Five Female Fantasy Characters Who Deserved a More Fitting End

In the real world, there have been many active efforts made in the realm of women’s equality. But can the same be said about the make-believe world that is created with storytelling? Do stories in our modern times truly and authentically represent the modern female?

Surely, there have been some instances where progress is obvious. A prime example of that can be seen in Disney’s Frozen. For decades, we were given fairy tale princess stories that stuck to the same sort of story trope involving a prince or other wealthy male character saving or somehow wooing the princess, and then they lived happily ever after. But then in 2013, Frozen was released, and Elsa was added to the list of Disney princesses. Well, sort of. When making Frozen, the creators decided to focus on a different form of love, that of two sisters. As an article by witchybop explained, the creators felt that the prince-and-princess-falling-in-love trope had been done many times before. Therefore, Elsa broke the usual mold, which technically takes her off the list of Disney’s princesses and puts her on the list of Disney’s fierce and independent queens.​

So it is not to say that films are not progressing when it comes to a better variety of female character portrayals, because they certainly are. However, there have still been several iconic female characters that never lived up to their potential and could have had better development, especially when it came to their ending. 

Here are five that some have argued deserved a better fate.

1. Daenerys Targaryen (Game of Thrones)

First and foremost, we must travel back to May 2019, when most of us spent our Sunday evenings waiting patiently for the final episodes of Game of Thrones to drop. This show had several powerful, realistically developed female characters, and for the majority of the show, one of those characters was the Mother of Dragons.

Daenerys, who some of us fans call Dany, began her journey in season one, where she was portrayed as an exiled princess who was nothing more than the sister of the heir to the fallen House Targaryen. Eventually, her brother sells her to Khal Drogo, and through that, she emerges from the cocoon of her timid persona. From there, it seemed like every season allowed her to take one step up in the ladder to becoming the ultimate ruler of Westeros and beyond. She proved herself to be virtuous, with an initial focus on liberating the people— she was the ‘breaker of chains’ who planned on ‘breaking the wheel,’ as she would claim. 

Until her protagonist arc branches off into something else after season seven, when she finally enters Westeros. She experiences many losses of those close to her, including two of her three dragons, and Westeros isn’t as welcoming as she had hoped, so it is understandable for her to be a bit more emotional. But isn’t it taking it a bit far for her to all of a sudden become a merciless ruler after seasons where the core of her personality was based on justice and salvation?

An even more unbelievable fact is that one of her major breaking points ends up being the fact that Jon Snow rejects her. I mean, he is a handsome guy with a great accent, don’t get me wrong, but it is just hard to believe that a woman as strong as Khaleesi, who can literally walk through fire unfazed, would allow any man to alter the core of her identity. 

The sharpest turn, which made a large portion of viewers fall out of their chairs in shock, was when she decided to burn the entire city of King’s Landing, killing thousands of civilians. There was no clear explanation why, just hints that she had gone mad, as she claimed that it was all to ‘liberate’ Westeros. And then, to top it all off, the main male protagonist of the show, who just happened to be the same male who rejected her, kills her. The all-powerful Khaleesi, who could destroy cities with dragons, dies after letting her defenses down when Jon Snow kisses her. Talk about taking the most respected, powerful character in the show and devaluing her into nothing more than an emotional girl who had a tantrum when a boy didn’t like her. I am certain that most fans of Dany would agree—they did her dirty. 

2. Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones)

While we are on the subject of remarkable GOT women, I can’t help but add Sansa to this list. Unlike Dany, she didn’t exactly start off as a beloved character. In season one, Sansa may have rubbed some the wrong way with her bratty attitude and the fact that her one concern in life was to marry Prince Jeoffery and move to King’s Landing. But her naive personality was quickly altered in the season 1 finale, where her beloved prince called for the execution of her father, which she was forced to watch. Unfortunately, that moment was just the beginning of the torture that Sansa endures throughout the series.

During her stay in King’s Landing, she acquires extensive knowledge about the world’s politics and develops the ability to navigate the political landscape. After that, she ends up in one too many arranged marriages, one with a decent person, Tyrion Lannister, and one that is light years away from that title, Ramsay Bolton. Tyrion assisted in the growth of her character by treating her with respect and compassion, while Ramsay—well, let’s just say he did the opposite. She was unwillingly molded into a woman with a backbone and the need for an emotional suit of armor. 

The series built her up to become an honorable, strong leader, and she even became the Queen of the North—which was awesome. The problem was that her becoming queen was the only thing they really did right for her.

Yes, at the beginning of the article, it was argued that the ‘happily ever after’ romantic arc had been overdone, and it certainly has—but out of all of the princesses that deserved a ‘happily ever after’ with someone who actually loved her, Sansa did. It is one thing for someone like Elsa, who didn’t spend her life dreaming of finding her prince charming, to end up ruling without one. But Sansa isn’t Elsa; Sansa spent her life dreaming of finding that epic love—and after all that she endured, she deserved it.

3. Padmé Amidala (Star Wars Prequels)

The beginning of Padmé’s story takes place in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, where she is elected the Queen of Naboo at the young age of 14. Despite her young age, she is a principled and diplomatic ruler, one who earns the respect of many, including the Jedi. She is someone who was born to rule, literally and figuratively, and this prequel does a great job of focusing on that key part of her character.

