Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Heel Face Revolving Door / Live-Action TV

Go To

  • The 100: As the situation becomes more desperate in later seasons, the characters react by allying with whoever they think might help their chosen faction survive, which often results in multiple innocent deaths. The presence of multiple cult leaders and mind control technology also exacerbates this.
  • 24: In the seventh season, Tony Almeida made this trope into a true artform: He joined a mercenary group while working with Bill and Chloe to expose a massive web of corruption while actually working for an Omniscient Council of Vagueness in order to get to Alan Wilson the Ultimate Man Behind The Man in order to execute a Roaring Rampage of Revenge for the death of his pregnant wife Michelle. The Live Another Day epilogue Solitary continues to suggest the possibility of a full turn when the time comes—and his brief return in the spin-off show Legacy has him working in a Black Ops group acting on behalf of the US government.
  • Alias: Arvin Sloane for four-and-a-half seasons of the show.
    • He's topped however by Sark, who describes himself as having "flexible loyalties" and in the finale outright states he doesn't care whose side he's on, as long as it's the winning side.
  • American Gothic (1995): Selena Coombs certainly seems to be riding one of these, or perhaps a seesaw. Aside from the moments when we see the weakening of her evil resolve and the good heart shining through (particularly the episode "Potato Boy"), the last several episodes of the series involve her repeatedly switching sides. It's hard to tell exactly who she's lying to at any given moment — Buck, Dr. Peele, or Caleb.
  • Angel / Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Lampshaded, where the character of Lindsey switched sides often enough that Angel decided to take pre-emptive action. Near the end of the series finale, Lorne, on Angel's orders, shoots him before he goes through the Face–Heel Turn phase again.
      • Just to detail Lindsey’s allegiance switches, he begins as the secondary villain in the very first episode, representing Wolfram & Hart (the Big Bad organization of the series) as they assist the episode’s main villain, the Monster of the Week. 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 in court who Would Hurt a Child (would kill three children, in fact), and he realizes that Being Evil Sucks when it comes to his conscience. So he pulls a Heel–Face Turn to help Angel stop the villain he was supposed to represent, even fighting alongside Angel as a Badass Normal 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 Face–Heel Turn and returns to Wolfram & Hart in the following episode, this time powering up the Monster of the Week as Angel fights it. He then continues to be a recurring villain throughout Season 2, first assisting Holland and then competing with Lilah for Holland’s job after his death. This is until one of the last episodes of the season, “Dead End”, where Lindsey learns about the horrific experiments Wolfram & Hart has been doing, particularly to one of his old friends, and, because Even Evil Has Standards, he once again pulls a Heel–Face Turn to help Angel take them down, fighting alongside him as a Badass Normal again as they raid the facility. After this, he is Put on a Bus at the end of the episode. Quitting Wolfram & Hart for good but not wanting to work with Angel either, he simply leaves town to start a new life. But then he returns in Season 5, undergoing yet another Face–Heel Turn because, due to Angel’s takeover of Wolfram & Hart, his jealousy gets the better of him. After all, Lindsey had to work hard to make his way up their ranks while Angel was simply handed the CEO position, which he couldn’t ignore. This time their battle ends on a sword fight (because Lindsey got a Power-Up during his absence to put him on Angel’s combat level) to celebrate the show’s 100th episode, ending with Lindsey banished to a demon dimension by Wolfram & Hart’s Senior Partners. Then, because Angel needs his help in the series’ final battle, Angel’s group frees Lindsey and convinces him to join their side once again, causing him to pull a third Heel–Face Turn. It is at this point that Angel is Genre Savvy enough to have Lorne kill Lindsey before Lindsey could pull another Face–Heel Turn and oppose him again after their team-up. Lindsey’s dying words seem to confirm that he was in fact considering yet another Face–Heel Turn down the road since he claims that Angel was the only one worthy of killing him, but then again his lines shortly beforehand indicated that Good Feels Good and he seemed completely sincere about that, so who really knows.
