Idiot Teens with a Death Wish

Doylistically (out of universe): The mentor who dies passing along his power is a classic SF trope, and Animorphs does a classic job of both playing that trope straight and subverting it. Elfangor becomes the emotional motivation for the team, because now they can't not fight the war — he literally died to give them a chance to save humanity. Given how much the series is baked on the idea of kids having no guidance at all when tasked with saving the world, he cannot stick around to mentor them. He has to die.

It's also not clear that Applegate et al. committed to the idea of morph-healing before #4, because it doesn't come up until then, and the rules of morphing are pretty fuzzy in that first book.

Watsonian (in-universe): Various explanations include:

When the Ellimist re-andalite-ified Elfangor, he never gave his morphing power back (X)

Elfangor has to let Visser Three kill him, or else Visser Three will tear the planet apart looking for him (X)

Elfangor lets Visser Three kill him in order to give the kids a chance to get away (X)

Elfangor is injured with some kind of weapon or radiation poisoning that causes an injury morphing can't heal

Andalites aren't aware that morphing can heal injuries to one's base form (X)

There are a couple of questions about Elfangor that are never directly answered in animorphs. Firstly, after the time matrix shenanigans, why does the Ellimist sit around on his hands and let Elfangor live on Earth long enough to get Loren pregnant, then pull him away before he can meet his kid but be sure to let him know he'll have one? Weird timing. It would make sense if he needed Tobias for some strategic reason in the future (Marco's relationship to his mother becomes very strategically relevant, for example), but aside from possibly helping with Tobias' bond with Ax, this never comes up. If anything, it just puts them in more danger when Elfangor goes looking for him. There's no reason for the Ellimist to go out of his way to make sure that Elfangor has an Earth kid. (It's *possible* that the Ellimist left Elfangor there because he wanted Elfangor to help humans build computers, which he did, but that doesn't explain the incredibly specific timing of the retrieval.)

Second, why the fuck is he carrying an escafil device around on his little ship? That makes ZERO sense. This is a device that you only need to expose someone to once, it has no combat use. And andalites are forbidden from sharing technology, so it's not like they're taking these things to other planets to grant other species morphing powers in the field. The only thing that taking this cube to Earth does is risk it being picked up by the yeerks. There's simply no reason for it to be on his ship.

Unless he knew he'd need it.

Tobias is bait. Tobias being in danger, doomed to infestation along with the rest of his world, is the Ellimist's leverage to convince Elfangor to do what he needs him to do -- bring this tech to Earth and give his son (and friends) the means to fight back. And the price of this, probably demanded by Crayak, is the clever wildcard of a war hero's life.

The Invasion is such an excellent one-two-three punch of an opening that I've never seen it topped in series fiction. Animorphs tells you EXACTLY what you're getting into with the first book.

We get about 3 pages of our heroes having wonder and joy at aliens being real before #1 hits us with the graphic onscreen death-by-cannibalism of this kind, caring stranger. And if Jake being chased by 7-foot blade monsters wasn't scary enough, he only escapes because a human bystander dies in his place.

So Jake goes home. To his nuclear suburban family, and his piddly sports problems, and his nice morph-training sequence with his friends. And just kidding there's a yeerk living inside your home already and it knows where you sleep. But that's fine, we'll just tell an adul — oh shit the cops are controllers the reporters are controllers the camp counselors are controllers the vice principal's a controller Elfangor really fucking undersold this problem.

So it's up to them, they guess. And Marco might be scared of dying, and Cassie might be reluctant to fight, but Tobias seems 100% confident they can save the world! So they go. And they don't save Tom, and they get people killed, and they do nothing to hurt Visser Three. And they don't even all make it home at the end of the day. Because it turns out Animorphs is not only a series where supporting characters die; it's a series where the main characters get permanently injured and will never be the same again.

Like [SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS HORROR MOVIES] Kane in Alien, Johnny in Night of the Living Dead, Dan in Frozen, Jonathan in Dracula, Hutch in The Ritual, Jason in Cloverfield, Mathias in The Ruins, Mary in Sinners, or Frank in 28 Days Later. [END SPOILERS]

Those characters all exist to be not just supporting cast members but people we know, people we like... who then encounter terrible fates that make the stakes of the rest of the story all too real. Each of them gets a moment that shifts the story from being adventurous (Alien, Cloverfield), family-oriented (Sinners, Night of the Living Dead), or "scary but we're handling it" (The Ritual, Dracula) to HOLY HELL WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE at the moment the eldritch forces eat them alive. They make clear this is a space where damage is permanent, where death is real and Captain America's not gonna popping back up 6 issues later good as new, and where anyone can die.