The following movie in the franchise continued with Padmé in a leadership role, but this time, instead of Queen, she is a senator. She survives a few assassination attempts, proves that she isn’t the type of girl to sit back from a battle when she fights in the arena battle on Geonosis, and then at the end…abandons her political sense because she is overcome with love. Love for a male that she didn’t actually seem too into for the majority of the film. Even worse, she laughed at the red flags Anakin kept waving above his head. ‘I think people should be made to agree’—that’s hilarious, Anakin.

Unfortunately, it was all downhill for her from there. In the final film of the prequel trilogy, we saw Padmé as a passive, side character who spent most of her time worrying about Anakin. She went from being a player in the game to being nothing more than a concerned wife watching the game on TV at home. And then—to wrap it all up, she dies, not from her political enemies or fighting for her people—not even truly from childbirth—but rather, because Anakin’s actions made her ‘lose the will to live.’ I mean, it could make sense if, perhaps, there was a Jedi mind trick that made her love him so much that he suddenly became the only thing in her entire world that mattered. If not, Padmé had too much to live for to just give up, and she deserved to die in the same way that she lived, with honor and purpose.

4. Wanda Maximoff (Marvel Cinematic Universe)​

Up next, in an equally iconic universe, we have Wanda Maximoff, also known as the Scarlet Witch. Wanda’s character development is quite possibly the most complex in the entire franchise. She is a character that is built, shaped, and reshaped on one thing: grief. As a child, her parents were killed by a Stark Industries missile, leaving her and her twin brother as orphans in their home country of Sokovia. Of course, this caused some initial resistance when it came to fighting on the same side as the Avengers, but she warmed up to them eventually. But where she gained new purpose, she experienced new loss when her twin brother died during the battle to defeat Ultron and save Sokovia. The latter of which was, in fact, not saved, but instead it was sacrificed to stop the impact it would have caused if it had fallen to Earth.

So, already, in the first movie that we see Wanda, we see the grief and loneliness that is caused by the loss of her parents, the country that she called home, and her twin brother. In her subsequent appearance in Captain America: Civil War, she experiences a different set of powerful, yet not entirely positive, emotions. After accidentally killing Wakandan civilians while trying to stop a terrorist at the beginning of the film, Wanda deals with the guilt of being seen by the world in the way that she once viewed Tony—as a threat. In this same film, she finds a pocket of peace when she starts a friendship with Vision. This friendship eventually develops into a deep love, and Vision helps fill the empty space that she was left with after losing her family. 

But we couldn’t let her enjoy this connection for too long—nope—we had to have Thanos come along and force her to kill Vision. Oh, but not just that—we also had to make Thanos reverse time to bring back Vision to kill him again in a slightly more gruesome manner. Needless to say, the grief spiral that leads Wanda to hold a town full of people hostage just so she can pretend she has a happy life with Vision and the children she never got to meet—completely understandable. 

Things only veered off course for Wanda after she released her fake town, henceforth sacrificing her ‘unreal’ children and husband. She was logical and compassionate enough to recognize that what she had done was wrong, and she corrected it. So then why did she start speeding down the villain road right after sacrificing her happiness in an act to do the right thing?  As if becoming evil was an acceptable course of action as long as she found a way to get her family back. Which inevitably leads to her death…well, we think it did. Some fans are still holding onto the hope that she survived. If so, her character still has a chance to explain her obscure shift to the dark side, and maybe then she can be taken off this list.

5. Bonnie Bennett (The Vampire Diaries)

Last, but far from being the least underserved female on the list, is the loyal, witchy best friend of Elena Gilbert in the Vampire Diaries, Bonnie Bennett. Bonnie is a character who is made out to be, right off the bat, the mature moral compass of the show. But why her? That’s a lovely question. In a friend circle consisting of several immortal vampires with several lifetimes of experience and knowledge, and an esteemed professor/vampire hunter, one would think the teenager trying to come to terms with the fact that she is a witch wouldn’t have to be the one to keep everyone alive and morally on track. But yet, she is.

Seasons pass with Bonnie being the savior of pretty much everyone, literally sacrificing her life several different times in order to help her ‘friends.’ But yet, she never actually receives much from them in return. It is as if she is simply their magical solution to their immortal problems instead of the best friend they all claim she is. All the while, Bonnie begins to lose almost everyone who isn’t a part of that friend group. She loses her Grams, the one teaching her to control her magic, and then she watches Silas murder her father while she stands invisible in the crowd, unable to do anything. 

Thankfully, she eventually finds someone who truly loves her, someone who sees the unending selflessness inside of her and plays the guitar to boot. For a short time, she is allowed happiness and a few moments of peace, which were long overdue.

But, alas, the immortal friend group that she had selflessly protected for years couldn’t allow such happiness to exist. One of the ‘friends’ had to go into an emotionless state and quite literally tear out her lover’s heart right in front of her. But it’s fine. She resumes her lonely, protective persona and ends up saving their town from the engulfment of hellfire. 

Bonnie was the hero of the entire show, but it was never acknowledged or celebrated, which could leave one feeling as if she was slighted. Her story ends with her leaving Mystic Falls to travel the world. Hopefully, she found another handsome British man and, more importantly, a better friend group.