    • 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 lampshades the difference between them when she rebukes Angel’s first attempt at an Enemy Mine, with the line “I’m not Lindsey. I don’t switch sides whenever the going gets tough.” However, in that same episode she does end up hating the Monster of the Week enough to kill him and save her enemy 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 dating Wesley. While she goes into that relationship with the intent to turn him evil, it is heavily implied that she grew to actually love him and was influenced to start turning good. When the Beast eventually shows up and destroys the Wolfram & Hart building, leaving her as the Sole Survivor, she joins Angel Investigations in an Enemy Mine. She is still mostly selfish during their team-up and clearly values herself more than Angel and Co., but she is nonetheless a team player and does help them out in their own efforts to survive. She is 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.
    • Angel himself, the no-good Irish lad turned into a bloodsucking demon turned into a mourning atoner still in the demon's body. And that was before the series began properly. During the course of both Buffy and Angel, He went on to lose and regain his soul several more times, revolving between heel and face each time. At one point, during a complex sting operation, he pretended to have turned evil again and then had to pretend pretending to be charming Buffy's mother. That's five stacked layers simultaneously!
    • Also Darla (though that one tended to have more logical reasons — whether she was a vampire or not, had a soul or not...)
    • Connor had more switches than anyone else in the series. He showed up in Season 3 as a Well-Intentioned Extremist taught by Holtz (also an example of the Well-Intentioned Extremist trope) to hate his father, Angel. He went from Heel to Face and back to Heel in Season 3, then switched sides (always thinking he was on the side of good) too many times to count in Season 4. In Season 5, given a normal life, he settled on Face.
    • Harmony. One of the best examples of Heel–Face Revolving Door, because she remained clearly the same person throughout and her switching sides fit into her conformist character. At the end, Angel tells her that he knew all along that she'd go back to Heel because she has no soul.
    • Faith went from thinking being a Slayer was awesome, to discovering she really enjoyed killing and hurting people, to wanting Buffy to kill her in order to bring Buffy down to her level, to being freaked over Buffy almost killing her and wanting revenge for killing her father figure, to a Heel Realization, undergoes a full Heel–Face Turn in the last part of Buffy Season 7, to The Resenter in the comics, to a kinda-sorta reformed Slayer, after attempting to kill Buffy again. At last count, she's playing watchdog for Angel.
    • Throughout the series, Spike would switch between attacking the Scoobies and reluctantly joining forces with them for his own needs, even after becoming a somewhat ally in Season 4. Heck, even when he got his soul back the final season had him murdering people again, though it turns out the First Evil was controlling him against his will.
  • Arrow: Sara betrays Oliver on the Amazo out of fear of Ivo, then her loyalty wins out. Then she somehow ends up with the League of Assassins, but ultimately defects.
    • Malcolm Merlyn pretty much spends the entirety of Season 3 flip flopping.
  • Babylon 5: Londo Mollari takes a few spins through the door as the series progresses. At times it seems more like sides are picking him than the other way around.
  • Battlestar Galactica (2003):
    • Boomer: First she's a Cylon sleeper agent, then she doesn't want to be one, then she fails to overcome her programming and shoots Admiral Adama. Then she tries to make peace between Cylons and humans and, failing that, she tries to kill her counterpart's daughter and betrays her model number, causing a civil war. Then she has a change of heart and escapes with the Final Cylon when the others want to surgically remove her brain. Then, faced with execution for causing the Cylon civil war, she knocks out another Cylon to take her place in the brig while abducting Athena's baby to use as a hostage in her escape plan which ultimately cripples the battlestar. Then she starts having second thoughts after bonding with Hera. Make up your damn mind, woman! If you weren't so flaky maybe more people would like you. At least Athena killed her after she returned Hera before she had the chance to change her mind again. To be fair, though, her constant mind-changing isn't entirely unjustified. if you flew all the way to some middle of ass nowhere planet to bond with the humans, only to have them start suicide bombing you, and then, on top of that, the man you love has married and is having a baby with the girl who shot you, then, well, you'd probably be a little peeved too. It's also worth noting that at least one set of those Heel Face Turns was faked (rescuing Ellen was entirely a front so that she could kidnap Hera.)