I had to do a little bit of digging around but I think the relevant tropes are: "The Worf Effect" when a strong/known character is defeated to show an enemy's strength, and "Sacrifical Lion", an important character killed to show an enemy's strength or that shot just got Real.

I'll argue: No, Marco isn't an antihero. But he wants us to see him as one.

My understanding from my half-remembered BA in English is that the antihero is:

The protagonist

Someone who thinks they're at least somewhat in the right at the time the story takes place

Someone the audience is meant to think is wrong (or disagree with)

The Ur-example IIRC is Pip from Great Expectations — if you don't spend much of the story cringing at what a classist pig he's becoming, read another book. Wikipedia lists Dexter Morgan, Walter White, and Annaliese Keating as recent examples.

Obviously Marco's a co-protagonist of Animorphs, and if his ethics don't make you at least a little uncomfortable sometimes then you are not the kind of person I want to be around. But he rarely ever thinks he's in the right when he's doing something morally sketchy. If anything he's too hard on himself in places where he's been put in an impossible position. Not only that, but he puts a ton of effort into trying to do the right thing, even when it's hard. He just wants the reader to think it comes easy for him.

Like, when he says "call me Mr. Ruthless" in #25, he's sad about the baby seals whose dead mom he's eating, because he has no other food source. Cassie and Tobias (the team softies) both set aside this concern as "we gotta eat" + "at least the baby seals will feed a baby orca." Marco tries to turn that empathy off, but thinks of his own dead mom the whole time. Or his speech about ruthlessness being "the bright, clear line... that goes from motive to means... not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution" (#30). People quote that passage out of context, but the context is all-important: he's crying himself to sleep with the knowledge he must kill his mom to save a bunch of strangers. He loves Eva infinitely more than he cares for Jara and the other hork-bajir, but he selflessly chooses to stop Visser One anyway. That "ruthless" decision? Is to sacrifice his own family to save Toby's, because he knows it's what his mom would want even though it's the last thing he wants.

Like, in the 1800s when the term was first coined, you did have a ton of protagonists like Jean Valjean (Les Misérables), Amy Dorrit (Little Dorrit), Jim Hawkins (Treasure Island), Jane Eyre (ibid), Heidi (ibid), the narrator (War of the Worlds), Pollyanna (ibid), who are meant to be these paragons of virtue, modeling kind and right behavior for the reader. But these days "Pollyanna" is an insult, Jim Hawkins has been overshadowed by Long John Silver, Amy Dorrit sells 1% of the novels that Pip Pirrip does, and characters who are as virtuous as Valjean or uncomplaning as Jane get lambasted as "Mary Sue."

The Invasion is such an excellent one-two-three punch of an opening that I've never seen it topped in series fiction. Animorphs tells you EXACTLY what you're getting into with the first book.

We get about 3 pages of our heroes having wonder and joy at aliens being real before #1 hits us with the graphic onscreen death-by-cannibalism of this kind, caring stranger. And if Jake being chased by 7-foot blade monsters wasn't scary enough, he only escapes because a human bystander dies in his place.

So Jake goes home. To his nuclear suburban family, and his piddly sports problems, and his nice morph-training sequence with his friends. And just kidding there's a yeerk living inside your home already and it knows where you sleep. But that's fine, we'll just tell an adul — oh shit the cops are controllers the reporters are controllers the camp counselors are controllers the vice principal's a controller Elfangor really fucking undersold this problem.

So it's up to them, they guess. And Marco might be scared of dying, and Cassie might be reluctant to fight, but Tobias seems 100% confident they can save the world! So they go. And they don't save Tom, and they get people killed, and they do nothing to hurt Visser Three. And they don't even all make it home at the end of the day. Because it turns out Animorphs is not only a series where supporting characters die; it's a series where the main characters get permanently injured and will never be the same again.

