This is a pet peeve of mine. When an author or screenwriter takes their characters through an ordeal of suffering, loss and growth… but then at the end they erase it all. Everything is sunny. None of that Bad Stuff ever happened.
There are a couple of common mechanisms authors fall back on. Probably the most notorious is the Dream Sequence, where someone goes through all sorts of Bad Stuff but then they wake up and it was just a nightmare. For me, the only way it could be right is if one of the characters then sees something that could be a hint of what is to come. The Dream Sequence becomes a premonition, and they can try and take steps to prevent the Bad Stuff.
Speaking of premonitions, that brings us to the other significant means to erase story events, which is Time Travel. Characters in genre movies, especially, are constantly traveling through time to “fix” some sort of Bad Stuff. But there’s no end to the paradoxes with Time Travel. Villains can be killed (not a heroic thing) before they do Bad Stuff, so then why would the future characters Time Travel? They can start relationships that they have to abandon (not a heroic thing) or try to stay with someone they had lost, which means abandoning everyone they know with the Bad Stuff still going on. It’s just a mess.
Wishing/Miracles is another common way to erase Bad Stuff and revert to the status quo. This is more a fantasy thing, obviously. Somewhere along the way, the characters encounter some form of magic that grants wishes, or a deity that can literally wave their hand and make it all go away. Maybe it seems that everything is restored without the Bad Stuff, but tampering with reality itself? Never a good idea.
I suppose that for the writers, it feels like having your cake and eating it, too. Tell the dramatic story, bring your characters into dire peril with the Bad Stuff, but then wave a magic wand and fix everything. But really, it’s an insult to the readers/viewers who were invested in the story and then had it snatched away.
Don’t do this. Just don’t.
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