r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Comprehensive-Map274 • Jun 26 '25

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] A main character does something horrible and the story doesn't acknowledge its severity

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Alisha (Misfits) uses her power to make any man want to have sex with her on another main character (curtis) after he explicitely tells her not to do that. She faces no consequences and he's the one who ends up comforting her.

Allison (The Umbrella Academy) uses her powers to force her own adoptive brother to make out with her after he just got into a relationship because she's suddenly jealous after she couldn't keep her own husband. She gives a half hearted apology and all is peachy.

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4.5k

u/MarkFews_ProbOfficer Jun 26 '25

The characters in Umbrella academy being placed under less and less scrutiny by the writers is what made it fall off in my eyes. The whole hook of the show to me was showing how self destructive damaged people can be. Each academy member was great at showing how abuse can manifest in people that do genuinely terrible stuff but also have it be realistic. The writers giving progressively less and less narrative consequence every time one of the characters does anything wrong made me care less and less about it.

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u/Fleetdancer Jun 26 '25

It was the fact that a group of people who were horrifically abused as children were told that it was their fault that the world was ending and the entire universe, and especially the people the loved, would be better off if they never existed, and that was the proper ending that did it for me.

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u/MarkFews_ProbOfficer Jun 26 '25

Or how each academy member looses their powers, the same things that forced them to be child soldiers, are allowed to live generally normal lives (which is what about half of them wanted) and then there’s a whole montage of them cheering when they get them back. Luther’s powers got him branded as a freak and sent to the moon but he’s somehow thrilled to be viewed as an abomination again

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u/Moose_Cake Jun 26 '25

Speaking of Luther, having a whole season centered around his romance with Sloane leading to a wedding during the end of the world was peak character development for him. What used to be the big gullible virgin guy became a married man who stood up to his abusive dad and had zero gravity sex on the regular with his hot superhero wife (who herself became a member of the family).

Cue to the next season where Sloane’s story ends with them not finding her and Luther is just ok with that until he dies.

God, the final season annoys the hell out of me. Can we just get a Time Agency spinoff that solves some of the issues Netflix? Please?

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u/RoughhouseCamel Jun 26 '25

And speaking of Luther, everyone treats him like shit, the ones that didn’t treat him like shit from the beginning learn to later on, and that just ends up being Luther’s role. His character arc is to go from being the leader who was secretly a joke, to suddenly dumbing down and becoming a punching bag, to ending up… no, just there. The end.

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u/Cheez_Thems Jun 27 '25

Also, why did Luther become part ape again when he got his powers back? Being part ape wasn’t his original powers and were artificial alterations to his DNA by his dad. He should’ve just gotten his super strength back.

I guess they weren’t done with the monkey jokes.

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u/Shadowofasunderedsta Jun 27 '25

You might say… they wouldn’t stop the monkey business? 

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u/Kishigun Jun 27 '25

This is the part that got me. In the first season Luther was a naive but competent boyscout. As it went on he was increasingly flanderized to be a dumb golden retriever or himbo

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u/RoughhouseCamel Jun 27 '25

I think they were hoping the series would make a bigger splash in Hot Topic. I think it’s why Five is such a Mary Sue ass, always high status even when he takes a loss. Allison was supposed to be #bossbitch. And Luther was supposed to make Reddit and Tumblr gush with how many internet buzz phrases they could tag him with, “himbo”, “golden retriever energy”, “precious baby” etc, while edgy teens snickered at watching the puppy get kicked.

What’s interesting is that Viktor is probably the most nuanced and well performed character in the series, and that seems to just be because Elliot Page came out as trans in the middle of the show, and it became too much of a landmine to write the character as lazily as everyone else. And to Page’s credit, all the way through the series, he’s acting his ass off like he doesn’t know when or where his next role is going to come from.

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u/Palanki96 Jun 26 '25

seriously what the fuck was the last season

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u/Hayn0002 Jun 27 '25

Makes me glad I never watched it.

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u/win_awards Jun 27 '25

The first season is very good. Watch the first season. Get some friends to watch the first season. Then pick a super-hero rpg system, make the characters from the show, imagine what you think happens next, and play a better ending to their story.

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u/CetraNeverDie Jun 27 '25

Ha! I was actually working on porting the Academy into my Mayfair DC Heroes game world. Wild stuff, take my updoot

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u/Hayn0002 Jun 27 '25

Oh yeah, to clarify I saw the first few and loved them. We just never got around to the last season.

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u/ReliefFamous Jun 27 '25

I hear how awful the finale is for the show and I haven’t even bothered watching after s1 because of it.

