Times where an antagonist rejects an offered opportunity to redeem themselves in Live-Action TV series.
- 24:
- Two quarters through Day 4, a traitorous fighter pilot named Mitch Anderson has stolen a jet and has set his sights on Air Force One. Jack Bauer manages to get in contact with him and tells him that he can still walk away from everything. Anderson seems to consider what Jack says for a moment, but ultimately shuts down his comm link and blows Air Force One out of the sky.
- In the Day 7 finale as the now-rogue Tony Almeida prepares for his endgame that'll take out the man behind his wife's murder, a dying Jack attempts to appeal to whatever good is left in Tony by reasoning with him to drop his crusade. Tony responds by gagging Jack's mouth shut and arming a bomb on him that will be used to kill the man.
- Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Grant Ward, former member of the team who turned out to be a HYDRA mole, does this twice. First, during the late first season when given the chance to let Fitz and Simmons escape (instead choosing to drop them into the ocean to drown, which he'd later retroactively claim was actually trying to 'give them a chance' to escape). And second, late in the second season when offered another chance when circumstance forces Coulson to ask him for help, only for him to use this as an opportunity to manipulate SHIELD so him and his brainwashed lover Kara Palamas can kidnap Bobbi Morse (who they decided was at-fault for Kara's brainwashing and were using as a scapegoat for revenge). In-between these, he does make what he thinks is a genuine attempt at redemption, by turning over information about HYDRA, but the team recognise that, given he's clearly a sociopath, he doesn't really regret any of the things he's done and is only now attempting redemption because his other choice is life in prison, and even his love for Skye is just a deluded obsession on his part, so they wisely reject it.
- Angel: After Angel ruins Jasmine's plan to create world peace at the expense of free will (and eating people), he finds her wandering distraught through LA. She chews him out, asking if her price for ending war, disease and poverty was really too high. He insists that it was, but suggests that she can still try and make the world a better place the old-fashioned way, even if she's lost her powers.Jasmine: Not all of them. [punches him off a bridge]
- Babylon 5 has Londo Mollari, who is told he'll have three opportunities to choose redemption, or suffer the consequences. In a possible subversion, these moments are never directly revealed, and it's arguable whether he's saved his people or condemned them.
- In season 4 of Battlestar Galactica (2003), the Cylon John's mother says he isn't a mistake and offers him redemption if he could just accept himself for the boy she made. He considers it for a moment before he angrily rejects her love and prepares to pick apart her brain to extract the information he wants.
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Faith expects this trope to be played out in "Choices", but Willow surprises her.Faith: Give me the speech again, please. Faith, we're still your friends. We can help you. It's not too late.
Willow: It's way too late. You know, it didn't have to be this way. But you made your choice. I know you had a tough life. I know that some people think you had a lot of bad breaks. Well, boo hoo! Poor you. You know, you had a lot more in your life than some people. I mean, you had friends in your life like Buffy. Now you have no one. You were a Slayer and now you're nothing. You're just a big selfish, worthless waste. - Though the drivers on Canada's Worst Driver and related shows aren't actually villains, there have been two contestants who fit the basic premise of this trope: Colin from Season Two and Scott from Season Six made a big joke of everything and refused to learn. Colin became the first to be expelled from any Driver Rehabilitation Center in the world, while Scott became the first (at least on the Canadian show) to be effectively expelled by his own nominator (who cancelled Scott's insurance, meaning Scott was no longer a valid driver).
- Doctor Who: In "Evolution of the Daleks", the Doctor and the now-Half-Human Hybrid Dalek Sec try to redeem the Daleks by creating a new, non-evil race of Daleks, which would have ended their genocidal war with the rest of the universe. The other Daleks reject this idea, violently.
- Barney from How I Met Your Mother uses this trope quite often. Practically Once a Season there's an episode that focuses on how shallow, selfish, and cruel his life as The Casanova is. By episode's end it looks like he's about to learn an important lesson and be more considerate of women from now on ... and then, without fail, Barney will explain that, no, seducing an endless stream of anonymous bimbos really is all he wants out of life.Lily: So you made a life-changing decision not to change your life at all?
Barney: True story. - Jessie: Emma tells Bryn they can still be friends if she could just start being nice to people. However, Bryn refuses and throws cheesy nachos at Rosie before escaping.
- Mr. Eko from Lost had a tragic backstory about being kidnapped and made into a child soldier, becoming a criminal, and feeling responsible for causing the death of his brother, Yemi. His main Story Arc on the Island was trying to talk to Yemi's ghost. As it so happens, Yemi was a Catholic priest, so their eventual meeting takes the form of a confession. Eko must be ready to ask for forgiveness, right? Of course, as it turns out, "Yemi" is actually the Smoke Monster/Man In Black in disguise, and he promptly kills Eko after this. So any future chance of redemption is lost right then and there.Mr. Eko: I ask for no forgiveness, Father, for I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive. A small boy once asked me if I was a bad man. If I could answer him now, I would tell him that, when I was a young boy, I killed a man to save my brother's life. I am not sorry for this. I am proud of this. I did not ask for the life that I was given, but it was given nonetheless. And with it, I did my best.
- Once Upon a Time:
- Rumpelstiltskin is almost de-powered by Belle's True Love's Kiss... but of course, he has a bit of a freak-out and rejects it. Quite possibly regrets that pretty hard. The same thing happened when he gave up a chance to travel to another world with his son, for the exact same reason.
- In the flashback sequence of "The Cricket Game", Snow lets Regina out of prison and offers the chance to leave all her evil deeds behind and start fresh, and Regina takes the opportunity to attempt once again to kill Snow. She even lampshades the concept, pointing out it's never that easy. No one ever just gives up that much hatred. This is contrasted against the present scenes in Storybrooke, where Regina really does want redemption, but understandably Snow and Charming are unwilling to give her another chance.
- Both Rumpelstiltskin and Regina do ultimately find redemption by Season 3. Regina sticks with it. Rumple...not so much.
- A recurring theme in Oz. Frequently, a prisoner will waste an opportunity at redemption because they simply don't care about doing so. Perhaps the most stark example is the prisoner "Poet", who manages to get a book contract on the basis of his poetry and is granted early parole (a rarity in the series; many of the convicts are hardened criminals and murderers with life sentences). He immediately uses his new income to buy drugs and is sent back to Oz after he shoots his drug dealer at a book signing event.Hill: To be saved, you have to want to be saved.
- Power Rangers Wild Force: In an attempt to end the conflict peacefully, Princess Shayla tells Master Org that it isn't too late to change, since Cole forgives him for killing his parents. Master Org doesn't care about this and goes on with his plans to destroy the Rangers.
- The Walking Dead (2010) has one for The Governor in episode 8 of season 4.
- Xena: Warrior Princess: Xena had a number of chances to redeem herself before her actual Heel–Face Turn, but she rejected them. Her most notable was in the land of Chin when she rejected two chances from Lao Ma in one day. The first time was when she let her rage over Borias' betrayal consume her desire for redemption with the leader. Later that day, when she had the chance to make peace with the leader, she instead kills him and offers Lao Ma the chance to rule together. Lao Ma relunctantly beats the crap of her and has her unconscious body dragged out the kingdom.
