Retired Outlaw

And all the federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.

— "Pancho and Lefty" by Townes Van Zandt

An Outlaw who is trying to add "former" to his description.

Let's face it, the outlaw life isn't for everyone. Sure, being outside the law gives you freedom, but you face freezing, starvation, getting ventilated by bullets on a regular basis, and you can forget about establishing normal relationships when you have to be able to get the hell out of town on a moment's notice. So some outlaws try to go straight.

In fiction, they generally break down into two broad categories.

• Outlaws who have successfully pulled off that fabled One Last Job and then try to go directly from "fugitive" to "law-abiding citizen" with no steps in between. Generally this involves Starting a New Life: changing his name, moving to a different territory, or otherwise obscuring his identity. How well this works depends on the story, but usually at least the main characters (who may be their former partners in crime) will discover the retired outlaw's secret.
• Former outlaws who've served their time in prison, paid their debt to society, and just want to put it behind them. These generally appear in stories returning to the same territory where they committed their crimes, as that's where their wife or surviving relatives live. The Untrusting Community certainly hasn't forgotten the former outlaw's foul deeds, and often they haven't forgiven them either. Sometimes the retired outlaw can earn the town's trust and grudging respect, sometimes not.

It's not unheard of for former Outlaws to become lawmen, the most famous case being Wyatt Earp.

This trope often overlaps with Retired Badass and Retired Gunfighter but doesn't have to. Some outlaws retire specifically because they don't have the badass attitude necessary to succeed in the field. Compare I Just Want to Be Normal for a similar mindset. If the outlaw was particularly bad and shows no remorse for past actions, he may be a Retired Monster.

See also Reformed Criminal, Falsely Reformed Villain, Reformed, but Rejected. Compare Former Teen Rebel.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Habara a.k.a. "Archdemon" in Daily Lives of High School Boys is a reformed bully. She's a rather plain girl by the show's beginning, but she has yet to live down her past.
• Love Freak Miyu from Gals! is a former gang leader. When the show starts she's dating the police officer who arrested her...
• Taking place in a world of pirates, One Piece has plenty of these. Some are nice, some aren't...
  • Captain Kuro grew bored with the high-stakes life of being a wanted outlaw and faked his death so the Navy would leave him alone. Of course, that didn't stop him from plotting to steal someone else's fortune...
  • After he lost his crew and leg, "Red-Leg" Zeff started the Ocean-Going Restaurant Baratie.
  • Crocus used to act as a ship's doctor on the Pirate King's crew, but following the crew's disbandment, went back to Reverse Mountain and Laboon.
  • Silvers Rayleigh was once the first-mate to Gold Roger himself, but now works at the Sabaody Archipelago, coating ships heading underwater with protective bubbles.
  • With the exceptions of Crocodile, Daz Bonez, Bon Clay, and Galdino, most of the Baroque Works agents beaten by the Straw Hats end up going this route.
  • Overall, as long as a pirate doesn’t hit the balance of “too infamous to ignore” and “not powerful enough to make it a bad idea to antagonize them,” the Marines don’t typically hunt down retired pirates, as their hands are too full trying to deal with the active ones.

Comic Books

• In at least one of the Masked Raider stories in Marvel Mystery Comics, the sheriff is a retired outlaw who is blackmailed into letting the gang do what they want because they know his sordid history.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1 & Vol 2: In her old age Priscilla Rich, the first Cheetah who operated as a villain in the 1940s and '50s, comes off like this. She's served her time, tried to prevent her niece from becoming the second Cheetah, and condemns Barbara Ann Minerva's actions as the third Cheetah. Barbara ended up hunting her down and murdering her in her quest to become the only Cheetah despite Priscilla's advanced age and retirement.

