Some heroes lead armies. Some
heroes find families. And some heroes… just wanna be left alone.
The loner archetype is a popular character format, a self-reliant character
who typically works alone, travels alone, and prefers to be alone under most circumstances.
That said, surprisingly, loners aren’t usually really alone. Many loners have allies, friends,
families occasionally join teams, and a surprising number of them adopt kids. Well, how can they be a
loner if they're not actually alone? Well, "loner" isn't technically synonymous with "alone person".
A loner is officially defined as someone who either avoids or does not seek out other people.
So whatever the reason, they don't go looking for friends or allies - but it's not really their
BUSINESS if friends and allies find them anyway. But this feels like kind of a cop-out, right?
What kind of a lame loner-in-name-only isn’t actually alone? Why do we have to jump through
these technical hoops to explain why the loner isn’t working alone? Well, it’s because most
stories thrive on character interactions. If your character is a loner with company, they can still
have all kinds of interesting dynamics with other, more sociable characters. But if
your character is actually alone, then the story has to rely on their individual
character being compelling enough to carry the narrative. So even if you have a loner character
who’d prefer to be alone and would theoretically work very well alone, most stories don't let
them stay alone because narratively that’s much less interesting than an ensemble cast.
This can make it kinda hard to convince the audience that this character is actually a
loner. Doesn’t matter how many times your gruff badass says “I work alone” if their actions don’t
reflect that sentiment. But in some ways, “loner” is more of a personality trait than a matter
of circumstance - many alone characters aren’t loners and don’t work very well by themselves, and
many characters in groups can still come across as loners if they don’t feel particularly reliant
on that group. There’s all kinds of reasons a loner can end up in company. Many loners are
initially helped or rescued by other characters who then stick around to make sure they don't hurt
themselves, most loners are too dang heroic to leave a child unattended, and a lot of loners
pick up tagalong protagonists who just like being around them. It's not about being alone
- it's about feeling alone. Which is probably the most depressing way I could've phrased that.
Anyway! Loners come in a lot of different flavors, but there's a few major subcategories
that strongly define what kind of story the loner fits in.
First off is the lone wanderer, a loner who wanders the world. Without a home or
base of operations, they drift from one setpiece to the next, following their own internal logic or
creed and occasionally meddling when their sense of justice demands it. This archetype was codified
in Akira Kurosawa's films Yojimbo and Sanjuro, starring Toshiro Mifune as a nameless wandering
ronin who keeps accidentally stumbling into gang wars and political intrigue and saving the
day before wandering off into the sunset. This character and story format was later adopted
into the spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, where Clint Eastwood played a nameless wandering
gunslinger who keeps accidentally stumbling into gang wars and the lawless wild west and saving
the day before riding off into the sunset. The popularity of this nameless wandering hero
archetype was pretty much inevitable thanks to the combined charisma of these two characters, and
nowadays it's a fairly common narrative staple. These characters are often explicitly nameless
or are strongly implied to be working under a pseudonym, and have a habit of vanishing out of
the story once their work is done - and while they typically find friends or allies wherever they go,
they generally travel alone, and don't pick up any long-term traveling companions - though there
are some pretty major exceptions. This loner archetype works very well for episodic narratives
and anthology series, where the loner is usually the one unifying theme between individual
installments, because they can just kind of wander into any story or setting you want them to
- gang war, murder mystery, political shenanigans, full-episode shakespeare homage, etcetera.
Similar to the lone wanderer but not to be confused with them is the lone traveler, a loner
who also walks the world, but has a very specific purpose in doing so. They might be a bounty
hunter or mercenary looking for money, they might be a vigilante hunting down someone who's
wronged them, they might just be questing after some personal macguffin. Where lone wanderers
drift in and out of other people's stories, the lone traveler is more goal-oriented and
it's easier for the audience to follow their personal story more closely. And since these
characters have more structured personal arcs, it's a lot easier for the narrative to give them
supporting characters. It's not uncommon for them to have a mentor, and some of them even get
traveling companions - usually ones they need to go out of their way to protect, like kids, squishy
love interests or non-combat support classes. Lone travelers have a coherent linear narrative they’re
following, and while they might stumble into fun setpieces in the same way the lone wanderer
would, they generally maintain the continuity of their personal character arc in the process.