Like [SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS HORROR MOVIES] Kane in Alien, Johnny in Night of the Living Dead, Dan in Frozen, Jonathan in Dracula, Hutch in The Ritual, Jason in Cloverfield, Mathias in The Ruins, Mary in Sinners, or Frank in 28 Days Later. [END SPOILERS]

Those characters all exist to be not just supporting cast members but people we know, people we like... who then encounter terrible fates that make the stakes of the rest of the story all too real. Each of them gets a moment that shifts the story from being adventurous (Alien, Cloverfield), family-oriented (Sinners, Night of the Living Dead), or "scary but we're handling it" (The Ritual, Dracula) to HOLY HELL WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE at the moment the eldritch forces eat them alive. They make clear this is a space where damage is permanent, where death is real and Captain America's not gonna popping back up 6 issues later good as new, and where anyone can die.

#animorphs#horror#oh oh sacrificial lamb and sacrificial lion depending on the character#on tvtropes

I hate to say it, but most of us know a guy already exactly like David would be as an adult. A little broey, a little mean, never quite crossing the line with his behavior in a way that anyone can call out. If he gets a job in a male-dominated hierarchical environment, he ends up excelling — he fits right in! he really knows how to sell himself! — but it's funny how he can never get anyone to collaborate with him twice. If he has a wife, she starts a lot of statements with "he's a great guy, really," and "he's never hit me."

And his boss, his drinking buddies, his CounterStrike team, will be So! Very! Shocked! when he gets arrested or fired or sanctioned at all for shutting his kids out of the house all night or groping a woman who was able to fight back. Because he's Such! A! Nice! Guy! and they had No! Idea!

Of course, the real shock in this case would be that he faced consequences. Because when it was the waitress who asked him to stop joking about following her home, she got called a hysteric and left a $0 tip. When it was Mandy from accounting who reported his dick pics, Mandy got "restructured" right off the org chart on grounds of "not the right fit." And there are 1000 other people out there, who knew they'd be making themselves crazy bitches if they asked him to stop patting them on the leg or to look somewhere else on the train or to please not touch their hair or to not tell that joke again. Those 1000 aren't shocked at all, nor is his wife, nor are his kids, nor is anyone who has ever been in his vicinity with hair or skin or clothes that let him conclude he can act without consequence.

Information gathering gets a bit riskier, because there are far fewer digital resources so the kids need to physically access things like libraries, data centers, and archives to get records and blueprints. Those resource being in a fixed physical location rather than available online thanks to Andalite hacking means its easier for the yeerks to secure them or set traps, but that's not anything the kids haven't overcome before.

The Invasion is such an excellent one-two-three punch of an opening that I've never seen it topped in series fiction. Animorphs tells you EXACTLY what you're getting into with the first book.

We get about 3 pages of our heroes having wonder and joy at aliens being real before #1 hits us with the graphic onscreen death-by-cannibalism of this kind, caring stranger. And if Jake being chased by 7-foot blade monsters wasn't scary enough, he only escapes because a human bystander dies in his place.

So Jake goes home. To his nuclear suburban family, and his piddly sports problems, and his nice morph-training sequence with his friends. And just kidding there's a yeerk living inside your home already and it knows where you sleep. But that's fine, we'll just tell an adul — oh shit the cops are controllers the reporters are controllers the camp counselors are controllers the vice principal's a controller Elfangor really fucking undersold this problem.

So it's up to them, they guess. And Marco might be scared of dying, and Cassie might be reluctant to fight, but Tobias seems 100% confident they can save the world! So they go. And they don't save Tom, and they get people killed, and they do nothing to hurt Visser Three. And they don't even all make it home at the end of the day. Because it turns out Animorphs is not only a series where supporting characters die; it's a series where the main characters get permanently injured and will never be the same again.

Like [SPOILERS FOR VARIOUS HORROR MOVIES] Kane in Alien, Johnny in Night of the Living Dead, Dan in Frozen, Jonathan in Dracula, Hutch in The Ritual, Jason in Cloverfield, Mathias in The Ruins, Mary in Sinners, or Frank in 28 Days Later. [END SPOILERS]

Those characters all exist to be not just supporting cast members but people we know, people we like... who then encounter terrible fates that make the stakes of the rest of the story all too real. Each of them gets a moment that shifts the story from being adventurous (Alien, Cloverfield), family-oriented (Sinners, Night of the Living Dead), or "scary but we're handling it" (The Ritual, Dracula) to HOLY HELL WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE at the moment the eldritch forces eat them alive. They make clear this is a space where damage is permanent, where death is real and Captain America's not gonna popping back up 6 issues later good as new, and where anyone can die.