Film — Live-Action

• Blackthorn: Twenty years after his disappearance in 1908, an aged Butch Cassidy, living under the assumed name James Blackthorn in a secluded village in Bolivia, decides to end his long exile and return to the United States after learning of the death of Etta Place.
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid try to do this by becoming bodyguards. They go back when their legitimate employment comes with a much higher body count.
• Charro!: Jess used to be part of Vince's gang, but has left and straightened up since. Vince then tries to make life hard for him by having him accused of being complicit in the gang's theft of a gold-plated cannon, with Jess needing to prove his innocence and stop Vince from using the cannon to intimidate a town's population.
• In Draw!, 'Handsome' Harry Holland has Just Got Out of Jail and is looking to go straight, but events conspire against him.
• El Dorado: In a town a couple days of riding from El Dorado, the sheriff and deputy are old friends of Cole, who recalls how the two were running from a posse the last time he saw them.
• Rachel is one at the start of Gang of Roses. She straps her guns back on when her sister is murdered.
• The title character of The Grey Fox is a former Wild West stagecoach robber who, after spending 33 years in prison, moves to a small town in British Columbia in the early 1900s to quietly spend the rest of his life as a law-abiding citizen. However, while there are no more stagecoaches to rob, trains soon prove to be an all-too-tempting target for the restless retired outlaw.
• The Gunfighter has two men who do this. One succeeds, the other fails. The one who succeeds becomes a town marshal.
• In Jane Got a Gun, Bill 'Ham' Hammond used to be a member of the Bishop Boys. He fell in love with Jane when the gang was transporting her and the other women they had kidnapped to the town where John Bishop was setting up a brothel. When Bishop refused to let Ham marry her, Ham rescued her from from the brothel—killing four other gang members in the process—and ran off with her. The married and set up a farm in remote New Mexico, and had a child together. The film starts with the Bishop Boys catching up with Ham again.
• In Johnny Reno, U.S. Marshal Johnny Reno is a former outlaw turned lawman. And he seems very happy in his new position, showing an immense respect for the letter of the law.
• The Newton Boys: After one Time Skip, the Newton Gang tries to stop robbing banks and use their cached loot to become honest oilmen. They return to crime after the owners of the neighboring wells tap into their oil reserves and suck them dry. After the gang members are finally captured but get off with short sentences, Glasscock changes his name and gets into the dried goods business, Jess and Joe return to being cowboys, Willis becomes a nightclub and restaurant owner, and Dock works menial jobs. Willis and Dock are suspected of a few robberies and other crimes decades later, though.
• Ocean's Eleven: Saul Bloom retired from the con game a year before the movie begins, but agrees to join the Benedict Job when Rusty explains to him what they're planning. In Ocean's Twelve he announces that he's too old to work another job to pay off Benedict and wants to enjoy what little time he has left. He changes his mind at the eleventh hour, showing up to help when most of the crew have been arrested.
• Once Upon a Texas Train has a band of retired outlaws who are reunited for One Last Job when their leader is finally released from prison.
• Robin and Marian: At the start of the film, Robin and Little John return to England as this but quickly get drawn back into their old lifestyle when the Sheriff tries to kidnap Marian.
• In Shanghai Noon, we have Roy O'Bannon, who starts the movie as an outlaw but by the end of the movie he's softened up. The epilogue reveals that he has become a lawman, and that his real name is Wyatt Earp.
• Both Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman's characters in Unforgiven.
• Ronald in The Warrior's Way.
• Tanaka Ken from The Yakuza was once a feared yakuza, but left that life behind to live an honest life as a kendo teacher.
• Young Guns II (in one of its great number of historical inaccuracies) portrays Pat Garrett as a Retired Outlaw who was part of Billy the Kid's group before being recruited into being a lawman and hunting Billy for the local authorities.