Similar to this character but slightly inverted is the loner who works alone. This is an important
distinction, because they might have a team, a family, a very active social life, a home base
and/or a strong and stable support structure, but when stuff gets serious and they need to get
stuff done, this character works alone. There's some pretty serious overlap between this archetype
and the lancer character - a member of a team who strikes out on their own a little more than they
maybe should. These guys frequently do teamups, but those teamups are the exception, not the
rule. Maybe they find teamwork restrictive, or they think their allies don't have
the stomach to do what needs to be done, or they just find people distracting and work best
when they don't have to deal with that. Or they've got a personal arc happening on the side, and
whenever that pops up they peel off from the group to handle it alone. Some of these characters were
also alone for a very long time usually due to some kind of traumatic event or ostracization, and
during that period they developed a very isolated, self-reliant worldview - and while they might
have friends and allies now, they can't shake the fundamental idea that, in the end, they can
only rely on themselves. Sometimes they eventually get their asses kicked enough that they decide
teamwork is actually pretty cool, though. When these characters are lancers, their hero foil is
usually all about friendship and teamwork, and the loner lancer typically scoffs a bit but ultimately
appreciates their optimistic perspective. But a lot of the time these characters don’t need fixing
or anything - their loner status is totally fine and healthy and they work very well on their own.
But sometimes it seems like the loner is almost in denial about how not-alone they actually
are at this point. This produces the archetype acting alone, a loner with a team, a support
network, a found family, friends, loved ones, and all the help in the world, who still thinks
of themself as a Cool Badass Solo Loner. These guys tend to be kind of insecure in their loner
status - unlike the previous archetypes, they're not loners because they prefer it that way or
they do their best work like that - it's because they DEFINE themselves that way, often as a direct
response to some kind of isolating event that made them alone in the first place. A loner who works
alone sometimes has a similar isolating event in their backstory, but usually became really badass
to compensate, and now functions very well on their own. But for some loners, it's not a matter
of skill - it's an ego thing. They internalized that they couldn't trust anybody, so they forged
an identity around the idea that they wouldn't trust anybody. And, since it's an ego thing, if
they realize they ARE relying on people, it hurts their pride. Acting Aloners sometimes lash out at
the people they're closest to when they realize the vulnerability inherent in their relationship,
or otherwise spiral into self-destructive behavior to preserve their self-image. Of course,
it's not always that dire - sometimes it just seems like the Acting Aloner doesn't really
notice the disconnect between reality and their self-image as a Cool Loner Who Doesn't Need
Anyone. Sometimes these characters will have a highly dramatic crisis of pride and run off
to be Cool And Alone again until they get over themselves. Once again, very common with Lancers.
And similarly dramatic is the archetype of the self-loathing loner, a loner whose isolation
stems from their overwhelmingly terrible personal problems. Maybe they think they're too dangerous
to be around, unworthy of having friends, have to isolate themselves so they can rise to
the top no matter what, or any number of other reasons. The bottom line is, these characters
think they have to be alone, but don't actually want to be alone. For these loners, acquiring
friends and a supporting cast is a much more emotionally loaded affair than average. The
self-loathing loner might keep the reason for their isolation a secret, or they might be pretty
upfront about it - but either way, they generally don't stay alone forever. Tenacious extroverted
protagonists will attach themselves to them and eventually earn their trust and friendship, and
the self-loathing loner will become significantly more emotionally healthy and usually evolve into
one of the other loner archetypes over time. Other unwilling loners include the loner on the
run, a loner whose isolation stems from the fact that the system is out to get them. They might be
a vigilante, an outlaw, framed for a crime they didn't commit, a typical YA protagonist - whatever
the reason, the system they live in is trying to screw them over, and they need to run, hide, and
generally avoid dealing with it wherever they can. Sometimes overlaps with the lone wanderer.
Interestingly, sometimes these guys will actually form groups and basically go on the run together -
a case where the group functions as a self-reliant loner despite being composed of multiple people.
Now, each loner archetype lends itself well to different kinds of stories. Lone wanderers
and travelers lend themselves best to episodic narratives, especially anthology series where
the loner can basically serve as a POV character through which we experience new settings and
characters every adventure. Lone travelers and loners on the run lend themselves very well to
long-form plots where the character is pursuing an external objective. The journey might
take them through a series of new locations, but they’re pretty goal-oriented and don’t
usually lose sight of the main objective. And self-loathing loners, working aloners and
acting aloners lend themselves well to character arcs where we get to explore the nature of
this loner and how they develop over time. Unsurprisingly, Loners are very appealing targets
for a very specific space of character arcs mostly centered on the concept of found family. Lots of
characters become True Companions after, like, one good bonding experience, but loners are
a little more prickly and tend to be harder to bond with. This means when they do start
bonding, it’s a lot more rewarding because, at least theoretically, that dynamic is earned.