    • It's mentioned several times by other Cylon models that this is a characteristic of the Eights, in that they're easily swayed. Even Athena calls them on it. In fact, Athena's fanatical devotion to the Colonial cause may be an attempt to compensate for this perceived weakness in herself. That and the fact that the slightest indication of treachery would get her thrown out of an airlock.
    • Gaius Baltar was even worse. The plot kept jerking him around from The Atoner to Les Collaborateurs. Not entirely his fault, since he had a phantom Cylon in his head for most of the series, but still, would it have killed him to show some backbone once in a while? Signaled by his recurrent Beard of Evil: clean-shaven, he was The Atoner, sometimes even The Woobie. With stubble, he was a Dirty Coward, and usually a Smug Snake as well. On rare occasions when he actually groomed his beard, watch out.
    • And the tradition is carried on by Joseph Adama in Caprica. One week he's Daniel Greystone's best friend, the next he's sending his brother to kill Daniel's wife. One week he's recovering from Tamara's death, the next he's diving into a VR game to desperately try and find her. One week he's a stable, loving father, the next he's shooting up virtual drugs.
  • Being Human (US): While Aidan is currently The Atoner, flashbacks reveal that he has gone through multiple bouts of being this and the Friendly Neighborhood Vampire before Jumping Off the Slippery Slope and becoming a remorseless bloodsucker again.
  • Charmed:
    • Cole Turner/Belthazor/The Source/The Avatar/The Ghost. There's a reason he has so many personas.
    • Phoebe jumped into the revolving door with him for a while before she finally got off on the Face side again.
  • Dr Dean Archer from Chicago Med. He consistently works to heal his patients but he's prone to ethical breaches if he deems it necessary. Depending on the episode he serves as an ally or foil to the other doctors.
  • Chousei Kantai Sazer X: Fire Shogun Blaird switches sides an unbelievable amount of times after the Descal are defeated. He's first forcibly brought into the Neo Descal, but after he gets treated with disrespect by them he deserts and forms an Enemy Mine with his old rival Takuto Ando to fight them. Then he gets recaptured by the Neo Descal, but escapes again and tries to settle things with Takuto, only to get captured by Sazer-X and briefly form a friendship with the Ando family before he winds up back with Neo Descal after a prisoner exchange. Then he escapes again and throws his lot in with a fellow Wild Card, Jackall. Alongside Jackall he fights Sazer-X some more until Jackall dies pursuing his vendetta against Commander Shark, which leads him to decide his grudge against Takuto isn't worth it and make amends with him, from then on becoming a close ally of Sazer-X.
  • Chuck:
    • Jill is discovered to be a Fulcrum agent but says she was forced to, Chuck then sees that she was going to kill Sarah and arrests her in another episode, but then Chuck finds out that Jill was telling the truth and lets her go.
    • An even better example now is Chuck's mother in Season 4. We had 5 episodes ambiguously building her up to be possibly good and working undercover, or possibly working for the bad guys. The sixth episode of the season has her appear and swear her innocence, seeking help to stop a dangerous weapon from getting out, only for her to betray everyone. Except, it turns out all of this, including shooting Chuck because she assumed he was wearing a bulletproof vest, was part of her plan in order to fool the bad guys. Casey then tracks down evidence that her entire cover story is a lie and she really did join the villain years ago. In the seventh episode, she once again claims she can prove her innocence and sends Chuck on an episode-long mission to find the proof. Except, this was all part of an even more brilliant gambit, as she was in fact tricking Chuck all along in order to bring herself and her boss to Orion's base and blow it up with Chuck and Sarah inside. ...AND THEN SHE SECRETLY HELPS THEM TO ESCAPE. That's at least six trips through the revolving door in two episodes, and nobody's entirely sure whose side she's on.
