We Can Rule Together / Live-Action TV

• Angel: The protracted war between Angel Investigations and Wolfram & Hart LLC comes to an apparent close in S4 when the firm suffers huge losses at the hands of Jasmine and her pet Beast. The firm magically rematerialized with a new office building, but with a worker shortage: Impressed by Angel's ingenuity and ideas, they offer him an ever-increasing suitcase of money — essentially corporate head-hunting — until he finally caves and unilaterally merges his agency into the firm (admittedly to save his son). This leads us into S5, aka Dilbert with vampires, where most of Angel's ideas for reform end up in the conference room wastebasket anyway.
• The Shadows from Babylon 5 are prone to making sinister deals with other species, though in their case it's more about inspiring conflict than convincing people to join their side. The most straight example in the series was the offer given to Sheridan through his Brainwashed and Crazy wife.
• Blake's 7:
  • In "Aftermath", Servalan offers this to Avon. He rejects her not for moral reasons, but because he suspects that once she had what she wanted from him, he'd "be dead in a week."
  • Played for Laughs in "Orbit" when a Mad Scientist who's enamored with Servalan offers this trope in exchange for his superweapon. Servalan has had plenty of Hot Consorts, but as the scientist is a balding middle-aged loony with facial warts, even she finds it difficult to play along.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The First Evil tries this on Andrew and Spike.
  • After Faith kills Genevieve, Roden tries to convince her to replace her in his plan to kill Buffy and survive the End of Magic.
  • Vampire Willow seems interested in turning her doppelgänger into a vampire, believing the two of them could be quite the formidable pair. She is also implied to have romantic feelings for her counterpart, something Willow finds rather creepy...
• This is essentially Larry's entire motivation on Burn Notice. He's nostalgic for the days when he and Michael cut a swath through three continents and he wants to do it again. However, lately he's figured out by now that Michael isn't as much like him as the forged dossier floating around would have everyone believe.
• A tragic version in the final episode of Cowboy Bebop (2021). Spike is finally reunited with Julia, only to find she's no longer the innocent women he fell in love with when she suggests they rule The Syndicate together. Spike says he's no longer the Syndicate killer he used to be, so she shoots Spike, regarding him as another part of her past she needs to cut off.
• Oddly invoked and lampshaded in Diagnosis: Murder in the episode "Blood Ties" (a backdoor pilot for a cop drama involving two female police officers). A team of renegade cops, who have taken to murdering known felons and placing "organ donor" stickers on their driver's licenses so their organs can be harvested for transplants, tries to convince the two protagonist cops to join them. One of the two officers comments that this reminded her of a James Bond scene, where the villain tries to convince Bond to join him in taking over the world. She says, "All Bond had to do was say 'yes', and he could buy enough time for his fellow agents to rescue him and save the day. I never understood why he never said 'yes'... until now. The answer is 'no'."
• Doctor Who:
  • In "Colony in Space", the Master (believing he's got control of an all-powerful Doomsday weapon) offers his old school chum the chance to jointly rule the universe as a benevolent dictatorship. The Doctor replies that he wants to see the universe, not rule it.
  • The Master gives this speech to Adric in "Castrovalva" to try and get him to help him. Adric pretends to accept, but the Master sees through it immediately. Since the Master already had Adric strung up in a hadron web, being used as a human computer against his will, it doesn't put his plan in much jeopardy.
  • "School Reunion": The leader of the bat-like Krillitanes offers the Doctor the chance to join their Godhood Seeker plan, tempting him with the power to bring his long-dead people back and ensure he'll never outlive his human loved ones. Sarah Jane talks him out of it.
  • An evil offering evil example from "Doomsday". The Daleks and the Cybermen meet face to face for the first time, both regard each other as hostiles, but the Cybermen can see that together, the two groups would be all-powerful, and propose an alliance. The Daleks, being Daleks, reject this offer with lasers.
  • The Master does this a lot — until it's inverted beautifully in "The End of Time", when the Doctor asks the Master to join him, even paraphrasing the dialogue from "Colony In Space". "You don't need to own the universe, just see it." The Master seems tempted, then slingshots back to evil... then saves the Doctor from Rassilon at the last minute.
  • "The Vampires of Venice": The villain offers this to the Doctor after finding out he's a Time Lord. He refuses due to awkward interspecies issues ("I'm a Time Lord. You're a big fish... think of the children.") and because she kills people.
  • Missy (aka the Mistress, aka the Master regenerated into a female form) spends series 8 setting up another one of these, just to prove that she and the Doctor aren't so different. Having assembled an army of zombie Cybermen, she hands total control of them to the Doctor, daring him to use them against the Daleks and all his other enemies.
• Game of Thrones: Over the course of Season Eight, Daenerys Targaryen undergoes Sanity Slippage, eventually culminating in her burning King's Landing down and plotting to Take Over the World. She then makes this offer to her lover Jon Snow after he begs her to stop, asking him to help her "build a new world". It's this offer that makes Jon realize that she can't be reasoned with, and he's reluctantly forced to kill her, crying as she dies in his arms.
• Averted and then played straight in Highlander. In the episode "Comes a Horseman", Kronos offers Methos the chance to join forces with him. Methos accepts but later turns on Kronos when Silas offers him Cassandra's head. The real question is whether Methos joined forces as a stall tactic, genuinely joined forces and later changed his mind, or joined forces as part of a plan to kill Kronos.