Because of this, while loners factor into a lot of different stories, most loner-centric narratives
involve the loner bonding with at least one other character. And who that character is defines
a lot of what you can expect from the plot. The absolute most common variant is the kid.
This variant probably owes the majority of its popularity to the overwhelming success of the 70s
manga Lone Wolf And Cub, which was a story about a wandering assassin trying to avenge his murdered
wife, that’s the Lone Wolf part - but he was also traveling around with his baby son, that’s the
Cub bit. Started off pretty episodic, eventually transitioned into a more linear storyline focusing
on the whole vengeance thing. The story mostly centers on the strange dynamic between father and
son and how they’re walking the “road to hell” together, giving up their humanity to pursue
vengeance. In fact, the assassin is frequently called out for exposing his toddler to all this
horrifying vengeance and stuff, and while’s a lot of Samurai Honor going on, those characters
do make a good point that this is a pretty rough thing to do to a kid. But the stories this
format inspired don’t tend to focus on that part. Instead, the gruff adult loner usually adopts the
kid in question or otherwise actively chooses to take care of them - though sometimes they don’t
really have a choice in the matter - and instead of this being framed as a Supremely Uncool
Thing To Do To A Kid, this is used to soften the loner character as we see someone who’s
probably been single-mindedly pursuing some loner-y goal sacrifice a lot of those priorities
to take care of someone who, for the most part, can’t take care of themselves. Usually this story
format also lets us see the kid gradually grow up, become more self-reliant, and start taking care
of the loner in their own way. The Kid helps us sympathize with The Loner because it shows us how
this tough badass deals with someone powerless. There’s a form of character development called
“What You Are In The Dark” where a character is given the opportunity to do something morally
dubious or questionable in a context where nobody will know or hold it against them - aka In The
Dark. What the character chooses to do in this situation reveals who they really are underneath
any pretenses or social expectations. Usually, in this context, heroes reveal themselves to be…
well, fundamentally heroic. They do the selfless good thing, because even if no-one else would
know, they would know. When a gruff badass loner runs into a kid who needs help and opts to help
them, that’s a minor version of What You Are In The Dark, showing us that this character might
outwardly project an image of being totally in it for themselves, but in the dark they’re
actually a good person and will go out of their way to help the helpless. The Mandalorian
is pretty tropey, so unsurprisingly it plays this very straight - our loner protagonist is very
practically-minded and ruthlessly efficient, and could’ve turned baby yoda in for the bounty and
nobody would’ve held it against him, but instead he goes back for him and ends up on the run from
basically everybody trying to keep the kid safe. The easiest way to add depth to a gruff, quiet
loner badass is to chuck a kid at them and watch the parenting take over. In fact, this “what
you are in the dark” thing is kind of a major component of loner character development - I’ll
talk about this more later. This is also usually how they play the dynamic between Wolverine
and his clone/daughter X-23, though she’s a little more self-sufficient than the average
tagalong kid on account of being 97.8% Wolverine. On the other end of the
tagalong-morality-character spectrum is - perhaps unsurprisingly - the
mentor. Plenty of loners have a parent, teacher or guardian rattling around somewhere who serves a
guiding role in the loner’s journey - helping them out with their problems, giving them the next
plot point to deal with, etc. Unlike The Kid, The Mentor is more likely to dip in and out of the
story than be a regular companion. This is pretty common in episodic narratives where they maybe
don’t wanna keep the supporting cast too static. The loner mentor is usually used to provide
insight into the loner’s backstory, which is otherwise usually not very relevant to the story
- especially for Lone Wanderers and Lone Travelers who drift in and out of other people’s stories and
tend to work best if their own past is a bit of a black box. A Loner’s Mentor usually knew the loner
before they became the character we recognize, and thus will give us some insight into who this
character used to be before they settled into who they are now. You can also get mentors who didn’t
know the loner before the story started - those guys fill more generic mentor-y roles.
One of the most common companions for a loner character is… another loner. This just makes sense
- there’s only so many places to be alone in, and eventually the odds are good that you’ll
run into somebody else trying to be alone in the same place. These loners might initially
have a bit of a scuffle, but they’ll usually end up getting along all right, and will either start
actively traveling together or will just run into each other whenever the plot needs a little more
character spice. Sometimes groups of loners end up sticking together, all pretending like they’re
totally cool badass loners who don’t need nobody, none of them apparently noticing the irony.