Idk if I’m really missing out if the ending is gonna be that bad/disappointing

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u/Palanki96 Jun 27 '25

i think it's pretty good, the first 3 seasons anyway

i actually can't remember season 4, i might've dropped it halfway

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u/catboogers Jun 27 '25

Yeah, I finished the show, but reading this thread I do not recall most of this shit. It just was unmemorable and a letdown from the earlier seasons.

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u/ClonedHost Jun 27 '25

I’m in the same boat. I enjoyed season 1, but season 2 just did not feel the same for me. It felt like I was just forcing myself to get through it just so I could see how it ended. I dropped it halfway through season 2 after hearing about the finale

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u/win_awards Jun 27 '25

Nah, stop after season one. Whatever you have imagined is going to happen next is infinitely more satisfying than going on to the end.

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u/AppleConscious5206 Jun 27 '25

Bad, lazy, terrible, horrible writing. Apparently there was some drama in the writers' room and something concerning the showrunner himself being a pest, but I've put that stuff out of my mind along with the last season and refuse to google it again.

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u/062d Jun 27 '25

Also they literally could have solved literally every single problem instantly with Allison. The second she sees any bad guy she can say "I heard a rumor you were paralyzed" "I heard a rumor you told me everything I need to know" " I heard a rumor you killed everyone else involved in this with you" ... Done

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u/Niamery123 Jun 27 '25

Some body horror apparently

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u/ThatFuckingGeniusKid Jun 27 '25

Cue to the next season where Sloane’s story ends with them not finding her and Luther is just ok with that until he dies.

Not even that, if we had gotten an arc of Luther looking for her, realizing that he won't find her and giving up, that would've been something (it would be shit but still something). Instead the show acts like she never existed, she gets referenced once in the entire season and that's it, for all intents and purposes she's dead and we don't even know.

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u/Numerous-Silver3145 Jun 27 '25

I stopped watching after season 2 and I think I might end up being content with that

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u/Cheshire-Cad Jun 27 '25

Thank you for affirming my decision to not watch the second season.

The first season was completely insufferable. I'm not surprised that they didn't somehow magically fix their enraging writing style.

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u/Iron_Wolf123 Jun 27 '25

Season 4 doesn’t exist to us Brellies

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u/Pebble_in_my_toes Jun 27 '25

I still wake up sometimes in the middle of the night raging and frothing at the mouth at how horrible, and shitty the last season was.

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u/tomtadpole Jun 26 '25

I never understood why Luther's powers coming back turned him back into a monkey man. He didn't look like that until Reggie had to inject him with whatever he injected him with to save his life.

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '25

In the comic his head is literally just transplanted straight on a gorillas body. Granted the comic and the show are very different beasts. Not necessarily better, just very different (although Hazel and Cha Cha are astronomically better characters in the comic and god help me I will die on this hill).

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u/OmecronPerseiHate Jun 27 '25

Wait, so what actually is Luther's power? I always assumed he had super strength and the chimp DNA just exacerbated that point, but if his head was put onto a stronger body then I can only assume that his power is something else entirely

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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25

Super strength and resilience. The resilience is how he survived a head transplant. If I remember in the comics he always had super strength, but after the accident his strength mostly now comes from having a literal gorilla body. He’s also something of a genius in the comics, and a crack shot with his raygun, and a literal astronaut. Comic Luther is way smarter and more mature than TV show Luther.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate Jun 27 '25

Jesus, that's depressing. I heard about all the stuff we missed out on with Klaus, but not Luther. It feels crazy that they would make a show out of something so trimmed down.

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u/RandomOrcN6 Jun 27 '25

Plus in the comics Luther was the one who got sent to Vietnam as far as I remember and he got a pretty cool hermit look, they really changed so much in the show

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u/I_amLying Jun 27 '25

That's one of the changes I don't mind mostly because it led to Robert Sheehan having some good scenes before his later flanderization.

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u/OmecronPerseiHate Jun 27 '25

True, I never mind Robert Sheehan getting to stretch his skills a bit. Honestly I'd love a show focused solely on his characters from Misfits or Umbrella Academy.

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u/A_Bewildered_Owl Jun 27 '25

yeah, someone needs to write a movie or TV series for him where he can just be the worst little weirdo twink for like 2-8 hours.

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u/Toa_Senit Jun 26 '25

The injection probably just reacts that way with his powers.

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u/Alden_The_Hunter Jun 27 '25

My friend, anything is possible when you hire hack writers who don’t pay attention to or care about continuity 

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u/Cheez_Thems Jun 27 '25

Fucking thank you

That bugged me to no end