Older and Wiser

"I have learned of late that one must access calm as much as fire. So I have been, as humans say, working on myself."

— Worf, Star Trek: Picard

This character was one of the original protagonists. They hung out, had adventures, and had the Grand Finale with the rest of the cast once the show was cancelled. Now the show has had a Sequel/Revival, and the character's back, with a twist — they're a generation older than the new cast, and they've come back specifically to help the people who are in the same situation they once faced. This role can also be filled, in a Long Runner, by a character who leaves and comes back after a significant span of time.

See also Precursor Heroes. Compare Character Development when this happens onscreen.

In long-running Tabletop RPG games, this is a common fate for player characters when a GM starts a new campaign in the same setting: even if the new game has the same players, the original characters show up as grizzled veterans, wise mentors or literal gods.

Usually ends up being a Cool Old Guy (well, depending on how old he actually is by now). Related to The Mentor, though they're less likely to die. (Of course, there's always the possibility of a nasty refrigerator accident...)

Not an Inversion of Younger and Hipper. An actual inversion would be Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Come Boruto: Naruto the Movie and the Boruto retelling, the previous Idiot Hero Naruto is now a calm and mature adult. He's the hokage and is the leader of his village. This also applies to most of his generation as well.
• Digimon:
  • The Digimon Adventure cast to the Digimon Adventure 02 cast. Three^note Four in the English dub. years separate the two.
  • Taiki and Shoutmon from Digimon Fusion return to Digimon Xros Wars: The Young Hunters Who Leapt Through Time as the smart mentors. Yuu himself returns from the previous series now matured as one of the main cast.
• In Gatekeepers 21, several of the heroes from the original Gatekeepers, now grown up, are around as commanders, mentors and even parents to the new cast, and one of them has become the new series' Big Bad.
• Smith in Ginga Densetsu Weed.
• Gundam:
  • A variation occurs in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam where the The Rival of the previous series, Char Aznable plays the mentor role to Kamille Bidan.
  • This is subverted in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, wherein the previous cast end up in direct conflict with the new and still idealistic protagonists. They are older, and they are wiser, but it certainly doesn't do them much good when it comes to trying to convince the new cast of that. What doesn't help is that most of the returning cast are a little burnt out, or that the new heroes are being manipulated by the Big Bad.
  • In addition to Char, Amuro Ray, the protagonist of the first series, gets this as well in Zeta Gundam, but is a bit more angsty about it. Also in Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack, he seems to have once again matured to a steel-willed veteran.
• Any characters that are around for longer than one arc in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Notable ones include Joseph Joestar,^note up until he becomes a Scatterbrained Senior, that is Jotaro Kujo, Speedwagon, Dio Brando, and even Polnareff.
• Miwa "Micchi" Uzuki, the token girl in the original Kotetsu Jeeg, becomes The Captain in the revival, Koutetsushin Jeeg.
• In Lyrical Nanoha, almost the entire cast of the first two seasons returns as Older and Wiser mentor figures to the newcomers in StrikerS. Nanoha specifically designs her training programs to prevent them from making the same mistakes that she did when she was younger.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
  • Evangeline A.K. McDowell appears in the Stealth Sequel UQ Holder! where she now goes by the name Yukihime, having become a teacher at a school and acting as a Parental Substitute to the main character. Interesting, because in previous series she's practically the poster girl for Immortal Immaturity.
  • An inversion occurres with some members of Ala Rubra, who saved the world 20 years ago, show up to help Negi on his way. Especially Jack Rakan. He's certainly Older. Wiser? Not so much. Well, he actually is, but Negi finds that out the hard way
• Every new generation of Pokedex Holders in Pokémon Adventures will eventually be backed up by the older ones.
• The original cast in the Record of Lodoss War TV series after the Time Skip.

Comic Books

• The DCU often has Golden Age superheroes filling this role, especially Jay Garrick (the Golden Age The Flash) and Max Mercury to Wally West (the Post-Crisis The Flash) and Impulse.

