No one is completely good or bad, but fiction has a penchant for portraying people as if they are. This holds true, especially in the early days of film and literature, where heroes are often completely good white knights who set out to slay completely evil dragons and save maidens from becoming dragon chow. It’s even a common and very tired trope of fantasy literature.
Enter the morally gray character or what some sources call the anti-hero or Byronian hero. Neither completely good nor bad, the morally gray character speaks to us because of how relatable they can be. They might do awful things for a worthy cause or a cause they falsely perceive as good, but at the end of the day, the morally gray character is a nuanced trope that’s closer to reality than fiction.
Have a hard time picking out morally gray characters from movies and television shows? Here are a few morally gray characters from popular media and an explanation of what makes them morally gray. And no, the Gray Jedi aren’t on this list, although they might just make the cut next time.
1. Veronica Sawyer From The Heathers
Veronica Sawyer is the protagonist of the cult classic black comedy film The Heathers. Released in 1989, the film tells the story of 17-year-old Veronica Sawyer, who goes from outsider to popular girl after earning the attention of Heather Chandler, the leader of a clique known as the Heathers due to the fact that all the members share the same first name. Except for Veronica.
Veronica tries to fit in with her new, cooler friends but is quickly disenchanted when she realizes that they’re still pretty awful people up close. When Jason Dean, often shortened to just “J.D,” enrolls at Westerburg High School, Veronica lets herself get swept up in his aspirations of creating a better Westerburg.
What Makes Her Morally Gray?
Veronica lets herself get swept up in the influence of other people around her โ twice. While Veronica starts out as a fairly all-right, even a bit idealistic, girl, she has no qualms about standing by as the Heathers bully other students. When she does get a chance to break away from them, she decides to join J.D. in his school killing spree.
Though J.D. is the clearer villain between the two of them, Veronica is attracted to his risky, antisocial behaviors that result in several murders. In fact, she even leads J.D. into committing many of the murders because of her own ill will toward others. She later grows a pair and decides it’s time to actively pick a side and stand by it, ultimately choosing to save all of Westerburg from Jason Dean.
2. Batman From The Dark Knight
No list of morally gray characters would be complete with the granddaddy of them all โ Batman. Best known through his movie portrayal in the 2008 film The Dark Knight, Batman is actually the masked persona of billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. But even the playboy part of that is a bit of an exaggeration. While Bruce is no doubt a lady magnet, we never really see him being anything but a gentleman โ even when he’s roaming the streets as a crime-fighting vigilante.
What Makes Him Morally Gray?
If you think Gotham’s Dark Knight is a completely good guy, you need to get a pair of glasses. While there’s no doubt that Batman has a very strict code of morality, especially since he refuses to outright kill offenders, he does do a number of morally questionable things.
For one, we might see Batman as a hero for the everyman, but you also need to acknowledge that he’s essentially breaking the law as well. Batman damages property, commits breaking and entering, and assaults people; the list goes on. It’s easy to dismiss his actions as just doing what’s right, and that’s what makes him such a great morally gray character.
At the same time, you have to wonder what about Batman gives him the right or the moral high ground to essentially act as an arbiter of justice without any checks and balances aside from his own moral stance.
Batman may be nothing more than a fictional superhero, but this morally gray character has been the subject of many discussions about morality, ethics, justice, and the role of the legal system and law enforcement. Think that’s an exaggeration? Check out this dissertation on Batman through the lens of moral philosophy.
3. Sang-woo From Squid Game
Cho Sang-woo is one of the many morally gray characters from the hit Korean TV show Squid Game. We see that Sang-woo isn’t above doing questionable things for the people he truly cares about. Sang-woo enters the Squid Game after becoming a wanted man for stealing his clients’ money and using it for stock market investments.
What Makes Him Morally Gray?
Sang-woo isn’t the best of people. Obviously, he has a flexible sense of morality since he’s committed fraud and has proved to have no qualms about throwing other people under the bus. That said, it’s his love for his mother that puts him back on the right path. It’s a new show, so I’ll keep this spoiler-free. You can watch the series if you wanna know why he’s here.
4. Tony Stark (a.k.a Iron Man) From The Avengers
Now, this is a morally gray character who’s an actual billionaire playboy. Originally appearing in the Iron Man movies within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Tony Stark is the genius inventor at the helm of Stark Industries, a tech company he inherited from his father.
More recent portrayals of Tony Star show him as a reformed family man who’s more or less given up his vices to live a quiet life with Pepper Potts and their daughter Morgan. He even acts as a protective father figure to Tom Holland’s Spider-Man. But with his death, it seems many of us forgot just how gray Tony Stark can get.
What Makes Him Morally Gray?
Ask Wanda Maximoff and Pietro Maximoff about it. While early iterations of Tony Stark seem to treat his inventions as nothing more than physical manifestations of his innate genius, we see later on that the kind of charming, billionaire genius persona he has, and the ego that comes with it, has real consequences on the lives of others. Wanda Maximoff reveals that a Stark Industries bomb killed her parents.
