the START of an arc, not the end of one.
(and Damn, that point about "in Luke's eyes)
"You don't ask for forgiveness, Kaz. You earn it." -- Crooked Kingdom (six of Crows duology)
One of the best 'redemption through life' arcs that always came to my mind was Teal'c from Stargate SG1. True, his arc started with the series, but the first few seasons didn't waist time reminding us that he was once the enemy and the evil things he had done. But what was more important was that even though he had freed his people from evil, connected with friends and family and became a hero, he never let go of the burden of his evil deeds, all the way to a movie AFTER the show ended after 10 seasons. When talking to a character who was JUST starting his own redemption he had this to say.
Teal'c: "One day others may try to convince you they have forgiven you. That is more about them than you. For them, imparting forgiveness is a blessing."
Tomin: "How do you go on?"
Teal'c: "It is simple. You will never forgive yourself. Accept it. You hurt others… many others. That cannot be undone. You will never find personal retribution. But your life does not have to end. That which is right, just, and true can still prevail. If you do not fight for what you believe in, all may be lost for everyone else. But do not fight for yourself. Fight for others - others that may be saved through your effort. That is the least you can do."
He didn't play it soft or kind either. He was intense and weighed down with the burden of his own past. It is a VERY difficult process to write someone who was evil from the start (with no signs of changing) and put them on the path of redemption thru life, but it can be done. They did it in Star Trek, Buffy, Xena Warrior Princess, Dragonball Series, hell, I even think the Fast and the Furious made it work. (this is top of my head, i know there's more) It's a difficult puzzle to assemble. So much has to come together for an acceptable pay off. I understand the reluctance to let them live and take the easy way out. Fans are more forgiving and may want a redemption more than the writer, but some pieces (at least at the time) may not come together for the writer to morally allow the person to live.
Yes, the advantage of long form media. "NYPD Blue" became years of Andy Sipowicz struggling to become a better human. [Yes, I am old.] And "Xena" was designed as a series about working toward atonement.
Okay, this whole trope starts really with Bushido, ancient Japanese history, mostly during the warring states period. If you go watch the old Samurai dramas, it's a different thing altogether. The way the trope is supposed to go is that the villain realizes that they've done the wrong thing, taken the wrong path, whatever. The death is not a redemption, but an atonement. It's meant to be them dying for their crimes, while trying to make some sort of amends for their actions. It's not meant to make the heroes forgive them, it's a personal choice to stop the bad thing that they set in motion. Anime and Tokusatsu (live action suit shows) take up this cultural trope and use it to make the villains more complex and give them an arc. It's still not an 'all is forgiven' sort of thing, it's a direct punishment for their earlier actions. Remember that in Bushido, it's only in the moment of death that Bushido is perfected. It's meant to be the individual recognizing that their selfishness hurt the society and others and they therefore atone through suicide. It's a form of seppuku, or ritual suicide. It's the apology, but it doesn't insist on forgiveness. A lot of Western writers watched a ton of anime but never really got the underlying cultural understanding. That's why we get the actions without the substance. Anyway. lecture done. XD
No thats not what bushido is
Atonement through death is a trope that is older than dirt. It doesn't have an origin at a specific time period or place.
I really enjoy this discussion. Great point about Anakin's redemption through Luke's eyes.
I would add that I think/hope Anakin isn't redeemed through death. In ROTS he learned about training he could do to come back as a force being. Obi-Wan (and presumably Yoda) began similar training with Force Ghost Qui-Gon.
The fact that the three of then were together at the end of ROTJ is because they all had a vested interest in Luke and Leia.
Yoda and Obi-Wan are clearly happy that Anakin turned back to the light side but I don't think that implies redemption through death but more of people who loved him happy to see him return to the light. I like to think if he had lived that the Rebels would have put him on trial for his numerous war crimes.
Ps Love She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
I mean, Hordak did kind of have a redemption arc back in season 3, it's just that Catra showed up right at the end, sent Entrapta to Beast Island, and sent him on a big time villain relapse.
Thank you for this! Redemption as a concept is really, really complicated once you start to really think about it, and unfortunately we tend to just gloss over it with easy answers and convenient shorthands a lot of the time. Agreed very much on the heroic sacrifice high note being aesthetically pleasing because it's uncomplicated, and therefore gets used a lot. But like you say here, real redemption is a process, not a one-time action. Depending on the severity of the deeds done before, one deed at the end doesn't undo the harm done already, and it doesn't necessarily mean that those who were harmed get their trauma wrapped up with a neat bow. Human beings are complicated, and we are not defined by one single choice-- real redemption takes time and effort, it is multiple choices, again and again, and there are valid arguments to be made that, like addiction recovery, this is not a linear process.
(Really fast, your top in this video is really great! Needed to mention it!)
So, okay, I'm going to take the Jaime Lannister example here and make a controversial argument that his story is not and never was a redemption arc. From the perspective of his storyline, he was a man pulled between his selfish impulses and practical self-preservation (personified by Cersei) and his higher ideals and personal moral compass (personified by Brienne). We see this to be true of him even before the series starts when he finally tells his version of the events that sealed his reputation forever afterward, but then what exactly is he redeeming himself for, then? If the infamous thing that he did that was so vile turned out instead to be the thing that we morally agree with, and we see that, yes he does horrible things in the story, but his moral complexity is still in place before he ever meets Brienne. Looking at him through the series as a whole he's never truly a villain, nor is he ever truly a hero. He's a complex, morally grey character whose arc is being torn between his cynical pragmatism and his desire for true knightly ideals. Nothing about his arc is redemptive, really-- killing his king isn't something he feels he needs to atone for, it's something that he feels was right and is angry that it's the thing he's reviled for.
