Twice: Death of a Good Man

What is good?

What is bad?

What is the worth of one life?

That’s the question asked by the decision that Hawks makes to target twice. This post will look at the moral philosophies that overlap with those deicisions. @waxwingedhawks​ made a similiar post which you should check out, and while we might overlap I’ll be discussing different material. However the gist of this post is, even if Hawks decision was to prevent the deaths of thousands then is it worth it to kill a good man like Twice?

1. Should the Batman Kill Joker?

Slides taken from this powerpoint: [Source.]

There’s one famous example of ethics in hero comics that relates to this very issue of Hawks killing Twice. It’s especially relevant because Twice himself is a character based off the Joker, in that his whole life was changed by one bad day.

The ethical question is should batman kill the joker to put a permanent end to his crimes, and save the lives of everyone the Joker was going to kill in the future.

The quesetion itself demonstrates the conflict of Utiliarianism vs Deontology (or Kantian) when it comes to moral ethics. Utiliatiarnaism and Deontology are two opposing branches of ethics. And (this is simplifying here) the conflict between them arises from differing answers to this question? What is it that determines whether something is right or wrong.

Utiliarians believe that the results of an action are what determined if sometyhing is ethical or not. Therefore, this branch is called consequentialism because it states that the consequences of our actions define our actions. In other words the ends can be justified from the means.

Deontologists believe that the means themselves are the ends. Batman’s no killing rule is a deontological one. Deontologist believe that morals are not determined by the results of our actions, but rather there are set rules outside of our actions that we choose to follow or ignore. A deontologist would say that nothing good can be achieved from unjust means.

Batman believes killing is wrong, so he won’t kill the joker. The utilitarian argument is an appealing one. Batman could save so many lives if he just chose to bend his rule once. However, the appeal of utilitarianism is its flaw.

Utilitarianism summed up, is the greatest good for the greatest number of people. However, it pre-supposes that there is an objective greater good that the decision maker is working towards. Humans are fundamentally incapable of being objectives, and there’s no agreed upon objective “Greater Good”, its an idea that varies from person to person.

The problem with “the greater good” is that a lot can be seemingly justified towards it.

The reason batman doesn’t kill the joker, is the same reason crimminals are afforded civil liberties. It’s a deontological one. The idea that people always exist with certain rights, and should always be treated humanely is done for the sake of everybody. It’s not to let crimminals get away with crimes but rather to prevent innocent people from being wrongly persecuted.

For example you can use utilitarianism to justify putting cameras in people’s homes. If people never do anything wrong then there’s nothing to hide, right? Only the guilty will be punished. However, the reason we see this as a bad thing is because the definition of something wrong can change easily. If you put a camera in someone’s house, suddenly speaking badly about the government can be defined as something wrong, and you can be arrested for it.

As stated in the chart above, Utilitarianism is something that can quickly slide into harming a minority for the benefit of the majority.

To take another example from pop culture, there’s the famous scene in star trek 2 where Spock, a person who tries to live mainly by logical ideals rather than emotional one gives this famous quote.

Spock says, “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Captain Kirk answers, “Or the one.”



However, while Star Trek is the source of this quote they also stated the exact opposite idea in the third movie, where every single characters comes together and puts themselves at risk to revive Spock. When Spock comes back to life, Kirk says the reverse.

“The needs of the one, outweigh the needs of the many.”



The third movie states while it may be true that one person’s life is worth sacrificing to help many people, the other is true as well. That many people can come together and risk their lives for the sake of saving one good man. The point being that the world doesn’t exist in strict utilitarian, or Detonological ideals, but rather we’re always working for a spectrum of both. People should make sacrifices for the greater good, and people should respect the individual needs of the minority are two ideas that only contradict each other in a world of black and white, in a world of heroes and villains.

2. Harming the Minority

So, once again returning to the ethical question set up by the Twice and Hawks conflict. Is saving perhaps thousands of people worth killing one good man?

While Hawks is contemplating this question, the story gives us a very deontological rule. Someone who tries to help their companions can’t be a bad guy. Simply put, the act of helping other people is good, whether it comes from a hero, or a villain. In fact we’ve been shown this in the story before, Shigaraki is a murderer who lashes out at random, and he’s also a person who provided a home to several unstable people and helped them improve their lives, both of these ideas while contradictory exist at the same time.

Hawks and Twice’s beliefs contradict each other on a sociopolitical level. That is, both Hawks and Twice have a different idea on how society should be run. Hawks’ ideas are primarily collectivist, and Twice’s are individualist.