• Iron Fist (2017) has a variation when Madame Gao suggests that Danny Rand and his friends enjoy the hedonistic pleasures of a billionaire lifestyle while turning a blind eye to how the Hand is using Rand Enterprises as a cover for their illicit activities. Even if he hadn't been trained to fight the Hand for the past fifteen years, Danny is too naively idealistic to take such an offer. Later Bakuto tries to convince Danny to join the Hand by presenting Gao's organisation as a Renegade Splinter Faction, but Danny is skeptical and quickly discovers that Bakuto is little different from Gao.
• On Las Vegas, Montecito owner Monica Mancuso offers this to Danny McCoy after she fired Ed; Danny, fed up with her bullheaded way of running the casino, chooses to team up with Ed against her instead.
• Legion (2017): In "Chapter 27", Past Amahl Farouk invites David Haller to meet him in the Alternate Timeline once David becomes an adult, and suggests that they take over the world, but David isn't interested.
  Past Farouk: Well, when you're grown, come and see me. Together, we will rule the world.
  David: No. I don't think I will.
• The Card Carrying Magnificent Bastard Prince of Fire offers this to Xev in Lexx.
  Prince: I will be King, you will be Queen...or, perhaps, you'll be my slave. Same thing really.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: When Sauron finally reveals himself to Galadriel, having first developed an intense friendship/Ship Tease with her in his fair form as Halbrand he proposes that she rule Middle-Earth by his side as his queen.
• The Masked Rider episode "Mixed Doubles" had Count Dregon offer that his heroic nephew Dex can join him in his rule. Dex, of course, turns him down.
• Merlin (2008): Merlin sometimes receives offers like this, with his enemies usually throwing in the "Not So Different" Remark. Most notably, a powerful sorcerer sweetened the offer by playing up his insecurities and the past abuse heaped upon him. Once he threatened Arthur however, all bets were off.
• Moon Lovers: When he proposes to Yeon-hwa Wang Yo offers to make her his queen.
• Parodied in The Deadly Mantis episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where Crow imagines the titular Mantis giving a speech to the hero that is equal parts this and "Not So Different" Remark:
  Crow: "We're very alike, you and I, colonel; join me! No...you care too much, don't you?!"
• October Faction: Edith tells Viv that she should join Presidio and help them study supernatural creatures. Viv flatly refuses.
• In Season 1 of Odd Squad, Agent Olive often receives offers from her former partner, Odd Todd, to join him and his "Todd Squad", as an Evil Counterpart to Odd Squad. While she turns him down every time, and while the rest of Precinct 13579 finds the premise ridiculous (since it's just Odd Todd himself as the sole member), the Made-for-TV Movie World Turned Odd explores what it would be like if Odd Squad was nonexistent and Todd Squad reigned.
• The Outer Limits (1995): In the climax of the episode "Dark Child", Laura and her daughter Tammy are confronted by an alien who reveals that he is Tammy's biological father, who was conceived when he abducted and raped Laura years ago. He puts an apparent brainwashing necklace on Tammy and offers that she and Laura join him. They are family, and Tammy's status as a Half-Human Hybrid makes her potentially more powerful than a regular member of his race, so she will be a valuable asset in his race's invasion plans for Earth. Laura's encouragement gives Tammy the strength to remove the necklace. The alien loses his temper at their rejection and attempts to telekinetically strangle Laura, but Tammy angrily knocks him away and Laura stabs and kills him.
• Shadow and Bone: Once she is in his clutches, General Kirigan offers Alina Starkov a chance to rule by his side: the light to his darkness. Alina says they could have ruled together, as equals, but Kirigan just wants to use her as his weapon.
• In the final episode of The Shadow Line, Gatehouse outlines his plan to Jonah Gabriel and offers him a chance to join him. Gabriel refuses, which is what prompts Gatehouse to have him killed.
• In Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Redemption II", the Duras sisters offer Worf a regency (through marriage) over the Klingon Empire, which he rejects immediately out of disgust (and hey, they were scheming all over the place). The Romulans just as quickly make themselves known, since it was their hands in it.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • Hilariously inverted in the episode "Our Man Bashir", where Bashir is playing a Bond-like hero on the holodeck, and due to complicated reasons involving a Holodeck Malfunction is attempting to keep the story going without killing any of the villains like he's supposed to, or have any of the Bond Girls die like one of them is supposed to. It ends with Bashir, the good guy, giving the reverse of the speech, saying he's tired of being the good guy and will join the villain, and then he himself destroys the world while the holodeck characters act like he's gone utterly insane. The holodeck villain is visibly confused by this complete and utter derailment of the plot and then attempts to kill him anyway.
  • In the episode "You Are Cordially Invited", we learn that an occurrence of this in the Klingon creation myth is the traditional source of their concept of marriage. It's also why they believe all of their creator gods are dead.
  • This is standard First Contact procedure for the Dominion — if they want to annex a civilization, they send in the Vorta to offer a single military officer or government official total domination over his people and nation in exchange for allegiance. If this fails, they send in the Jem'Hadar.
• Stranger Things: One offers Eleven the chance for them to dominate the world together after he slaughters the other children in the lab; she refuses.
• In Supernatural, Lucifer tries to tempt Castiel, a fellow fallen angel, into joining his cause. Castiel tells him he'd die first. And Lucifer's overall plan through the entire series was to get Sam to agree to be his vessel, and in the end, Sam says yes- but only so he can trap him in an inescapable prison.
• Survivors: Dexter attempts to use the line on Tom, who's got him at his mercy. It doesn't work.
• The White Queen: In exchange for her freedom, Margaret of Anjou offers to name Richard of Gloucester as her heir, which would make him King of England after her husband dies. To sweeten the deal, she will even allow him to marry her just-widowed daughter-in-law Anne Neville after she notices the attraction between them. Richard, who is loyal to his brother Edward IV, isn't interested.

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