This other loner also frequently has a totally different personal agenda that occasionally
overlaps with or clashes with the protagonist’s. They might also be a little more antagonistic,
like a bounty hunter or mercenary or something, so while they generally get along with the
loner hero, they still have reasons to clash. There’s also the catch-all category of The
Tagalong, which encompasses all the various miscellaneous characters who see a loner doing
their loner thing and decides to join the party, usually with almost no input from the loner. These
characters normally exist to fill the important role of character foil. Whatever core traits
the Loner has, the Tagalong will highlight by having the opposite trait. The silent, brooding
loner will have a chipper, talkative tagalong; the well-traveled, experienced loner will have a
naïve, inexperienced tagalong; the chill paragon loner will have a more worldly tagalong; etc.
Tagalongs, like all character foils, work best when they play off the hero in an interesting
way, usually by contrasting with them. Of course, it can be a bit tricky to explain why exactly
this loner is willing to humor the tagalong and keep them around - explanations vary a lot. Doctor
Who gives us a different set of explanations with every doctor for why they travel with companions
- usually it’s cuz they’re lonely, although in the case of the Eleventh it’s specifically so they can
re-experience the wonders of the universe all over again by showing them to someone who’s never seen
it, which is pretty creative. In other cases, it’s more like the tagalong is the extrovert who
spotted the loner introvert and decided to adopt them, and the loner isn’t about to turn down an
active social life when it falls out of the sky in front of them. And in some cases, the Loner
and the Tagalong get along because at least one of them is in love with the other, although if
you ask the fans, that’s what happens every time. Now the final supporting character in
the Loner’s arc is the Innocent. Not a companion or a tagalong, this character or set
of characters is a living inciting incident. Something terrible has happened, is happening,
or is going to happen to The Innocent, and the Loner - who was probably Just Passing Through on
their way to somewhere else - is drawn to assist these poor unfortunate souls because they’re just
so dang undeserving of this plot shenaniganery. The Innocent will sometimes join the loner
after their intro story and become a tagalong, but more commonly The Innocent is just a member of
the one-shot cast for an episode of an anthology series, and we’re unlikely to see them again.
This character, like The Kid, shows us who the loner is in The Dark - the loner has the option
to move on and ignore them, and then instead they go out of their way to help them, because The
Innocent is just so gosh-darn innocent. However, The Innocent isn’t always lovable or even
particularly likable - sometimes loners will end up dealing with a cast of innocent bystanders
who somehow manage to be thoroughly unlikable, possibly due to willful ignorance, ineptitude,
an unwillingness to actually do anything about the antagonistic threat for themselves, or
otherwise just coming across as generally unpleasant. This is actually more effective
for the “What You Are In The Dark” factor, since not only is the loner doing something good
by helping these innocent bystanders, they’re doing something good even though the people
they’re helping kinda suck. That’s impressive. Even loners with active support structures
will usually spend a decent amount of time alone - wandering off to do solo adventures,
training montages, just getting in some Me Time, etcetera. And when the character’s alone, they get
that “what you are in the dark” factor, since they aren’t being seen or judged by their friends and
allies. In many ways, a Loner protagonist shows their true, fundamental self to the audience more
often than almost any other character archetype. Unfortunately, this leads to Writing Pitfall
Number One - the loner’s true self needs to be actually interesting and compelling. A character
doesn’t need to be sociable to be interesting to watch - a loner dealing with an ensemble
cast can be fun just because their dynamics are interesting, or the loner is working as a foil
for the other, less loner-y protagonists. But when the loner is on their own, the audience needs
to be invested in them individually. And it’s harder to sell an audience on a single character.
This is why a lot of loners are almost nonentities or black boxes, especially the Lone Wanderer
archetype, who frequently doesn’t even have a name. Instead of trying to sell us on them
as a person, these stories mostly focus on how they engage with new situations and problems. Now,
this does let us get a feel for their personality over time, but on some level it’s still kind of
impersonal. We know how they react to situations, but that doesn’t automatically tell us who they
are. And we don’t start off invested in them or their struggle, because without other characters
to play off of, we don’t really know them. Now, this can be a feature, not a bug.