    • As it turns out the good guy's side, she's taking Volkoff down from the inside
  • From season 3 onwards, Cobra Kai becomes a series of quickly-changing allegiances as a number of the students bounce back and forth between Miyagi-Do and the titular dojo. This is further complicated by the creation of Eagle Fang, Johnny's own dojo when he loses Cobra Kai, and the students loyal to Johnny leave after seeing how off the deep end Kreese and his students are. At the end of season 3, Daniel and Johnny seemingly put aside their differences and join forces, but their egos and differing ideals cause Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang to come to blows and eventually separate once more, causing fractures between the students working together against Cobra Kai and forcing them to pick which of the two dojos they will stand with.
    • Amongst all the characters, Robby is the most blatant example. He goes from seeing Daniel as a father figure and being his star pupil alongside Samantha, to joining with Kreese and Cobra Kai after feeling abandoned by both him and Johnny. Then, at the end of season 4, he realises through Kenny's descent into becoming a thug how corrupting Kreese's influence is, and finally reconciles with his father, seemingly ready to mend the bridge with him.
    • Eli/Hawk is a very close second. He starts off loyal to Cobra Kai, and stays loyal to Kreese after he ousts Johnny as owner, blaming Johnny for Miguel's injury. However, at the end of season 3, he realises how much of a thug he's become during the fight in the La Russo house, and decides to Heel–Face Turn in the middle of the fight to help the Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang students. Then after struggling to reconcile with his former friends for his actions, he is eventually forgiven by Daniel and decides to join Miyagi-Do in full, going on to become the All Valley male champion representing them.
  • Dark Oracle: Omen suffered badly from this, due to a bad case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder combined with a desire for Revenge and an unfortunate tendency towards partnering with those who were stronger and more evil than him. He's a villain at first, manipulating Cally as part of a plot for revenge on Doyle. He then tries to help Cally get rid of the comic book (partly out of a crush on her and partly out of a desire to hurt her Evil Twin, Violet) and gets trapped in comic world for his trouble. He returns, and helps Big Bad Wannabe Vern trap Lance in the comic world, pretends to help Cally get him out while secretly working for Lance's Evil Twin Blaze whom he actually frees, and then finally pulls a Heel–Face Turn and dies helping Cally free Lance and get rid of Blaze and Violet. Jeez, man.
  • Doctor Who:
    • 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. The Saxon Master, Arch-Enemy 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 Heel–Face Revolving Door already, making them both Wild Card characters in terms of allegiance. It culminates with Missy settling on Face and Saxon settling on Heel, and then doing a Mutual Kill 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 Killed Off for Real. In Series 12, 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 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 Heel–Face Revolving Door 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 Big Bad Duumvirate with the Monster of the Week, have him realize partway through the serial that this was going to hurt him in some way too, and then make an Enemy Mine 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 Heel–Face Turn in his last serial if not for the death of his actor, Roger Delgado, preventing this incarnation from ever actually doing so.
    • The Doctor themself, while not taking this trope to the extent that the Master does, dips into it from time to time as well. The First Doctor started off with Blue-and-Orange Morality, making him not entirely Face or Heel by the standards of his human companions (or the audience for that matter), giving way to a few decidedly “Heel” moments such as almost committing an unnecessary murder in one of his first episodes. By the end of his tenure though, thanks to the good influence of his companions, he was very solidly a Face and has mostly stayed there from then on. However, between turning into such a Jerkass that he almost murdered his companion for no reason early on in his sixth incarnation, being a straight up Manipulative Bastard oftentimes during his seventh incarnation, going particularly reckless and insane to Heel levels during his “Timelord Victorious phase” as his tenth incarnation, going reckless and insane to “Heel” levels AGAIN during his twelfth incarnation, and possibly having the Valeyard as a truly evil incarnation in their future, the Heel aspect of the character is clearly not entirely gone and can always return at any time due to the nature of the show.