Comic Strips

• Garfield believes he's getting smarter as he gets older until he sees Jon asking why people don't make cars out of cardboard and wonders if the others are getting dumber.

Fan Works

• Given that many decades have passed since the events of The Iron Giant, Hogarth in I am Superman is now an old man and serves as a good source of advice and inspiration for Taylor when she's feeling down.
• one day at a time (Nyame): Peggy Sue protagonist Jason Todd. Physically sixteen, but mentally fifty years old — he's raised four kids, juggled running a massive billion dollar-company and being Batman, all while helping lead the Justice League. That, on top of a major Break the Haughty Trauma Conga Line that saw him lose his best friend Roy, his adoptive father Bruce, and all three of his brothers within ten years, has left him as a much humbler, wiser, and overall better person than he was before.
• In The Second Try, Shinji and Asuka are mentally somewhere in their early 20's after they return to the past. However, they have the emotional maturity of a person at least 10 years older than that. Justified by their spending several years in post-apocalyptic Japan with nobody to rely on but each other; either they grew up fast or they didn't get to grow up at all. Especially when Asuka fell pregnant.

Films — Animated

• In the Futurama film Bender's Big Score, Lars Fillmore is an older and more mature version of Fry who managed to get sent to the past and had his features accidentally changed to become near-unrecognizable.

Films — Live-Action

• Frenchie from Grease returns to high school (yes, as a student) to be mentor to the next decade's New Transfer Student Michael Carrington in Grease 2.
• In The Hustler (1961), Fast Eddie is an upstart hotshot who is mentored by the older and wiser Bert Gordon. In The Color of Money, Fast Eddie is the older and wiser mentor to the upstart hotshot Vincent.
• Don Diego Vega (Anthony Hopkins), the original Zorro, returns to train Alejandro Murrieta (Antonio Banderas) in The Mask of Zorro.
• Though only a few years older, Nancy from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) embodies this trope when she trains a new batch of imperiled kids to fight back against Freddy in Dream Warriors.
• Star Trek: All of the cast of the original series take on this trope in various shades in the movies, particularly in The Wrath of Khan and The Undiscovered Country, where they are contrasted with younger characters like Preston, Saavik, and Valeris. Indeed, in The Undiscovered Country, it was Valeris's relative lack of perspective compared to her mentor Spock that led to her decision to betray the Federation by helping assassinate Chancellor Gorkon to try and start a war with the Klingons.
  • In the JJ Abrams movies, the trope is inverted by showing younger versions of the characters, including a particularly hotheaded Kirk. While Spock seems very collected in this continuity, we see that even he is very Hot-Blooded compared to Spock!Prime, who accidentally traveled several decades back in time into an alternate timeline.
• Star Wars:
  • Obi Wan Kenobi over the course of the films, who starts off as an apprentice to Qui Gon Jinn, but becomes more of a wise and experienced Jedi master, culminating in him teaching Luke, his former Padawan's son, about the Force in the beginning of A New Hope.
    • At least, if you watch it starting with the prequels. If you watch the films in the order they were released, we start off with him older and wiser, and then jump back to when he was young and still learning the ropes, with his Character Development showing how he became the old hermit in the original film.
  • Luke goes through a similar development going from a naive teenager in episode IV, to a wise, up-and-coming Jedi master himself in Return of the Jedi, to an old Jedi Master in The Last Jedi (playing this trope with a heavy dose of cynicism).
  • When we first met Han Solo in A New Hope, he was highly skeptical of the Force and the Jedi Knights. By the time of The Force Awakens, he's basically mellowed out with age, accepting the Force and its universal power.
• Invoked for laughs in the first Tremors film.
  Earl: "Damn it, Valentine, I'm older and I'm wiser."
  Val: "Yeah, well, you're half right."

