False fixing of a love triangle in Clone Wars
I was just talking about this, and lo, a prime example appears in the most recent episode of Clone Wars...
Okay, so Ashoka, the teenage padawan is all crushy on a character, but as a Jedi, she can't pursue any sort of relationship with him. Further, she gets to witness him developing a relationship with another girl. That's fine. It shows the difficulty of growing up as a padawan. (It also shows that a rebellious 14-year old girl is more mature than Anakin was when he was years older, but that's beside the point...)
But they don't let it go at that. At the end of the most recent episode, the rival girl falls off a cliff and is barely hanging on. The love interest tries to save her, but Ashoka just levitates him with the Force, then starts to do so on the rival girl. We see a droid gun about to fire at them, but we don't know who it's aimed at: all three parties are in the open with their backs turned. The episode description says that there is a cost, so I assumed a character would die from the start of the episode. The blast hits Ashoka in the back, and I think, "Oh shit! Is this where Ashoka dies?!" I didn't expect that, and it would have been pretty bold, but it didn't happen. She survived. Oh well. I quickly realized that the rival girl was being levitated over the cliff when Ashoka took the hit, which is obviously bad.
So she dies. No unlikely surviving a few moments to spew out a few dramatic sentences or anything. This means the love triangle is broken by killing off a character, just as I spoke of in a recent essay. At least the rival was a likeable character. Still, Ashoka can't have him, but it they still took the easy road of killing her off rather than deal with the consequences of having her live; which is that Ashoka's fruitless crush couldn't continue. Is it so awkward to have a protagonist fail at love that it's more comfortable for people, if the rival dies?
Okay, so Ashoka, the teenage padawan is all crushy on a character, but as a Jedi, she can't pursue any sort of relationship with him. Further, she gets to witness him developing a relationship with another girl. That's fine. It shows the difficulty of growing up as a padawan. (It also shows that a rebellious 14-year old girl is more mature than Anakin was when he was years older, but that's beside the point...)
But they don't let it go at that. At the end of the most recent episode, the rival girl falls off a cliff and is barely hanging on. The love interest tries to save her, but Ashoka just levitates him with the Force, then starts to do so on the rival girl. We see a droid gun about to fire at them, but we don't know who it's aimed at: all three parties are in the open with their backs turned. The episode description says that there is a cost, so I assumed a character would die from the start of the episode. The blast hits Ashoka in the back, and I think, "Oh shit! Is this where Ashoka dies?!" I didn't expect that, and it would have been pretty bold, but it didn't happen. She survived. Oh well. I quickly realized that the rival girl was being levitated over the cliff when Ashoka took the hit, which is obviously bad.
So she dies. No unlikely surviving a few moments to spew out a few dramatic sentences or anything. This means the love triangle is broken by killing off a character, just as I spoke of in a recent essay. At least the rival was a likeable character. Still, Ashoka can't have him, but it they still took the easy road of killing her off rather than deal with the consequences of having her live; which is that Ashoka's fruitless crush couldn't continue. Is it so awkward to have a protagonist fail at love that it's more comfortable for people, if the rival dies?