Crossposting this from Tumblr, because I appear to be on the fast track to deletion over there. No big surprise. My blog has been labeled as explicit for years, presumably for reblogging the occasional NSFW fanart. But considering the amount of time I put into writing this post, I figured I'd save it somewhere. Here seems like the best place, because here is probably where I'll end up spending more of my fannish time as Tumblr implodes.
Anyway, on to the post.
Someone had posted an image of Lisa Simpson apparently doing a presentation about how not every villain is redeemable, that sometimes they are just villains.
Someone else replied that if you want irredeemable villains, write them yourself, but basically don't complain if someone else wants to. I think that's a tad oversimplified. I reblogged with some vague response to that. The main examples that came to mind, though, were from Supernatural, and rather than derail the post onto SPN-specific stuff, I made the following post separately.
Here are a couple of relatively recent examples of redemption arcs, one of which I’m buying and the other of which I’m not.
Arthur Ketch. Yeah, not buying it, and not only because I’m salty about Eileen’s death and how he killed her. There was a chance at a redemption of some kind when he started to fall for Mary, except he didn’t actually do anything based on that. Not really. That would’ve been a believable redemption arc, if he’d been shown to make choices based on the fact he’d discovered some reconnection to humanity (as had happened with Mick, who he killed for it). He rather grudgingly helped save AU!Charlie, apparently to try to get into the Winchesters’ good graces. Not because he’d decided there was some value in helping the human resistance in the AU world or anything, but to try to get into their good graces. This would be why, when Sam says in 14x09, “We appreciate the effort,” I’m right there with Dean asking, “Do we?” (I remain convinced Ketch is in Michael’s pay, because he still seems very clearly out for himself and no one else. That and he’s not actually incompetent enough to have steered them so very wrong the two times we’ve seen him this season by accident.) So this is a completely unconvincing apparent attempt at redeeming a villain. It remains to be seen if they continue trying to make him a sympathetic character seeking redemption. If so, they’re going to have to give us a LOT more to make it believable.
On the other hand, let’s look at Rowena. She tried to sell her son for three pigs. She abandoned him, and then adopted some other kid and gave him eternal life. (The fact that this kid gave her some glimpse of human kindness and this touched her, and that she later had to kill him is relevant to her arc.) She was all Team Lucifer until he killed her. Twice. Even then, she was a reluctant ally, rather like her son had often been. (Speaking of her son, she also tried to kill him various times in various ways.) We get glimpses along the way of why she has made the choices she has, largely around abandonment and being left to fend for herself. That doesn’t make them good choices, just comprehensible ones. Still, she seems utterly out for herself (even if understandably so) right up until she gets the spell from Sam to regain full access to her powers, after bonding with him over the horrors they’ve experienced from Lucifer. He slips her the spell so that she can have the power to protect herself (and potentially the rest of the world) from Lucifer, another act that seems to touch her apparently-cold heart. In that same episode, she learns Crowley is dead.
The next we see of her, she’s on a killing spree... but choosing people who arguably deserve it. The sort of people that are more monstrous than your average vampire or werewolf. (Side note, this makes her hooking up with Gabriel a brilliant idea, even if the scene was poorly written.) Then we learn she’s doing this to get the attention of Death in hopes of bringing her son, Crowley, back. Of course, she also tortures Sam and tries to kill him, especially once they tell her he’s the one who will kill her for good. But... she stops. She can’t go through with it. She breaks down in sincere grief. She’s not magically (heh) all good all the time after this. A perfect example is when she’s asked to help Jack in 14x07. Help Lucifer’s son? Absolutely not! She’s furious they’d even ask it of her, and is ready to stalk off. And then Jack, being Jack, touches that part of her that responds to someone being honest and kind. She’s not happy about it, but she knows she has to try to help him, and she does her best.
This is someone on a believable redemption arc. The changes in her choices are rooted in the very basis of her character: someone who has been treated harshly and so has been solely looking out for herself at the cost of anyone and everyone else, but yet has been able to be touched by kindness, mainly because it’s been such a rarity in her life. Billie monologued a bit about how regaining her power put Rowena back in touch with the overall energies of the world, which, ok. But it really seemed that it was more about discovering (to her shock) that Crowley’s death was a cause for grief. That she had actually loved him, despite her complete inability to actually do so remotely well. Since then, she’s been a more sincere ally and seems to actually be striving for redemption. Not just to get on Sam’s good side so he doesn’t kill her. That’s certainly in the back of her mind somewhere, but she does appear to actively want to do better, even if she’s sometimes reluctant to help in specific situations (see, again 14x07). Actually, 13x21-22 might be an even better example, because she could’ve (and started to) walked away when Lucifer escaped into the AU world. That would’ve been to her benefit, because Sam was over there, and he can’t very well kill her from an alternate universe. But, muttering and cursing about it, she finds she can’t just abandon the guys to their fate, and sets about holding that crack between the worlds open for them.
That’s how you make a redemption arc believable. The seeds of that redemption need, among other things, to be mixed right in with the seeds of whatever made them a villain in the first place. There have to be clear choices that are not strictly about self-interest as part of that arc. And they can’t be easy choices. They should be doing the equivalent of muttering, “bollocks” under their breath while making those choices. Otherwise a) the redemption isn’t earned and b) the redemption isn’t believable.
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