By and large you don’t tend to associate heroic characters with those who shoot people dead in cold blood, but it does happen. And sometimes, it manages to even feel justified. And most impressively, it can feel justified when there’s no obvious reason why this should be.
Like, in real life, I have little sympathy for those who would gun down a defenceless victim, but thanks to the power of story and fiction, it can be made to feel right, just, or even good. That’s what I’m trying to explore with this list, which is looking at these along these dynamics:
• How much is the character who is doing the shooting a hero? Evil people shoot people in cold blood all the time, but heroes? Good guys? That’s a bit more unusual.
• How clearly as the shooting in cold blood, meaning the shooting wasn’t “fair”–the victim was unarmed, unprepared, basically defenceless.
• How much is it unjustified, meaning that there is no immediate compelling reason to kill the person, certainly not at that exact moment? Like, it’s not self-defence or to protect some other innocent person (ie Superman snapping Zod’s neck in Man of Steel).
• And yet, even with that, how much does it feel like the right thing to do?
In other words, we’re looking for a character who would not normally shoot someone in cold blood, who has got no justifiable reason for shooting someone in cold blood, who goes ahead and shoots someone in cold blood, all in a way that reads for me in the audience as absolutely the right thing to do.
And of course, there is also the catch-all criteria for how cool and memorable the sequence is. That’s always a factor. I mean, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even think of it.
I realize as I write this out that part of what I’m looking for are scenes which really confront me the implicit contradiction of the shooting being both unjustifiable, but also in some way the right thing to do. That is a place that I hope life never brings me to, but which is part of the inherent power of story to force me to explore.
Now, as with most of my similar lists, I’m not purporting that these are the 13 very best examples of this idea in all of fiction–I’m sure there are countless others that I have forgotten or never been exposed to. But these are the ones that stick with me, listed according my ranking of how closely they hew to my platonic ideal for this trope.
So with all that said, here’s what I came up with…
13. Han Solo shoots Greedo
Star Wars–also known to all these darn kids as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
“Over my dead body…”
This one is pretty far off from the concept I’m really looking for, but it’s so iconic I have to include it.
Han Solo, that stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking nerfherding smuggler, is confronted by Greedo, a bounty hunter who is after him on behalf of the giant slug-gangster, Jabba the Hutt. The two sit across from each other as the cantina in Mos Eisley, having a conversation full of veiled threats. With Greedo distracted the banter, Han is able to unholster his gun and shoot the guy under the table, with any warning?
Or does he? This is a funny example because of how many different versions of this moment there are, thanks to George Lucas going back and tweaking with his science fiction blockbuster after the fact, for decades. The changes to this moment meant that Han was shown to shoot after Greedo fired at him, or at practically the same moment that Greedo shot at him. Generally, though, everyone seems to agree that the best version of this moment has Han shooting first, taking down Greedo while he is still posturing and threatening, the smug reptile that he is.
This might be the best known (in terms of pop culture, anyway) item on this list, but obviously it has to be pretty low in the ranking. For one thing, Han isn’t exactly a hero, not at this point–in fact one of the things this scene does is establish how much of a rogue element he is. More importantly, Greedo is obviously not unarmed, he’s actively putting Han’s well-being into peril by threatening to bring him to Jabba the Hutt, and depending on the version you see, was actively planning on shooting Han anyway.
But still, pretty cool, right?
12. Avon shoots Blake
Blake’s 7 – “Blake” (1981)
“Avon, I was waiting for you…!”
In the closing moments of the last episode of the last season of the 1970s/1980s dystopian science fictions series Blake’s 7, the show’s leading protagonist, Avon, finally comes face to face with Blake, the show’s original main character, and after a brief and confused conversation, shoots him dead. The two men had always had a contentious relationship, but they were ostensibly on the same side, fighting against the totalitarian and oppressive regime known as the Federation. However, Blake had been missing from the show for a couple of years, and when Avon found him again he was told that Blake had betrayed them (in reality, it seems Blake had just been testing one of Avon’s colleagues, which helped to lead to the whole misunderstanding). Blake proved to be a bit inept at explaining himself, and when he approached the shocked Avon, the latter responding by opening fire, apparently fulfilling actor Gareth Thomas’ wishes that if he was going to return as Blake, he would do so be killed off permanently.
