Let’s discuss the beloved sci-fi chestnut that can always be relied upon to draw a few eye rolls: the reluctant hero. You know the kind. Imagine a hacker who wants nothing more than to be left alone but finds themselves saving a world they couldn’t care less about. Or an aloof space mercenary who gets predictably yet unenthusiastically roped into a rebellion against a cybernetic overlord. Yeah, you know that type. Everyone acts like they’re tired of seeing it, but come on, if you’ve made it this far, you’ve probably got a secret soft spot for them, too.
In Star Wars, we have Luke Skywalker complaining about the moisture farms of Tatooine, while in The Matrix, Neo’s “Why me?” moments have become iconic. The College of Character has noted that these are “tropey” moments. But what’s important here is not to judge those moments too harshly. What’s important is to understand what motivates those moments and, by extension, what motivates the characters living in those moments. Why are they living in such moments? Why are we as the audience living in such moments with them?
One of my clearest memories of coming across this trope is at a sci-fi convention where fans of Blade Runner and aficionados of The Expanse clashed over which antihero was greater: Deckard, the replicant hunter who’d rather be doing anything else, or Joe Miller, the belter detective who can’t seem to stop being good in an obviously rigged system? You have to actually want something to debate it with that much breath and fervor. And those are two highly debatable and highly defendable characters as per the characteristics of the antihero.
What Is the Reluctance For? When critics deride the reluctant hero trope, they often see it as an unflattering reflection of our own reluctance to rise to the occasion. If they view it as a narrative device that juxtaposes our internal struggle with a clearly defined external threat like an alien invasion, I suppose I can understand that perspective. But I’m not very fond of it. It’s deliberately unkind to creators and audiences alike, and it ignores what makes the trope so enduring. After all, if we can’t relate to an internal struggle with the apocalyptic (or whatever the big threat is), then what can we relate to?
This is where the trope grips us. We don’t merely wish to witness grand interstellar titans clashing or sleek cyberpunk urban panoramas. We yearn to see a character creeping reluctantly to the fore, a figure similar enough to us—mortal, all too human, and riddled with doubt—that we can imagine his or her actions as something we might undertake in a pinch. If nothing else, it’s the kind of thing our “real” selves might not shy from if we somehow found ourselves on a starship or in an underground compound on the other side of a dystopian city.
Let’s take a moment to to recall the first season of Stranger Things. Yes, Eleven carried many enigmas and had lots of secrets, but if there was a character in that season who embodied the “reluctant hero” trope, it was definitely Chief Hopper. He was a jaded cop and a big-town washout who had kept the bottle too close for comfort and had only a small-town atmosphere to fight weirdos in; he was someone the audience could not really look up to as much as feel sympathy for. By the time he became a hero for the good of the underground bunker needed to protect a Russian invasion, he might as well have been in a bear suit.
Altered Carbon’s Takeshi Kovacs is a tough Envoy who was brought back to life centuries after he was originally matrixed. Why? Because we live for a reluctant decision to more resolve than would serve our real-life hero ideal, especially when the next stage gets us closer to the kind of kicking-corrupt-mind-twisting-A.I. overlord butt end we read for and watch for, as if it were truly an outcome in our lives that might make everything okay. Kovacs got matrixed back for us to see in his somewhat okay-don’t-hurt-him-kicking way and in the situations that hopefully lead us to the kind of down-to-business finish that makes alter egos worth our while.
Some might say that Din Djarin in The Mandalorian is just another familiar character type. The quiet bounty hunter who’d rather be collecting bounties than acting like a dad to a 50-year-old green baby is pretty much what was advertised and what we tuned in to see. But come on: when he finally decides to risk it all for the sake of Grogu, doesn’t that scene play out in your head just like it did when you watched it, over in your brain like some kind of a Highlights magazine for nostalgia?
