Note: Edited and reposted from my personal blog.



As a fan of many characters deemed villains in their respective stories, redemption arcs are often a topic of discussion. Does this or that character deserve redemption? What makes for a satisfying redemption arc? Which redemption arcs work or don’t work?

However, it’s rare for me to come across a conversation that examines the concept of a redemption arc itself, let alone the forces that shape our understanding of what redemption means and how it works.

With that in mind, I’m going to see what I can do to crack open the assumptions behind redemption narratives and see what interesting alternatives present themselves.

As someone who studies Jewish texts as an entryway into Jewish values and ethics, the ways that majority gentile fandoms talk about characters transforming from villains to non-villains often strike me as reflecting Christian hegemony. Or, when speaking specifically of American media, puritanical Christian hegemony.

Redemption narratives are rooted in a deeply Christian framework where people do bad things because they are evil, sinful, or corrupt by nature. The task of redemption is to destroy or purge that corruption, and the surest way to do this is to suffer and die for others.

For an example of a redemption narrative, look no further than Anakin Skywalker. As Darth Vader, he murdered and terrorized his way across the galaxy for decades, but near the end of Return of the Jedi, he sacrifices himself to kill the Emperor and save Luke. Once he proved he still had good in him, he dies as Anakin Skywalker.

While Christianity has redemption, in Judaism, the vehicle for character transformation is atonement. In the Jewish worldview, people do bad things because they’re messy, finite and human. The task of atonement is to repair the damage you’ve done and return to a place of clarity. Sometimes, there is no making up for what you’ve done, so you find a way to live with that yet still strive to do better. The surest proof of atonement is having the opportunity to make the same mistake as before but choosing differently.

Books can be written about the differences between redemption and atonement, but for the sake of brevity, redemption is fixing who you are, and atonement is fixing what you’ve done.



An example of an atonement narrative would be Xena in Xena: Warrior Princess. As the Destroyer of Nations, Xena spent years in the pursuit of power and conquest, slaughtering countless people. But, inspired by Hercules, she realizes she can do better, so she does. She turns over a new leaf, using her strength, leadership, wits and skill to bring justice to the world and protect those who can’t protect themselves. She’s always struggling with ambition and bloodlust, and her reputation as a bloodthirsty conqueror follows her, but many times throughout the show, she chooses not to kill even if it would be easier for her to just murder the weakling in charge and take over.

I don’t think atonement narratives are particularly rare. It’s just that fandom is so habituated to analyzing stories and characters through the lens of Christian hegemony, usually without even knowing it, that alternative possibilities aren’t recognized, let alone explored or examined.



Let me give you an example. I love Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender. She’s such a layered, complex character, and she’s so much fun. She is, no contest, my fave. She’s also, in the narrative of the show, a villain. One question that gets asked a lot about her is whether or not she’s redeemable.

At first I didn’t think anything of it. Then I started paying attention to the language people were using to describe Azula, and so much of it has these weird connotations of Original Sin. From the way a lot of people talked about her, it’s as though she’s condemned to damnation from birth and that her behavior is an expression of her morally corrupt nature.

It became deeply unsettling to see so many people flat-out deny the possibility of change for her. The underlying message I get from that? Don’t bother trying to do better. Your moral worth is fixed and immutable, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

This paradigm is so jarring to my Jewish sensibilities. Judaism does not deny that people are capable of wicked deeds. The Talmud is very blunt about each person having an impulse to do good and an impulse to do evil. We all mess up. That’s life. But when we mess up, the path to atonement is always open. We can always repent, seek to repair the harm we’ve done and commit to doing things differently.

To me, that’s more empowering.