Certainly, this is a moment that was both iconic and shocking, and perhaps the single most memorable event over the entire series. But of course I have to admit it can’t rank too highly on this countdown. First of all, while Avon was certainly the show’s leading character in its last two seasons, it’s a bit of a stretch to call him a “hero” exactly–his devotion to pragmatism and self-preservation doesn’t give room for a lot of more traditional heroic attributes. Indeed, Blake wasn’t even the first person he’d shot in cold blood in that very scene! It’d also be hard to argue that his shooting of Blake was the right thing to do–from all appearances, Blake hadn’t betrayed them, he was waiting for Avon to join him to continue their battle against the Federation.
11. Andor shoots Tivik
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
“Calm down, calm down, we’ll be all right.”
This is the second, and last, example from the Star Wars franchise. This time around, we look to the scene near the start of Rogue One, where co-lead Cassian Andor meets up with Tivik, a nervous and fretful informant, and gets information about the Empire’s new planet-killing weapon. Unfortunately, Stormtroopers find out about them, and in order to protect himself and the information that he is carrying, Cassian quietly shoots Tivik dead, figuring that there was no way he’d be able to escape, and even if he had, he was sure to give up the information that he had about the Rebellion’s activities.
One of the main reasons that this instance has to rate pretty low on a countdown like this is that it’s hard to tell how much we are meant to see Andor as a “hero”. Similar Han Solo, this scene is our introduction to the character, and is obviously meant to highlight the ways the guy lives in the grey shadows of the Star Wars universe. Of course, later we come to see there is a lot to admire in the guy, but here at the start the shooting makes us uncertain, which means the moment doesn’t quite hit the cognitive dissonance that I’m chasing of seeing a good guy doing an unjustifiable act, but in a way that makes the audience feel like it’s the right thing to do.
Looked at a bit more dispassionately, one might also feel like the shooting was justified. Given Tivik’s physical limitations (he has a lame arm, it seems), it was unlikely he was going to be able to escape the stormtroopers in the same way Andor does (it involves climbing a bunch), and given his terrified demeanor, it was unlikely he’d be able to avoid giving away the Rebel Alliance’s secrets, leading to a lot of other people’s deaths. And he’d probably be tortured and eventually killed himself, in any case. So at least in Andor’s mind, he might have been doing a good thing, and he was certainly doing a necessary thing.
10. Rick Flag shoots Derek Tolliver
Suicide Squad #20 (cover dated December 1988)
“And the Squad will be safe.”
Rick Flag was the military man assigned to Amanda Waller’s “Suicide Squad” program, in which convicted super-villains were used as expendable agents in top secret black ops missions for the US government. He was a driven man burdened by a lifetime of guilt and obligation. Derek Tolliver was a political operator who blackmailed Waller into getting the Squad to do work which would allow him to get his corrupt politician elected. Waller figured out a way to blackmail Tolliver back, getting the Squad out from under his thumb, but in typical fashion she didn’t share any of this with her team. Flag found out about what Tolliver was doing and in his emotionally broken state, took it upon himself to protect the Squad by confronting Tolliver and shooting him dead on the spot.
Flag certainly fits the “hero” qualification. Of course he’s a soldier and surely used to dealing out lethal force, but one presumes it’s not his normal habit to gun down employees of the US government. But this situation doesn’t score highly on this ranking because at no point does the reader feel that killing Tolliver is the right thing to do. Reading it, it’s more akin to the proverbial idea of watching a train wreck. Waller and Flag’s world is falling apart not only in spite of their best efforts, but because of them.
Interestingly, there’s an even more dramatic second version of this trope in the following issue, but it falls even further away from the concept I’m chasing. After killing Tolliver, Flag moves on to kill Joseph Cray, Tolliver’s corrupt politician. The Squad is sent out to stop Flag “by any means necessary.” As Flag confronts Cray, he is interrupted by the presence of Deadshot, a former Batman villain turned Squad member who is rife with psychological problems. He fulfils his orders to stop Flag from killing Cray by killing Cray himself.
It’s a shocking and memorable moment, but it’d really be hard to justify Deadshot as a hero, even though he is a Squad mainstay.
