# You can't make a Sequel -- You killed off the Character! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 3, 2020, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670 "2020-11-03T19:56:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/81 "2020-11-05T18:59:48Z")
> [@Drum\_God](#): > > I wonder if the Empire provides universal healthcare? 🙂 Yes they do…but unfortunately it doesn’t cover _our_ universe. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/82 "2020-11-05T19:24:49Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > In Dracula, when they put Lucy Westenra down, they stake her, stuff her mouth with garlic, and decapitate her. This sort of implies that just the stake by itself would have been insufficient, although it was probably just overkill on the part of the fearless vampire hunters. And iirc, Slavic vampires were staked not so much to kill them, but to pin them to their coffins so they couldn’t dig their way out. Vampire mythology is a welter of conflicting traditions. Our Fearless Leader wrote a column about it, back in the very early days of the Straight Dope (mostly codged from one book). Bram Stoker actually selected and streamlined it and made much of it canon when he wrote **Dracula**. But staking through the heart has probably been the most standard and constant method of killing off vampires. It’s used to kill vampires in the penny dreadful **Varney the Vampire** and it’s how Carmilla meets her end in Sheridan le Fanu’s **Carmilla** (She’s floating in blood in her coffin at the time – talk about overkill). It’s the method preferred and talked about in Stoker’s Dracula (even if they did go overboard with Lucy, and they didn’t actually kill Dracula that way – if he was killed). It’s certainly the way they killed Dracula in the stage play and the Universal movies. The vampire in Carl Dreyer’s **Vampyr** (made about the same time as Universal’s Dracula) gets staked with a metal stake, rather than a wooden one, but it’s a stake nonetheless. Untold numbers of vampires in other films got done in that way. Of course there were other ways (fire, acid, sunlight ever since the 1940s, after Nosferatu’s example). I’d bet that if you ran a vampire through a wood chipper they wouldn’t come back. Or if you dissolved it in holy water. In _I Am Legend_ Richard Matheson has his hero killed his vampires with a stake until he learns that it’s effective because it keeps the arteries open, after which he simply puts a lot of slashes in his vampires to make them bleed out. Things like the “pinned in the grave by the stake” strike me as after-the-fact speculations. It’s not given as the reason in most accounts. Vampire legend changes through the years as writer add or ignore strengths and weaknesses to meet the needs of their plots. In the 1985 movie **Once Bitten** one of the vampire “facts” is that the vampire has to bite its victim three times in one year to “turn” them, something that no one else has used. And, as far as I can tell, nobody else is interested in using Stephanie Meyer’s “sparkling” vampires from the Twilight series. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/83 "2020-11-05T19:24:57Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > the poster child for this is _Sherlock Holmes._ . Doyle wasn’t really very fond of his most famous creation, so he killed him off in the aptly-named story _The Final Problem._ . But the public wanted more Holmes. Doyle wrote _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ , which was supposed to be Watson’s memoirs of a case before Holmes’ demise. But it wasn’t enough. So he resurrected Holmes I’ve wondered whether Doyle deliberately “killed off” Holmes in a way that left open the possibility of his not really being dead. * * * It’s not killing off a character only to bring them back later, but sort of along the same lines: Frank Baum wanted to stop writing stories about the land of Oz, so he ended the sixth Oz book with Glinda casting a magic spell that would make Oz completely unreachable and invisible to the rest of the world. But then, a couple years later, he revived the series, through the magic of modern technology: > [@](#): > > Through the kindness of Dorothy Gale of Kansas, afterward Princess Dorothy of Oz, an humble writer in the United States of America was once appointed Royal Historian of Oz, with the privilege of writing the chronicle of that wonderful fairyland. But after making six books about the adventures of those interesting but queer people who live in the Land of Oz, the Historian learned with sorrow that by an edict of the Supreme Ruler, Ozma of Oz, her country would thereafter be rendered invisible to all who lived outside its borders and that all communication with Oz would, in the future, be cut off. > > The children who had learned to look for the books about Oz and who loved the stories about the gay and happy people inhabiting that favored country, were as sorry as their Historian that there would be no more books of Oz stories. They wrote many letters asking if the Historian did not know of some adventures to write about that had happened before the Land of Oz was shut out from all the rest of the world. But he did not know of any. Finally one of the children inquired why we couldn’t hear from Princess Dorothy by wireless telegraph, which would enable her to communicate to the Historian whatever happened in the far-off Land of Oz without his seeing her, or even knowing just where Oz is. > > That seemed a good idea; so the Historian rigged up a high tower in his back yard, and took lessons in wireless telegraphy until he understood it, and then began to call “Princess Dorothy of Oz” by sending messages into the air. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/84 "2020-11-05T20:05:04Z")