Literature

• The Hunger Games: Cressida, and she uses this knowledge to try and help Katniss any way she can.
• Eskarina Smith, previously seen as a determined young witch in Equal Rites, returns in I Shall Wear Midnight as an advisor to the determined young witch Tiffany Aching.
• Malazan Book of the Fallen:
  • As an Elder God who hasn't been active for a few millennia, K'rul may not be up to date with the running Malazan war effort, but he has the knowledge to aid his human proteges when the empire tries to set free an age-old Jaghut Tyrant in Darujhistan. He specifically aids Kruppe in assembling the people needed to fight back.
  • Apparently, spending several hundred thousand years suffering a Fate Worse than Death mellowed Draconus out a bit. All who knew of his legendary cruelty feared his return to the world, but among the first things he does when he comes back is making friends with the mentally challenged Ublala Pung.
• Done interestingly in Robin Hobb's works with Fitz, protagonist of the Realm of the Elderlings' Farseer trilogy. He's still the narrator and protagonist when he returns fifteen years later for the Tawny Man trilogy, but the heart of the story is his attempts to guide and mentor the adolescent offspring of his old friends. So, for once, the Older and Wiser character remains the main character!
• The Star Wars Expanded Universe has Ferus Olin, who was a contemporary of Anakin in the Jedi Quest series as a teenager, was a young adult and the main character of the Last of the Jedi series, and returned in the Rebel Force books to serve as on-again-off-again mentor to Luke and Leia. He does indeed have a Heroic Sacrifice and a genuinely moving death scene.
• Henry in The Time Traveler's Wife managed to be an Older and Wiser mentor to himself.
• Used in each subsequent Tortall Universe series by Tamora Pierce.
  • Alanna (Song of the Lioness) appears as a parent and veteran warrior in The Immortals, Protector of the Small and the Trickster's Duet. By the time of the last, she's middle-aged, as is her husband George.
  • Prince Jon of Song of the Lioness is young, naive, and haughty. King Jon in Protector of the Small is a firm and progressive ruler who makes pragmatic compromises and instills a sense of royal responsibility in his descendants.
• Star Carrier has Trevor "Sandy" Gray, a young hotshot Space Fighter pilot in the early books disliked by his peers for being a "Prim" (short for "primitive," as he used to live in the flooded ruins of Manhattan without modern technology before being forced to enlist) and a "Monogie" (Prims tend to be monogamous, a practice that has fallen out of fashion in the wider world). Fast-forward 20 years during a Time Skip, he's a seasoned captain of a supercarrier on track to becoming an admiral.

Live-Action TV

• When Faith first appears in Buffy the Vampire Slayer she's a cynic, a Blood Knight and especially because she is a Slayer she can have and do whatever she wants. Now she tries to teach other Slayers that With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility and With Great Power Comes Great Insanity, is on the lookout for those who might go Knight Templar, and is insightful enough to know that Angel created monsters, and tears himself up over having to live with them.
• Barney Collier from Mission: Impossible appeared in some episodes of the revival series, while his son was one of the main characters (and their actors were father and son, too).

• Nowhere Boys: Ellen returns in the final two seasons, now a school teacher and The Mentor to the younger Nowhere Boys.
• Tommy in Power Rangers: Dino Thunder, who returns to superheroing as the team mentor figure after taking seven years off for college, graduate school, a doctorate program, and wildly successful research on superpowered dinosaur cyborgs. It is unknown, but doubtful, if the character slept between his departure in 1997 and return in 2004.
• Sarah Jane Smith in The Sarah Jane Adventures, as compared to her in Doctor Who three decades prior. Explicitly shown in the Who episode "Turn Left": in an alternate timeline in which the Doctor died without regenerating, Sarah Jane takes the Doctor's canon role by preventing the plot of "Smith and Jones" from coming to fruition. Though she dies in the process.
• Colonel Samantha Carter is promoted from a member of the Five-Man Band in Stargate SG-1 to the leader of the Atlantis Expedition in Stargate Atlantis. The timespan is a bit shorter, but the concept is the same.
  • Lieutenant General Jack O'Neill takes on this role in Stargate Universe.
• During his time on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Wesley Crusher comes across as a Book Smart yet socially naïve Teen Genius; when he reappears on Star Trek: Picard, he's a Traveler with the responsibility to protect the timeline, and he fully understands the weight of this role.
• Although Welcome Back, Kotter didn't have any prior show, the character Gabe Kotter was a former student who comes back to his high school alma mater to teach an often unruly group of remedial wiseguys known as the "Sweathogs", of which he was a founding member.

