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Lermis
Since: Nov, 2018
18th Apr, 2019 11:23:58 PM
You Can't Thwart Stage One and Near-Villain Victory.
Edited by Lermis Space Battles Dot Com fanworks (unnoficial) index in my Sandbox.
This is all over the place, usually in horror or action stories related to the supernatural. Basically, there's an old evil, and people have figured out a way to contain it or keep it at bay, often with a ritual that needs to be repeated. Of course, the hero ends up unleashing it by failing to repeat the ritual in time or something else goes wrong and the hero has to face the evil. At the end, though, the evil is permanently defeated, and the people are no longer threatened or burdened, while sealing it only kept the issue from becoming dangerous.
Examples include the witches in Hocus Pocus being killed for good after they've been awakened for the first time in centuries, Calamity Ganon in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, who is defeated after a sealing plan failed, the witch in ParaNorman finding peace at the end after her calming ritual fails and brings her back enraged, and in Coraline, where children have been kept away from the Other World by the landlady, but when Coraline slips through, she ends up eliminating the threat at the end.