Hawks’ ideas are centered around two things, maximizing effiency, and the greater good. His goal has always been to save as many people as possible and to maximize the efficiency of his actions while doing so.

Hawks will always sacrifice the few for the sake of the many. What he believes, and what he was also specifically raised to believe is that he should be capable of saving everybody. That Hawks should devote all of himself to the sake of the people around him. The ideal of a hero, but not really a person. Hawks believes that whether people are saved or not lies entirely on him, and therefore he always maximizes the number of people he can save with every action.

Even sacrificing parts of himself with those decisions. When Hawks knows that he is not strong enough to kill the High End Noumu, intsead he sacrifices his wings (which are Hawks’ symbol of personal freedom) in order to give Endeavor the strength boost to defeat the villain. Hawks has to sacrifice himself. He always has to sacrifice himself for the many.

Which is why Hawks flies so fast. He genuinely believes (or rather was taught to believe) that if he works hard enough, if he sacrifices himself and is the perfect hero then he should be able to save the people he wants to save.

This is what makes Hawks the man who moves too fast. The reason other people can’t keep up with him is because they don’t devote absolutely all of themselves, to the point where they have no lives outside of their own work to the act of saving others.

Hawks will always choose the selfless choice. Even the decision to kill is a selfless choice. You could argue that Batman not wanting to infringe upon his personal morals to kill Joker even though Joker might kill other people in the future is a selfish choice to make. Hawks would murder Joker in about ten seconds.

Hawks is a collectivst to the core. His argument is that personal feelings and invidual freedoms should be stomped all over if it’s something that benefits the whole of society.

The ideas of Twice and the liberation front as a whole are individualit ones. Basically, individual liberties should not be stepped all over for the process of the greater good.

The League of Villains and the Meta Liberation front are both a response to hero society’s tendency to let the minority suffer for the favor of the majority. I’ve spoken about this point before, but in the abstract the liberation front has broad, agreeable ideas.

Hero society is conformist in nature. People are often bullied because they do not fit the right kind of quirk.

In a society where literally everyone can shoot lasers out of their eyes, bullying people, intimidating them, pressuring them to conform is not necessarily the right answer. Collectivism works on the idea of there being an in-group and out-group. Obviously, for an in-group to even exist people have to be excluded.

It would make more sense to run hero society from the angle of people have thousands of different types of quirks, we should do out best to maximize the inclusivity of society so that no one gets left out. The fact that people sympathize with the liberation army is because the current hero society, rather than trying to be accomodating to the differences between people and protecting the minority, instead chooses to oppress the minority and let people who could have been helped become villains because it’s just easier.

Which is what Twice’s backstory is entirely about. That even trying with your best intentions to turn your life around, you can fall out of society through no fault of your own.

The idea that Twice became a villain not because he’s a good or bad person, but instead because of good or bad luck. Something that Twice really doesn’t have control over.

So, the LoV and MLA are an individualist response to an oppressively collectivist society as a whole. Those who cannot conform, want to destroy the current society that excludes them.

However, Twice values people’s feelings over the greater good of the mission, whereas Hawks will stomp all over his own feelings for the greater good of his mission the twist is that both of them are utiliatarians. Both Twice, and Hawks will justify murder in order to bring their ideal society in place. Twice’s philosophy sounds well and good that people who are outcasts should be taken care of, until you remember that Twice regularly wants to murder people in the name of protecting his small found family.

Twice still believes in a very unhealthy way that he needs to pay everybody back in the League of Villains for accepting him, by being useful to them. Even though the league cares about Twice’s feelings more than his use as a person, Twice still really sees himself the way that Hawks does. The only worth Twice has is a person is how useful he is to other. It’s just both of them justify their utilitarianism through different social viewpoints, Twice kills to protect the few, Hawks kills to protect the many.

3. The Death of a Good Man

Twice has stated these ideas before in the manga. First that he would never kill a friend, and second as what he told Hawks above a person who helps their friends can never be a bad guy. By Twice’s logic alone, Hawks betraying his friend makes him a bad person even if he is betraying that friend for good reasons.

For the final part of this meta I’m going to talk about the flaws of Utilitariansm. I’m going to use an example from another manga, Bungo Stray Dogs with the character Ango Sakaguchi.

In the second light novel we’re told the story of the Dark Era. To summarize, there are three people who work for the mafia, Dazai, Ango, and Oda. The three of them are drinking buddies, and sort-of-friends who meet outside of work and discuss. Eventually their work, or rather the system causes their friendship to fall into conflict.