Professional Wrestling

• Tyree Pride, a Haitian wrestler who competed on Championship Wrestling From Florida's Caribbean tours, was a mouth piece for Tokyo Monster Kahagas in the post territorial sytem National Wrestling Alliance, arguing that Kahagas was necessary if the NWA was to make any resurgance. However, when Ring Warriors entered the alliance in 2011, the NWA decided to use it to reestablish a presence in the Caribbean and Tyree Pride was pulled out of retirement to ensure success. Ring Warriors at this time still had a straight example in Tammy Lynn Sytch, who at first seemed to have her same self serving motivations from Smoky Mountain Wrestling, but instead was genuine this time with her demands for more female roles, in particular offering up Santana Garrett as the conceptual face of a Ring Warriors Women's division.(for the record, Kahagas exceeded Pride's expectations as wrestler, if not as a savior, but Garrett needed a little more time to meet Sytch's)
• When the Motor City Machine Guns first stopped by Ring of Honor, it was technically an example of this for Chris Sabin, who hadn't done much of anything in the promotion till but they still amounted to pests to the Briscoes and The Kings Of Wrestling. But four years in the promotion and nine years in the business total saw them quickly become leaders of the locker room when they returned ROH in 2016 and the younger talents of promotion really needed help rallying against Bullet Club.

Tabletop Games

• Pathfinder: The Tian goddess Shizuru is this to the Avistani goddess Iomedae. The two deities have much in common in terms of personality, concerns, outlooks and beliefs, but Shizuru is much older and more experienced. She has long since won her crusades and settled into the role of a ruler, and has had to temper her youthful furor with the realities of having to rule a nation. She views Iomedae's comparatively youthful zeal with tolerant amusement, much like an old veteran with a brash but talented young soldier.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse: A handful of variants and one Heel–Face Turn'd villain exhibit this:
  • The Eternal Haka is Haka as the last surviving human at the end of time. His base power is Haka of Knowledge (as opposed to his base form's Crush), and his card art has him reading in a library.
  • Team Leader Tachyon, from a Bad Future where Legacy has become the tyrant Iron Legacy, has streaks of grey in her hair, and her base power is to support her allies as opposed to fueling her own abilities.
  • As the villain La Capitan, Maria Helena roamed the time stream to loot and plunder however she wished. Eventually, though, a much older version of hers realizes what she's done and seeks to atone as La Comodora.
• Warhammer 40,000: Warboss Ghazkull made his first appearance in a first-edition supplement in the early 90s as a generic Warboss for the Goff clan. A few years later, he's at the head of the biggest Waaaagh! in the galaxy, has ravaged the planet Armageddon repeatedly, formed a one-sided Friendly Rivalry with Commissar Yarrick, and believes himself to be on a mission from the Ork gods.
• The Yu-Gi-Oh! card game has lots of monsters that are older versions of other monsters, and it's kind of hard to list them all. Some notable examples:
  • Dark Magician -> Dark Sage
  • Injection Fairy Lily -> Counselor Lily
  • Legendary Six Samurai - Shi En -> Great Shogun Shien
  • There are lots of others, of course, but it's impossible to list them all.

Theatre

• Although still technically the main character, Oedipus of Oedipus at Colonus has completely transformed from his portrayal in Oedipus the King and provides a contrast with the rest of the cast which is younger.