9. Sarah Walker shoots Frank Mauser
Chuck – “Chuck Versus Santa Claus” (2008)
“You go right ahead, Agent Walker. Arrest me. But say “good-bye” to Chuck…”
Sarah Walker was a CIA agent assigned as handler for Chuck Bartowski, a civilian who had unwittingly downloaded into his brain the “Intersect”, the sum total of all knowledge and data collected by all US espionage agencies, and thus the most important intelligence asset in the country. One of Sarah’s main goals was to keep Chuck’s identity a secret. In the episode, “Chuck Versus Santa Claus” from the show’s second season, Sarah saves Chuck from Frank Mauser, an enemy agent who has discovered that Chuck has the Intersect. Mauser is captured and disarmed, but boasts that with his knowledge he will still destroy Chuck. So Sarah guns him down.
In a lot of ways this fits the template that I’m chasing with this post. Sarah is certainly a hero, and although she is pretty comfortable doling out a bit of lethal force when necessary, she doesn’t usually just point blank kill her unarmed enemies. Mauser had surrendered and was about to be handed over to the CIA–Sarah’s own people, so on one level there was no reason to kill him. But nonetheless, she has a motivation to pull the trigger that we in the audience can clearly understand. Her mission is to protect Chuck, and it’s clear that even imprisoned, Mauser represents an imminent threat to that mission.
So why doesn’t this entry rate higher? I think because as much as I have enjoyed Chuck, it’s just not all that compelling. Everything is too much on the silly or flippant side to really take seriously. This scene aims for dramatic, but it’s pretty obvious what is going to happen and comes across as just another moment, rather than anything especially meaningful. Thus it just doesn’t distinguish itself greatly amongst everything else on this list.
8. James Bond shoots Professor Dent
Dr. No (1962)
“That’s a Smith & Wesson, and you’ve had your six.”
British MI6 agent 007 James Bond is sent to Jamaica to investigate the death of a local operative, Commander Strangways. For various reasons, he becomes suspicious that local geologist Professor Dent is involved. Bond evades numerous attempts on his life that Dent has orchestrated, culminating in Dent sneaking into the house that he believes Bond is sleeping in and shooting at the “body” in the bed. However, Bond ha anticipated him, and set up the house as a trap. He disarms Dent and holds him at bay, demanding to know who he works for. Feigning giving Bond information, Dent dives for his gun, only to discover that he’s spent all of its ammunition. Bond coldly reveals that he knew the gun was empty, and mercilessly guns Dent down in response.
James Bond, of course, is no stranger to lethal force–indeed, his whole deal is that as a “00” agent he is “licensed to kill”. But Dent is actually the first person that we see Bond kill on screen, at least if we are only counting the movies in the official licensed franchise from Eon Productions (there was a TV adaptation of Casino Royale that was made years earlier). Many of Bond’s kills come in the midst of combat and could reasonably identified as self-defence or potentially as examples of military operations.
Bond’s shooting of Dent, however, is neither of those. The whole gimmick of the scene is that while the audience ie meant to believe that Bond is in danger, that the truth is is Bond knows he is completely safe because Dent’s gun is out of bullets. In fact, Bond’s shooting of Dent seems even counter-productive to his goals, since once Dent knows he is genuinely helpless, Bond never tries to get Dent to answer his question about who he is working for. But it’s presumed that Bond either knew that it would be useless to get Dent to talk, or he already effectively knew that the mysterious figure “Dr. No” on a nearby island was the root of all of his troubles. Bond could have then just had Dent arrested, but we get the impression that he just can’t be bothered, and he’s just too annoyed at the man to give him another moment of life.
In all this, this example fits most of the metrics of this countdown–Bond is a hero, albeit a ruthless one, and there is no particular reason beyond his irritation to actually kill Dent. But do we in the audience feel it is the right thing to do? Well, we don’t feel any reason to object, certainly, but it’s more that the scene is used to reinforce how cold Bond can be. It doesn’t, as some of the other entries on this list, invite us to confront how we feel about it, or to consider whether Bond was right. I think this is because James Bond is not the type of person to question it himself. For Bond, it seems that Dent is just a murderous weasel and shooting him is just the most viciously easy way to deal with him. He even shoots him an extra time for good measure.
All of this makes the scene cool (especially with Connery’s iconically suave performance), but it doesn’t make it particularly interesting.
7. Katniss Everdeen shoots President Coin
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (2015)
“Today, the greatest friend to the revolution will fire the shot to end all wars. May her arrow signify the end of tyranny and the beginning of a new era. Mockingjay, may your aim be as true as your heart is pure.”
