Live and Let Live: In Defense of Not (Permanently) Killing Off TV Superheroes

I recently fell down the rabbit hole of comics-based, superhero television adaptations. I blame it on Netflix; it’s difficult to avoid getting sucked into the Marvel universe when both of the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones are available in their entirety from day one. And now there’s even more to pick and choose from if you’re like me and find yourself playing catch-up more often than not–Arrow and The Flash are my two go-betweens for binge-watching at the moment, and after realizing I can watch Legends of Tomorrow on Hulu I am now fully invested in the Arrowverse. (Curse you, Greg Berlanti.)

Like my new TV obsession, my foray into the world of superhero comics is also relatively new. I’d been a casual reader before, but towards the tail end of last year I started picking up new series and following more deliberately; between The Big Two, as well as amazing publishers like Dark Horse and Image–well, I think it’s safe to say I’ve been ingesting more comics than books with mere text in black-and-white lately.

So I may be somewhat of a newbie to both mediums, but hear me out–I don’t believe, as a recent Entertainment Weekly article argues, that superhero TV shows need to kill off a major character in order to stay interesting. There are a few reasons why.

If you’re wondering why characters don’t stay dead on superhero shows, just take a look at the source material. During my comics deep-dive, I started doing a lot of side research–which is how I stumbled across the fact that comics continuity, as a whole, is kind of a joke. Characters and their histories are retconned left and right, which effectively allows an entire reset of a storyline. We’re seeing two huge examples of relaunches right now, between All-New All-Different Marvel and DC’s Rebirth. And deaths of big names certainly don’t stick–Spider-Man, The Flash, Captain America. If you can think of a major superhero, they’ve likely had at least one death in the comics–only to pop up again, either after it’s revealed their death was faked to give another character a chance to take up the mantle or their character gets a reboot. Revivals pretty much go hand-in-hand with comic book superheroes these days, so it’s not completely out-of-the-ordinary to write a story arc on TV in which Sara Lance meets her demise as the Black Canary on Arrow, only to be resurrected later to travel through time and fight crime on Legends as the White Canary. And that’s just one instance where bringing a character back to life and putting her on a new show has also breathed new life into the character itself.

Comics, on the whole, certainly provide more of a sense of creative freedom than the versions that have been adapted for the small screen. Between relaunches, creative team swap-outs, lack of popularity/low sales, and the list goes on–comics are a huge, sometimes overwhelming medium, with hundreds upon hundreds of titles to choose from (and that’s not always a good thing). Their television counterparts don’t really have that luxury, or the ability to easily backtrack when it comes to previously established story. Some of that is budgetary–when it comes to big fight scenes, artists can make it as epic as they want–but some of that has to do with the bureaucracy of TV, of course. If things are moving along smoothly, the network Powers That Be aren’t going to want to do anything to disrupt that, and making a Big Decision like killing off a big name can sometimes be the wrong kind of shake-up for fans.

Speaking of fans, there’s the audience expectation–because if they’re familiar with the comics, they know there’s likely not going to be any big deaths that stick. It’s one thing if you set out to make a TV adaptation that flies in the face of its comics canon and can prepare audiences in advance, but if these showrunners are attempting to at least stay partially true to previous incarnations they’ll likely avoid killing off Oliver Queen or Barry Allen for good–and the fans are expecting that. They’re tuning in to Agents of SHIELD because the show brought Coulson back; if they want to watch a darker comics adaptation, there are several others out there to choose from.

That’s why it doesn’t make a lot of sense to insist on superhero shows following the trend of having to prove there are “real stakes”, as the Entertainment Weekly piece cites. Sure, Game of Thrones has given new meaning to the phrase “no one is safe”, but this was nothing new for those fans who had read A Song of Ice and Fire series prior to starting the show. Those stakes were real because they were already there; it wasn’t something that had to be manufactured or changed just because the show was airing on HBO. Of course, now that the show has taken a different direction creatively from the books, who knows what’ll happen? But to make the comparison between GoT and shows inspired by superheroes from the Big Two makes me side-eye a bit.

In fact, given the body counts that are seeming to stack up on shows like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead–not to mention all of the absolute pain and suffering that has befallen lead character Meredith Grey on Grey’s Anatomy–I’m starting to wonder if shows are depicting too much trauma happening to its main characters. I understand the desire to shake things up in the narrative; I don’t object to a strong dose of angst every now and then. But when writers put their characters through traumatic circumstance after traumatic circumstance, it goes past the point of seeming unrealistic–it starts to feel gratuitous in a way that almost looks exploitative. No, thanks.

Killing off a superhero on television might sound like a good creative idea, in theory, but I don’t understand why it would be necessary. By their very nature, superheroes have always been a little removed from the dangers faced by ordinary men, at least most of the time. I can say without question that I’ve been completely entertained by the shows I’ve been watching so far–and maybe that’s a part of me knows these larger-than-life characters will be safe. They’re not infallible, and they’re certainly not perfect–but let’s not hold that against them. Let’s keep them around a while.

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Carly Lane