On a more personal note, his unrestrained sense of self-importance and lack of self-awareness in Iron Man 2 is highlighted in a scene where he flies through the air in a military-grade super suit while drunk. You can’t even legally drive while drunk. Iron Man was using a weapon of mass destruction while drunk.
Another terrible thing he’s done? Get Peter Parker involved in Captain America: Civil War. Sure, Peter may have insisted on trying to be helpful to him. But a responsible adult would have had the sense to know that getting a minor involved in a potentially deadly situation isn’t right, no matter how you internally justify it as limited participation. It’s also clear that heaps of MCU characters could defeat Stark, so he doesn’t even have the full ability to protect Peter like he thinks.
5. Sandor Clegane From Game of Thrones
A more obvious pick might be Varys, Tywin Lannister, or even Daenerys Targaryen. But when it comes to morally gray characters in Game of Thrones, you’ll find that Sandor Clegane often slides into the background.
To be fair, he doesn’t really have as much screen time as more popular picks. But this not-so-knightly knight in rusted armor has a solid claim as one of the best morally gray characters in the show and in the books.
Game of Thrones fans may recall that the Hound is the brother of Gregor Clegane, the Mountain. The two have a long-standing grudge against each other that goes beyond regular sibling rivalry and is more about the fact that Gregor abused Sandor as a child. While he’s never a completely great guy, as he often actively taunts Arya Stark, his actions never completely match what he says.
What Makes Him Morally Gray?
Sandor may be loud and proud about being an awful person, but we get the sense that he only wishes he was as morally deprived as he says he is so he wouldn’t feel conflicted. He kills a peasant boy on Joffrey Baratheon’s orders and later taunts Arya with it, but at the same time, he never takes pleasure in wanton destruction the way his brother Sandor does. But his most poignant morally gray moments are in his scenes with Sansa Stark.
In a setting where most people are pretty horrible, Sandor is one of the few characters who live up to Sansa’s vision of the ideal knight, along with Brienne of Tarth. But where Brienne is nobler, Sandor is disenchanted with knighthood and sees most knights as hypocrites.
Yet, he’s the only knight in the Kingsguard who performs chivalric acts like saving Sansa from being raped and offering him his cloak after Joffrey has her stripped naked and beaten in his throne room. He also often says crass and downright cruel things to both Stark sisters, but he’s also one of the few characters on the show who is actually honest about what he thinks and believes in.
6. BoJack Horseman From BoJack Horseman
BoJack F. Horseman, titular lead of Bojack Horseman. Where do you even start with this guy? In a way, he’s exactly like Tony Stark if Tony Stark never turned his life around. He’s a mess, is deeply flawed, and can’t seem to help but lead himself back down the path of morally questionable and self-destructive decisions. Also, like Tony Stark, he’s got a lot of memorably quotable lines.
As the former star of the hit ’90s sitcom Horsin’ Around, BoJack lives off the afterglow of his glory days and tries desperately to recapture his youth by filling the void of his existence with drugs, alcohol, and partying. His penchant for wallowing in self-pity often results in self-centered behavior that hurts the people around him, especially the ones he claims to care about it.
What Makes Him Morally Gray?
Let’s give BoJack a bit of credit before we tear him a new one. In all honesty, he does try to be a good person despite his trauma and his own lesser impulses. That said, he’s a classic case of how trauma and mental illness aren’t excuses to treat people badly.
Sarah Lynn was already 9 months sober when BoJack, knowing she has problems with substance abuse, invites her to go on a bender which leads her to overdose on heroin at the Griffith Observatory and die.
Later, he makes the dubious decision to sleep with Penny. A lot of viewers excuse this since Penny was of legal age, but it’s undoubtedly morally gray given that BoJack has sex with her after her mother rejects him, effectively, he’s taking out his frustrations on Penny while taking advantage of her naivety. But then again, the disputes around the morality of BoJack’s actions are what make him a great morally gray character.
7. The Entire Cast of Parasite
If you think the previous characters on this list are morally gray, then just think about the whole cast of Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 black comedy film Parasite. The film follows the Kim family as they literally try to rise up from the darkness of poverty and into the more rarefied sphere of the wealthy Park family. The Kims hatch a plot to replace the current housekeeper and slowly take several servant roles within the house. The film culminates in the deaths of several characters.
What Makes Them Morally Gray?
Who is the hero, and who is the villain in Parasite? No one fits neatly into either category, really. The Kims actively plot to infiltrate the Park family home by throwing the current servant under the bus. Later on, that servant tries to blackmail them as well. But to focus on the gray morality of the poorer cast members would be a mistake. Though the Parks never explicitly do anything to harm the Kims, their sheer obliviousness towards how their desires and actions affect the people around them makes them morally gray characters as well.
What about severus snape??? He is one of the best examples of morally Grey charecters