Introduce a character and forget about them until the last chapter?
In my story, the main character gets help from / saved by two complete strangers. They don't tell the mc who they are or what they are doing, they just helped the mc out of kindness and disappear just as fast as they appeared.
Later, at the very end of the story in the final chapter, I have these two characters come back into play and reveal a twist about them. Just as an example, let's just say that they are the kids of the legendary hero or something (which is NOT the mc, btw.). The villain is actually defeated at this point, the two simply come back to finish off the villain for good, so he may never return.
Could this be a bad idea for these characters? Sure, a bit of mystery is intriguing, but I feel like I don't show enough of these characters, since they only appear in the first and last chapter, so they might appear like asspulls to some. I get the feeling people won't care about these characters, given how little they know about them, even if I spend most of the last chapter focusing on them and what they did behind the scenes that affects the main storyline.
What I did to kind of solve this issue is reveal things over the course of the story that indirectly gives more info about these two characters, without ever mentioning them. For example, someone might mention how the race, which the legendary hero belongs to, have red eyes, and the two mystery characters have orange eyes, "diluted" from interbreeding. Still unusual looking for a normal human being, but not as noticeably strange and it's not unique to the hero's children, but it does give a little hint towards their identity.
In fact, when I show those characters in the first chapter, I drop a lot of hints like this without the reader even realizing, as they are hints for things the reader couldn't have knowledge of at the time when they start, but the reader does gain that knowledge over the course of the story. The reader (and the mc) doesn't know about the red eyes yet when they first see the two characters, but finds out about it later. Not to mention, since the two characters are gone so fast, the reader might forget about them and not even realize they're getting hints to those characters.
Should I show these two characters more often instead?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/33982. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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They might represent the villain's fate, but in that case they shouldn't come from nowhere they should be almost ever-present like vultures waiting for him to show weakness. This might be why they help your protagonist in the first place.
In Peter Pan, the villain is Captain Hook who is pursued by an alligator that swallowed his hand and wants to eat the rest of him. The alligator is mostly low-key and happy to wait for Hook to get into another compromising situation where he will be easy prey. There is no depth, it has only this "lizard mind" ambition. It's a spoof of Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, but also a nod to Captain Cook who was killed by Hawaiian natives. There is a sense of "justice" that the pirate's wicked lifestyle has caught up to him, or his evil has been corrected by a natural force (exotic natives being another feature of "wild nature" like a whale or alligator). Yes, it is very close to deus ex machina, but the method of death is symbolical payback for the villain's defiance of law and order.
Through the alligator we know that Hook is living on borrowed time. His fate was sealed that day he lost his hand, and eventually his destiny will catch up to him. To emphasize the metaphor the alligator has also swallowed a clock that Hook hears ticking when it gets close (a clock that continues to tick years later). The alligator could eat Wendy or a mermaid, but it is only interested in Hook. It is his fate, and his alone.
As an aside, it would be a different story if Hook had abused the alligator and that led directly to his death – then the alligator would become almost another character with a revenge arc and a decision-making process and a call to action – that's all a bit much for an alligator. In 18th Century thinking, a pirate represent a man who defies the natural world order, and so it is "justice" that the natural world becomes their undoing. This is more heady and symbolic, but it might keep your mystery people in an "other" realm.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/34000. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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I agree with wetcircuit, this is a deus ex machina.
I don't think it will help to show them more often, in the end they save the day and they are your heroes, not your MC.
The hero is the one that needs to take the actions and make the decisions (and any sacrifices needed) that lead to and through the climax. S/He can't be a defenseless waif rescued by somebody else.
(In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker chooses to fall, for all he knows to his death, after Darth Vader announces he is Luke's Father, then he is rescued. But this is after that climax, he risked his life to escape Vader).
I worry this will be an unsatisfying ending. The only way I know to save it is if the MC learns something from these strangers that in the end s/he remembers and uses to save the day, in their stead. If you need them for some other reason, have them reappear, to reinforce or clarify this lesson somehow, shortly before the climax and final chapter. Any relationship can be clarified then, a loose end tied up. But the hero has to fight their own battle, the bad thing cannot be defeated by somebody else.
Edit: From your comment: The two simply finish off the villain to prevent him from ever returning again.
If this needs to be resolved, I think the villain is not actually defeated, and this is a job for the MC or hero.
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