Readers have firm opinions, as we all know. They tell us how much they love or hate our characters. They insist that two certain people should be in a relationship. Sometimes they even dress up as our characters. (That last one would be pretty cool, honestly.) But one of the most resolute opinions is the one stated above: the bad guy has to die in the end.
This has been in my mind since last month when I saw The Rise of Skywalker. I’ve been holding off on commenting because it isn’t fair to give spoilers, and even now I’ll try not to be too blatant. But one of my issues with the tale is that a certain character sacrificed their life to save another character’s life… but then later that second character died anyway.
I felt like this was terrible storytelling, because the first character’s death became meaningless. However, my husband said that the screenwriters really had to kill that second character off. “He was a bad guy. He had to die.”
Star Wars has a tradition of villains being redeemed by the Force. Han Solo would be an example of a sketchy character who rose to a higher ideal. And then there’s Darth Vader, who was restored by his son, Luke, in Return of the Jedi. But however, he had already been fatally wounded and died immediately afterward. As both a writer and a viewer, I feel like the creators of Star Wars want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want the optimistic lesson of a villain coming back to the light, but at the same time they still want the bad guys to be killed in the end.
I’ve been feeling like a rebel lately, some of you may have noticed, and this assumption really sticks in my craw. WHY does the bad guy “have to” die? It comes back to the weird, judgmental thing that many readers do. They insist that every villain must pay for their crimes with their lives.
To me, as a writer, that outcome is really predictable and boring. I would find it much more interesting if a “bad guy” admits their error and survives. Think of the memories they carry. The shame and guilt. How can a reformed bad guy ever make amends for their previous actions?
What do you think? Should the bad guy always die?
Have you read one of my books? Then it would be great for you to leave a review! Meanwhile, if you’d like to learn more about me and my work, check out my web site, Facebook, Instagram and/or Twitter!
Wyrmflight 
After I made my first comment here, I thought about what is perhaps the English language’s classic “bad guy” who does reform, deal with his guilt, and live a happy life–Ebenezer Scrooge.
Considering I’ve played Scrooge in a few productions, you’d think I would have thought of him right away.
That is a really great example, where his reform and changed life is the whole point of Dickens’ tale. The story would not have worked at all, if Scrooge had experienced his awakening and then immediately died.
It may also make a difference that Scrooge’s crimes, if you want to state it that way, were all social. He made his assistant work late on holidays in a freezing office, but he never was violent toward him.
(This is actually the first comment I tried posting but it didn’t show up.)
Forgive me in advance if I come across here like a know-it-all; I know there are people who know more about each of the things I’ll mention than I do.
My understanding is that George Lucas was borrowing both from American movie serials of the first half of the 20th century and from Japanese story telling. While *Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back* was as far as I know the only film in the franchise to truly follow the movie serial format with its cliffhanger ending, the reform and then death of a “bad guy” is, I think, a Japanese tradition. The American tradition during the same time was that the bad guy not reform, but just die. (Although J. R. R. Tolkien’s *The Lord of the Rings* trilogy does have a character who more fits the Japanese tradition).
I think this desire to see the bad guy die comes from our brain, specifically the limbic system which is responsible for more “primitive” aspects of our mind, including “if you hurt me, I’ll hurt you.” That’s part of the fight or flight response which helps almost all animal species survive. It’s built into us, and is likely why criminal justice systems are often more focused on punishment than on reformation, even though the latter is much more logical.
However, the cerebral cortex and, I think, other portions of our brain (again, I’m not an expert on this stuff), allows our mind to intellectualize. This allows us to think, “My feelings are I want to either punch this guy in the nose or run away, but I’m smart enough to know that talking this through is a better option.”
I think that “the bad guy reforms and lives” may work well in a work that challenges the mind, but not in much popular entertainment where our feelings are to strike back.
Yay, it came through this time!
Odd that you should mention this. I’m dealing with book two of my trilogy right now, but in book three I have a loose plan for something similar to your concept. We’ll see if that idea lasts, but I feel pretty good about it.
When you get done, we’ll have to compare stories and see how we did it.
It will be at least a year before I have to deal with it. It feels like the right way to go.
“The bad guy has to die” is really no different than other “rules of success” that occasionally pop up in genre writing such as “you must always have a happy ending.” It’s something that has appeared based on a perception of what sells the most — and often that’s a perception driven more by film than by literature.
In fact, what you should do is write the ending for the villain that’s most natural for the world of the story and works best within the context of the story itself. Bonus points if the villain’s end also contributes thematically to something you’re saying about our world as a whole.
That’s what I think, too.
That’s a great question. If the villain is nasty and has no sense of humor and pretty much a dull villain, then yes.
If the villain is funny and/or interesting, probably not. When the villain shows some poteniality for change, he should definitely not die. I recall Merle’s death on TWD. That was stupid. Merle shows a few signs that he can change and then is killed immediately afterward. How stupid is that? Lousy story-telling.
A great example that comes to mind is Sawyer on the show Lost. He was a real jerk at first but over the course of the series, he really became a pretty awesome dude and he was my favorite character because he was so interesting. If they’d killed him off (as I feared they would), I would have quit watching.
Often times, I think it’s best to ask if we need to kill off any major characters we’ve invested in. A lot of times, this stuff is too brutal with all this killing. Villains that return are often very interesting and well, we already know them which is like visiting with an old nemesis. Obviously the 60s Batman and Robin show understood this. Haha.
The main villain who had to die as far as I can see was Vuldemort. He’s just pure evil and there was no other way which is fine. But my rule when I start to kill off any character is that I really think hard about it and try not to. A lot of times, it’s way more interesting if they go on, even when we want them to die. I also don’t like killing off heroes either. Why retire them when you can get more mileage? Haha. Of course, I’m talking about series characters, too.
Great post!
Thanks, Parker, and welcome to the blog!