If a story has a hero who fights a villain, then the hero will win in the end. Always.
Sure, there might be stumbles along the way. It may take a
Hero's Journey or two to
Earn Your Happy Ending. Evil might
score a few victories first, and maybe even
almost win in the
Darkest Hour before Good can
save the day at the last minute. In the end, however, there's never any doubt that the forces of good will prevail. Even in video games that allow you to play as the bad guys, the minute the sequel comes out,
expect it to make the "good" ending the only canon one.
It doesn't matter how big the
Big Bad is or how puny
The Hero is—not only
can the
Kid Hero foil the
Galactic Conqueror, despite how improbable it logically ought to be, but the audience
expects it, and will be sincerely shocked if he doesn't.
This trope is so
omnipresent, especially in works with
Black and White Morality, that attempts to
subvert it can easily lead to
Like You Would Really Do It, and any work with a
Downer Ending where
The Bad Guy Wins for
once automatically catapults itself to the cynical end of the
Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.
Side effects of this trope may include
Plot Armor,
Invincible Incompetent, and
Underdogs Never Lose. Compare
Happy Ending and
Happily Ever After, which are closely related, and
Invincible Hero, where not only does the good guy win in the end, but he also wins in every intermediate step. Contrast
The Bad Guy Wins.
The villainous counterpart to this trope is
You Can't Thwart Stage One—the good guy's victories always come at the end, and the bad guy's victories always come in the middle.
Please do not list examples on this page. After all,
there is a reason for the "Always" in the trope name. (
Plus, we'd be here forever.)