Video Games

• Atelier Annie: Alchemists of Sera Island: Liese. Not that you'd be expected to know. She's also a kind of Trickster Mentor, since she's testing and spying on Annie for her grandfather.
• Breath of Fire: Bleu, especially in Breath of Fire II (provided that you can find her...) where she proves to be one of the best spellcasters in the game.
• Dark Forces Saga: Kyle Katarn becomes the mentor to new player character Jaden Korr in Jedi Academy. He's also the Final Boss if you turn to The Dark Side, and actually puts up one hell of a fight.
• Devil May Cry 4: Dante is twice the age he was in Devil May Cry 3 meaning he's in his mid to late 30's, giving him almost 20 years worth of experience between this and his first adventure. He goes from a smart-ass to a smart-ass with a lot of experience and skill to the point he doesn't take the plot of the game seriously at all, contrasting with Nero who not only has personal investment in the plot but also has as much experience as Dante did in 3.

• Donkey Kong has Cranky Kong, who was the Donkey Kong from the original arcade games. Unfortunately, while he's older and wiser, he's so much so that he's more Grumpy Old Man than anything else.
• Fallout: Mayor Robert Joseph MacCready of Fallout 3 is a child with a Cluster F-Bomb vocabulary and universally unlikable attitude. Mercenary Robert Joseph MacCready of Fallout 4 is a polite man with a strong Papa Wolf mentality, a likable personality, and a total refusal to use foul language. The last decade really humbled him.

• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy IV: Rydia joins the party as a child, and when the ship your party is on gets destroyed is taken to the Land of Monsters, where time flows faster than in the regular world. When she rejoins the party later in the game, she is a fully-grown adult, complete with additional powers.
  • Final Fantasy X: Auron would fit this trope perfectly, except we see it backwards. Near the beginning, he emerges from obscurity to join the younger crew and teach them what's what, but only as the game progresses do we gradually learn what happened the first time around.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War: Finn and Oifey; you had them in the first generation as young apprentices, in the second generation they are back as mentors to Leif and Nanna, and Seliph and the other children at Tirnanogue respectively. Shannan also serves as a mentor to Seliph as well his much younger cousins, Larcei and Ulster. Lewyn, who comes back as Seliph's strategist, also counts, though this may be because of his resurrection and Laser-Guided Amnesia.
  • While Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade came out a few years after Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade, it's a prequel to Binding Blade, taking place nearly 20 years before. In Blazing Blade, we see Bartre as a Hot-Blooded Boisterous Bruiser who is extremely Book Dumb and insensitive, though unknowingly. Come The Binding Blade, he is the father of Fir and is much more subdued, while still having some hotblood. He also grew a mustache. In addition, Karel goes from a bloodthirsty "Sword Demon" who only lives for battle to the much calmer and wiser "Sword Saint" who mostly keeps to himself unless his family is threatened.
  • Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn: Averted; the cast of Path of Radiance all make appearances as major characters and despite some maturity still have their own problems and issues to deal with.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening: Played straight; Tiki, who was just a dragon child in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, reappears as a dragon teen who takes up a mentor role towards Lucina and, in the DLC, her Junior Counterpart Nowi. And she can even be romanced by a male Avatar.
  • In Fire Emblem Fates, this applies to Laslow, Selena, and Odin, who are older versions of the second-gen characters Inigo, Severa, and Owain from Fire Emblem: Awakening, having matured out of a lot of their more negative character traits, while still retaining their core personalities.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses shows this in many of the students, as well as Cyril, post-Time Skip. Given that the country the game takes place in descends into civil war during the interim, it's Justified. One Zig-Zagged example is Dimitri, who falls into the Despair Event Horizon and becomes a bitter Blood Knight consumed by a desire for revenge: only in the Blue Lions storyline does he begin to get better, and even then, by his own admission, he still has some issues with his mental scars.
• In Galaxy Angel II, the Moon Angels from the first Galaxy Angel trilogy act as mentors to their successors in the Rune Angel Wing. They're a downplayed example as only four years have passed between trilogies, and they still very much retain their quirky personalities.
• God of War (PS4): Kratos has had a lot of time to think about everything he did in the original trilogy, and it shows. His famously Unstoppable Rage has been reigned in, and when he does get angry, it's a Tranquil Fury. Kratos clearly regrets everything he's done, and he wants nothing more than to keep his son Atreus from repeating his mistakes.
  Atreus: So I'm a man now? Like you?
  Kratos: No. We are not men. We are more than that, and the responsibility is far greater. And you must be better than me. Understand?
• Golden Sun: Isaac and Garet show up for the tutorial levels of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Garet plays the trope straight, having matured from a Hot-Blooded source of Plucky Comic Relief to a more sedate parent struggling to keep a leash on his even-more-temperamental teenage son, but Isaac subverts it almost to the point of a total inversion— he's gone from a quiet momma's boy with a bad case of Chronic Hero Syndrome to a rather reckless fellow more interested in putting Matthew through obstacle courses than getting Tyrell out of life-threatening danger.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the Hero's Shade teaches Link several advanced sword techniques, and there are multiple nods at him being a previous Link (eventually confirmed to be the one from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time).
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker: Ganondorf himself returns older and wiser, now sporting a surprisingly effective Beard of Evil, having become much more calm and calculating than he was in his youth, preferring to control events from the shadows as opposed to in everyone's face with his magic and hordes of evil. Fittingly, however, he reverts to his fury of the old days during the final battle.

