20 Fictional Resurrections That Were Actually Good

‘Captain Jack Harkness’

These days, on the big and little screens alike, death is cheap. Screenwriters have figured out that killing off a beloved character is an easy way to emotionally manipulate an audience, but they don’t want to deal with the fallout of that choice — i.e., losing an effective audience draw in the form of a beloved character.

So what do they do? Bring them back to life. This is easy in universes that are already magical, but don’t underestimate the resurrection capabilities of real-world analogues, either. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that you can’t fully mourn a character’s death due to the likelihood that they’ll just be brought back anyway, defeating the purpose of the whole stunt.

User zbox2345 agrees. “In many cases, when a character is brought back to life, it can feel cheap or unearned,” they told r/AskReddit. But there are times when the stunt is just as poignant as a certain death. That’s why they asked, “What instances of a character being revived do you think were done particularly well?”

X-Men: The Animated Series

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

Doctor Who

Game of Thrones

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Dragon Ball Z

The Transformers

The Leftovers

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Supernatural

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

American Horror Story

The OA

The Abyss

Pulp Fiction

The Good Place

Back to the Future

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