Literature

• Jean Valjean of Les Misérables is a mixture of both types. He tries to go straight after getting out of prison but discovers that so long as people know he's an ex-con, they'll never give him a fair chance, so he's forced to create a new identity to become an honest man. This violates the terms of his parole, turning him into a fugitive.
• Wayne in Mistborn: The Alloy of Law used to be a thief before he accidentally killed a man. He was saved on the brink of being hanged by Wax - a lawman - and ended up becoming a lawman himself, if a bit of a Kleptomaniac Hero. He still sends half of his wages to the family of the man he killed.
• In Mystic River Jimmy Marcus was a juvenile delinquent and later the leader of a fairly sophisticated group of thieves. He retired for good after the combination of going to prison and his wife's death while he was inside, leaving him to raise their daughter when he got out, and now owns a convenience shop in town. Although the younger generation has no idea what he did, some of the neighborhood's older residents have never stopped thinking of him as a thief.
• In O. Henry's story, "A Retrieved Reformation," the safecracker Jimmy Valentine has gotten out of jail and is trying to go honest under a new identity so that he can marry a banker's daughter. But when a young child accidentally locks herself in the bank's new super-secure safe, he's the only one with the tools and the skills to have a prayer of getting her out.
• In River of Teeth, Hero Shackleby is a retired Demolitions Expert and Master Poisoner who's bought themselves a little house on the prairie and spends their time sipping poisoned iced tea on their porch. Since that has become really boring really fast, Hero jumps at the opportunity Houndstooth presents to be active again and do One Last Job that will make them known far and wide.

Live-Action TV

• Alias Smith and Jones has two outlaws trying to retire, but forced into the Boxed Crook role in order to get an amnesty offered by the governor of Wyoming Territory.
• Black Saddle is about Clay Calhune; an outlaw whose brothers were killed in a shootout that left him seriously wounded. After recovering, Clay decides to swap his six-guns for law books and becomes a lawyer.
• Many Cold Case guest characters who were criminals during the events leading up to the murder are honest citizens in the years afterward. Drug dealer Mason Tucker from "The Runner" runs a Jaguar dealership, The Mole for the bank robbery crew in "Dog Day Afternoons" is now the bank manager, former drug mule Ceci from "Sanctuary" is a housekeeper, stickup man Pete Doyle from "Bad Reputation" went to work as a janitor before being the Victim of the Week, Honey Trap hustler Sharon from "November 22nd" is a waitress, former thief and addict Cal from "Hoodrats" is a construction worker, graffiti-obsessed gang leader King Tut from "Bombers" has moved on to painting cars, Gang Banger Zen from "Read Between the Lines" is a bus driver who covered his old gang tattoo with one of his wife and daughter, etc. Some have elements of The Atoner (if they committed the murder or contributed to its chain of events and guilt drove their later lifestyle choices), a Retired Monster (if they did any of those things but are implied to have changed lifestyles more out of convenience or necessity than remorse), or a Falsely Reformed Villain (like King Tut, who maintains his old lifestyle in secret).
• CSI once had an episode where one of the ringleaders of the Rwandan Genocide moved to America posing as a refugee, trying to put it behind him. It... doesn't work out...
• Dead Man's Gun: The first man John Pike kills in "Death Warrant" (shooting him from an ambush) robbed one bank eight years ago and has been a good citizen ever since.
• Earl from My Name Is Earl tries to do this by creating "good karma" through good deeds, after getting hit by a bus (as a balance for winning the lottery after all his bad deeds). Unfortunately, all the bad karma from before is still conspiring to force him into it. At one point, he loses faith in his list (of things to make up for) and goes back to his criminal practices. He gets hit by a car within a few days.
• While most of the fugitives in Time Trax continued their criminal activities in the 20th Century, one of them took the chance to get a fresh start and became a lawman. He died helping Lambert take down a present-era criminal (as well as teaching him how to quick-draw). His gravestone had a birth date a century and a half later than the death date, and the inscription "He found his place in time."

Music

• There's a kids' song by Tom Chapin called "Billy the Squid" about a squid outlaw who at the end of the song retires to the suburbs with "Clamity Jane" (yes, the whole thing is a Hurricane of Puns).
• "Ringo" by Lorne Greene, the first-person account of a Western lawman, an ex-outlaw, and his relationship with the title character, a notorious gunfighter.
• The Townes Van Zandt song Pancho and Lefty has Lefty, who retired to Ohio after his compadre Pancho was killed. The song implies Lefty sold Pancho out for the reward money as a nest egg.
• Bruce Springsteen put out 'Outlaw Pete' on his 2009 album 'Working on a Dream' album. Yes, Pete was an outlaw for most of his life ('At six months old he'd done three months in jail'). After a vision, Pete rides off and settles down. And then Bounty Hunter Dan goes on his trail ...