I had to do a little bit of digging around but I think the relevant tropes are: "The Worf Effect" when a strong/known character is defeated to show an enemy's strength, and "Sacrifical Lion", an important character killed to show an enemy's strength or that shot just got Real.

I'm stumped on this one, because I feel like Justice League of America is such a product of the 1960s-70s, and Animorphs is such a product of the 90s-00s, that I don't know how to reverse the causality.

Anyway, he has canonically been rendered unconscious before, and once he is, a yeerk could take over his central nervous system and block his control over his abilities that would free him. They'd probably want to keep him far away from everyone rather than use his powers for themselves and risk him escaping their control.

Oh! Just remembered B'arzz O'oomm! Spoiler: in YJ cartoon canon, he's a martian who gets mind-controlled by a Reach scarab that bound itself to his spinal cord. So there's precedent for alien brain parasites to take over Martians!

So on paper, what happens during #21 - 22 is:

Saddler gets traumatic brain injury (TBI)

Doctors tell Saddler's family he's probably not going to make it; everyone says their goodbyes

There's an incident in an elevator? No one at the hospital seems to have good answers about this

Saddler wakes up, conscious and coordinated, albeit with no memory and some personality changes

Doctors go "this is not even the weirdest thing that's ever happened with a TBI" and send Saddler home

Saddler disappears from his room that night, is never seen again

Everyone else is operating with slightly different amounts of information. So I think that it really does depend on which family member we're talking about.

Jake and Rachel: Know that the "Saddler" who recovered then ran off was actually David, and that Saddler's dead while David's gone. However, don't know what actually happened to Saddler's body (eaten by lion? dropped down elevator shaft? slipped into morgue as John Doe?) and don't really have the means to find out.

Jean, Steve, Dan, Naomi: Have enough distance from the whole mess that they've talked and arrived at the not-unreasonable conclusion Saddler's "recovery" was temporary and that he died shortly after disappearing. They figure he had a burst of consciousness that concealed an ongoing brain bleed, but became disoriented that night and wandered into a river or road that got him killed. Given how weird TBIs are, Steve (an M.D.) might conclude this is 100% possible.

George and Ellen: Probably clinging to the possibility that their son is still alive out there somewhere. Since they know Saddler well enough to have noticed just how out-of-character his behavior was after he "regained consciousness", they're justified in assuming that he really might be wandering around somewhere with amnesia and unable to find his way back.

Brooke and Forrest: Were younger when all this went down, and so have more of an impression that everyone else thinks their brother's still alive.

Justin: Suspects that the yeerks infested Saddler for some reason, and that the Saddler who "woke up" was a yeerk who made temporary use of Saddler's body. Doesn't have any answers — he tried asking Tom about it and came up empty — but can't rule it out.

The Ellimist: He'd be like "all right, sure, everyone's got their own religious beliefs, I'm not here to dunk on anyone else's." And the louder Marco or whoever insists that, no, we met the guy, he forced us to travel through time on multiple occasions, he kidnapped us to a whole other planet, the more Tom is like "I'm not arguing with you, and I'm glad you have a nice personal mythology that brings you comfort! I support your beliefs!"

Going off how in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Season 1, Kimberly and Billy undergo a body swap experience in episode 16, and the team finds out relatively soon afterwards, I'm of the opinion any in team body swapping isn't going to be a secret for long. It's not something you keep from the team.

If the switch happens with a character like Tom, Chapman, Alloran, or far too many Yeerks, the end result is total party kill/infestation. I don't quite see a way around that right now.

However.

Given the general premise as established in my opening paragraph... my pick would be post war Jake and Cassie.

I'm pretty sure @thejakeformerlyknownasprince has posted or reblogged something about how their relationship was never going to work post war. And yeah, I have nothing to prove otherwise.

But... I'm of the opinion that the others don't really understand what ending the war cost Jake. They know he sent Rachel to kill Tom, yadda yadda. But knowing isn't understanding. And they don't have to deal with how his parents react to him. Etc.