  • The Good Place: 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 Enemy Mine), to reluctantly agreeing to get moral philosophy lessons from Chidi as a condition of the Enemy Mine, 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 "The Reason You Suck" Speech directed at him in one particularly bad case), to 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 Heel–Face Turn with several lapses and fake-outs.
  • Heroes:
    • Volume 3 Sylar, of all people. Just to show how crazy it's gotten: First, he was standard "killer" Sylar. Then he joined Angela Petrelli and tried to reform. Then he joined Arthur Petrelli against Angela Petrelli and tried to reform in a different way. Then he betrayed Arthur Petrelli and skipped town with another character. Then they go BACK to Arthur Petrelli. And then he becomes a serial killer again and goes AFTER Arthur Petrelli. After that, he gets split into a friendly "empty slate" body (which occasionally thinks it's Nathan) and unwanted dark passenger in Matt's head. When he finally manages to get body and mind back together, he is suddenly "impotent (sic)" at killing people and gets really nice and cosy towards Claire. Because, as we are learning, he wants to become socially accepted again. After being rejected by Claire, he is then trapped in his worst nightmare by Matt only to be saved and brought out by Peter Petrelli (he had a dream that Sylar would save Emma), after they were both trapped in his head for what seemed like years (but was actually only hours). Because of his near-endless torture experience from his nightmare, he turns good AGAIN and teams up with Peter.
    • HRG fits this trope as well. He is constantly shifting, so we are never entirely sure which side he is on save his own. We know his agenda is to protect his family, particularly Claire, which would put him on the good guys' side, but the methods he uses have alienated his family. HRG also finds himself unable to satisfy himself with a settled, stable life, stating, "There are only so many crossword puzzles I can do," which provides another motivation.
    • Nathan Petrelli also fits this trope, as he is also constantly shifting sides. In Volume 4, he went from being the Big Bad before shifting back to the good side again. On one hand, Nathan cares deeply about his family and does his best to protect them, particularly his brother Peter and daughter Claire, but his methods and ambitions often alienate them ... until he sees the light, becomes the The Atoner once again, and does another Heel–Face Turn (frequently prompted by Peter and/or Claire).
    • Angela Petrelli. She loves her family, sure, but she's got a good poker face. Like Nathan and HRG, she can also be a Well-Intentioned Extremist.
  • Kamen Rider:
    • Kamen Rider 555: Kiba Yuuji switches back and forth between helping and hating humankind several times during the story.
    • Kamen Rider Gaim: Kouta's rival Kaito Kumon believes that having power is the only way to not get oppressed in this world so he doesn't care much for morality. During the story, Kaito would switch from being a power-seeking jerkass who is apathetic to the heroes' problems to a helpful ally who wants to destroy the powerful villains and vice versa as long as it suits his goal.
    • Kamen Rider Geats:
      • Ace's rival Michinaga Azuma starts off an abrasive player in the DGP, mellows out a little bit before getting eliminated and finding himself on the Jyamato side, only to wind up in an Enemy Mine with Ace to take down the DGP, after which he goes on to become a player in Ace's DGP, albeit an extremely ruthless and only nominally heroic one.
      • Ace's foil Keiwa Sakurai starts off as Ace's ally and Friendly Rival until the final game of the JGP — when he learns of Mitsume's nature as the Goddess of Creation and the role she indirectly played in his parents' deaths, he believes they were unjustly sacrificed to give birth to Ace. This puts him and Ace at odds during the Desire Royale — when Ace starts opposing the DGP to save Mitsume, Keiwa chooses to preserve it to grant his ideal world and make Mitsume pay for her sins. After the failed Grand End he ends up joining Ace's DGP, though he remains bitter about Mitsume; when Sara dies, Keiwa cooperates with the DGP management, Beroba, and Kekera to kidnap Tsumuri and turn her into a Goddess of Creation to exploit her powers and grant his wish of reviving his family. Ace gets through to Keiwa with one last battle between the two of them, which leads to Keiwa rejoining Ace's DGP and fighting alongside him to help create a world where everyone can be happy.
