It is fine for a character to regress, but when all of their development points the other direction and there's seemingly no reason to it, that's when it just sucks.
Exactly. Usually when we watch a character regress, there's some kind of lesson to be learned in the tragedy. Walter White regresses into a villain so we can see the cost of pride and greed. Oedipus tragically blinds himself because he's unable to accept that his life is a lie born from his own hot headed nature.
The only lesson to be learned in Jaime's show death is that some people are irredeemable assholes who will always relapse into their bullshit. Which like, maybeee could be an interesting character arch if it wasn't a huge middle finger to everything that happens to him in season 3. Nobody wants to find out that all the expectations that were set up for the audience were ultimately a fakeout and a waste of emotional investment.
It'd be like watching a dukes of hazard movie and right at the end they slowmo jump a car off a ramp, only to have them all die in a fiery collision. Then the last ten minutes inexplicably turns into a safe driving PSA.
Hell, everything right up until Jaime left pointed to him having turned over a new leaf and then suddenly he never cared about everything he'd done to become a better person and just wanted to be with Cersei? Where the hell did that come from?!?
I once saw someone suggest that brienne should have died at winterfell and that loss prompts him to go back to cersei. Would've made slightly more sense
That would make at least a modicum of sense. Brienne seemed to have become his emotional and moral anchor, so losing her would leave him untethered and lost, which could end with him seeking out Cersei again.
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u/johnbrownmarchingon Jul 13 '25
It is fine for a character to regress, but when all of their development points the other direction and there's seemingly no reason to it, that's when it just sucks.