On a personal note, I also really, deeply love and appreciate the course of his arc (well, on paper-- in execution it was rushed too much to land properly). I have a big, big problem with "beauty and the beast" stories a lot of the time, not because they are inherently bad or anything, but just because of personal baggage from life experience. This one, though, this says all the things I feel like we as a culture do not say nearly enough. Not from Jaime's perspective (and yeah, I will argue that everything he does in that season makes complete sense about the things he's done that he actually does feel guilty for and how that shapes his self-image and what he feels he deserves), but from Brienne's. Because as un-romantic as it is to admit, the reality is that we cannot save other people from themselves. No matter the potential we see in them, no matter how badly we wish or how hard we try, or how decent a person we are, at the end of the day, that person is going to make their own choices. It has no bearing on how good we are, or how worthy we are, or even how worthy they are. We cannot force them to make the choice we want. This happens with mental illness, it happens with addiction, it happens with trauma, it happens all the time. No matter how beautiful of a person you are, you cannot force a beast to become a prince-- that is their choice to make and their work to do. This ending is sad, tragic, even, because Jaime could have made the choice to build a better life for himself and continue to try and live up to the nobility he wished he could have, that he sees Brienne living-- but in Winterfell, looking the Starks in the eye, looking Bran in the eyes, and saying, "yes I am deserving of good things now, I feel perfectly fine with all of this, sorry about the terrible things I and my family did to you, but I did some good things so we're good now." That's not the mindset of someone who truly understands what they did, and that's not someone who fits the redemption role, no matter how badly we as the audience may wish otherwise. To call this character arc a redemptive one does it a disservice and over-simplifies who Jaime is, what real people go through in recovery, what the people who love them go through, and ultimately what this story is trying to say about human nature. It's complicated.
Really great video! Talking in more depth about the concept and nature of redemption would be really great. Thank you for this discussion!
I love your analysis of this trope, especially when you mention that it empowers the perpetrator. I was reminded of Jimmy Saville, pdf file and life-long Catholic, who seemed to be under the impression that if he did enough "good" in his life, it would make up for the abuse he perpetrated against thousands. A counter balance if you will. That's why he was so involved in charity work and fundraising for the needy : his goal was to redeem his evildoing by having a positive impact in other areas of his life. On a smaller scale, this is how people learn to view abusers : complex and nuanced. How many people have been told "But they were always nice to me", or "But they volunteered at church and helped people pay their bills" when exposing their abuser? It isn't lost on me that this way of thinking is deeply transactional in nature, much like the religious view of "good deeds". Good deeds are done to buy our way into heaven, to buy our redemption out of sin. It's absurd, but that's how many people live their lives. This transactional view of morality has also bled into our justice systems, where consequences for crimes are often farcically at odds with the consequences in the victims' lives.
I also greatly appreciated your reminder that forgiveness is not owed but rather earned. Some people believe that expressing remorse should be enough to qualify for forgiveness, which I feel strongly against. While it is true that forgiveness may be a healing path for some, it should never be seen as a given or an inevitability. People who cannot forgive are not "bitter". You can move on from harm that was done to you without forgiving your abuser, simply because the blame lay at their feet, not yours.
I'll get off my soapbox now ;)
Good youtubers who produce good content that takes an obvious amount of education/time/research are in fact owed a comment, sub and like.
I don't think Shadow Weaver is redeemed, I think her death is her final toxic attempt at exerting control over Catra and Adora.
I think another factor is that she was in a no win situation anyway. If she fights the monster she'll probably die. If she doesn't Adora will instead, the heart will detonate and everyone including her dies. She had the choice of dying on the winning side and having Adora achieve her goal after she dies or dying on the losing side and achieving nothing.
I don't think she intended it that way. It's just that she doesn't know how not to be that way. Her mask is literally and figuratively off. It's not manipulation, it's just who she is.
Thank you ... THANK YOU! I always thought I was alone on this one ... :P
I'm a sucker for redemption arcs, partly because I think few people are evil for the sake of being evil, and partly because it satisfies my buddhist longings (oxymoron duly noted).
But I'm always very anxious during such arcs, because they usually end in the death of the redeemed. And. I. Don't. Like. It.
For similar reasons you stated, but also for another one: Imagine all the good someone like that could have done with the rest of their life. Someone willing to sacrifice their own life for someone else, or at least risk it. Someone potentially willing to change themselves, admitting to their own sins, paying for what they did.
It's not just the cheap way out for both the character and the writer, but in my opinion also cheats the world out of some potential good. Let that frecking behind-opening work hard to at least try to balance out all the bad they've done. Heck, have them do it despite people still HATING them, despite not getting that forgiveness they are longing for.
I don't care, just let them actually work for it! :P
Yeah i never understood how one death some how undoes a whole heap of bad stuff, wouldn't them being alive and using the rest of their lives to do good make more sense?
Yes it would make more sense but time is a factor in some media and as Joe Espin says, redemption through death is quick, easy (and I'll add cheap). It's one of the reasons I liked the Evil Queen's arc in Once Upon A Time. Even when she started to do good, it took time for most people to accept it, she faltered on the way but ultimately came through in the end. Although that doesn't include the death part of the trope, so it may not count.
It's not so much that death undoes any of those wrongs, more so that death prevents them from doing any more wrongs. It's easier to forgive a person if they are dead and you know they can't ever hurt anyone again.
@@EmeralBookwise not really no
@@tyronechillifoot5573 : To be clear, I am in know way saying that forgiveness is mandatory just because some one perform one last ostensibly "heroic" sacrifice.
All I'm saying is that when a former villain is dead there is less baggage involved in forgiving them. Arguably it doesn't even have to be true forgiveness, just letting any lingering grudges die with the perpetrator and moving on with our lives.
Exactly
You should watch Bojack Horseman. I don't think it specifically deals with redemption through death trope, but it does talk about many related subjects that you touched on, such as not being owed forgiveness and people thinking that making a single grand gesture every once in a while is enough to be considered a good person. It's a really great series that deconstructs alot of our societal views on morality.
Good point about the narrative arc being done, which makes me glad that real life doesn't automatically kill people who change their evil ways, or there'd be no motivation to do so.
Cool, nuanced new video - can't wait to see more trope dissections in the future :) Like the satellite love interest, fridge-ing, romantic plot tumors, deliberate values dissonance, etc.
In my last DND session the Fighter told the Rogue "It's the right thing to do and good things come back to people who do good."
My favourite Redemption Arc in all of fiction is probably Megatron in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, and its sequel series, Lost Light.
One of the weird things about it is that, all along, Megatron's entire plan seems to be to perform this specific subset of the trope. He realises how far gone he is from his original goal, and opts to save Cybertron from Shockwave's universe-ending plan and then let the Autobots execute him for his millions of years of war crimes. And while he does get inspired enough to dodge the fate at his initial trial (Starscream decided to grandstand and Megs refused to let Screamer be the one to write his epitaph), the plan is still basically the same: Do a good deed (find Cyberutopia so the Transformers can have a home that isn't ravaged by the war) and then accept his fate.
