Best Film & TV Redemptive Character Arcs

[Totenkindly]

Note: This is Television, not films -- no Darth Vader, lol.

I figured I'd open with two.


Charlie Pace (Lost)

Charlie starts out as a lying, sneaking, self-absorbed drug addict and over a few seasons, through a series of self-evaluations (some of them forced on him) and assistance of other characters like John Locke or becoming genuinely interested in helping Claire and her baby Aaron, he manages to struggle out of his addiction and take a new path. Later he is given the short end of the stick and resolves to selflessly embrace an outcome he cannot avoid, which is both amazing and bittersweet considering where he started from.


Theon Greyjoy (Game of Thrones)

Theon begins the series as kind of a loser, always feeling like he's less than everyone around him, sometimes becoming a braggart and throwing around his weight only to look like a jackass or worse than when he started. He even bullies people and does a few terrible things to win other's admiration (which ironically only seems to do the opposite). Later we find out how Theon has been consistently belittled by his own father and generally his own people aside from his older sister Yara who is both protective (on some level) but also frustrated with him, and a lot of his anxieties, boasts, and cruelties stem from his own feelings of inadequacy.

As typical for a GRRM story, every time you think Theon's fortunes might pick up, things simply gets worse for him, especially when he falls into Ramsey Bolton's hands, who literally becomes his abuser and tormentor in terrible physical and emotional ways, leaving him only a shadow of a person. It becomes dark and depressing to watch.

Which is what is even more amazing, when Theon finally summons scraps of courage and begins to claw himself out of the hole he's in to regain some of his humanity. The damage he suffered can never be fully healed, but he manages to build his backbone and account well for himself by the time the last season rolls around and redeem his worth. This is one of the few arcs that the GoT showrunners actually did well on their own.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Boomer from Battlestar Galactica (2003) had a really good one. It was one hell of a complicated character arc and I was very satisfied with the way it ended tragic as it was. As a one sentence summary, I'd say she actually shares many things in common with Theon Greyjoy, in the sense of being someone torn between two worlds.

I'd like to go into a detailed breakdown, but I need to go bed and I have a lot to do tomorrow.

 

[Totenkindly]

Jimmy McGill AKA Saul Goodman

Jimmy McGill and Walter White are strong contrasts to each other. "Breaking Bad" is about a man who seems good but then goes completely south by the end of his arc. (Was he always corrupt but just disempowered for much of his life until he throws all morality aside? Maybe.) "Better Call Saul" is about Jimmy McGill, a man with a shady past often known as "Slippin' Jimmy", who keeps trying to be good but continuously falling back on shady means to get by and make a name for himself.

If Walter White is a man who fell to the Dark Side, Jimmy McGill is a guy constantly wooed by the light who has trouble making it stick. He doesn't mean to hurt others, but his propensity to wheel, deal, and drink deeply of the "thrill of the con" often leaves others paying the price. Jimmy also hates the pretentious, the powerful, the judgmental, the establishment -- and he will do anything to tear them down as a "victory for the little guy" even when he ends up doing worse things in the process.

Maybe Walter White doesn't give a shit what other people think about him, but Jimmy very much cares about the opinion of the few people in life his who matter -- including his brother Chuck and his friend Kim Wexler -- and he is very susceptible to feeling about himself how others feel about him. It's devastating when he finds out how little faith some people really have in him. When those relationships spin out of control, Jimmy is left bitter and cynical and fully invests in his "Saul Goodman" persona, embracing his own inner slime.

Which makes it most remarkable that after Jimmy's most amazing tour de force, he finds himself laying it aside to win the respect of the one person in the world he still cares about. Maybe he'll always be known in society by the name he built for himself (Saul Goodman), but inside he finally knows who he is.

 

[The Cat]

Giaus Baltaar - Battlestar Galactica reboot. The man goes from the man who betrayed humanity for a blonde to the president, then a criminal, exonerated, a cult leader, and finally a legitimate religious leader.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Giaus Baltaar - Battlestar Galactica reboot. The man goes from the man who betrayed humanity for a blonde to the president, then a criminal, exonerated, a cult leader, and finally a legitimate religious leader.

I love the first part of this, especially, where we see how it all happened. I liked the format of the finale of showing you how it began and what all the characters were doing before, and then showing the end of the character arcs, and these would resonate with each other.

I still think the end of Starbuck's character arc is stupid, though.

She becomes Poochie!

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Ralphie in The Sopranos. Just kidding, he's basically a twat until the very end. You think he's learned a lesson and changed, then he murders a horse for an insurance payoff.

 

[Totenkindly]

Ralphie in The Sopranos. Just kidding, he's basically a twat until the very end. You think he's learned a lesson and changed, then he murders a horse for an insurance payoff.

 

[Totenkindly]

Eleanor Shellstrop (The Good Place)

Her redemption might not have been unpredictable, considering the show is a light comedy with some dense philosophical/ethical foundations, with a lot of the badness played up for crazy laughs -- but Eleanor is just kind of a "worst of the worst" in an absurd way, even with her death (flipping off the "green planet" guy with a shopping cart of cheap margarita mix, food trays, and tabloid mags right before she's dragged out in the road and run over by a truck advertising a pharmaceutical product called Engorgelate -- yeah, take a guess) that lands her initially in the proverbial "good place."

What's fascinating is that even this self-absorbed, self-indulgent, hyper-emotional skeeve on some level is unhappy with who she is and shows remarkable tenacity at improving -- if not before her death, then after. Her worldly wiles go a long way into unraveling the Season 1 mystery and overcoming other obstacles in the series, even while she is being tempered by the experience of finally bonding with people... people who are as messed up as she is.

