Is this a justifiable kill?

So protagonist is a spy. At one point, they are approached by a civilian who learns their real identity and tries to blackmail them. My protagonist kills them. The thing is, the murder victim isn't someone from an enemy agency or a criminal organization. They're just an average person who's providing an obstacle to the protagonist. While my protagonist isn't going to be a pure hero, I worry that the audience might by turned off by them murdering a civilian.

It may depend on how serious the consequences would be. Say if the hero is trying to save the world or something, and having their secret revealed would make things difficult. Or if the character in question had some really nasty demands in exchange for silence. But if the audience doesn't think that there'll be any serious problems, the protagonist could look trigger-happy.

Besides the consequences of mission failure, there's also the consequences to the protagonist. Are we talking about loss of cover, loss of job, or loss of life? The more severe the consequences to the protagonist (or as pointed out the world/nation) the more understandable the killing is.

There's two other critical factors I'd consider:

1) The reasonableness/vileness of the demands. A demand for 100 bucks to feed your family and a demand for 10 million bucks to finance a genocide are very different, without even getting into demands for action (a demand for the agent to kill someone fairly instantly moves this into justifiable territory, but takes away any greyness you're trying for).

2) What alternatives your protagonist considers and why they reject them. They're a government agent, can they just have this person temporarily detained until the mission is over? Can they just pay to buy time to complete the mission? Can they abandon current cover?

A character who considers everything to not have to kill someone, but then ruthlessly decides it's the only option and goes through with it, is miles away from someone who decides 'this person is inconvenient, Murder Is the Best Solution.'

Also, let me note that the threshold for this is likely to vary from one audience-member to another.

Some audience-members might be okay with pretty much anything to maintain cover; others might have various levels at which they consider the act to be acceptable; while still others might balk at any killing of a civilian—or even any killing at all.

Ultimately, as those above have mentioned, you can increase the likelihood of the act being found acceptable by making the situation more pressing for the protagonist, or the civilian nastier.

It may also help to establish early on just how far the protagonist is willing or expected to go—and where the work is willing to go.

For example, perhaps the killing of civilians is discussed early on, maybe in a way that allows the protagonist to give their feelings on the matter.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 12th 2024 at 9:50:32 PM

I think it depends on what kind of story it is, how the character reacts to it. Blackmailing a spy is asking to get killed.though. Blackmailers are stock murder victims for a reason. If the spy is a boy scout, then he should have a crisis about it. If the spy is an anti-hero, less so.

Espionage isn't cricket to begin with and can carry the death penalty. So legally it isn't justified, but is it that big of a deal?