  • Kingdom (2019): Beom-pal throughout Seasons 1 and 2, continually shifting allegiance to his clan, the prince, and himself, before finally settling on Prince Chang after realizing how monstrous his clan has actually become once told to execute innocent civilians.
  • Lost: Due to the aggressively gray morality of the show, somebody either does a full 180 or is set up to look like they have, in almost every episode. The worst offender is probably Ben, with Sawyer running a close second, especially in the first few seasons.
  • Once Upon a Time:
    • Rumplestiltskin starts out as a fully evil character, whose unresolved personal issues and guilt over his chronic cowardice, trying repeatedly to redeem himself with Belle, who becomes his Morality Pet. Over the course of the first season, he eventually ends up as more or less a Sympathetic Anti-Villain. After her memory is returned in the second series, his focus returns solely to finding his son. After finding out that 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 his father, Peter Pan, and later takes him down, 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 Emma uses the dagger to force it to take herself as the new host, becoming the new dark one.
      • In Season 5, Gold spends the majority of the first half of the season trying to be a better man after becoming mortal and powerless, again, before secretly enchanting Excalibur to transfer the darkness to back to himself upon Hook's death, becoming not just the Dark One (again), but the most powerful Dark One to have ever lived.
    • Regina enters the revolving door in Season 2, desperately trying anything to win back her surrogate son only to constantly be met with obstacles and scorn. In the Season 2 finale, she firmly commits to the Heroes side but spends a good portion of Season 3 as the Token Evil Teammate and The Friend Nobody Likes. However, as of the Season 4 finale, she is undeniably a hero now, even if somewhat of an Anti-Hero.
    • Emma in Season 5. 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.
    • Zelena in Season 6 due to Regina blaming her for Robin's death, and she ends up living on her own and being propositioned by the Evil Queen to form a new alliance. She then occasionally helps out with the Queen's plans while occasionally helping the good guys as well, before Rumple orders the Queen to kill her. After being saved by Regina she becomes a Wild Card for the majority of the season before siding with good again permanently after reconciling with Regina and destroying her magic.
  • Oz:
    • Chris Keller. Is he inherently evil? Is he trying to be good? Is he too psychologically damaged to know what he's doing? Is he loyal to Beecher? Is he working for Schillinger? Is he trying to get help from Sister Pete? Is he trying to screw with her mind? It alternates.
    • Tobias Beecher has a lesser case, but he can alternate startlingly quickly between being an Anti-Hero and an Anti-Villain.
  • Sean, Tanya's boyfriend in Power Rangers Zeo 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.
  • Pretty Little Liars:
    • Jenna. Initially she's against the Liars due to them being part of the prank pulled by Alison that led to her blindness, but later has a change of heart after Hanna saves her life. She assures the Liars that they can trust her, only for her to keep yet another secret from them: she regained her eyesight. There's also the fact that she's still a suspect for being A (albeit a less suspicious one as of recent episodes).
    • As of Season 4, we have Mona: The reveal that she's the Big Bad of Seasons 1 and 2 at the end of the latter puts her on the Heel side, then she's sent to Radley where she "reforms" and is integrated back into society in the second half of Season 3. She tries to convince everyone that she's made a Heel–Face Turn now, and yet no one trusts her, still believing her to be evil. They were right, she was working for the second A. However, after almost being burnt to death in the Season 3 finale, she tells the Liars that they're "all in this together", and joins them to try and unmask A. We have yet to see how much this will last though...
