Affirmative-Action Legacy

Minute Man: I'm black?
Cosgro Toys Exec: We decided to take a multi-cultural approach.
Minute Man: But, I'm not black.
Cosgro Toys Exec: I think you have vaguely African features...

— The Specials

So, the Big Two comic publishers have a couple of issues. The first: brand new characters not heavily tied to already existing characters and continuity have a hard time becoming popular and long-lasting. The second, the eras when characters could stick (the Golden and Silver Ages) produced heterosexual white males almost exclusively. The solution to both? Take a preexisting character, and pass their superhero identity to a woman, racial minority, or LGBT person!

Trouble is, the legacy characters, minority or not, often also don't stick very well and there is a history of them being replaced. It also doesn't help that sometimes, these new characters don't catch on and fall out of a regular role, occasionally resulting in another trope entirely. Furthermore, Unpleasable Fanbase aside, depending on how the original character is treated or how the mantle is passed to the new one the preexisting fanbase may react very badly.

This can also be very dangerous for people hoping to use this trope to promote diversity or inclusivity: should the new character be so badly received that it actually damages the name or brand, it also becomes easy for people to blame the diversity or inclusivity for the drop in quality.

That said, several of these characters have gone on to be popular and enduring heroes in their own right.

See also Gender Flip, Race Lift, She's a Man in Japan, More Diverse Sequel.

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Examples:

• Comic Books
  • The DCU
  • Marvel Universe

Anime

• Pokémon Horizons: The Series has Liko, a girl, as a true main character of a Pokémon anime series, in contrast to previous female main characters in prior Pokémon: The Series installments who were just secondary to Ash Ketchum's journey.

Fan Works

• Amazing Fantasy
  • Izuku, a Japanese teenager, is being tutored by a universe-displaced Peter Parker to become Spider-Man.
  • Lampshaded by Miles, who doesn't think much of this, and is rather annoyed when cuts on his costume reveal this to the world and the internet makes a fuss about him being a "black Spider-Man".
• In Ducktales: Twenty Years Later, the female Gosalyn has taken up the Darkwing Duck mantle.
• FNAFNG: The next-generation of the Fazbear Legacy is comprised of five girls: Bearennice^note Freddy and Beartha's daughter, Carol^note Toy Chica's and Chica's adoptive daughter, Sarah^note Foxy's and Mangle's daughter, Enigma^note Springtrap and Marionette's daughter, and Danielle^note Brenda and Roselle's adoptive daughter), and two boys (Kristian^note Bonnie and Toy Bonnie's adoptive son and Paradigma^note Springtrap and Marionette's son). Of them all, three of them are openly LGBT, with Carol being bisexual, Enigma being pansexual, and Danielle being a lesbian, and Enigma and her twin brother Paradigma are rabbit-Slimer hybrids thanks to their mother's dark magic allowing her to conceive them as her biological children.
• The Thomas & Friends AU fic Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure Bad Ending has Sir Topham Hatt (bald, white, straight man) being replaced after his resignation by Charlene Bellis (long-black-haired, tan-skinned, lesbian woman).

Films — Live-Action

• Parodied in the above quote from The Specials. Especially funny considering James Gunn, who plays Minute Man, doesn't look even remotely like anything other than white.
• James Bond:
  • M (the chief of MI6) was first played by a woman, Dame Judi Dench, starting with 1995's GoldenEye.
  • No Time to Die has the title of Agent 007 being held by a black woman (played by Lashana Lynch), with James Bond having retired at the end of Spectre. Also in No Time to Die, it turns out the Gadgeteer Genius Q (Ben Whishaw) who's there since Skyfall (and mentioned having predecessors in the latter film) is either gay or bisexual.
• The Mask of Zorro: Two separate examples, one Watsonian and one Doylist:
  • In-universe, the entire film is about Diego De La Vega, a Spanish hidalgo, passing the mantle of Zorro on to Alejandro Murietta, a Mexican peasant. While it's easy to overlook by today's standards, this would have been a huge social gap during the era in which the movie is set, when monarchy and aristocracy were still firmly entrenched in most of the western world, ideas of human equality and universal rights were only beginning to challenge them, and even societies that were moderately serious about these things were still very inconsistent in their application.
  • Out-of-universe, Antonio Banderas was the first Hispanic actor to play the role of Zorro. This is no small irony considering that the character has always been portrayed as either a Spaniard or a Mexican (depending on exactly when a particular story is set), but his previous actors had all been Americans, of varying heritages but none of them Latino.

Literature

• In Devil's Cape, the male Doctor Camelot is replaced by his daughter Katie.
• In the last, unfinished Biggles book, the title character was going to retire from his position in the Special Air Police and be replaced by a new character, Alexander "Minnie" Mackay, who was part Native American.