And then throughout the comic's second season, Megatron's resolve is tested repeatedly. It's shown that slapping a red badge on his chest and going "Not evil anymore, want to be loved now" didn't automatically make him a good person, he's still kind of an arse to the rest of the crew of the Lost Light, he still has moments where he lashes out at others due to stress, he still has a heavy disregard for other species, particularly organic ones, and he has to learn to follow the values of the Autobots, rather than simply stopping his previous actions. The chance that he could relapse, and return to his warmongering ways, is a very real fear for not just the Autobots, but also for himself: He's so afraid of returning to who he was before that he initially refuses to fight when the Decepticon Justice Division come to execute him for treason, he tries to surrender to spare his comrades and it takes the brutal murder of his closest friend, Ravage, to motivate him to pick up his Fusion Cannon and stride out to meet Tarn on the battlefield.
And while it sticks, he's never truly validated. Team Rodimus, the core cast of the book, gradually come to trust him and accept him as their friend and co-leader. But not all of the Lost Light's crew do, in fact most of them want him gone and eventually mutiny against him and Rodimus to achieve that goal. Optimus believes in him, but a lot of others heavily question his judgement on the matter, and regard his acceptance of Megatron's change to be a bridge too far, a failing in Prime's character. And of course, the wider galactic community still wants the guy's head on a pike.
And while Megatron is ultimately redeemed in the eyes of Rodimus, Magnus, and the other protagonists, he's _never_ redeemed in the eyes of himself. Whenever people talk about the good he's done, he can only say that he could've done more. When he's facing the certain fate of either being executed or imprisoned in a slow cell for the rest of his life, he believes its deserved in spite of Rodimus' desperate attempts to save him. And during the final battle with the Functionists, he can't bypass the Morality Lock to open one of Rung's Matrices (Morality Locks stop anyone who hasn't accepted and found peace with themselves from activating Guiding Hand tech), and has to pass it back to a one-handed Rodimus, who opens it with his teeth.
It's a complex and very emotional story, that takes a character that many would've regarded as irredeemable prior to 2014, and makes it work.
Shadow Weaver, right before her "heroic" sacrifice: "I wonder what new ways I can come up with to traumatize my wards. Oh, I have an idea!"
When Vera spoke of transactional morality, I remembered a story from a 70s era show, "Rod Serling's Night Gallery." It was an anthology show that many regard as a successor to "The Twilight Zone", but where "Twilight Zone" emphasized science fiction, "Night Gallery" emphasized horror. The story came in the show's second season and was called"The Sin Eater". Set in Wales during a time of plague and famine, where only the rich could gorge themselves, but when they knew they were dying or had died, a Sin Eater was ordered. The corpse would be surrounded by food, and the Sin Eater would perform the ceremony which would transfer that person's sins to the food, to be eaten by the one performing the duties. Thus, the Sin Eater, in the eyes of Heaven, would bear the sins, and the dead rich person could rise to Heaven. But the area's Sin Eater is himself ill, so his son is ordered to perform the rites. There's a lot more to it, and a horrific twist at the end. It's a gut punch, but like good dystopian stories, a lesson for the audience.
Now I want to know and I'm not sure if I have the means and time to look the show up so it is a bit cruel of you to just tease what you talk about
@@grinnylein Okay... Spoilers.
The boy (son) is told by his mother to recite the ritual but instead of eating the food to hide it within his cloak (must have TARDIS pockets). But he has to spend hours reciting the ritual while sitting with the corpse and despite his extreme hunger not eating. It's harrowing to watch. He gets away with it because he's alone for the ceremony, lest anyone else bear the sins. When the ceremony is completed, he runs away, not even taking the money offered as payment. He gets home, and his mother takes the food into another room... which she lays around the dead body of her husband, the boy's father. He's told that the only way his father can go to Heaven is if he, the son, actually properly performs the ritual this time. Tears streaming down his face, the boy closes the door and picks up a loaf of bread, as he starts chanting, and bites the loaf. It's melodramatic as heck, but dang it makes me sob.
While I really enjoy your discussion videos any time I’m sorry to say overly sarcastic productions already did the the trope talk a year and a half ago
Please don’t let this discourage more videos like this I love hearing it from any writer’s perspective
Thank you
as someone who loves entrapta and hordak and entrapdak.... youre right it wasnt handled the best but at the very least it leaves off on a note where i (dunno about others) can imagine the two of them keeping each other accountable and actively working to become better together. shame its not an idea that couldve been explored in the show proper tho :C maybe in a spin-off comic? id read that
What makes Hordak's redemption work for me is the revelation that he was another of the show's abused children/child soldiers, like Catra and Adora - Adora got the easiest redemption of anyone: "Oh, you have the magic sword? You must be good now!", but all the "victims" in the series got their own redemptions.
It also helps that, by the end of the show, only Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime - the two abusers who created all the other villains - aren't redeemed, and pretty much everyone has had a turn at being evil (except Bow).
After accepting Shadow Weaver as an ally, teaming up with every other former resident of the Fright Zone, redeeming Catra, and forgiving everyone who was mind-controlled by Horde Prime, giving Hordak a pass after he overcame repeated mind-wipes in order to help defeat Prime doesn't seem like so much of a stretch.
I can relate to a lot of what you've said about moral transactionalism within society. Your explanations made me think back to past situations in my life when I've been wronged and yet the perpetrators have expected me to forgive them instantly following nothing more than a quick apology on their part and yet, when I've explained that it may take me some time, they've been quick to disappear from my life.
I really appreciated this critical take on an all-too-common and, frankly, lazy trope. Also, in addition to obligating people to accept a transactional morality, it also trains us to tolerate abuse in anticipation of a grand redemption after the harm has been done. Truly, Redemption Through Death needs to be retired and, hopefully, replaced with Redemption Through Accountability.
You raise an intriguing point with the “moral framework” and it’s real world expectations because the use of tropes in any story or narrative creates perhaps the implied impression that there is an objective “framing” to an individual actions.
That’s a person who have done a single good dead is absolve from the harm and hurt that they cause to others.
However, this is a dramatic convention or construction and not something that “exist” in reality because reality has no “dramatic convention” or “construction,” in which there is no obligation of the person who have been wronged, hurt or, harmed to absolve that person who hurt him, her, them, or they.
Furthermore, the transactional nature you describe can be found in tropes where characters are “punished” because of the “moral framework” within the narrative.
For example, the “Entitled to Have You” trope where often but not always a woman rejects a man and she gets “punish for it.”
She is “punished” for transgressing the “moral framework” of the story.
