Heroic Characters and Their Legacies

 

Firstly, I'm going to say that I don't like it when characters are killed off. Most characters don't deserve that. This post is partly because of that. 

Superheroes face a lot of danger. They're heroes, they're super. It's what they do, and what needs to be done, usually. So it'd kind of hard to believe that they're going to make it home unharmed every single time. 

The good writers know this. If you ask me, heroes should have to pay for they do. For every risk and reward, there should be a repercussion. You shouldn't be able to toss someone through a building without them sustaining any injuries. Personally, I love it when writers give their characters scars, because that means that they're taking the injuries into account later after it's been healed over.

So where am I going with this? 

It's OK to kill off your hero. It's realistic and should be expected. As they say in How to Train Your Dragon (the first movie). "It's an occupational hazard." However, most readers are not going to expect to you kill off the hero.

This is because superheroes are often portrayed as being invincible characters. They always rise to the challenge, save the world, and make it home only 2 minutes late for dinner.

Which, as I mentioned above, is unrealistic. But I digress.

The trick is to kill off the hero without having your fans take out the pitchforks and torches. The solution? A legacy.

"Now, what is a legacy?" you ask. Well, let me explain.

First you have the hero. The original. The one that has all the fangirls because they're the main character, and they came first. Then, you add the character who fills the gaps that they leave when they're gone. Think Peter Parker and Miles Morales. 

For those of you who don't know, Miles is the successor of Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man. 

Peter is the original, and Miles is the legacy. With the original gone, the successor has to fill the shoes of the original. Now, there are various ways to go about pulling this off, and there is no right way, so you can do it pretty much any way you want to. The thing to keep in mind, though, is that you (probably) want to do it in a way that doesn't enrage the readers. This means that you need to do it in a way that feels natural and true to the story and breaks the hearts of readers, but doesn't leave them questioning what happened.

Make the death clear, realistic, and impactful. Then make the legacy that the character leaves behind even better.