Of these three people we have:

Oda, a handy man for the mafia taking care of orphans who has a person rule to never kill people directly, because he believes it’s an absolute wrong to kill someone.



Ango, a spy who incredibly similiar to Hawks will lie, manipulate, and deceive his own friends for the sake of what he always calls the greater good.

Dazai, a mafia executive who kills people and joined the mafia because he was suicidal and wanted to find a reason for himself to live.

Dazai and Ango exist on opposite sides of the political ideas spectrum, Dazai is an inidvidualist who only really thinks of himself, Ango thinks of the good of everybody as a collectivist at the cost of his individual relationships with his closest friend.

Oda is somewhere in the middle between them, however he’s acknowledged as a good person. The twist is Oda used to be an assassin that killed many people for whatever reason in the past. Just like Twice, he’s a dangerous crimminal. However, at the same time he was reforming himself, trying to be to a better person, and taking care of several orphans without a home. He had also stopped killing people at this point.

The story sacrifices one individual good man, in order to achieve what is called a “greater good” for everybody else.

Ango is an individual with a strict and unbreakable moral code, always acting for the good of the majority. In a simple black and white story, he would be seen as a good person. However, not only did his actions result in the death of a good person, or at least a person trying to be good, all of the orphans Oda was trying to take care of died as well. That is a powerless minority was considered an acceptable sacrifice in order to maintain the status quo for a majority of people.

We see Ango make these choices again and again. To betray individual people for the sake of a faceless majority.

In the most recent chapter of the manga, he almost decided to shoot Atsushi in the head in order to make a quick decision to save as many people as possible. He even pretty much convinced himself that his only choice left was to murder Atsushi. Atsushi of course being… another powerless orphan with very little agency within society as a whole.

Ango would sacrifice Atsushi, someone who trusts him and is working with him if he thought it would help the greatst amount of people. Whereas, Lucy and Kyouka are people who would not kill Atsushi if they thought it would save people. They’d prioritize Atushi over the majority. Here we are coming into that conflict again.

However, as I’ve pointed out: the people who tend to be sacrificed are always in the minority. They would have been on the losing side regardless. Which is why true utilitarianism is impossible, because Ango is not making objective decisions here. He’s actually making very personal ones on the premise that he’s being objective. He keeps targetting over and over again peopele who are considered in the minority, and not only that Ango is very good at concinving himself he needs to do these things. Just as we witness Hawks convince himself that he needs personally to take out Twice.

Both of them are convinced that they are operating objectively, but instead are making very personal decisions. They have to be the one to pull the trigger themselves, Hawks corners Twice with a knife and Ango was ten seconds away from shooting Atsushi in the head the moment Atsushi stops being useful to him. Both of them repeat the worst flaws of their utilitarian mindset, by judging people based on their use to society as a whole rather than whether ot not they have the right to live and improve just for being people.

The counter to this logic is empathy. Twice is capable of murdering a lot of people, and has even done so in the past. However, at the same time that doesn’t make Twice a bad person, or a person capable of only doing bad things.

Opening your mind to the idea that people are both capable of good and evil depending on the circumstances, allows a person who has done bad things to be given the chance to do good things for the sake of others around them. Twice has done bad things in the name of the league, but it’s also Twice’s love and genuine compassion for others that has stabilized mentally a lot of the members of the league and allowed them to become better as people.

Someone capable of fighting to kill is also equally as capable of fighting to use that strength to protect. Basically, reality will always be at odds to ideals. Neither Hawks’ ideals nor Twice’s ideals allign with the reality that both of them exist in. Which is why there’s actually no need for them to fight each other.

Empathy is the idea that everybody is struggling to live in their own way, that everybody is trying to live by their own means. Rather than forcing Hawks to Twice to fight, both of them could recognize that the other is struggling and needs help. Hawks needs someone to tell him that he deserves to be selfish, and take care of himself instead of continually sacrificing both himself and his emotions for the greater good. Twice needs someone to tell him that he doesn’t need to kill people, to be accepted by society. For both of them there are other options that exist, it’s just without empathy, without acknowledging the viewpoint of another person neither of them would ever be able to see those options.

What Hawks and Twice need isn’t for one of them to be right, and one of them to be wrong. They don’t need to fight and see who wins. What they need ultimately is each other to make up for what they are lacking individually. They are both victims with several things in common, while they’re capable of hurting each other because of what they have in common, they’re also equally capable of smypathizing with one another and helping to heal.