Newspaper Comics

• A storyline in the newspaper comic Latigo concerns an ex-gunman who goes straight after four years in prison, and becomes the preacher in the town of Rimfire. It originally ran in 1981.

Theatre

• In The Music Man, Harold Hill comes to River City to find that his old partner, Marcellus Washburn, who still knows him as Gregory, has settled down there:
  Harold: Besides how could I know you'd end up in a little tank town like this? You were a pretty big slicker when you were in business like me.
  Marcellus: Too many close shaves the way you work. Besides I got me a nice comfortable girl—Ethel Toffelmier—boss's niece.
  Harold: Gone legitimate, huh? I knew you'd come to no good.

Video Games

• Arcanum: William Thorndop is a former bandit and was once the continent's finest marksman, but had a My God, What Have I Done? moment that convinced him to change his ways. He's now a member of a religion that promotes an Actual Pacifist philosophy and cut off his trigger fingers with a knife to make sure he can never hold a gun again.
• Diablo II: Elzix the innkeeper makes no secret of the fact that he's a retired Desert Bandit leader. People seem to have forgiven him, since one Intrepid Merchant even reminisces about having been held up by him.
• Jericho in Fallout 3 is a retired raider, although he doesn't seem to be happy living in Megaton. Also, Moriarty speculates Billy Creel might have killed Maggie's parents and "adopted" her. However, considering Moriarty's character, his claims are very suspect.
• Michael in Grand Theft Auto V starts the game as one of these, having settled down, entered Witness Protection, and raised a family using his earnings from his past days as a bank robber. However, he's soon drawn back in by both ending up in debt to a cartel kingpin and the fact that he doesn't feel fulfilled by "civilian" life.
  • He either does manage to successfully pull this off and retire for good, or ends up dead by hands of his student, or manages to become worse off by helping to kill off his former friend Trevor. Online later confirms the first one to be canon.
  • The same game also gives mention to previous protagonist Niko Bellic. According to Lester, he "Went quiet" and left his criminal ways behind.
  • "The Contract" DLC for the Online mode reveals that Franklin managed to retire from the criminal world and now runs a Private Intelligence Agency.
• Overwatch: Cole Cassidy was once a proud member of the Deadlock gang of robbers, up until being caught by Gabriel Reyes who offered him a deal to work for Overwatch. By all accounts, he actually did a pretty good job... until Reyes had to get into a fight with his superior Jack Morrison that left both of them presumed dead and Overwatch disbanding. By the time the plot gets into motion, Cassidy's dealing with the ramifications of his criminal past: bitter ex-comrades, lack of trust, and one hell of an identity crisis.
• John Marston's family in Red Dead Redemption is a textbook example of the "going straight to law-abiding citizen" variety. His new life as a simple rancher went pretty well for him — at least, until the FBI's predecessor kidnapped his family and ordered John to capture or kill his former gangmates.
• Rusty in Scrapland used to be a mercenary in his youth, before he got too old. Now he runs the junkyard.

Web Original

• Ain't Slayed Nobody: Irish gunslinger Lance Kilkenny was once a member of Colin Brock's gang of outlaws, but defected out of disgust to join a posse seeking to bring Brock to justice.

Western Animation

• Captain Villads of The Dragon Prince is a former pirate turned legitimate (if eccentric) sea captain.

Real Life

• As mentioned above, several western notables accomplished this in real life. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday both switched sides between outlaw and lawmen at various points in their lives. It was easier for a person to start over in eras before computer networks.
  • Emmett Dalton was the only survivor of the infamous Dalton Gang, having spent 14 years in prison after the botched Coffeyville shootout that led to the death of his brothers Bob and Grat Dalton, while his third brother Bill was killed in a shootout with U.S marshals two years later. Upon his release in 1907, Emmett wrote books and had some small movie roles about his life as an outlaw, before going into real estate.
• The documentary Tiger King features an interview with Mario Tabraue, a former drug cartel kingpin whose exploits are said to have inspired the film Scarface (1983). After serving his time in prison, he has by all accounts reformed his ways and now keeps to himself with a menagerie of exotic animals.

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