Redemption Quests in Live-Action TV series.
- Caroline's idea to save $250,000 to launch the cupcake business, the driving arc of 2 Broke Girls.
- Brilliantly subverted on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. In the first season, Ward turns out to be a deep cover agent for HYDRA, turning on the team, killing Victoria Hand and Eric Koenig and dropping Fitz and Simmons into the ocean (the former suffering brain damage from it). When he's arrested, season two seems to indicate Ward is on a trip to regain the team's trust...only for them to make it abundantly clear they are never going to forgive Ward for what he's done and only see him as the enemy.
- It's first shown when a captive Ward is giving up info to Coulson and talking as if he's still part of the team.Coulson: My team? Y-you... You are not, nor will you ever be, on my team. You dropped Fitzsimmons out of a plane. You murdered Victoria Hand and Eric Koenig. You betrayed every one of us, you deluded son of a bitch!
- Breaking Skye out of of a jail, Ward gives her a gun, assuming they'll be fighting their way out together "like old times." As soon as his back is turned, Skye shoots Ward and runs out on her own.
- Later, the team is forced to work with Ward to take on a mutual foe, Ward doing a talk on how he knows it'll be a long path to winning their trust back but he's willing to do it. The glares they give are pure death before asking if Skye can shoot him again, this time in the head.
- Fitz is stunned that Ward truly believes that all it takes is an "I'm sorry" and all is forgiven. Instead, he tears into the hell Ward has put him through and when Ward protests that he still considers them friends, Fitz snaps back that he now realizes Ward was never their friend but playing a role and coldly dismisses him.
- It takes being shot by Skye again for Ward to finally grasp there's no redemption for him and thus embraces being full-on HYDRA.
- The writers have acknowledged that much of Ward's actions in season three are a deliberate Take That, Audience! to how there were still fans who believed in him (complete with a "Stand With Ward" hashtag). They thus had to push Ward with stuff from ordering bombings to personally killing Coulson's girlfriend to get the audience to realize Ward's journey was never one of redemption but falling into darkness.
- It's first shown when a captive Ward is giving up info to Coulson and talking as if he's still part of the team.
- Brimstone: This is the entire premise of the show, where Fallen Hero Ezekiel Stone gets a second shot at life and a way out of Hell if he returns 113 souls that managed to escape.
- Doctor Who: It's suggested from his debut story "Deep Breath" onward that the Twelfth Doctor is trying to find ways to atone for the mistakes of his past incarnations. At the top of Series 9 (his second season) this trope is exaggerated when a new tragic mistake, a moment of weakness (though understandable), of his has cataclysmic consequences: When he realizes a trapped boy in a war zone is the future creator of the Daleks, the worst villains in the universe, he abandons him mid-rescue — possibly triggering the boy's descent into evil to begin with. When's he's called to face the person originally affected by this, the Doctor is ready to do so by way of facing the consequences and perhaps atoning for it, fully aware that it will probably be a case of Redemption Equals Death.
- The Equalizer: A retired secret agent becomes a private investigator to help people who really need it. His past is never revealed, it's only hinted that he did a lot of amoral things.
- Game of Thrones:
- After returning to King's Landing, Jaime is making more of an effort to live up to his vows and duties as a Knight, telling people who consider him a failure and has-been that he still has time left. More specifically, while Catelyn didn't intend for it to be his redemption quest, seeing him as beyond redemption, after losing his hand and growing close with Brienne, Jaime shows a sincere desire to want to return Catelyn's daughters back to her. After Catelyn's death, he sends Brienne to keep them protected from Cersei and anyone who might hurt them.
- To some extent, Jorah's loyalty and commitment to Daenerys is driven by his need to atone for souring his honor in Westeros and initially spying on Daenerys.Jorah: Better men than me have learned that what a man sells for gold, he can never buy back. He must earn it, by fire and blood.
- Little House on the Prairie: What happens with the Olesons' two natural children – Nellie and Willie – in the later years of the series.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: Sauron tells Galadriel that after Morgoth's defeat, he went on a quest to heal Middle-earth in order to earn the forgiveness of the Valar. This being Sauron, his way of healing and reconstructing what he helped destroy, was by making experiments on Orcs that would put to shame any Evilutionary Biologist.
- Lost's Michael has a redemption arc in season 4 after killing Ana and Libby in season 2. He manages to save Desmond, Aaron, Sun, and
maybeJin before dying in the season finale. - Basically the premise of My Name Is Earl: Earl did bad things, has a list of them, and is trying to make up for them.
- This sums up the character arc of (former) Commander Michael Burnham in season 1 of Star Trek: Discovery. In the first episode, she commits mutiny against her captain in a desperate attempt to head off a war with the Klingons; despite her efforts, the war starts, her captain is killed and her ship wrecked in the ensuing battle, and she is court-martialed and imprisoned. Six months later, Captain Gabriel Lorca arranges for her to end up on his ship, USS Discovery, and enlists her to help bring an end to the war. Through a long and convoluted series of events (which include her exposing Lorca as an imposter from the Mirror Universe), she succeeds in stopping the war before Earth is attacked, for which she is pardoned and reinstated.
- In the first season of Stranger Things, Chief Hopper's increasingly determined obsession to find and rescue the missing Will Byers, even if he has to beat up state troopers, break into secret government facilities, grapple with a sinister Government Conspiracy and enter a toxic upside-down alternate dimension filled with ruins, poisonous spores and bloodthirsty plant-demon-things in order to do so is all but outright stated to be an attempt at seeking closure and redemption over his inability to stop his young daughter from dying of a terminal illness, and his falling over the Despair Event Horizon as a result.
- Sam Winchester from Supernatural. After breaking the final seal which unleashed the apocalypse on Earth, Sam spends all of Season 5 by trying to fix the mess he created. Season 5 is often viewed as Sam's redemption by many viewers.
- The 31st U.S. season of Survivor, was branded ''Second Chances" and cast with 20 former players that did not win in their one previous appearance, but did place highest in a fan vote for who deserved to return. Seasons 25 and 45 included as their only returning players, those who had a previous appearance cut short due to medical evacuations ordered by the show's medical team.
- Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries. After becoming a blood-addicted Ripper who was controlled by Klaus for the first half of the third season, Stefan spends the other half of the third season trying to gain his free will back and turn on his humanity again. He tries to redeem himself for all of the immoral acts he committed during his Ripper phase by joining the fight in destroying Klaus.