Katniss Everdeen helps to inspire a revolution that overthrows the power of oppressive Capital, intending to put an end to the barbaric Hunger Games forever. However, once the dust has settled, the ostensible leader of the revolution, President Alma Coin decides not to hold democratic elections, and instead opts for another round of Hunger Games using the children of the people of the Capital, as a form of retribution for decades of past injustices. Furthermore, Katniss comes to recognize that in the final days of the war, some of the travesties that were attributed to their enemy, the deposed President Snow, were actually committed by Coin in order to turn public favor in the direction she wanted. Katniss volunteers to be the one to actually execute Snow in a big public event. But at the critical moment, Katniss re-aims her bow and shoots Coin instead, killing her and putting an end to her reign in the most perfunctory manner possible.
This is the only item on this list where the lethal weapon is not a gun of some sort, but a bow and arrow, but it still counts. And it’s a pretty good example of what I’m looking for–Katniss is as much a hero as the world of the Hunger Games provides, and she does straight-up murder President Coin in as cold-blooded a manner as one can imagine. And certainly the movie (and the book, I presume, although I have not read it) wants us to see this as a the right choice. Coin is clearly toxically deranged and power-mad, and would certainly have gone on to establish a regime as unjust as the one she had been fighting against.
But given all that, is her shooting Coin really “unjustified”? It was pretty evident that Coin was taking things in a pretty bad direction, and Katniss didn’t really have any other meaningful way to stop her. And she’s pretty handily pardoned later on, so it seems like a pretty open secret that Coin was bad news.
Still, I’d say the shooting was sufficiently “murderous” that I’d rank it a lot higher if I just liked the last couple of Hunger Games movies better. This is one of the most memorable bits in those two films, but in general I find them both pretty mediocre, so the whole things is just less exciting than it could have been.
6. T.E. Lawrence shoots Gasim
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
“Gasim…did you do it?”
T.E. Lawrence is a British officer sent to work with Arab leaders in rebelling against the Turks in World War I. He gains some favor amongst the Arabs, partially by working tremendously hard to save the lives of one of their men, Gasim, when he is lost in the desert. However, when a conflict breaks out between different Arab tribes that demands the death of someone who has committed a crime, Lawrence volunteers to carry out the execution himself in order to prevent the spiral of reprisals that would result, which would destroy the fragile unity he’s helped to broker. Unfortunately, the guilty person, whom Lawrence must execute, turns out to be Gasim. Heartbroken, Lawrence goes ahead and carries out the execution.
Lawrence of Arabia actually features another instance of Lawrence shooting an unarmed person, when his own porter, Farraj, is badly injured and is mercy-killed to prevent him from being captured and tortured by the Turks. But it is the shooting of Gasim which really shows us how committed Lawrence is to his mission and to becoming someone that the various Arab leaders can rely on. It’s a heartbreaking moment in a monumentally epic film, beautifully directed by David Lean and wonderfully acted by Peter O’Toole.
But it may be that it doesn’t fully hit the “unjustified” qualification for this list. For Lawrence and for most of the audience, it certainly wasn’t standard to carry out acts of justice in this manner, but in the context of the characters of the movie, Gasim’s execution is seen as absolutely necessary (the guy was himself a murderer, after all).
This is the only example of a depiction of a real person featured in this list. The shooting was based on a real incident, although not one involving the real Gasim. I read excerpt from the real Lawrence’s journal which describes it here. It’s pretty horrifying–a lot more horrifying than we see in the film, in lots of ways.
5. Edmund Exley shoots Captain Dudley Simpson
LA Confidential (1997)
“Would you be willing to shoot a hardened criminal in the back…?”
Ambitious police Detective Lieutenant Ed Exley helps to uncover a conspiracy to take over Los Angeles’ criminal underworld by the corrupt police captain, Dudley Simpson. After a massive gunfight, only Exley and Simpson are left standing, with the police on its way. Simpson offers to spin a tale which will make both he and Exley look like heroes, with a promise to promote Exley as a reward. However, instead of allowing that to happen, Exley shoots Simpson dead in the back.
