History HeelFaceRevolvingDoor / LiveActionTV

* ''Series/TheGoodPlace'': [[spoiler:Michael goes from pretending to be a friend to the protagonists, to getting revealed as a demon torturing them, to realizing that he’s in trouble with his bosses if he doesn’t team up with the protagonists (forcing an EnemyMine), to reluctantly agreeing to get moral philosophy lessons from Chidi as a condition of the EnemyMine, to these moral lessons causing him to bounce back and forth a few times between genuinely improving and falling back into his old habits (causing a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech directed at him in one particularly bad case), to [[ReverseMole pretending to betray the protagonists except he really didn’t]], to reaching a sort of moral enlightenment and (non-lethally) sacrificing himself to help the protagonists escape from trouble, confirming he actually is good now. In other words, a very gradual HeelFaceTurn with several lapses and fake-outs.]]

** Lilah Morgan, Lindsey’s main rival at the firm, dips into this trope as well, though to a much lesser extent than Lindsey did. She even [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] the difference between them when she rebukes [[TheHero Angel’s]] first attempt at an EnemyMine, with the line “I’m not Lindsey. I don’t switch sides whenever the going gets tough.” However, [[spoiler:in that same episode she does end up hating the MonsterOfTheWeek enough to kill him and save her enemy [[TheLancer Cordelia’s]] life, demonstrating her first act of good. She immediately returns to being purely evil for a while after that, but then things get complicated when she begins [[DatingCatwoman dating Wesley]]. While she goes into that relationship with the intent to turn him evil, it is heavily implied that she [[InLoveWithTheMark grew to actually love him]] and was influenced to start turning good. When [[MakeWayForTheNewVillains the Beast eventually shows up and destroys the Wolfram & Hart building]], leaving her as the SoleSurvivor, she joins Angel Investigations in an EnemyMine. She is no less selfish during their team-up, but she does actually look out for them. She is [[HeelFaceDoorSlam killed shortly after]], and her ghost reappears to tempt the team with evil offers again, but she did begin showing signs of good at the end of her life beforehand.]]

* ''Series/TheGoodPlace'': [[spoiler:Michael goes from pretending to be a friend to the protagonists, to getting revealed as a demon torturing them, to realizing that he’s in trouble with his bosses if he doesn’t team up with the protagonists (forcing an EnemyMine), to reluctantly agreeing to get moral philosophy lessons from Chidi as a condition of the EnemyMine, to these moral lessons causing him to bounce back and forth a few times between genuinely improving and falling back into his old habits (causing a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech directed at him in one particularly bad case), to [[TheMole pretending to betray the protagonists except he really didn’t]], to reaching a sort of moral enlightenment and (non-lethally) sacrificing himself to help the protagonists escape from trouble, confirming he actually is good now. In other words, a very gradual HeelFaceTurn with several lapses and fake-outs.]]

* ''Series/TheGoodPlace'': [[spoiler:Michael goes from pretending to be a friend to the protagonists, to getting revealed as a demon torturing them, to realizing that he’s in trouble with his bosses if he doesn’t team up with the protagonists (forcing an EnemyMine), to reluctantly agreeing to get moral philosophy lessons from Chidi as a condition of the EnemyMine, to these moral lessons causing him to bounce back and forth a few times between genuinely improving and falling back into his old habits (causing a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech directed at him in one particularly bad case), to [[ReverseMole pretending to betray the protagonists except he really didn’t]], to reaching a sort of moral enlightenment and (non-lethally) sacrificing himself to help the protagonists escape from trouble, confirming he actually is good now. In other words, a very gradual HeelFaceTurn with several lapses and fake-outs.]]