Like the thing with the Lone Wanderer, sometimes the mystery inherent in the loner is
an actual selling point of the narrative. But if the audience is supposed to be invested in
the loner from minute one, the story needs to do some work to get us attached. For instance,
Samurai Jack is an episodic series where every episode has a different setting and story, but
the pilot gets us invested in the main character by showing us his entire origin, from childhood
to adulthood, explaining why and how he’s in the situation he’s in, and establishing his goal for
the series. Then, in case we missed the pilot, every episode begins with a handy narration
and jingle establishing the premise of the series all over again - it doesn’t get
us as invested in Jack as the pilot did, but it lays out the basic context and tells
us who our protagonist is and what he wants. But if you’re trying to actually sell us on the
loner’s character, the story needs to actually let us see what that character is - and that
usually means we need to see them interacting with other characters. And here’s where we hit pitfall
number two - maintaining that loner mystique while throwing a bunch of characters at them. While
we’ve already established that loners don’t need to be alone to still qualify as loners, if they’re
too sociable they risk losing that loner vibe. In fact, if they lose the loner vibe without
losing the associated antisocial tendencies, they can stop feeling like a loner and just start
feeling like a jerk. If the loner spends all their time around other people and also complains
nonstop about having to be around those people, we don’t think they’re a cool loner who’s only
in company coincidentally, we think they’re an asshole who’s bringin’ down the mood. A loner who
picks up a friend group or a support structure but acts totally uncool or unappreciative
of them comes across as a bad friend, and the audience can end up wishing they’d just
leave and be alone like they say they want. Now again, this can be a feature, not a bug,
as long as it’s actually addressed in-story. A loner who picks up a social circle is liable to
undergo at least a little character development, mostly focused on learning to get along with and
appreciate their new posse, even if they’re still a loner at heart. Again, this is very popular with
lancers. So a loner who joins a group might end up needing to actually confront how much they’ve
changed, if they’re still trying to go it 100% alone when that’s just not how it works for them
anymore. Loners-in-groups might still peel off for solo adventures or alone time, but they generally
need to accept that they’re in the group now, not just coincidentally in the same room most of
the time. Loners are a lot like cats, honestly. “No, it’s not like I like you or anything, I’m
just gonna make sure I’m always within 20 feet of you.” And, just like cats, if loners get too
aggressive in the “I wanna be alone” direction, they can end up driving off those new friends
and then regretting it. It’s a hard balance to strike. You wanna show off the loner’s character,
so you wanna give them plenty of characters to play off of, but you don’t wanna make them so
social that you can’t justify calling them a loner anymore. Plenty of loners strike this
balance by having loose ensemble casts of supporting characters to play off of without
getting pinned down in any one friend group, but if you give a loner an actual team, you
gotta figure out how to keep them sufficiently loner-y in that context without making them such
a cranky downer that the audience questions why the rest of the team even puts up with them.
That’s always something to keep in mind when writing a character like this. If you’re
writing a story with one protagonist, it’s easy to start thinking of them like the
center of the universe - but they’re not. They’re just one person in a much larger story. So it’s
always important to consider how the supporting characters would actually see this loner based on
their actions and personality, because otherwise, the loner risks drifting into Mary Sue territory.
If basically every secondary character seems to see the loner the same way the writer apparently
does - like, for instance, as a Loose Cannon Who Don’t Play By No Rules But Gets The Job Done
Anyway, or an Improbably Sexy Middle-Aged Man Who No Female Deuteragonist Can Resist, or Just
The Coolest You Guys He’s So Amazing - you get the feeling that this character isn’t really being
developed, they’re just being fawned over. And if a loner is frankly acting like a jerk to
their perfectly inoffensive supporting cast, we expect at least some characters to notice and
potentially call them out. And if they don’t, we might suspect the writer is giving their favorite
character special permission to run roughshod over the rest of the cast, like a gym coach playing
favorites with the football team. The more varied the secondary characters are and the more
diverse their reactions to the loner, the more perspectives we’ll have on our loner protagonist,
and the more perspectives we have, the more deeply we’ll understand them. And since a story with
a Loner Protagonist is in large part carried by the strength of that character alone, you want
your audience to understand them on a very deep level. Let them play off a variety of people,
places and things in a variety of different ways, and we’ll get to know them very nicely.
So… yeah!
Anyone else want to turn the phrase "pulling a Vegeta" into a thing?
Also video games are the perfect fix for completely loner stories since the player can have many different interactions with the world around them even when there’s no npc entity in the entire game
I like the idea of having characters react differently to the loner. Like the chick/heart of the team may be sympathetic towards the loner maybe even be in love with them while the smart guy simply thinks they’re an asshole that doesn’t deserve to be apart of the team
I think Red nailed why I hate the trope so much, because when I see a character who's just standoffish and hostile even when people are kind to them, I don't think "Wow, I want to learn more about them!" I just get annoyed at their douchebaggery and want them to go away.
You get some characters, like Wolverine, who are kind of loners? But they're still capable of kindness and genuine friendship, and extending respect to other people. So they're really just more grumpy than anything else.
But as she said, if a character just acts like an ass and is consistently rude to everyone, why should I care about them or their story?
The show with what looked like a feral middle schooler looks interesting, anyone knows its name?
Could not stop thinking about Magneto in the newer x-men movies throughout this entire video.