Okay, so let’s talk about the cartoon tv show 3 below for a bit and how the writing in season 2 kind of really suffers, particularly with this character….
Tronos madu, and why I’m so salty over his character death. The backstory behind this character is that he is a bounty hunter from a war torn planet voltar and the reason he is after the royal children is to get revenge for the akiridions turning their backs on his alien race when they needed their help the most during the war, inturn it ended with the almost complete genocide of his alien race and almost entire destruction of his planet. So yeah, that a pretty good justified reason to want the royal family dead. His role in the show is at first he hunts down and attacks the royal children, but then ends up getting captured colonel kubritz and while he was being held captive at site area 49-B he makes a deal with kubritz to capture the royal children so he can have their cores and she gets their technology, but the deal goes bust after tronos tries to kill the royal children before kubritz can exploit them for the techology and kubritz ends up incapacitating tronos and locks him up in area 49-B again and tortures him. Then later an asteroid is about impact and destroy earth, the akiridions agree to work with colonel kubritz to destroy the asteroid before it hits earth, Krel builds a big laser gun to destroy the asteroid, but lacks a massive power source to power it and the only one who as a massive enough power source is tronos with his endless electrical lightning powers. Of course, tronos is like, why should I care? But after Aja talks to him that she found out what her parents did to his planet and agrees that was a real shitty thing for them to do. That she understands where he is coming from and willing to do better than her parents. This convinces Tronos to help them and they destroy the asteroid, but soon after kubritz betrays them and tries to capture the royal children and tronos again. Of course, krel saw this coming and planted a bomb on the giant laser gun. They use the explosion of the laser gun as a distraction to escape from the base. Tronos tries to escape, but at the last minute decides to help the akiridions escape and get revenge on kubritz, but he ends up getting captured AGAIN. And the akiridions make no effort to try to rescue him. They just end up leaving him behind. Like, seriously what the fuck? Real great way to just throw him under the bus. It’s like “ok, thanks for your help, but your still evil so will leave you with crazy military lady to torture you.” And furthermore, what was that speech aja said about being the better person when she just ends up abandoning tronos? Like okay aja, you want to a better person, but you still kind of a piece of shit.
Then in the next episode, general Morando comes to area 49-B, confronts tronos is his captive cell and then just straight up kills him. And I’m just like WHY? Why build up this awesome villain character with a start of a redemption story arch only to kill him off in the few episodes we see him? And that’s not the worse part of it, later in the episode Aja gets stuck in area 49-B again and doesn’t even acknowledge or mention him at all. Yeah, real great way to forget about someone who just helped save the world and all that stuff you said about being the better person and you still turn out to be a shitty person. His death felt pointless. At least with the first villain alpha his character death made sense and fit well into the narrative of the story, he was a bounty hunter that no remorse in killing varvatos vax’s family and varvatos wanted to kill him to avenge his family, so alpha had it coming to him. But with tronos his death just seemed like a cop-out because the writers couldn’t figure out anything more to do with this character and make him fit into the story more, but really matter of fact there was a lot they could of done with him. Why not continue his redemption story arch to show he still has some speck of goodness in him? Maybe have him not wanting to kill the royal family anymore and join sides with the akiridions briefly to get revenge of kubritz? Or have the akiridions actually help rescue him from kubritz and they just part ways after that? Or maybe have him get injured while trying to escape from kubritz and goes to the akiridions for help? There were so many opportunities they could have done more with this character, but they choose not to.
I really like antagonist redemption stories, it shows a lot of character growth that the person is willing to overcome their past traumatic experiences and not let their past define them and work towards being a better version of themselves. I would have liked to see that struggle with tronos, was he willing to overcome the trauma of the destruction of his planet and let go of his grudge against the akiridions? Or was him working together with the royal children just a fluke and still wanted his revenge more than anything? Well, we never got any of that, so we will never know.
And yeah, I did notice the similarities between tronos and angor wat from trollhunters, they both seemed like all around villain characters at first, only to later reveal that they had good justified reasons to do what they did even if it isn’t really morally right. Angor wat just wanted to save his people from war and get his soul back that he was tricked into sacrificing by morgana. Tronos just wanted to avenge his alien race for being left to die by the akiridions. And both characters never see full redemption because they get killed off beforehand. But also with the case of Strickler from Trollhunters, it proves that secondary villain characters can have a good redemption story arch while fitting well into the rest of the story. So why couldn’t tronos have the same thing?
Oh, and all the stuff about the royal family abandoning the voltarians during the war when they needed help the most is never brought up again throughout the rest of the series, which is a shame because it puts into question the morals of the royal family and the reasons why they did what they did and whether the royal family is really purely good. So yeah, really didn’t like how this show handled tronos, his story was cut short too quickly just for the sake to quickly wrap up the rest of the story to the series final.