I definitely read Loki’s Infinity War death completely different- based solely on the look on his face when he decides to goes after Thanos and his last words to Thor (‘sun will shine on us again’ sounds like a really fancy goodbye) completely read it as the second version. He didn’t think he was getting out of it, in my opinion.
Also, I completely forgot that Dante’s Peak exists. And how much that scene with the acid lake messed up child me lol.
I would add a concern that romanticizing sacrificing oneself to be redeemed in the eyes of others could have some dark consequences. Probably has had. In Star Wars morality is simple and Vader's wrongs are undeniable, but what about someone whose family has told them something about them is immoral. Stories are powerful, we have to be careful with that power.
Redemption isn't owed, but I wouldn't say it's earned either, because how do we measure good and bad doings? Do they have one fixed value that we can say at certain point they were "paid off"? Or does the weight of acts ultimately differ in our eyes?
Throw the economics through the window, it doesn't apply to morality. What redemption is, is a grace. It's completely up to the victim where, when, why and whether they're going to have that grace.
You're a very interesting person with a lot to talk about. I found this video in particular the most interesting!
In terms of Redemption through death I find I agree with you where it should be handled carefully and be consistent with the narrative.
Where as I prefer the redemption through change and seeing a villain find the error of their ways and strive to become better. Again with this one it should be handled carefully and explore the character's psychological state
Yes!! This trope has annoyed me to no end for so many years! it DOES feel cheap. There is of course other related tropes that I've seen such as what I like to call "the a-hole redemption" which is when a character who is generally an a-hole suddenly starts acting nice only to be killed of moments later by something completely unrelated. And the worst part is that you see it coming a mile away.. Because it is just that... a trope!
However.. I have seen a property where a villain redeemed herself without dying.. only to become the annoying, comedic sidekick for the hero.. that was almost worse..
I think redemption should come down to 2 components: changing internally in terms of values, intentions and motivations, and external impact. In the redemption through death trope they usually change internally, but the one big good act is unlikely to counterbalance all of the bad they did.
I don’t think redemption has to mean they undid all of the harm, but they realized the harm they have caused and they changed internally as a person. Of course, that redemption doesn’t mean they are entitled to the forgiveness of every person they hurt.
It`s often a lazy trope but it`s also quite real. Someone dies all of the sudden all the bad things they`ve done are forgotten and they are fondly remembered. As long as they weren`t only evil.
Also, I will say, one problem that I have with this trope is actually sort of the inverse of yours. It sort of implies that, short of a massive self destructive act of goodness, it’s almost impossible to redeem yourself for your moral failings.
TBH the idea of redemption through a single act, and then death, is something that really irked me without even knowing why (but in a very few cases), until I read a meta on tumblr about it that said something along the lines of it being a very christian-catholic idea that has been permeating western society and has the effect of putting a lot of pressure on the victim(s ). It has been enlightening... just like this video! I too feel like it's a very cheap way to fix things.
This is a wonderful video. I hate the trope as well, not because it's over used or used poorly. I hate it because it conditions people to think that one dramatic action can redeem a pattern of terrible behaviour. How many abusers look to their sporadic acts of kindness to "prove" they're better than they are. I believe it's a harmful trope I'd like to see less of. It's not much different from what you said, and it's not as well thought out a position as your explanation but it's where my mind went to.
I have wondered for years what movie included a grandma die from the volcano lake since I watched that movie as a child. Hearing the name of the movie and knowing it wasn’t a fever dream was fantastic!
I remember years (decades) ago an editorial in the newspaper about how the author felt the Catholic Church made up for its crimes of the past. He used the phrase "balance sheet". I remembered this when you said how morality wasn't transactional. The letter writer was acting like moral actions had some kind of measurable value and you could total and compare good to bad; like murdering a person for worshiping "wrong" somehow equals teaching 10 kids to read and giving a war widow $40. I was outraged and tempted to write back asking which exactly good deeds the church had done to counter the 20k+ deaths of Béziers, France in 1209 (400k when adjusted for population increases), the atrocity that gave us the phrase "Kill them all, let God sort them out." (Originally it was, "Slaughter them all for the Lord shall know His own." because the city was protecting Jews and since there wasn't a way to tell who was faithful and who wasn't they just killed everyone.)
You're right about Vader. It was about redeeming himself to his son. In Legends books, Vader appeared to Leia asking forgiveness and she refused demanding he never see her again. It makes sense, Vader hurt Leia more. He destroyed her home and tortured her and the man she loved while she was forced to watch. To Luke, Vader cut off his hand, killed (kind of) his mentor, tortured his best friend when he wasn't around, and threatened his sister. Big difference.
Forgiveness is a choice, not something owed. Luke chose to seek opportunities to forgive Vader, and ultimately found them - in the end, Anakin's Light Side triumphed - and that is a worthwhile message in itself: that, no matter how terrible a thing you've done, you can still choose to do the right thing now, and possibly find forgiveness.
Saying someone has crossed some sort of moral event horizon and is now unforgivable, is equivalent to saying that they might as well continue to do evil things because they can never make things better.
Something in real life that always bothers me which is adjacent to this topic (and possibly contributing to it) is the idea that once someone dies you can’t talk bad about them. How often when someone dies people are encouraged to only look at the positives of that person because otherwise it’s in bad taste or otherwise wrong. Which never sits well with me. That thought does lean heavily into this trope because the narrative wants us to only view that positive act and forget all the bad that happened before it which is not how it works. The story will often twist this idea and give it to the characters having them morn and occasionally even look back fondly on a character who hasn’t earned it which again doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not quite sure what my point here was but those are some thoughts I have about the trope and some of the real life repercussions of it.
Spoilers, but I feel like Radiant Historia's true ending had a stellar example of redemption through death. Heiss was a jackass to the very end, but it was his love for his nephew that motivated him from the get-go, so it made sense in a way that he'd sacrifice himself for Stocke. Also, they really subverted the Heroic Sacrifice endgame trope by making Stocke NOT have to sacrifice himself to save the world, but having the villain do this instead. RH is a great game, if anyone has a chance to play it, it's the best JRPG on the DS/3DS.
As easy on writers is this trope I would say for characters that die to make up from wrong doings isn't. They often don't live to be forgiven. Sure they don't have to deal with people having against them those evil things they did....but they don't get anything at all. They are dead.
But to address transactional morality worry touched here I think we need to look sister tropes to redemption by death, like "she can fix him" . And it's mostly in romances when one of characters does horrible things to person they "love".