> [@FordPrefect](#): > > I knew that HHGTTG was a radio show before it was a book but I didn’t know that story about the birth of the improbability drive! That’s brilliant! According to Adams’s comments in The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts (pub. 1985), as he was wracking his brain to find a way to save his heroes and write the next episode, he happened to watch a TV show about jiu jitsu. The man on the show said that it didn’t matter if your opponent outweighed you - if you know how to redirect that weight then the weight becomes an asset for you and a problem for your opponent. So he started pondering how he could make the improbability of them being rescued be a solution, rather than a problem. Oh - I forgot a bigger impossible sequel. In So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, the dolphins bring back the earth, which had been demolished in the first chapter/episode. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/85 "2020-11-05T20:08:23Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Vampire legend changes through the years as writer add or ignore strengths and weaknesses to meet the needs of their plots. In the 1985 movie **Once Bitten** one of the vampire “facts” is that the vampire has to bite its victim three times in one year to “turn” them, something that no one else has used. And, as far as I can tell, nobody else is interested in using Stephanie Meyer’s “sparkling” vampires from the Twilight series. I’ve been watching _True Blood_ lately and am up to the fifth season. They make up a whole bunch of vampire tropes. In particular, victims are not turned simply by being bitter, whether they survive or are drained entirely of blood and killed. You have to be buried for 24 hours together with a vampire in order to be turned, who then becomes your “parent.” I don’t know if any other version used this. Vampires are killed mainly by being staked or shot through the heart with a wooden stake or bullet Instantly bursting into disgusting goop), or being burned up by the sun. However, in at least one case one appeared to be killed by being decapitated. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/86 "2020-11-05T20:09:17Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Darth Maul surviving is merely improbable, not impossible. Light sabers cauterize wounds (except in bar fights against walrus people, but that’s an edge case) so he’s not going to bleed to death, and SW medical technology is obviously hugely more advanced than ours. The bottomless pit is the harder sell, but the setting does have cheap and abundant anti-gravity - presumably, there’s an anti-gravity field at the bottom of that shaft for some reason. Maybe that’s what they use in SW instead of hand rails? I swear I’ve read, but can no longer find a cite, that Lucas added the scene showing the 2 halves of Darth Maul falling down the shaft separately to make it utterly clear that he was dead and was never coming back. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/87 "2020-11-05T20:30:07Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > So he started pondering how he could make the improbability of them being rescued be a solution, rather than a problem. > > Oh - I forgot a bigger impossible sequel. In So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, the dolphins bring back the earth, which had been demolished in the first chapter/episode. Well, sure, but: Adams had already written in time travel by then. He didn’t really need to come up with something odd about the dolphins; he’d already had the characters haventa forewhen presooning returningwenta retrohome. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/88 "2020-11-05T20:33:22Z")
That might have been his intent, but he also gave us General Greivous, a cyborg missing even more of his body than Maul lost, so he opened a door to bringing back Maul with a similar cybernetic intervention. ---