From Dystopian Streets to Interstellar War: The Reluctant Hero Trope Still Succeeds
Let’s change direction and get into the nitty-gritty of what makes us all secretly love the reluctant hero—especially in sci-fi and fantasy. It’s not just the age-old trope of “an unremarkable person rising up to do the remarkable.” That’s so stale it’s creaking. But even a hero in an interstellar odyssey musters a vibe that sets them apart from their hard-bitten cyberpunk urban counterpart. Both flavors are far from being exhausted.
Feeding the Fantasy: Why This Trope Thrives Let’s dissect why this trope is still around and still working, even when the outcome is altogether predictable. The appeal truly draws from the hero’s reluctance in contrast to the fantastic settings of our stories. Sci-fi, in particular, hammers home the juxtaposition of the ordinary and the otherworldly. Just think of Deckard. In the end, it isn’t about his winning fights, nor even about using some sci-fi tech to come out on top. No, what makes Deckard’s story work, really work, is the psychology behind it—his lack of any true psychological (or even physical) victory at its conclusion, with strong parallels to the lives of many in the 2010s.
This trope is beautiful because it gives the fantastical a basis in reality. When the protagonist isn’t eager to pick up the luminous blade or try on the new prototype for a battle mech, it gives us time—and the character a reason—to reflect on the nature of heroism. What makes a hero? What makes an anti-hero? Is heroism a simple act of doing good, or is it more a function of the circumstances one finds oneself in? And what makes us connect with the hero or anti-hero? Is it momentary regret over not having the kind of courage to make the enlistment choice?
Case Study: The Appeal of the Antihero at Fan Conventions I recall attending a virtual panel for Cyberpunk 2077, where fans were in part debating whether V, the game’s protagonist, was a reluctant hero or just a self-centered merc. The chat was lively, with plenty of people praising V’s apathy towards Night City, the game’s unabashedly corrupt setting. To fans at the panel, the disinterest in the model for the game’s version of a “hero” may have tipped their preference towards a characterization that ultimately conveys a relatable level of dissatisfaction with an unrealistically heroic ideal. Hearing the chat crew stash their feelings for “try-hard” morals onto an NPC (I mean, not even AIs are given perfect orders to follow anymore) and list them as reasons to balk at V’s preordained path of righteousness made me think about how antiheroes are becoming a mainstay for fandoms expecting to see themselves in a character.
This is the moment when sci-fi works its magic. A hesitant hero faces a confrontation in a world of future technology—what’s at stake here resonates, and not just with our techno-obsessions. This is about our shared anxiety over high-stakes, high-tech situations and what roles we might be expected to play in them. We could hardly be expected to feel otherwise in such a moment. After all, feeling awesome inevitability in the face of action is what college is for.
The Comeback Is in Popular Culture. Let’s admit it: Nobody enjoys saying they love something that’s kind of a hallmark of mass taste. But if you’ve ever found yourself thrusting your cheering fist in the direction of a matched set of chins housing a weary ex-soldier or a washed-up detective finally regrasping their sword or blaster, you know you’re beating off the old even with the new. And even the mightiest critics of the reluctant-hero trope can’t quite eviscerate it when it’s done well. Take, for instance, Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. Sure, he’s a grunt of a hero, full of low dialogue and big, muddy action, but the simplicity and low-key satisfaction of watching a not-so-eager-to-help Geralt (or a not-so-eager-to-help hero in general) do right by the realm really tunes the audience into a frequency of pep.
Do you recall when the Mass Effect series started, and you had the chance to mold Commander Shepard into the ultimate soldier for saving the galaxy? And yet, still, in those sometimes clumsy-looking cutscenes, with those not-so-great facial animations, you could sense, in the pauses between Shepard’s dialogue and the slightly awkward delivery of some lines, that Shepard wasn’t just another action hero of the sort video games have been offering in increasing numbers for the past couple of decades. She (or he, as you preferred) was a hesitant hero—at least for the moments when you chose for her (or him) not to just plow ahead and do what was obviously necessary.