But because of one big act this characters is forgiven things like stalking, lying, breaking-and-entering, getting into fights, invading privacy, attempting isolate and control, abuse of all types, impulsive outbursts of anger, killing loved ones of their 'love interest', insults, saying things to humiliate/break down their victim ect. The big one of them is also going after somebody who already is married or is about to get married or just are in happy relationship with somebody else.
But because of one big romantic act or showing the slightest signs of improvement the victim of their actions is not only expected to forgive them... But also get together with them, and even get married to them instead of much more healthier options... Or at least give cancelation prize to them. No matter how horrible, cruel or just disrespectful and insulting this person was to them.
The bigger discussion here will always be framing and not redemption necessarily. Redemption doesn't require characters or audience to forgive any villain who is going through it, it just requires the character to do the thing because they want to change. I enjoy redemption arcs to be honest because I generally enjoy the villainous characters more, but sometimes some writers can't handle the Challenge of keeping the story believable to the others' reactions to the reformed person.
I think the second critique might be why I tend to like the “abused henchperson” twist to the trope better than most of the others. Because the henchperson’s not actually doing their “heroic” act to be redeemed, but rather for revenge, it makes more sense, character-wise. That they’re also abused by the Big Bad gives it a little feeling of justice as well. All around a little more satisfying, I think.
Vader's sacrifice in Return of the Jedi I'd say more or less worked... but when JJ pulled basically the same thing with Kylo Ren in Rise of Skywalker, it *really* rubbed me the wrong way. Well admittedly, that movie had already rubbed me the wrong way before it even started by pulling one of the three very specific things I *really* wanted the Sequel Trilogy to avoid, (those three things being "Don't have Luke turn evil," "Don't revive Darth Vader" and "Don't revive Palpatine"... And in a way, them managing to avoid these for two movies straight only to abruptly pull the third in the *finale* made it extra annoying) but even just going into the movie, I had a very specific hope that whatever happened with Kylo Ren, it *not* just be a straight-up repeat of Darth Vader. I wanted him to *either* stay a villain the whole way through and die, *or* do a Heel Face Turn and live to try and atone for all the evil shit he'd done. But, nope, once again the fallen hero character ends up performing one good act and then dying immediately afterwards.
I agree. This is the reason why I like TLJ the most from the new trilogy (even though it is hated by so many people), because at least it tried to do something different. When JJ came back he again copied the original trilogy, and it didn't work at all for me.
@@sigyn27 The Last Jedi is in my top 3 favorite Star Wars movies. I don't love everything about it. I think its handling of Snoke was frustrating at best. But when it was good, it was PHENOMENAL.
tbf though, the death of Kylo Ren can't even be entirely blamed on JJ. Like, we have Colin Trevorrow's initial script for Episode 9, and while I do think that said script sounded better (not great by any means, but better), it too had Kylo Ren turn good again and then die shortly after...
@@thelordstarfish That's really interesting you like TLJ that much. I like it a lot as well, perhaps not enough for it to be in my top 3, but I think TLJ really had potential. At same time I need to acknowledge it failed as a sequel to TFA, because they were just too different. This whole "trilogy" is such a disjointed mess, I still can't understand how they managed to screw it up so much.
As much as I like Kylo Ren, I think after TLJ it was really difficult to have a good redemption arc for him. He had a chance at redemption in TLJ after he killed Snoke, but he chose power instead and became the Supreme Leader. If there had been more films, then maybe, but with only one it was really tricky and they didn't do it right. I think in the last film Kylo Ren should have been the main villain. He, the First Order and the Knights of Ren (whoever they are, because based on the films alone I only know they like masks and black clothes), they would have been threat enough without bringing Palpatine back. Especially if Kylo Ren would have tapped more into the Dark Side.
Perfect points made, honestly. There's a whole lot to redemption arcs that isn't close to explored in any kind of depth in favor of the really surface level big gestures. It's used very cheaply, especially as you say in movies. I was actually thinking of Bucky Barnes for a bit there, and the vacuum of potential in his redemption that's taken for granted in a lot of ways (I know they've explored it a bit but it's also like oh he took off the kohl everything's fine now as far as the other heroes are concerned). There's also sometimes issues when long form media take on redemption arcs where eventually it's all just forgotten and their former villainy is a goofy in joke or something (i.e. Vegeta, I love him but good god). But hey, long form shows also go the movie route a LOT; any monster of the week shows that try and tie up their storyline in a single episode are doing it sometimes 10 times in a 20 episode season, just cause it's an easy way to tie up those loose ends.
I do honestly hate this trope so much. I think it's cheap, I think it's sad, a waste of potential, a bad example to set. There is almost nothing good about it. It's so rarely done well that it's hard to find good examples of it, and especially good examples where the alternative (the person surviving) wouldn't be way more fascinating.
Re. Stranger Things, my impression of the show was that Billy was a stand in character for things they realized they couldn't do with Steve (because they liked Joe Keery too much) and Will (because they realized having a 14 year old murder a bunch of people might be bad actually). We did pretty well out of it imo cause I loved his story, but honestly I would find FAR more entertainment value in Billy being alive in season 4, how his character might change or be affected by the memories of the things he did while possessed by the monster etc. and how other people act around him. I like stories about the effects of trauma. I like characters to have to work for their redemption and live with the consequenses and the extra work that comes with every small step they manage to take; and I like it when they have to come to terms with the possibility that they might never be fully forgiven.
Nobody's ever watched it to the end, but there's always Heroes. It's basically a meme, but Sylar did a reverse heal turn about six times. I think he's mentioned on the TV tropes page specifically for it. It makes sense that nobody would trust his efforts to be good by the end. So what they do in the final heel turn is call massive attention to that fact. The episode is called The Wall. It's a psychological masterpiece imo. Sylar gets trapped in his own mind, just locked in there alone. Peter enters his mind telepathically and gets trapped in there as well, because while Sylar is the only person with the power to stop the season's big bad, he has NO desire to leave this prison. He knows he's a monster, he's punishing himself, he's had more than enough chances to be a better person already and he's come to terms with the fact that it isn't happening. He's also kind of convinced he's hallucinating Peter to punish himself some more. Peter has reason to loath Sylar, who not only was responsible for his brother's death but impersonated him for months too. So there's this huge wall that's stopping them from getting out, right? To cut a long story short, despite Peter basically throwing himself at the wall to try and beat it down, it isn't until he accepts that Sylar has changed (after years trapped together) that the brick of the wall begins to shatter; i.e. maybe Sylar put the wall up, but despite the pretence of trying to tear it down, Peter was in fact the one who was keeping it there. It's a really beautifully handled approach in a show that messed up redemption a million times, and it kinda makes me sad that so few people have ever stuck it out long enough to see it. Love letter to that episode, honestly, it was a jewel in the rough.