**Author:** ![ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chockfullofheadygoodness/32/511_2.png) [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/89 "2020-11-05T20:48:00Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > I swear I’ve read, but can no longer find a cite, that Lucas added the scene showing the 2 halves of Darth Maul falling down the shaft separately to make it utterly clear that he was dead and was never coming back. I recall that as well. IIRC the shot was added after audiences at the initial charity premiere screenings speculated Maul wasn’t really dead and was such a great character he just had to come back for the sequels. I also remember that the reason the Savage Oppress character on Clone Wars was created was that showrunner Dave Filoni wanted to bring back Maul, but Lucas said “Nope, nope, he’s dead and staying that way”. So Filoni created a new force sensitive Sith apprentice character of the same species. About a year later, after seeing Oppess is action, Lucas changed his mind and asked Filoni to resurrect Maul as Oppress’ brother. Cynics noticed the timing lined up with when Lucas was ramping up the promotional campaign for the 3D rerelease of Phantom Menace. The Clone Wars story arc with Maul’s return aired at the same time the rerelease was in theatres. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/90 "2020-11-05T20:48:06Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > I swear I’ve read, but can no longer find a cite, that Lucas added the scene showing the 2 halves of Darth Maul falling down the shaft separately to make it utterly clear that he was dead and was never coming back. He was only mostly dead. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/91 "2020-11-05T21:03:54Z")
He got better. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/92 "2020-11-05T21:30:05Z")
Speaking of Star Wars characters falling into a pit, Boba Fett survived falling into the Sarlacc Pit in _Return of the Jedi_----- at least in the original Star Wars expanded universe works which are no longer considered canon. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/93 "2020-11-05T22:21:03Z")
I figured that Captain Phasma would also return, because she was last seen falling a long way and vanishing into a fireball. But, as far as I know, she’s still dead, so I guess that doesn’t count as a bottomless pit. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2020, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/94 "2020-11-05T22:40:33Z")
Rumor is that the Madalorian TV show is going to re-canonize that bit. ---
**Author:** ![Drum\_God](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drum_god/32/44_2.png) [@Drum\_God](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drum_God)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2020, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/95 "2020-11-06T00:12:19Z")
We’re up to 94 posts and no one has mentioned John Snow? He was well and truly dead on a show that really was not at all shy about killing off major characters only to be resurrected in the next episode. John’s untimely passing and subsequent recovery is hardly ever mentioned again. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2020, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/96 "2020-11-06T00:25:23Z")
Looking up this topic on the internet, I find the expected TV Tropes pages on it ( [Back from the Dead - TV Tropes](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BackFromTheDead) ) and various webpages about killed and revived characters ( such as here – [https://www.tvfanatic.com/slideshows/23-characters-who-came-back-from-the-dead/](https://www.tvfanatic.com/slideshows/23-characters-who-came-back-from-the-dead/) ) These aren’t quite what I’m looking for – I’m thinking of cases where a character gets killed (ideally, definitely and completely, with the corpse destroyed and all), yet the creators nevertheless write or film a sequel involving that character because they like them too much, or the public demanded it. They might come up with some clever dodge (they weren’t really dead) or some metaphysical tripe (reincarnation! Or their _katra_ is still around) or they might just not bother explaining (Ygor!) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2020, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/97 "2020-11-06T00:55:37Z")
Maybe the [First Law Of Resurrection](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FirstLawOfResurrection) trope? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/98 "2020-11-10T22:41:45Z")
> [@ChockFullOfHeadyGoodness](#): > > I recall that as well. IIRC the shot was added after audiences at the initial charity premiere screenings speculated Maul wasn’t really dead and was such a great character he just had to come back for the sequels. [Just saw this article](https://www.polygon.com/star-wars/2020/11/10/21558304/darth-maul-sequel-trilogy-george-lucas-princess-leia-star-wars-archives-prequel-book?fbclid=IwAR2jdq9VzKtoK9a96UNNhVT9VooT4D6CN5uGW4alz4I24l4EBZvZZbtueE8&fbclid=IwAR1stTwct1d2L1IFy4Im2kDBvWyXJvlB8944-ghk9m4ZqkTcKWvn838CCw8), where now Lucas is saying that Maul was supposed to be the main villain in his concept for the sequel trilogy. Which, knowing Lucas, doesn’t invalidate anything you or **Muldoon** were saying. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2020, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/99 "2020-11-10T23:47:47Z")
Julie Newmar’s Catwoman fell down a bottomless chasm at the end of her first two-parter episode of _ **Batman** _ in 1966. I don’t think her reappearance later was ever explained. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2020, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-cant-make-a-sequel-you-killed-off-the-character/924670/100 "2020-11-11T00:14:37Z")
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