This is one of the only examples on this list in which someone is shot in the back–the other case is Andor shooting Tivik in Rogue One. But where that could be seen as an act of mercy, this is very different. Exley’s shooting of Dudley, specifically in the back, shows us what sort of person the movie’s events have turned Exley into. Earlier, the ambitious Exley had approached Simpson with a desire to become a homicide detective. Simpson had tried to put him off, saying Exley didn’t have the stomach or the flexibility to do the sorts of things he would need to do in that role, including shooting a hardened criminal in the back to prevent that person from getting off unpunished. Exley of course had protested he’d never do such a thing, but by the end of the movie, when that criminal turns out to be Dudley himself, he does exactly that.
Exley might be considered a bit of a dubious hero, but he is on the side of law and order, and goes out of his way to do his job. There is certainly no overt justification for killing Simpson, but given his position it’s likely he would have gotten away with his crimes if he’d lived, and the world is clearly better off without the guy. Does that make it the right thing to do, or more accurately, does it feel like the right thing to do from my seat in the audience? Umm, mostly I guess, although maybe not entirely.
Nonetheless, it ranks pretty high only my list, only coming down a place or two because Exley himself is such an unlikable weasel.
4. Will Munny shoots Skinny DuBois
Unforgiven (1992)
“Well, he should have armed himself if he’s going to decorate his saloon with my friend.”
Former outlaw Will Munny is lured back into a plan to collect the bounty on some vicious cowboys by his desperate need for finances. This leads to Will’s friend Ned being killed by the local sheriff and his men. Saloon owner Skinny DuBois then displays Ned’s body in an open coffin in his establishment. When Will discovers this, he confronts Skinny in full view of everyone at the saloon, tells everyone else to move away from him, and then brutally shoots Skinny dead. When the sheriff protests that he just killed an unarmed man, Will replies, “Well, he should have armed himself if he’s going to decorate his saloon with my friend.”
The Western genre is full of lots of people shooting other people, including I’m sure other instances of good guys killing unarmed bad guys. There’s even another memorable example in this actual movie. But it’s Will’s dispatching of Skinny that really sticks out for me.
Will is a pretty dark sort of protagonist. He’s a former outlaw and murderer who kills someone in cold blood because he’s angry at him–Skinny is not even the person who actually killed Ned, though he is revelling in it. But on the other hand, Will’s motives throughout the movie are mostly sympathetic–he wants to stop bad people because it will be away for him to take care of his family, and the rampage he goes on the end is to get a form of justice for his friend, who was brutally and unjustly murdered.
So does that make him a hero? He’s certainly a protagonist, and we do sympathise with him. But part of the story of Unforgiven is not that Will is pushed to the breaking point to do something he’d never do, but rather that he’s always been the person who is willing to pull the trigger, and that he just hasn’t for a while simply because he hasn’t had a reason to.
3. Sawyer shoots Tom Friendly
Lost – “Through the Looking Glass” (2007)
“That’s for taking the kid off the raft.”
Lost was a convoluted story about airplane crash survivors on a mysterious island that was not quite as deserted as it first appeared. The group come into conflict with the “Others”, a mysterious cabal of inhabitants on the island with their own bizarre agenda. One of the leaders of the group was a big man named Tom Friendly. After a particularly heated conflict group of the Others led by Friendly are defeated, thanks in part to the arrival of a group of survivors led by Sawyer, a hard-edged conman. Friendly surrenders, conceding good-naturedly that he’s been defeated. Sawyer responds by shooting him in dead in the heart, saying that this was in retribution for when Friendly took Walt, another of the survivors, off of a raft that they were trying to escape in.
Throughout Lost, it was always challenging to know what was going on, including at times who was an ally and who was an enemy. And often it was frustrating to watch the characters not take actions that seemed obvious, or not share information or even ask direct questions when they needed to. Thus, it was immensely satisfying when at the end of the third season, Sawyer just shot and killed Tom Friendly rather than accepting his surrender. Hurley is shocked at the action: “Dude, it was over,” he says, “he surrendered.” Sawyer replies, “I didn’t believe him.” Neither did we, Sawyer, neither did we.
So the scene is super-cool, it felt absolutely like the right thing to do, and there was certainly no external justification for it. But, like in many of these examples, Sawyer isn’t exactly an unmitigated hero. He’s one of our protagonists, of course, and ostensibly a good guy. But coldly shooting someone isn’t exactly something we can’t imagine him doing. It’s not as if it was Jack, for instance.
Actually, there is an example of Jack lethally shooting someone earlier in the series, when he has to euthanise the marshal who is suffering both from injuries sustained in the crash and Sawyer’s failed attempt to put him out of his misery. But that scene isn’t nearly as cool as this one.