• Mortal Kombat 11: Happens a few times, given that time-travel is involved.
  • Johnny Cage has mellowed out considerably since his days as a smug Hollywood star. When his past self shows up again, Present-Johnny is the one most annoyed by him.
  • Hanzo Hasashi (aka Scorpion), has likewise calmed down considerably since being resurrected, finally avenging his family, making peace with Sub-Zero and the Lin Kuei, and working to rebuild the new Shirai Ryu clan. He tries to get his past undead self to see that there can be more to his existence than vengeance, and that even if the bloodline of the old Shirai Ryu was wiped out, it doesn't mean the end of their clan as long as there are worthy successors to carry on their traditions.
• Police Quest: Sonny Bonds, the hero of the original games, is your SWAT unit's commanding officer in the tactical First-Person Shooter SWAT 4. For the record, that means the last time we saw him, he was a Detective Sergeant in Homicide. A minimum of ten years later (due to physical SWAT requirements), he has been promoted to the rank of Captain. At least. One hell of a meteoric rise.
• Sakura Wars (2019) sees the return of Sumire Kanzaki after her retirement from active duty, now serving as the commander of the new Imperial Combat Revue. She is no longer as haughty and boastful as she was in her youth, and has mellowed out considerably, although she still caries herself with the pride of being a top actress back in her day.
• Soul Series: Soul Calibur has two examples:
  • Siegfried changes from an arrogant bandit from a knightly background who unknowingly murders his own father and winds up letting Soul Edge turn him into the next Nightmare to a regretful and determined paladin-like figure determined to redeem himself even in the face of horrific crimes and almost certain death.
  • Seong Mi-na is the same age as Siegfried, and starts out as a naive and Hot-Blooded girl. In later installments, Yun-Seong looks up to her as a cool big sis, and her father remarks that she has grown.
• Star Fox: Peppy Hare was part of the original Star Fox Team and now fights alongside his fallen teammate's son. He even gives up piloting his arwing after Star Fox Adventures, becoming more of a Mission Control figure.

• Tales of Xillia 2: Downplayed. The cast of the previous game do show up and as party members too but as it's only been a year since then, both aspects aren't as prominent as they would be in most instances. Still, having saved the world (or got sense kicked into them in the case of Gaius and Muzet) before means they can help Ludger as he gets dragged into Origin's Trial and is forced to make some rather important and even cruel decisions in that regard.
• Trails Series: Due to the entire series being one big continuity, anyone who first appears in The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, and The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel I and II end up becoming this trope by Cold Steel III and IV.
• Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon: Jim Hawkins, compared to how he is in the film, due to the game taking place 5 years after the events of the film.
• Zone of the Enders: Leo Stenbuck, returning in The Second Runner less mopey and with added levels in Badass.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night: Gilgamesh is a conceited Jerkass due to having his personality in this incarnation modeled on how he was early in the tales written down in The Epic of Gilgamesh. When the protagonists of Fate/Grand Order time travel to Mesopotamia to find the Big Bad's final Holy Grail, they meet a Gilgamesh who has lost Enkidu, failed at his quest for immortality herbs, and is settling down as the wise God-King of Uruk. And it shows, Uruk citizens are really capable, content, and happy with his rule. He only acts rude towards the protagonist because of the sheer stress of running his kingdom and fighting the war against the Three Goddess Alliance. In the game proper, this version is summonable as his Caster-version.