This was a very well done and thought out discussion. Not one of my favorite tropes, but it can be done well.
I have only just seen this video but I completely agree with you I enjoy all your videos but ones like this that make people think are so important to be able to get across messages like this
I really like how you discussed this trope.
i love this darker palette on you!
I remember Dante's Peak! It was awesome!
Dante's Peak terrified me when I was a kid
Far superior to Volcano, which came out in the same year.
@@Elwaves2925 Indeed, like Deep Impact is far superior to Armageddon
@@KayleighBourquin Agreed. I still think Deep Impact is one of the best disaster movies ever made.
I really appreciate your remarks on She Ra; you articulate things about Catra's redemption that my mind had never fully articulated. Though I've always loved Catra's redemption, your breakdown of it helped me better understand some layers of *why*.
Also I really appreciate your remarks on Hordak as well, since that's always bothered me
[Edit: your take on Shadow Weaver was also excellent]
I do not think Zuko was actually a redemption arc, at least if being a proper villain voluntarily is the requirement. It seemed like that in the first half of S1 but with the backstory in mind he's just a poor abused kid who's fundamentally good but was forced on the wrong path by toxic influences in his life.
In other words, to be good he didn't need to change who he is but STOP trying to change who he is.
There are plenty of villains who started out as poor abused kids forced onto the wrong path by toxic influences.
I think this quote summarizes it nicely.
"She's like us now isn't she? She's a monster."
"She's an innocent victim."
"So were we, once upon a time."
Many villains begin as victims. Azula did. She was broken by her father's abusive parenting. She dove into the path of villainy full throttle.
@@quinnsinclair7028 There's nature AND nurture though, that make us who we are. Azula and Zuko endured the same abuse, Zuko's might have actually been worse because he was the heir, Azula was very much second in their father's eyes. The difference was, Zuko knew right from wrong. He cared deeply, and wanted to do what was right even if he was conflicted about it and made different choices. In Season 1, you saw it with all his blue spirit stuff. Azula never did. She only cared about power, and enjoyed hurting people. Experiences can develop tendencies like that, but they start somewhere innate. To assume a person's experience is solely responsible for their behavior is to deny their agency.
@@maurinet2291 Didn't Azula also had zero support system unlike Zuko?
@@drawingsticks5333 True. Largely Zuko was supported by his mother while Azula was scolded by her. Not to mention Azula didn't have an Uncle Iroh figure. All she had was the Fire Lord rewarding her for cruelty.
@@drawingsticks5333 No, she had her little girl gang. She manipulated and used them so eventually they turned against her, but that was her choice. And Iroh might have had a similar relationship to her as he did with Zuko, but he recognized the sort of person she was. That was evident in some of the remarks he made, And she had nothing but contempt for him anyway for his actions after his son died. Azula didn't have a support system because she refused to have one.
It’s a good, well thought out point. For my frame of Master of DW, I ask, ‘were the writers aware or not?’ Because ultimately, while the master a) fought rascalon to save the doctor in the End of Time, b) tried to do a good thing in their own twisted mind in Death in Heaven (this is highly debatable, I know) and c) ultimately betrayed her former self in The Doctor Falls, the narrative crafted ultimately puts the redemption in the eyes of the Master themselves. And ultimately, all I can do is try to read the scene, because three writers have now had a major hand in the Master’s plot. In the case of The Doctor Falls, my read is that yes, its a good act, but it doesn’t redeem the master. Rather, the master is someone who might seek the approval for doing the right thing (see Lindsay Ellis’ video on narcissism), and that is not enough to justify a character redemption - and no one gets to know what the master did in that episode,because it is NOT a redemption to anyone outside of the master themself.
Just my rambling thoughts.
I strongly feel that in The End of Time The Master fought Rassilon not because he wanted to save The Doctor, but because he really, really wanted to murder Rassilon.
I'm also just wary of how broadly the 'redemption arc' framework gets applied to any story dealing with character change.
Like one of my favourite comic stories is the Death of Harry Osborn arc by DeMatteis in the pages of Spectacular Spider-man. It begins where Harry Oborn, gentle family-man starts being tormented by visions of Norman Osborn aka. abusive proponent of toxic masculinity, murderer and the Green Goblin. Since Harry still loves and idolises his father, the hallucinations start bullying and guilting him for not being the man Norman wanted him to be untill Harry breaks and gives in. However because he can't be ok with Norman's abuse and murders, he starts blaming all of Norman's bad actions on Peter/Spider-man or accusing him of framing and uses that as justification for tormenting him per the Green Goblin legacy. Throughout the story Harry is in internal conflict over the love he has for the people around him and his desire not to harm them, against the the guilt he has for "failing" Norman and not being like him. The story concludes when Harry sets up a bomb trap to kill Spider-man and Norman's enemies (and in the end, himself, rather than continue the torment) but realises his son and friend are in the building. Forgoing putting on the Goblin mask he rushes to save them before going back to save his best friend as well. However out in the street, he collapses after the Goblin formula he was on turns out to be toxic and he dies reconciling with Peter.
It's generally regarded as one of the best Spider-man stories, but I've seen one or two try to argue that the ending is a "bad redemption", since Harry's final change is marked by one grand gesture of heroism before dying. It's not even that gesture that kills him.
But 'redemption' or fixing Harry's soul is not the point or focus of the story. Yes the story looks at self-destruction but while Peter wonders if Harry is beyond help, the framing never really entertains the notion that he's too far gone. Harry dies because he consumes his fathers poison literally but remains himself because he can't bring himself to wholly accept his father's ideology that hurts his loved ones. The grand gesture is about holding on to love rather than making amends. If you're looking at it through a framework of redemption it doesn't work because it's not a story about redemption or putting things right, it's about protecting what's already right.
That's just one example but seeing everything through the lense of redemption arcs can really limit your ability to experience and enjoy other narratives.
Funnily enough there was recently a story that attempted to revisit the plot and bought in concepts of souls and hell and it was just the worst.
Great discussion! Love your takes
I'm younger than you and I do remember Dante's Peak. When I saw you were going to talk about the film I thought you'd also mention Pierce Brosnan's boss who initially impedes the volcano investigation because he doesn't take Brosnan's concerns seriously. After he's conclusively proven wrong he apologises then spends the rest of the film working to help the evacuation but still dies horribly. I wonder where he would fit in this whole scale.