2. Thomas Magnum shoots Ivan
Magnum, P.I. – “Did You See the Sunrise?” (1982)
“Ivan…did you see the sunrise this morning?”
Vietnam vet / private investigator Thomas Magnum and his friends prevent another friend, T.C., from being used in an assassination attempt of a Japanese prince. In the process, another friend, the loveable Lt. “Mac” McReynolds, is killed by a car bomb meant for Magnum. In the end, it is clear that the culprit behind all of this is Ivan, a brutal Russian Colonel who held Magnum and his friends captive in Vietnam for an extended period of time. However, even though the plot has been exposed and stopped, Ivan is granted diplomatic immunity and allowed to leave. On the way to the airport, Magnum carjacks him and drags him into the woods. The two have a tense standoff, which ends when Ivan smugly announces that he knows Magnum will never kill him cold blood. Magnum asks if Ivan saw the sunrise that morning, echoing the last thing that Mac had said he wanted to do before being killed. When Ivan answers “yes,” Magnum turns and shoots him.
I seriously, seriously considered making this my number one entry on this list. It’s one of the greatest sequences in my television-viewing life, and certainly the most shocking moment that Magnum, P.I. ever delivered. Magnum is the show’s hero, and shooting someone in cold blood is outside his normal method of operation. And yet if anyone deserves it, it’s Ivan, the man imprisoned Magnum for months, who heartlessly killed his friend, who brainwashed another and tried to use him to assassinate a world leader, and who is most likely going to do more of the same in the future. But is killing Ivan the right thing to do? The guy certainly deserves, but does that make it right?
The scene is challenging and effective because it invites us to wrestle with the question, and doesn’t provide any sort of answer. Indeed, the shooting is the very last thing that happens in the story, and in true 80s episodic TV fashion, I don’t think the event was mentioned at all the following week or at any other point in the series. So if I rate this list on the basis of how well the story asks the question of whether shooting someone in cold blood is the right thing to do, this example would easily come in at the top spot.
But if on the other hand, I rate it on how powerfully the scene answers that question, then I got to turn to one other example…
1. Amos Burton shoots Dr. Strickland
The Expanse – “Immolation” (2018)
“I am that guy.”
Amos Burton, a mechanic about the spaceship Rocinante and a skilled fighter, befriends the scientist Praxideke “Pray” Meng and attempts to help him find and rescue his daughter Mei, who has been kidnapped and is being experimented on along with other children by Dr. Strickland, in an effort to understand and control the mysterious “Protomolecule.” Burton and Prax finally catch up with Strickland on Io, who has murdered Mei’s nurse and claims to be working to save the children. Not believing him for a moment, Prax takes him aside into a nearby airlock in order to kill him. But Prax is a moral guy who is not used to violence, and he struggles to pull the trigger of his gun. Amos enters and assures Prax that he is not “that guy”–the kind of person who would just execute someone, even someone like Strickland. Pray leaves, and Strickland breathes a sigh of relief, until Amos turns to him and informs him that while Prax might not be that guy, he is, and summarily kills Strickland with his shotgun.
Along with the Magnum, P.I. example listed above, this is my favorite example of this trope. But unlike with Magnum, the appeal of this scene is not how morally complex it is, or how much it challenges me. Rather, it’s with how immensely satisfying it is. Of all the victims included in this list, Strickland is easily the most hateable, merrily using children and other innocents for his unscrupulous scientific research as he does. When Prax finally catches up with him, it’s clear that it would be good and right for Strickland to die. But for Prax, doling out the punishment will cost him something dearly–he simply does not have the temperament for that sort of violence. Seen in that context, Amos’ actions are not just examples of justice, it’s also mercy…to Prax. Prax will not have to have the memory of taking someone’s life, but that life will still be taken nonetheless. As Prax leaves the airlock, it’s absolutely predictable what is going to happen next, but it’s also exactly what we want to see happen. With all of this, it’s excellent storytelling.
Amos Burton is a little like some of the others listed here in that he’s not exactly a good guy. He’s a little too comfortable with brutality to feel completely safe around. But he’s always willing to fight for the people and the causes he believes in, and to put himself on the line to do it. In that, I am totally comfortable calling him a hero.
And that’s the list! Like I said, I’m sure there are many more I’ve forgotten. Like, there must have been something in Firefly, right?