  • Prison Break: John Abruzzi. Also Mahone whose loyalties remain murky up until the end of the series.
  • Revolution: Nate Walker or Jason Neville. He saved Charlie's life in the episode Pilot. In "Chained Heat", Charlie manages to get the drop on him. In "The Plague Dogs", Nate helps to save Charlie's life from Ray Kinsey. In "Soul Train", Nate gets captured by Team Matheson and refuses to talk. He escaped and told Tom Neville what he knew, but he also helped Charlie to escape from Neville. In "Sex and Drugs", he reported to Monroe that Aaron had one of the pendants in his possession, but he left out a number of details in his report. In "The Stand", he decides not to help Tom Neville in bringing an air strike on the rebels, gets thrown out, and warns Charlie about the air strike. The "The Song Remains the Same" has Nate officially join up with the rebels. Unfortunately, his past allegiances come back to haunt him in the episode "Clue" and nearly gets him killed when they think he's still working for Monroe. In the first season finale "The Dark Tower", Jason Neville seems to join up with his father when Tom Neville successfully takes over the Monroe Republic. However, there are already signs that things will break down between them sooner rather than later.
  • Gunther and Tinka on Shake it Up.
  • Stargate SG-1:
    • Teal'c was originally the most trusted right-hand man of the series' Big Bad, then he defected to the side of Earth, and then he was captured and his mind altered to make him think that his defection was part of a (very stupid) long term Gambit Roulette to gain the trust of the heroes (bear in mind the heroes kill the Big Bad many times over during this period, and less reversibly they destroy the vast majority of his military power). The heroes, under the guidance of The Mentor, then gave him a quick Near-Death Experience to fix him up again. Obstructive Bureaucrats see it as this trope instead of the much simpler truth (A pure Heel–Face Turn interrupted once by brainwashing.)
    • The next episode has a sinister suit conduct an thorough investigation into the team, noting that "Teal'c changes sides more often than I change the oil in my car.".
  • Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Garak tends to do these at least twice per episode. He's a bastard, he has some really compelling characteristics, he's really amazingly... no wait, he's a bastard again. End credits. However, Garak rarely turned against the main cast — he usually just did things that they considered morally objectionable on their behalf.
    • The two main villains of the series, Gul Dukat and Kai Winn. 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.
      • Dukat in particular was loyal mostly to himself and was willing to side with whoever offered him the most power. Occasionally he does the right thing, but ultimately his desire for power wins out every time.
      • Kai Winn wavered between being a Well-Intentioned Extremist and just being power-hungry. She was sometimes shown sympathetically and occasionally helped the main cast, but sometimes she openly opposed them, and other times her eagerness caused her to act too quickly and end up doing more harm than good.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: In-universe example. In the episode with the holonovel about the Maquis mutiny, when Tom Paris first plays the novel, he 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.
  • Supernatural:
    • Although Castiel is unarguably trying to be the good guy, he appears to have been trapped in this revolving door since his first appearance. He starts out as the angel that rescued Dean from Hell, but then it's revealed the angels have plans for Dean and expect him to do exactly as they say even when their plans are morally ambiguous to say the least. Castiel starts to have doubts and sympathize with Dean, eventually twisting the rules to help Dean. But then he gets dragged off to Heaven and forced back into line, betraying Anna and setting Sam free to go start the Apocalypse, before he betrays Heaven for good and sides with Dean a couple of episodes later. He spends most of the fifth season on the Face side of things, with the exception of his Temporarily a Villain role in "I Believe The Children Are Our Future", but appears to have jumped back into the revolving door as of Season 6. He makes a deal with Crowley, but he does so in order to fight Raphael and prevent the apocalypse from re-starting. In order to carry out his plan though, he is forced to lie to and manipulate the Winchesters while carrying out some pretty morally ambiguous schemes. He undoes some of the worst ones though rather than risk the Winchesters, but ultimately finishes the season on a Heel note, having absorbed millions of souls from Purgatory and declared himself the new God. He seemed to come back to himself within an episode or so of the seventh season and asked for forgiveness only to be taken over by Leviathans who then, a few episodes later, appeared to liquefy him. About halfway through the season, he turned up again with amnesia, living a peaceful life as a faith healer. He got his memory back and took the broken wall in Sam's mind onto himself, effectively bringing Sam back to normal, but landing himself with an incredibly messed up head. As of the end of Season 7, he seems to be on the Face side, having made a Heroic Sacrifice. As of the middle of Season 8, he's apparently back to Heel, being Brainwashed and Crazy for Naomi. In the episode "Goodbye, Stranger", he leaves both sides behind and goes off on his own. He stays mostly on the Face side after that, although he was tricked by Metatron into causing the angels to fall. Then, there was the time Rowena had him under a spell and tried to make him kill Dean. There are moments after that, such as when he sides with Kelly about allowing Jack to be born, when sides against the Winchesters but he's just as often portrayed as in the right during these moments.