* ''Series/TheGoodPlace'': Michael goes from pretending to be a friend to the protagonists, to getting revealed as a demon torturing them, to realizing that he’s in trouble with his bosses if he doesn’t team up with the protagonists (forcing an EnemyMine), to reluctantly agreeing to get moral philosophy lessons from Chidi as a condition of the EnemyMine, to these moral lessons causing him to bounce back and forth a few times between genuinely improving and falling back into his old habits (causing a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech directed at him in one particularly bad case), to [[ReverseMole pretending to betray the protagonists except he really didn’t]], to reaching a sort of moral enlightenment and (non-lethally) sacrificing himself to help the protagonists escape from trouble, confirming he actually is good now. In other words, a very gradual HeelFaceTurn with several lapses and fake-outs.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The Master does this quite frequently, partly because the fans love him and partly to demonstrate that he's just like the Doctor, only evil. Simm acts like this in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E17E18TheEndOfTime "The End of Time"]], but Ainley does it most dizzyingly in [[Recap/DoctorWho20thASTheFiveDoctors "The Five Doctors"]], going from "help the Doctor" to "help the bad guys" a handful of times in one story. Also the Ainley Master seems rather hurt that the various versions of the Doctor all suspect his motives.
** The Master takes this trope to its absolute extreme at the end of Series 10 of the revival, to the extent that it even puts a unique spin on the trope itself. [[spoiler:The Saxon Master, ArchEnemy of the Tenth Doctor, crosses into the timeline of the Twelfth Doctor, at which point he has already regenerated into the Missy Master. This leads to the first-ever team up of multiple incarnations of the Master. Both the Saxon and Missy Masters had their turns through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor already, making them both WildCard characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a MutualKill on each other! In other words, the Master pulled a double-suicide on him/herself specifically because of their confused morality. While the Saxon Master is guaranteed to survive by means of regenerating into Missy, and is heavily implied to do exactly that immediately following the events of the episode, the Missy Master is stated to have been KilledOffForReal.]] In Series 12, [[spoiler:this did not stick. The Master turned up in a new incarnation and was firmly back in the Heel camp again, due to discovering that the Doctor was “the Timeless Child” and therefore [[GreenEyedMonster more special than he was.]] So, to recount between the three incarnations, the Master went from Heel to Face to Heel as Saxon, started as Heel then went through several HeelFaceRevolvingDoor turns as Missy before finally settling on Face, and then came back as a Heel again as the “O” Master. Quite the moral journey!]]
** The original “Delgado” Master from the Third Doctor’s tenure was actually like this most of the time as well. His modus operandi was typically to start a BigBadDuumvirate with the MonsterOfTheWeek, have him realize partway through the serial that this was going to hurt him in some way too, and then make an EnemyMine with the Doctor to stop the threat that he started. He also had a few moments of showing genuine concern over the Doctor’s well-being. He reveled in hurting him but also seemed to generally not want to go far enough to kill him. In fact, he was supposed to go through an actual HeelFaceTurn in his last serial if not for the [[ActorExistenceFailure death of his actor, Roger Delgado]], preventing this incarnation from ever actually doing so.

** The Master takes this trope to its absolute extreme at the end of Series 10 of the revival, to the extent that it even puts a unique spin on the trope itself. [[spoiler:The Saxon Master, ArchEnemy of the Tenth Doctor, crosses into the timeline of the Twelfth Doctor, at which point he has already regenerated into the Missy Master. This leads to the first-ever team up of multiple incarnations of the Master. Both the Saxon and Missy Masters had their turns through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor already, making them both WildCard characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a MutualKill on each other! In other words, the Master pulled a double-suicide on him/herself specifically because of their confused morality. While the Saxon Master is guaranteed to survive by means of regenerating into Missy, and is heavily implied to do exactly that immediately following the events of the episode, the Missy Master is stated to have been KilledOffForReal. But considering the Master has been [[JokerImmunity “killed off for real” twice in the classic series, once in the TV movie, and three more times in the revival series already]], this did not stick: the Master turned up in a new incarnation at the top of Series 12, firmly back in the Heel camp, implied to be because he believes the Doctor betrayed him by not looking for them after the events of [[Recap/DoctorWhoS36E12TheDoctorFalls "The Doctor Falls"]].]]

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In-universe example. In the episode with the holonovel about the Maquis mutiny, Tom Paris, playing the novel, switches sides whenever it's convenient (after all, it's just a game). Holo-Chakotay wises up fast and sends him off to a position where he doesn't matter to the story.

** The Master takes this trope to its absolute extreme at the end of Series 10 of the revival, to the extent that it even puts a unique spin on the trope itself. [[spoiler:The Saxon Master, ArchEnemy of the Tenth Doctor, crosses into the timeline of the Twelfth Doctor, at which point he has already regenerated into the Missy Master. This leads to the first-ever team up of multiple incarnations of the Master. Both the Saxon and Missy Masters had their turns through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor already, making them both WildCard characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a MutualKill on each other! In other words, the Master pulled a double-suicide on him/herself specifically because of their confused morality. While the Saxon Master is guaranteed to survive by means of regenerating into Missy, and is heavily implied to do exactly that immediately following the events of the episode, the Missy Master is stated to have been KilledOffForReal. But considering the Master has been [[JokerImmunity “killed off for real” twice in the classic series, once in the TV movie, and three more times in the revival series already]], this did not stick: the Master turned up in a new incarnation at the top of Series 12, firmly back in the Heel camp.]]

