Finally, Someone is Not Trying to Insult Us

A big issue I have with fiction is when a franchise 'kills off' a character, then goes through the whole 'are they really dead, it seems like they are' for a while, and then finally make a big (Oh so shocking) reveal that the character is not really dead. In comics, just about all your big heroes have been there at one time or another. So many shows have done this, some devoting seasons to the mystery, when all along you already know the character is not going to stay dead.

It is one over played, extremely cliche, story type that has stretched way past being enjoyable or shocking.

I knew that Superman, Spider-Man (regular Marvel, as they did keep the Ultimates Universe Peter Parker dead) and Wolverine would all be back from the dead after the big deal that was made about them dying. I had hoped Marvel was going to keep Captain America dead and make his perfectly done death in the after math of their Civil War event mean something. Nope, he was brought back a few years later.

And in all these cases they play out the big 'mystery' of if they are really dead and go through a whole insulting con job of a story trying to make us wonder and doubt what we already know, which is they are not dead. It is a real insult towards the fans to do that, especially with how often it is done.

It also trivializes the idea of death in fiction.

Either commit to a character's death, or don't play games with your audience.

So when the first trailer for Stranger Things season 4 came out a little bit ago, I was very much pleased to see that they were not going to insult us. One of major characters appeared to have died at the end of season 3, and they gave us a bit of a hint that he wasn't really dead at the very end, without out right saying he was alive.

Well the trailer was all about making it clear the character was not dead. I applaud them for being straight with us about this. It gives me hope that there are going to do this right. We can still get the drama of all the other characters believing him dead, while not being insulted as the story plays out. They don't need to waste time with the over done concept of trying to solve the mystery of if he is dead or not, and can instead focus on a bigger story.

And this works great, because we never saw a body, never got any kind of confirmation that he was dead, it was just his body was not there after an explosion took place. It appeared he died and it makes sense that everyone would assume he was dead, but they never tried to push this idea.

I've seen a few complain that the trailer was a spoiler, by showing he was alive.  I see it as them making it clear from the get go that they are not going to play that sad game. They are not going to insult us.

I love it and am looking all the more forward to season 4 now.

I hope other writers look at this as an example of the correct way to do a 'not really the death' of a character.