Third category. Is probably aware that he’s putting in life in danger and staying anyway.
I'm broadly in agreement with your views on this.
Bravely Default 2 has an interesting example, though (I really enjoyed the game, but considering what you've said about starting to play games again and finding time for them I'm not about to recommend you play an 80 hour or so JRPG. With 2 false endings. That you have to experience in order to get the actual final ending.)
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There's an interesting example (maybe) in Gladys in Bravely Default 2. It looked like they were doing a death = redemption thing right up until you start talking to NPCs after she dies, and... It is very clear that their feelings about her are at this point at best complicated, I think even at the end of the sidequest where some of them visit her grave. Death wasn't enough, but there is an acknowledgement that she made the first step and saved everyone by doing so even if that doesn't lead to either redemption or even forgiveness for her acting as the executioner in a witch hunt (And this is made more complicated due to acknowledgement that the actual villain of the chapter had manipulated her, and that... It takes an entire city to do a witch hunt, which the game does acknowledge that part fairly well) - There's at least enough there acknowledging that death on its own is not redemption, and being suckered into doing something does not excuse your actions to lead me to not be annoyed at the game for... Brushing up against it like I normally am.
There's also indication that she wasn't intending and was intending to put the work in had she survived, and of the various characters who serve as secondary villains in the game, she's the only one who doesn't survive her chapter, with the rest... Working for that redemption, in various ways (Not so much Chapter 3, but everyone working for Chapter 3's villain is under literal mind control), and it's only Gladys who's redemption feels... Ambiguous... Which definitely helps the game avoid the implications your talking about.
Meanwhile that game gives redemption to the first two villains in the game - two mercenaries who are introduced by taking a child hostage and threatening to kill him if their target doesn't hand herself over to them via a series of side quests which they're in the background of and have a lovely comedic interplay between them. Which... I don't know how the game managed to do a redemption arc for a man who's first instinct on 'how to kidnap a princess with a body guard' was 'hold a child at knife point and hope she hands herself over' and his boss but they managed it.
Star Wars: Bloodline acknowledges the point you were making with Vader and Luke. The novel is is told from Leia's perspective (about six years before The Force Awakens) and has her reflect on how she has never been able to forgive Vader's actions, which includes his torturing her in A New Hope. She can accept Luke's account of events and his feelings, but that doesn't change her view on the matter.
This has a lot of food for thought, and I admit I kind of love this trope although it is in execution. Philosophically I think when done well it isn't so much saying "you can do lots of bad things and then do one good thing and everyone has to like you" but more "if you think you're doing the right thing but then realise you are actually doing harm, the realisation isn't enough but you have to actually do the work to undo what you did no matter the sacrifice". But again it's all subjective and I think it depends on how it is done.
“long form media like TV”
We’re what, 20 years into the Prestige TV era and I still had to think about this for a minute because TV still means a 30-minute self-contained episode airing at the same bat time every week.
I frickin’ loved Shadow Weaver’s death. Well, “loved” because she was a total monster. She spent so much of her life emotionally manipulating Catra and Adora, OF COURSE she was going to go for the ultimate emotional manipulation gut punch. And seriously, what else was she going to do? Like, that monster would cut through Catra, and if she had any “redemption” at all (in the sense of realizing she was ever incorrect), I think she knew at some level that Adora was stronger with Catra. She doesn’t let Catra go to Adora, she dies anyway, and at least this gives her the emotional one-up. Or so she thinks, anyway. It was just SO consistent with how her character had been established.
I was willing to forgive Hordak being waved off because the whole concept of redemption was explored so strongly with Catra and Shadoweaver (and my absolute favorite, Wrong Hordak). Scorpia and Entrapta to a lesser extent as well. Like, I dunno, in the context of Shadow Weaver’s death, I feel like Hordak getting the redemption = death treatment wouldn’t have worked either. And I really liked the Hordak/Entrapta “your imperfections make you beautiful” dynamic, and it foreshadowed Season 5 so well. So I don’t think he should have stayed bad either. I guess I’m willing to give it a pass because they acknowledged it, and hey, Catra had to put in the work, so presumably Hordak will have to put in the work too. I can easily see a spinoff/fanfiction where he and Entrapta go to deal with all the shit on Beast Island because that way he doesn’t have to be around people he hurt, and he has to actually emotionally deal with his shit.
As (many) others have said, Shadow Weaver died doing what she loved best... traumatizing her two adopted children.
also an example of a villian 100% redeemed is the evil queen (Regina) from Once Upon a Time....the evil queen of Snow White was 100% redeemed over the 7 seasons of the show...she finally realized and understood that the Love between Snow White and Prince Charming was the most powerful magic of all time....she was powerless to destroy it and then she began to understand it and she saw how valuable it is, that same LOVE Snow and Charming had extended to their entire family....their Daughter, their Grandson, and Snow's step mother (Regina herself)....she became what i call a "Dark Hero"....she still used dark magic, but she used it for good purposes....just like how Batman was, he used dark tactics to bring in the bad guy...but Regina did not die....villians being redeemed don't always have to die
Not gonna lie, I had forgotten Dante's Peak existed until you mentioned that specifc scene, and it's the only scene I actually remember from that movie
me too! lol
As I find common, I find myself agreeing with you in most of these thoughts. Of the shows that I've seen, the one that surprised me was the grandma in Dante's Peak. Granted, I haven't seen that in years, but I never thought of that as a redemption arc. I guess I didn't catch or remember the part about it being her fault. I'm pretty sure you're right, though. Now I want to watch Pierce Brosnan trying to be a volcanologist again. LOL. The part that tickled me most, however was "If you want to hear me mispronounce YOUR name ..." Because that made me chuckle.
if you make this trope discussion a series I will gladly watch it alongside Trope talks 😁
you watch enough sci-fi to know that multiple shows with the same basic premise can all have different advantages and coexist.
4:07 you mean like he was too dangerous to be kept alive?
Vera I love Love LOVE your blouse!! How perfect for the season!
Snape had been in here if Rowling wasn’t a moral pitfire
I don't think Snape fits here. He didn't turn on Voldemort in the last moment and redeemed himself by dying. He had turned sides years earlier. It was only revealed to the readers after his death.