* ''Series/{{Oz}}'': Chris Keller.

** The Master takes this trope to its absolute extreme at the end of Series 10 of the revival, to the extent that it even puts a unique spin on the trope itself. [[spoiler:The Saxon Master, ArchEnemy of the Tenth Doctor, crosses into the timeline of the Twelfth Doctor, at which point he has already regenerated into the Missy Master. This leads to the first-ever team up of multiple incarnations of the Master. Both the Saxon and Missy Masters had their turns through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor already, making them both WildCard characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a MutualKill on each other! In other words, the Master pulled a double-suicide on him/herself specifically because of their confused morality. While the Saxon Master is guaranteed to survive by means of regenerating into Missy, and is heavily implied to do exactly that immediately following the events of the episode, the Missy Master is stated to have been KilledOffForReal. But considering the Master has been [[JokerImmunity “killed off for real” twice in the classic series, once in the TV movie, and three more times in the revival series already]], this is did not stick: the Master turned up in a new incarnation at the top of Series 12, firmly back in the Heel camp.]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
** The Master does this quite frequently, partly because the fans love him and partly to demonstrate that he's just like the Doctor, only evil. Simm acts like this in ''The End of Time'', but Ainley does it most dizzyingly in "The Five Doctors", going from "help the Doctor" to "help the bad guys" a handful of times in one story. Also the Ainley Master seems rather hurt that the various versions of the Doctor all suspect his motives.
*** The Master takes this trope to its absolute extreme at the end of Series 10 of the revival, to the extent that it even puts a unique spin on the trope itself. [[spoiler:The Saxon Master, ArchEnemy of the Tenth Doctor, crosses into the timeline of the Twelfth Doctor, at which point he has already regenerated into the Missy Master. This leads to the first-ever team up of multiple incarnations of the Master. Both the Saxon and Missy Masters had their turns through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor already, making them both WildCard characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a MutualKill on each other! In other words, the Master pulled a double-suicide on him/herself specifically because of their confused morality. While the Saxon Master is guaranteed to survive by means of regenerating into Missy, and is heavily implied to do exactly that immediately following the events of the episode, the Missy Master is stated to have been KilledOffForReal. But considering the Master has been [[JokerImmunity “killed off for real” twice in the classic series, once in the TV movie, and three more times in the revival series already]], this is almost guaranteed not to stick, making the better question whether or not the Missy ''incarnation'' survived, or needed to regenerate herself.]]
* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': Jaime's morality has been a roller-coaster over the course of the series.
* ''Series/{{Glee}}'':
** Puck and Santana do this in varying degrees.
** Since the end of the first season, [[BigBad Sue]] seems to be doing it quite a bit too.
** And as of the end of the second season, Jesse has it going for him as well.

* ''Series/UglyBetty'': Wilhelmina Slater.

*** The Master takes this trope to its absolute extreme at the end of Series 10 of the revival, to the extent that it even puts a unique spin on the trope itself. [[spoiler:The Saxon Master, ArchEnemy of the Tenth Doctor, crosses into the timeline of the Twelfth Doctor, at which point he has already regenerated into the Missy Master. This leads to the first-ever team up of multiple incarnations of the Master. Both the Saxon and Missy Masters had their turns through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor already, making them both WildCard characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a MutualKill on each other! In other words, the Master pulled a double-suicide on him/herself specifically because of their confused morality. While the Saxon Master is guaranteed to survive by means of regenerating into Missy, and is heavily implied to do exactly that immediately following the events of the episode, the Missy Master is stated to have been KilledOffForReal. But considering the Master has been [[JokerImmunity “killed off real” twice in the classic series, once in the TV movie, and three more times in the revival series already]], this is almost guaranteed not to stick, making the better question whether or not the Missy ''incarnation'' survived, or needed to regenerate herself.]]

*** The Master takes this trope to its absolute extreme at the end of Series 10 of the revival, to the extent that it even puts a unique spin on the trope itself. [[spoiler:The Saxon Master, ArchEnemy of the Tenth Doctor, crosses into the timeline of the Twelfth Doctor, at which point he has already regenerated into the Missy Master. This leads to the first-ever team up of multiple incarnations of the Master. Both the Saxon and Missy Masters had their turns through the HeelFaceRevolvingDoor already, making them both WildCard characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a MutualKill on each other! In other words, the Master pulled a double-suicide on him/herself specifically because of their confused morality.]]