Live-Action TV

• Doctor Who:
  • Brigadier Winifred Bambera (an African woman) to Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart in the story "Battlefield".
  • The revived series brought us the Brigadier's daughter, Kate, who now serves as the Doctor's contact within UNIT.
  • Invoked in-universe by the Doctor in "The Doctor's Wife" and "Death of the Doctor", who confirms the long-held fan belief that Time Lords can indeed change genders and ethnicities during a regeneration, although his incarnations are all white men as of those stories. The first female (mainline) Doctor would be Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor, who debuted in the 2017 Christmas special. Later the Fifteenth Doctor would be the first non-Caucasian one to headline the series, played by Ncuti Gatwa.
  • In the former episode, the Doctor mentions a friend of his named the Corsair, who was famous for changing sex in his/her regenerations, being described as a good man and a very bad girl.
  • In "Let's Kill Hitler" it's revealed that Mels, the black twenty-something childhood friend of Amy and Rory, is actually the previous incarnation of the white, middle-aged, River Song. Mels in turn regenerated from the white, seven year old Melody and was forced to grow up again after her first regeneration left her as a toddler.
  • On the villainous side of things, Missy is a female legacy to a male character, being a regenerated Master. Word of God states this was to test the audience's reaction prior to casting a female Doctor.
  • "Hell Bent" has a double example of this, when the Doctor shoots the commander of Gallifrey's military forces, who promptly regenerates from a white man into a black woman.

Radio

• A tragic but heartwarming real-life example of this occurred with the political podcast The Michael Brooks Show when the titular host passed away from a sudden health condition. The day after his passing, his sister Lisha took up the mantle as the host of the (still unchanged) show alongside its two prior hosts, Matt and David.

Roleplay

• My Superhero Legacy, a Legacy Character-themed Superhero RP, has an example in Tae-hyun Chong, the fourth Windwing. While the previous bearers were white, presumably cishet men, Tae-hyun is a queer Korean-American.

Tabletop Games

• Bunker of Sentinels of the Multiverse, like Captain America, both inverts and plays it straight. The current, main-timeline Bunker is white. A promo card depicts the World War II-era Bunker as a black man. And an alternate-future version of the character is also black.
  • Played straight with (aheh) Legacy, whose inherited abilities are passed down only to the first child in each generation. Said firstborn has been a son for long enough that the primary Legacy, the third to bear the identity, is Paul Parsons VIII; his successor in the role is his daughter Pauline.
• In Freedom City, Raven II was the daughter of the original male Raven, and Johnny Rocket II is the original's gay grandson. The third edition, among other changes, introduces a new Lady Liberty; while the first three were white cis women, Sonja Gutierrez is Hispanic and trans.
• In the 9th edition of Warhammer 40,000, the title of Lord Castellan of Cadia passes down from Ursarkar E. Creed (a man) to his daughter Ursula Creed, Ursarkar himself having been abducted by the Necron Lord Trazyn the Infinite at the tail end of 7th edition.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy standard Legacy Character Cid has a granddaughter named Cidney in Final Fantasy XV.
• Street Fighter 6 newcomer, Kimberly, is the pupil of the ways of Bushin-ryu, who follows the steps of Final Fight protagonist Guy, and his mentor, Zeku, before her.

Webcomics

• In Shortpacked!, Amber created the non-stripperiffic persona of AMAZI-GIRL in order to provide an actual female superhero role model, both for herself and others. When Lucy (who is black) was hired to the store, she bonded with Amber over the lack of female role models in comics. Later, after Amber has left the store, a thief is in the stockroom, and Robin unveils the Amazi-Girl outfit for Lucy.
  Schtick-Shift: ...the hell do you think you are?
  Lucy: I'm the new Amazi-Girl.
  Robin: [from off-panel] psst, say it like it's a logo
  Lucy: What?
  Robin: like in comic books. say it like it's a logo
  Lucy: Robin, this isn't a comic book. You can tell because I'm a woman with agency.
  Robin: doooo eeeet
  Lucy: ...I'm the new AMAZI-GIRL?
  Robin: muy bueno
  Lucy: I said it the same way.
  • In the end, Lucy decides Amazi-Girl brings out a side of her she doesn't like and decides not to take up the mantle. But she does put the cape back on when the Soggies invade in the Grand Finale.

Web Original

• Less Than Three Comics' Brat Pack had mention of the future descendants of Uncle Sam (II). Sam married the daughter of black superheroine, Talon, and their children went on to become Uncle Sam III, and Miss Liberty II (after Uncle Sam II's mother (The original Uncle Sam was his grandfather, a WWII hero, and the <3-Verse's Captain America analog, a power which continued along the family line)).
• Parodied in this article from The Onion, which announces Marvel is making a new version of the Green Goblin...left-handed.

Western Animation

• The Legend of Korra, a Sequel Series to Avatar: The Last Airbender, has Korra as the new Avatar. This is more of a meta example—Aang was not the first Avatar, and successors are always from a different nation and often opposite gender to their immediate forebears. Aang is male and from a Tibetan Fantasy Counterpart Culture, but could pass for European in the show's art style; Korra is female, darker-skinned (being from a fantastical Eskimo Land equivalent) and bisexual.
• In Gargoyles, the Hunters are a group of humans (eventually all part of the Canmore family) who hunt gargoyles, particularly Demona. While all the earliest one whom we've seen were male, there was a female Hunter (Fiona Canmore) as early as 1920; the modern age saw the title shared by Robyn Canmore and her two brothers.

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