Maybe the most endearing aspect of Eleanor is that she is just a normal person often ruled by her emotions. Even in the series finale, she can have poor initial reactions to change or loss, but the sign of her maturity is that she now recognizes her selfish behavior when it occurs, takes a step back, and can make more permanent choices out of love for the people she cares about rather than to feed her own needs. Maybe it takes her thousands or more years to learn this, but she's a remarkable blend of humanity that aspires to constantly do better even when wallowing to start in the proverbial gutter. When the final credits grow, Eleanor could not have become a better person than she eventually became even while feeling fallible and human.

 

[ceecee]

Jason Dixon - Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Derek Vinyard - American History X

Apollo Creed - Rocky

 

[Totenkindly]

Fine, fuck it -- I just changed the title to include Film as well as TV shows.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

lando lol

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

i was disappointed with DS9 because Dukat got this really awesome supposed redemption arc but then it turned out he was secretly a shitheel in it for himself the entire time. Damar on the other hand, definitely a favorite redemption arc of mine. Jaime Lannister too.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

May Day in A View To A Kill. "Get Zorin for me!"

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Why do we love redemption arcs so much anyway? It must speak to our psychology, as most of us can identify with the feeling of being smacked by our conscience and realizing we've been wrong, and wanting to right our wrongs.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Jimmy McGill AKA Saul Goodman

View attachment 29146

Jimmy McGill and Walter White are strong contrasts to each other. "Breaking Bad" is about a man who seems good but then goes completely south by the end of his arc. (Was he always corrupt but just disempowered for much of his life until he throws all morality aside? Maybe.) "Better Call Saul" is about Jimmy McGill, a man with a shady past often known as "Slippin' Jimmy", who keeps trying to be good but continuously falling back on shady means to get by and make a name for himself.

If Walter White is a man who fell to the Dark Side, Jimmy McGill is a guy constantly wooed by the light who has trouble making it stick. He doesn't mean to hurt others, but his propensity to wheel, deal, and drink deeply of the "thrill of the con" often leaves others paying the price. Jimmy also hates the pretentious, the powerful, the judgmental, the establishment -- and he will do anything to tear them down as a "victory for the little guy" even when he ends up doing worse things in the process.

Maybe Walter White doesn't give a shit what other people think about him, but Jimmy very much cares about the opinion of the few people in life his who matter -- including his brother Chuck and his friend Kim Wexler -- and he is very susceptible to feeling about himself how others feel about him. It's devastating when he finds out how little faith some people really have in him. When those relationships spin out of control, Jimmy is left bitter and cynical and fully invests in his "Saul Goodman" persona, embracing his own inner slime.

Which makes it most remarkable that after Jimmy's most amazing tour de force, he finds himself laying it aside to win the respect of the one person in the world he still cares about. Maybe he'll always be known in society by the name he built for himself (Saul Goodman), but inside he finally knows who he is.

Definitely. Saul found his conscience. Walt lost his conscience. Contrast Walt's murder or Krazy 8 or letting Jane die to his reaction to the dirtbike kid's death toward the end of the series. Walt is racked by guilt for those first two deaths, yet barely bats an eye over that boy's death, giving Jesse an unconvincing schpiel about it tearing him apart. Early series Walt would have been horrified about having multiple people brutally executed in prison. Late series Walt almost takes glee in making that call.

BTW, I think Cranston's best acting is during Jane's death scene, and if we have to revisit the "this is the moment he became Heisenberg meme", then I think this moment is the best contender in the show. I think this affected him in a way that led him to rationalize his bad decisions to the point he could make some of the evil decisions we see after that point.

 

[Totenkindly]

i was disappointed with DS9 because Dukat got this really awesome supposed redemption arc but then it turned out he was secretly a shitheel in it for himself the entire time. Damar on the other hand, definitely a favorite redemption arc of mine. Jaime Lannister too.

I would like to include Jaime Lannister, except the redemption arc got f*cked in the ass during Season 8 unsatisfactorily. He was pretty awesome for the initial seasons.

 

[ceecee]

Fine, fuck it -- I just changed the title to include Film as well as TV shows.

Oh nooo I didn't even notice the title was just TV.

 

[Totenkindly]

BTW, I think Cranston's best acting is during Jane's death scene, and if we have to revisit the "this is the moment he became Heisenberg meme", then I think this moment is the best contender in the show. I think this affected him in a way that led him to rationalize his bad decisions to the point he could make some of the evil decisions we see after that point.

One could try to make a case that Walt stabilized a bit in the final two episodes but it's less a redemption and more like just an acceptance of who he was become and what it has cost him. I can't even tell if he experiences regret -- he comes close in those scenes with Skylar and watching his kids in the finale but he seems to have accepted what his lot is going to be and just pushes it through to completion.

 

[Totenkindly]

Oh nooo I didn't even notice the title was just TV.

Well, it made sense at the time but there was almost no content or participation for just TV, so consider it an adjustment lol.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

One could try to make a case that Walt stabilized a bit in the final two episodes but it's less a redemption and more like just an acceptance of who he was become and what it has cost him. I can't even tell if he experiences regret -- he comes close in those scenes with Skylar and watching his kids in the finale but he seems to have accepted what his lot is going to be and just pushes it through to completion.

Did he even feel guilt for what had become of Jesse? It's hard to say really.