*** Just to detail Lindsey’s allegiance switches, he [[spoiler:begins as the secondary villain in the very first episode, representing Wolfram & Hart (the NebulousEvilOrganization of the series) as they assist the episode’s main villain, the MonsterOfTheWeek. Then, after a short absence, he returns as part of a trio of Angel’s recurring foes throughout Season 1, with Lilah and Lee. This is until Season 1’s penultimate episode, “Blind Date”, where he is asked to represent a villain who WouldHurtAChild (would kill three children, in fact) in court, and he realizes that BeingEvilSucks when it comes to his conscience. So he pulls a HeelFaceTurn to help Angel stop the villain he was supposed to represent, even fighting alongside Angel as a BadassNormal in the episode’s ending battle. Unfortunately, between Angel still treating Lindsey poorly despite his turn to good, and his former boss Holland Manners offering him a pay raise to return to the villains, Lindsey ultimately pulls a FaceHeelTurn and returns to Wolfram & Hart in the following episode, this time powering up the MonsterOfTheWeek as Angel is fighting it.]]

** Lampshaded, where the character of Lindsay switched sides often enough that Angel decided to take pre-emptive action. Near the end of the series finale, Lorne, on Angel's orders, [[spoiler: shoots him]] before he goes through the FaceHeelTurn phase again.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In-universe example. In the episode with the holonovel about the Maquis mutiny, Tom Paris switches sides whenever it's convenient (after all, it's just a game). Holo-Chakotay wises up fast and sends him off to a position where he doesn't matter to the story.

** The two main villains of the series- Gul Dukat and Kai Winn both started out as smug, power-hungry backstabbers, and then went through a series of character arcs which gradually made them more sympathetic until they were AntiVillains and almost good guys in their own right, and then both immediately turned 180 and became even more evil and vile than before, ending up as devil-worshipping cultists. Winn eventually [[spoiler:experienced RedemptionEqualsDeath]], but Dukat [[spoiler:became TheAntichrist]]. One of the writers said that, especially in Dukat's case, this was intended to make them better villains, showing that they had the capacity to be good, decent people- they just consciously chose not to be.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'': In-universe example. In the episode with the holonovel about the Maquis mutiny, Tom Paris switches sides whenever it's convenient. Holo-Chakotay wises up fast and sends him off to a position where he doesn't matter to the story.

* ''Series/{{Charmed}}'':

** In seasons 1-3, [[spoiler:Sherry Palmer is another example. She begins the series as a Face, happily married to the BigGood David Palmer. However, as the first season goes on, her paranoia about the Palmer family's reputation causes her to resort to increasingly unethical means to cover up the family's mistakes. Not to mention TheReveal that she helped cover up an accidental murder committed by Keith Palmer before the start of the series, which David Palmer was unaware of. David Palmer's strict adherence to HonorBeforeReason and determination to go public with the information puts a major wedge between them, and due to Sherry's increasing [[EvilIsPetty pettiness]] toward her husband, she ends up undergoing a FaceHeelTurn and becomes the main political BigBad by the end of the season. [[ManipulativeBitch This culminates in her attempting to manipulate him into having an affair to create legitimate dirt on him]], but David sees through it and the two divorce. [[HeelFaceMole She fakes a Face turn at the start of Season 2, but this is a ruse]]. However, she has a genuine HeelFace turn at the end of the season when [[EvenEvilHasStandards there is threat of WorldWarThree]], and she selflessly puts her life at risk for the good of her husband and her country. She is still a Face as of the start of Season 3, but does another FaceHeelTurn once she [[TokenEvilTeammate murders David Palmer's rival]]. This obviously recreates the rift between them, and due to her death at the end of the season she ultimately ends her time on the show as a Heel]].

** In seasons 1-3, [[spoiler:Sherry Palmer is another example. She begins the series as a Face, happily married to the BigGood David Palmer. However, as the first season goes on, her paranoia about the Palmer family's reputation causes her to resort to increasingly unethical means to cover up the family's mistakes. Not to mention TheReveal that she helped cover up an accidental murder committed by Keith Palmer before the start of the series, which David Palmer was unaware of. David Palmer's strict adherence to HonorBeforeReason and determination to go public with the information puts a major wedge between them, and due to Sherry's increasing [[EvilIsPetty pettiness]] toward her husband, culminating in her actively sabotaging him and even trying to create new dirt on him, she ends up becoming the main political BigBad by the end of the season and the two divorce. [[HeelFaceMole She fakes a Face turn at the start of Season 2, but this is a ruse]]. However, she has a genuine HeelFace turn at the end of the season when there is threat of WorldWarThree, and she selflessly puts her life at risk for the good of her husband and of her country. She is still a Face as of the start of Season 3, but does another FaceHeelTurn once she [[TokenEvilTeammate murders David Palmer's rival]]. This obviously recreates the rift between them, and due to her death at the end of the season she ultimately ends her time on the show as a Heel.]]