@@sigyn27 But he got redeemed from being a bully and demeaning ashat for 7 years
@@megan88 Hmm... I don't think he did. He was a bully and at the same time someone fighting for the good side and risking his life for the right cause. He never stopped being a bully and he had joined "the good guys" many years prior to his death. He seems to fit in this trope only because the readers' perspective changes after he dies and his memories are revealed. (To be clear, I do think that Snape was a positive character overall, despite all the awful things he had done.)
I agree with EVERYTHING you said here, love it!!
Great stuff re: She-Ra.
In regards to TV shows, the most glaring example I can think of with this trope is season 3 of 13 Reasons Why where after they spent the first two seasons showcasing what an absolute MONSTER Bryce Walker was, they try to turn an about face. The entire season is about the mystery of his death and after spending the first two seasons with him, the writers had to know that everyone’s initial reaction would be “who cares?” But it’s actually pretty disgusting how they handle it by trying to make us care about him just because he’s dead when he’s done nothing to atone for his actions
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I do! We watched it in class back in the day!
Memories...
I know this was 3 weeks ago but as someone who has been through abuse and trauma (by a member of my own family) this really rings true for me. They're not part of my life anymore, and there is basically no way I can forgive them. I'm in a much better place, and I've come to terms with it (as much as I possibly can). However no one thing, or anything really, can forgive what they did.
I think Angel had the right idea in that redemption is less about one act or even if you achieve it (because in some stories people are not gonna forgive you or they're dead) but simply striving to be better...every day. I saw a reaction to Orpheus recently so the timing of this was pretty good.
I figured you probably didn't want to mention that show cause of all the controversy with the creator (fair enough) but that show definitely had some strong examples.
I agree with all of your main points. To add to your last point; the abuser who demands forgiveness is continuing to center themselves rather than those they've harmed in the narratives they've created to justify the abuse. I've experienced it a lot with people going through 12-Step programs where being forgiven just something on a checklist on the way to their recovery. (Forgive me so that I can stop being a drunk.) This needs to be called out more often.
The one minor point I disagree with is listing Nux (Fury Road) as this trope. He's more of a Finn character than a Darth Vader, a duped victim rather than a deliberate abuser.
"Death=Redemption" is honestly a cheap way writers avoid any consequences for a character while pretending they become good.
Vader spent more than 2 decades murdering innocent people and hunting children and killed thousands in the tyrannical regime he helped created. He only saved Luke because his emotions got the better of him for a moment. This wasn't planned, it was a momentary lapse in judgement. The only reason why he ever even considered killing the emperor was so he could be a tyranical ruler himself. He was evil and selfish through and through. One good thing doesn't redeem someone of decades of monstrous behaviour. People who think Vader was redeemed have bad morality.
I give a pass to Shadow Weaver because her death wasn't redemption. Her death didn't redeem her, HOWEVER she was responsible for Adora and Catra's trauma, her very presence was bad for their health and her leaving means Adora and Catra can start healing.
One of the best examples of this trope is Fullmetal Alchemist where a problematic character offers to die for another character but a hero tells them "no", downright pointing out how this trope doesn't redeem them and only serves to avoid consequences.
I don't know the latter two entities you mention but I agree with almost all of your points about Vader. I can see how you got to it but the one point I disagree with is Vader's reason for killing the Emperor. It was not so he could become ruler himself, although that was the way of the Sith. Vader's offer of ruling with Luke was turned down and Luke also turned down the Emperor, something Vader hadn't seen before as nobody directly stood up to the Emperor. Vader being ruler was off the table at that point. He killed the Emperor because Luke was his son. It was that one finial bit of good that Luke felt in him.
It's not like Luke was beating the Emperor, or was even holding level and Vader tipped the balance. The Emperor was massively kicking Luke's arse and was about to kill him. Vader had to choose whether to let that happen to Luke's death, or stop the Emperor and he chose to stop the Emperor and save his son. If that had been any other person in the galaxy (aside from maybe Leia), Vader wouldn't have been in any doubt and the idea of stopping the Emperor would not have come up.
To get back to agreeing with your points, do his actions redeem him? Most definitely not and it's why I never liked Vader becoming Anakin's force ghost at the end of ROTJ. Luke might feel some kind of redemption for him but that's a very personal thing to him and it doesn't diminish all the evil Vader did and would have done had he not died. We are in full agreement there. :-)
But isn't saying that there are good and bad kinds of people already narratively cheap? I agree that from a given framing, _acts_ can be relatively good or bad, but I don't tie those to any sort of persistent "personal identity", and think that any person ultimately IS only whatever they are doing at the moment.
Anakin's tranformaton into Vader was planned, too. But not by Anakin.
In the original comics Dark Phoenix Saga, Marvel editorial dictated that Phoenix had to die, because she had, y'know... destroyed an inhabited planet. No having to deal with consequences there (although maybe they've touched on it since? idfk.)
The Star Wars Infinities version of Return of the Jedi showed a good version of Vader surviving. In this take, the Emperor escapes and Vader lives. Vader doesn't get imprisoned because they need him to track down and bring the Emperor to justice. There's a reason to keep him around, and he has time to work towards redemption like Catra did. However, it's not an ending the movie could have gone with, because as you noted, it was the end of a movie and the franchise (at that point).
I really want to dig deeper on this one. You managed to reference Dante’s Peak without mentioning it’s other redemption through death: Paul who dies on the bridge. It’s because he delayed leaving long enough to be sure everyone else got out. For me it more than redeems his earlier errors, after all, he wasn’t entirely wrong. I knew Star Wars was going to try to pull a redemption arc for Kylo Ren but for me he was irredeemable. Maybe if they had Leia in that last movie it might have worked but I don’t think so. And here’s my truly controversial point: this is why Tony Stark should have died at the end of the first Avengers movie. He was an anti- hero at that point and I honestly felt cheated when he was saved. If nothing else, that battle should have had a cost. And think how much good he would have done by just not existing! No Ultron, no Sokovia Accords… that’s a heroic death 😉
Great video ! I liked your arguments and I agree with most of what you said :)
You and OSP make different kinds of videos that I watch for different reasons. They explain why things do or don't work in terms of broad appeal, but they wouldn't touch the discussion about transactional morality that you went into. They don't talk about the lager implications, just how things behave in a literary context. More views does not equal higher quality.
(Nothing against OSP, I adore their videos, they're just not filling the same need)
Thank you!
There's also the trope where the heroes get hated by the people they save so many times by just one bad act, whether they were mind-controlled or they were doing something they thought was the right thing to do to save them.