Webcomics

• Girl Genius: Apparently a biological feature of Jagermonsters; while the "young" ones (who can still be a century old) are very excitable Blood Knights with an intense love of fine clothing, the older ones seem a lot saner, with the generals still dressing well but cracking jokes about things like one of them missing a hat (when younger ones find lacking a hat themselves to be rather awful), and have no real thirst for fighting, enjoying a good scrap but having no unnatural drive; if they fight, it's because they chose to. We get a closer look at this when Captain Vole, so bloodthirsty he got kicked out of the Jagercorps, is accidentally aged hundreds of years in one sitting. While a part of it can be trauma, he finds himself utterly confused by how much his insanity waned; he used to care a lot for clothes, but not quite as much now, he doesn't really think he wants to fight anymore, and his dreams of watching Europa burn are gone; he doesn't want that anymore, and he doesn't really have another dream to replace it. And he even laments the carnage he caused, at least a little.
• Clark from Shape Quest, who complains that they feel he's way too old for adventuring, despite being 35.

Western Animation

• Cornelius in Babar and the Sequel Series Babar and the Adventures of Badou is the oldest and wiser elephant in the cast and probably in the entire kingdom. Madam may also count as a female version.
• A now old and retired Bruce Wayne in the futuristic Batman Beyond. Though age has robbed him of his old stamina, his fighting and detective skills are still as sharp as ever.
  • Also, a Crossover episode of Static Shock shows Static in that time period, not only Older and Wiser, but far stronger.
• A rare villainous example is Ravage from Beast Wars. One of the last surviving original Decepticons from the era of the Cybertronian Wars (a.k.a. the original cartoon), he's moved up in the world since we saw him last, and he learned a thing or two from his millenia of war.
  • Also, the Time Skip between the original 'toon and movie has Spike going from Tagalong Kid to adult who has a son who's the new Tagalong Kid.
• Egon in Extreme Ghostbusters (while his three colleagues made a cameo Not as You Know Them).
• Zuko, Katara, and Toph all act as mentors to Korra at some point in Legend of Korra. Zuko, in particular, has calmed down a lot from how Hot-Blooded he was in his youth. Katara is still the same Team Mom as she always was (and is now a literal mom) but her temper never comes through. Toph isn’t quite as snarky as she used to be and is a Doting Grandparent oddly enough. And as Roku did to Aang in the Avatar: The Last Airbender, an older Aang acts a spirit guide to Korra, since he is now the previous Avatar.
• Ahsoka Tano in Star Wars: The Clone Wars was Anakin's snippy, reckless Kid Hero Padawan. In Star Wars Rebels she's become a leader in the early rebellion and has matured into a warrior and mentor.
• Word of God says one reason Young Justice had a Time Skip: season one shows the Team being trained by their own mentors, while season two shows them older and training even younger heroes.

Real Life

• This frequently happens with military officers in between major wars. A few notable examples from American history include:
  • Andrew Jackson, who served as a messenger during The American Revolution while a teenager, then went on to become a General in the War of 1812.
  • Quite a few junior officers got their first experience in the Mexican-American War before going on to become prominent figures during The American Civil War, including Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant.
  • The same goes for the Spanish-American War giving young officers experience for World War I, including the commander of the American forces in WW1, General John "Black Jack" Pershing.
  • World War I also served in this capacity for World War II, giving officers like Dwight D. Eisenhower (though he trained troops rather than seeing action himself in WW1) and George S. Patton.

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