** In seasons 1-3, [[spoiler:[[Yandere Sherry Palmer]] is another example. She begins the series as a Face, happily married to the BigGood David Palmer. However, as the first season goes on, her paranoia about the Palmer family's reputation causes her to resort to increasingly unethical means to cover up the family's mistakes. Not to mention TheReveal that she helped cover up an accidental murder committed by Keith Palmer before the start of the series, which David Palmer was unaware of. David Palmer's strict adherence to HonorBeforeReason and determination to go public with the information puts a major wedge between them, and due to Sherry's increasing [[EvilIsPetty pettiness]] toward her husband, culminating in her actively sabotaging him and even trying to create new dirt on him, she ends up becoming the main political BigBad by the end of the season and the two divorce. [[HeelFaceMole She fakes a Face turn at the start of Season 2, but this is a ruse]]. However, she has a genuine HeelFace turn at the end of the season when there is threat of WorldWarThree, and she selflessly puts her life at risk for the good of her husband and of her country. She is still a Face as of the start of Season 3, but does another FaceHeelTurn once she [[TokenEvilTeammate murders David Palmer's rival]]. This obviously recreates the rift between them, and due to her death at the end of the season she ultimately ends her time on the show as a Heel.]]

* ''Series/TwentyFour'': In the Seventh Season, [[spoiler:Tony Almeida]] made this trope into a true artform: [[spoiler:He joined a mercenary group while working with Bill and Chloe to expose a massive web of corruption while actually working for an OmniscientCouncilOfVagueness in order to get to Alan Wilson the Ultimate [[TheManBehindTheMan Man Behind The Man]] in order to execute a RoaringRampageOfRevenge for the death of Michelle.]]
** The ''Live Another Day'' epilogue ''Solitary'' continues to suggest the possibility of [[HeelFaceTurn a full turn when the time comes]].

** Rumplestiltskin, whose unresolved personal issues and guilt over his chronic cowardice, trying repeatedly to redeem himself with Belle, who becomes his MoralityPet. [[spoiler: After her memory is wiped,]] his focus returns solely to [[spoiler: finding his son]]. After finding out that [[spoiler: Henry is his grandson, making a good majority of the main cast his family as well]], his motives and intentions become increasingly more ambiguous. In the first half of season 3, he travels with Emma, Snow, Charming, Regina, and Hook to rescue Henry from [[spoiler: His father,]] Peter Pan, and later takes him down, [[spoiler: killing himself in the process]]. In the second half, he is brought back by Neal and is controlled with the dagger by Zelena, who uses him to do her bidding, before marrying belle in the season finale. In season 4, he puts on an act of being changed, while really conspiring to cleave himself from the dagger, which would cost several lives to do so. After his plan is discovered, Belle uses the dagger to force him to leave town, but he later returns, and works with the queens of darkness to turn Emma, the savior, dark while trying to find the author of the book to write a new story in which villains get a happy ending. It turns out this was all to prevent the darkness from taking him over completely. The Apprentice removes it, but it leaves him in a coma, and the darkness breaks free, trying to take over Regina, before [[spoiler: Emma uses the dagger to force it to take herself as the new host, becoming the new dark one]].

** [[spoiler: Regina]] enters the revolving door in Season 2, desperately trying anything to win back [[spoiler: her surrogate son]] only to constantly be met with obstacles and [[ReformedButRejected scorn]]. In the Season 2 finale, she firmly commits to the Heroes side, but spends a good portion of Season 3 as the TokenEvilTeammate and TheFriendNobodyLikes. Howewer, as of the Season 4 finale, she is undeniably a hero now.
** Emma in season 5. [[spoiler: After becoming the Dark One, she repeatedly bounces back and forth, making it a mystery even to the storybrooke residents if she's good or bad, and what her end game is]].

* Multiple characters per series in every American SoapOpera, ever.

* Sean, Tanya's boyfriend in ''Series/PowerRagnersZeo''is like this. In his first episode, Tanya finds out that he stole the answers for an upcoming math test. But she is able to talk him out of cheating and it looks like they will make a good couple. That is until Sean's next episode, where Tanya joins him on the school baseball team, due to her having a great throwing arm, which makes Sean feel threatened and he starts giving Tanya negative feedback. Even after the team wins a game at the end of the episode, Sean is still negative towards Tanya, saying that she almost blew it for them and that they won the game by luck. It's here that Tanya decides that she's had enough and breaks up with Sean.