    • Crowley is Castiel's opposite; he desperately wants to be the Big Bad, but circumstances and greater threats keep forcing him into Enemy Mines with the heroes. When we first meet him in Season 5, he helps the heroes fight Lucifer because he correctly believes that once humanity is destroyed, Lucifer will turn on the demons. Once Lucifer is dealt with, however, he declares himself the King of Hell and spends most of Season 6 as an antagonist. But once Season 7 rolls around the new threats of Castiel and the Leviathans force him to reluctantly aid the heroes again for a return to the status quo. But of course, as soon as that's dealt with, he immediately betrays them and goes back to being a bad guy for Season 8. Season 8 ends with Crowley's humanity being partially restored and Knight of Hell Abbadon announcing her plans to usurp Crowley's throne, so it wouldn't be surprising to see him back on the side of good (or at least as close to the side of good as he ever gets) for Season 9.
    • In Season 9, Gadreel's allegiance is all over the place. He starts out as a guardian in Heaven, then he lets Lucifer inside the Garden of Eden and is punished for his crime. After his unexpected release, he tries to atone by helping Dean save Sam, only to be convinced by the conniving Metatron to join his new army. He joins the Winchesters again, but the vengeful Dean is having none of it. Gadreel eventually helps Castiel infiltrate Heaven but fails and commits suicide, by creating an explosion that will break open the walls to Castiel's prison cell, in a final act of atonement.
  • Teen Wolf: Viewers can look forward to seeing whether Derek is going to be a good guy or a bad guy in any given episode. He is never genuinely evil though.
    • His uncle, Peter, might qualify better. He's killed several of the Big Bads, and has extensive knowledge of the supernatural that he will use to help the heroes, but only if it's to his benefit. The other characters are mostly aware of this, and never fully trust him.
  • The Vampire Diaries:
    • Damon pretty much lives inside the revolving door. Of late he has been ostensibly a good guy, at least in terms of larger motivations, but he still always seems to find time to relapse and kill people to keep things interesting.
    • Also Isobel. Really, you never know whose side that girl is on.
  • White Collar: Downplayed trope. While not evil, Neal Caffrey is still a criminal on work release who doesn't always know if he wants to go straight, and struggles with obeying the law even when he wants to. He starts out the series not wanting to run from the law anymore but not truly reformed, gradually decides he wants to go straight, becomes convinced that he isn't capable of being anything but a criminal, and then either ends up consulting on museum security or becoming a thief again, depending on your interpretation of the evidence Peter finds at the end of the series finale.
  • Wizards of Waverly Place: Max did this in one episode, taking Justin's side, then Alex's side, then back, depending on who looked most likely to win the weekly conflict at that exact moment. He also announced to both siblings when he was doing this.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess:
  • The X-Files: Krycek, probably why he was known as "Ratboy" among the Fandom.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top