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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31054
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31054
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

You don't always need someone to die. Remember that the Hero's Journey is a universal archetype. It does not just apply to quest stories where the hero literally goes on a journey. It is (it is proposed as) the archetype of all stories. Thus it is proposed as the archetype of Pride and Prejudice just as much as Lord of the Rings, of Terms of Endearment as much as Star Wars.

But that does not mean that the choice are arbitrary. A story is a moral artifact. It has a moral structure and to be satisfying it must follow a fairly strict moral economy. In some stories, moral economy demands that the antagonist must die. This is not so much a matter of the enormity of the antagonists sin demanding the price of death, as it is the economy of the protagonists virtue demanding that the antagonist must be faced and defeated.

For an interesting study in the moral economy of a story, consider the ending of the Glory season of BTVS. Buffy has defeated Glory, who has turned back into Ben. Buffy then refuses to kill the helpless Ben, even though she knows Glory could one day return. But while Buffy's back is turned, Giles suffocates the helpless Ben, explaining that Buffy cannot kill him because she is a hero, but that he has to die, nonetheless, because otherwise one day Glory would return and make Buffy pay for her mercy.

This raises all sort of interesting questions about Buffy's hero arc, and also about Giles' hero arc. Essentially is raises questions about what heroism is, and what it demands. I Buffy, or Giles, entitled to make the cold moral calculus that says that the death of the innocent Ben is justified by the prevention of the numerous deaths that the returning Glory would cause? Or is the hero bound to a moral code that says they are to avoid harm in the present and not justify violence now against the potential of violence to come.

The point is, there is a moral logic to your hero's arc that determines whether your antagonist is to die or not. Of course, you are in charge of that moral logic, but the appeal of your story will very much depend on the choice you make. Those who find your moral logic satisfying will like your story and those who do not will not. But whatever the moral logic you decide upon, you must follow it through. If you violate the moral logic you have established (or that is established by the tradition in which you are writing) then few will find your story satisfactory.

Original score: 18