Byronic Hero / Live-Action TV

Byronic Heroes in live-action TV.

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• Alex Standall from 13 Reasons Why is... complicated, to say the least. As an individual, Alex is artistic, talented, polite, compassionate, and kind. On the other hand, he's also moody, angst, sarcastic, cynical, has little patience, self-critical, and Hanna's suicide has left him deeply depressed and emotionally conflicted. He also doesn't hesitate to threaten others when he's angry enough, such as when he threatened Monty with a gun. The fact that he's Bryce's killer certainly emphasizes his Byronic status even more. Suffice it to say, he fits this trope to a tee.
• Bellamy Blake from The 100 ticks off most of the checklist: male, very attractive, used his charisma to become the 100's leader, led them in rebellion against the Ark, is not above violence or murder to achieve his goals, is driven by a fierce sense of loyalty that overrides other moral concerns, but is tormented by guilt over past mistakes. However, since he's only the show's supporting lead, his Byronic qualities are often challenged or undermined by the actual lead protagonist.
  • Lincoln also has all the hallmarks of a Byronic hero, but with the caveat that he comes from a brutal society of tribal warriors, and the ways he rebels against that society's values actually bring him into much closer alignment with conventional modern values.
• Angel:
  • Angel, The Vampire With Soul!
    Cordelia: (spinning in chair) Look, I'm Angel! "No, I can't do anything fun tonight. I have to count my past sins, then alphabetize them. Oh, by the way, I'm thinking of snapping on Friday."
  • Wesley Wyndam-Pryce for a good time of later seasons fills the role of the Byronic hero as a cynical, self-destructive drunkard with a troubled past and horrible crime behind him and only a vast intellect to sustain him. Losing the love of his life to a demonic body snatcher — and then being asked to coach said hellspawn to assimilate into mortal life — didn't do him any favors.
• From Babylon 5:
  • Londo Mollari is an old, bitter, and cynical republican who dreams of days of bygone glories, and is willing to undergo a Deal with the Devil to see his ideals come to fruition. He spends most of the show's run highlighting and showcasing the darker sides of both the overhanging conflict and Babylon Five itself, and while he is almost as important to the story as Sheridan, Londo's part of it is decisively darker and is won with backstabbing and intrigue. In the end, Londo ends up more of a Tragic Hero when he is forced to pay the piper for his past misdeeds.
  • Season 5 introduced a group of telepath refugees looking for a place to create a home for their kind, away from the prejudices of others. Their leader's name is Byron Gordon, and that's not a coincidence.
• Edmund Blackadder in his 2nd, 3rd, and 4th incarnations. He might disagree though, as he once described a Byronic hero as someone who wanders around Italy in a big shirt, trying to get laid.
• Raymond Reddington of The Blacklist is a ruthless, charismatic criminal mastermind. He has built a global criminal empire over the course of thirty years and established himself at the top of the underworld. He also has a strong and radical moral code that enshrines loyalty while also endorsing murder, torture, and other heinous acts in service of a greater goal.
• Jimmy Darmody of Boardwalk Empire. He is detached, intelligent, moody, yet charismatic and handsome. He is often seen in a brooding state of mind, tends to be abrasive towards those around him, yet he operates on a moral code.
• Alan Shore from Boston Legal, a brilliant lawyer with no hopes of advancement within his firm due to his unwillingness to play by the rules. He is intelligent, charismatic, the office Casanova and deeply philosophical. Also he takes seemingly impossible cases and often wins due to his fiery passion, skilled oratory, and questionably legal tactics.
• A few examples from The Boys (2019):
  • Billy Butcher. Billy is a violent Vigilante Man, with a jaded look in life, who struggles a lot with own personal integrity. On one hand, he genuinely tries to be a better person and a good father figure to Ryan, loathes himself for being immoral and violent, but at the same time he knows this is his very nature. Butcher recognizes that the Supes are people just as much everyone else, but he is still determined to take them down, even if it means breaking the law and manipulating people he cares about. It also helps that he is an attractive man wearing a Badass Longcoat.
  • Queen Maeve. An alcoholic, cynical, broken woman who started as a huge idealist in her past, only to get trapped by the corruption of the Seven and Vought and her inner desire to do good but at the risk of her beloved ones.
• In Continuum, Kiera is a lot like this, especially since her fixation on getting back to her son often leads to the detriment of the people around her.
• Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald from Cracker was a Byronic Criminal Psychologist. Best summed up by this conversation:
  Thomas: Why do you drink so much?
  Fitz: I like it.
  Thomas: And smoke so much?
  Fitz: I like it.
  Thomas: And you gamble as well?
  Fitz: Yes, I like it.
• The Defenders (2017):
  • Jessica Jones (2015): Jessica is a cynical and brooding Broken Bird who feels intense guilt over many events in her Dark and Troubled Past, including the death of her family and her actions under Kilgrave's control. She's not above violence or intimidation when it comes to doing what she has to get done.
  • Daredevil (2015): As an individual, Matt Murdock is complicated. He's an intelligent lawyer who studied at Columbia, has opted for vigilantism, and sincerely cares about the people from Hell's Kitchen. On the other hand, he is also prone to Unstoppable Rage and is not above crippling the bad guys. In Season 3, he has taken a level in cynic as he undergoes a crisis of faith, is cold and distant with his friends in an effort to push them away, and plans on killing Fisk as he believes it's the only way to stop him. He's also a controversial figure in-story, dividing opinions and driving others away in his fervent pursuit of his ideals. However, Matt has not yet become convinced that he's an evil man (though he's nearly constantly questioning it).
• Doctor Who: The Doctor qualifies if only for his collateral damage count, including the genocide in the Time War to save the universe. However, how much of a Byronic hero he is highly depends on the episode and era. The Ninth Doctor fits the trope very closely, as did the First. Other incarnations that come close are the Tenth, though he tries very hard to throw off the "cynical and jaded" part; and the Seventh, although he doesn't qualify for the aesthetic aspects and has some prominent traits atypical for this trope. The Sixth Doctor, modelled by his actor after Mr Darcy, wishes he was this, but it's an affectation, and hardly a convincing one either. The Fourth Doctor, with his Tall, Dark, and Snarky traits, unpredictable and often quite broody personality, tendency towards Antiquated Linguistics, head of dark curls, striking, otherworldly and magnetic appearance, gothic Victoriana motifs and taste for beautiful dark velvet frock coats, is a conscious take on this trope and aesthetically the most straightforwardly Byronic of the lot... except for the fact that unlike the typical archetype he's also a funny Manchild who eats lots of jelly babies. Possibly an in-character affectation?
  • The Fourth Doctor's Byronic traits are very heavily exploited in the angst-ridden Telos Novella Ghost Ship, a Gothic Literature Pastiche written from the Doctor's first-person point of view. Not only does he spend a lot of it having beautifully-described and romanticised brooding scenes (like standing at the prow of a ship in a rainstorm staring out at the horizon until the sunrise), struggling with his own regrettable actions from "The Deadly Assassin" and "Genesis of the Daleks", questioning the classism of British society, and experiencing The Dulcinea Effect, he also constantly namedrops writers of 19th Century literature and quotes poetry in times of stress or intense emotion, making it ever clearer that this was the character type he was intended to be commenting on. It's a fairly extreme Alternative Character Interpretation for a character most fondly remembered for smiling at people and offering them jelly babies, but justified as the Doctor admits that he is experiencing depression, and is well aware that his actions aren't how they'd usually be.
  • The Twelfth Doctor, coming off of a previous life in which he spent nine centuries defending one town from an endless parade of villains, is one of the broodiest, frostiest incarnations. He's constantly struggling with his darker inclinations, fears, and regrets, particularly regarding his Time War atrocities. His character arc in Series 8 is figuring out if he can be called a good man or a bad man, or an officer (who gives orders) or a soldier (who carries orders out) — neither of the latter options appeals to him. He finally realizes that he is "an idiot!" devoting his life to "passing through, helping out, learning" and this helps him solve a seemingly impossible crisis. In Series 9, his Chronic Hero Syndrome combined with his struggle to accept that he, as a near-immortal, will inevitably lose everyone he loves causes him a great deal of grief. When he loses his companion Clara Oswald (partially because she became too similar to him) in "Face the Raven", the combination of that and a heap of other miseries piled upon him triggers a Freak Out that puts him on a path of being driven by rage, anguish, and self-interest instead in the finale "Hell Bent" two episodes later; returning to his best self involves Mind Rape. After this, things finally improve when he fulfills his relationship with River Song, but after that stretch of his life ends he becomes really determined to move on by way of coping as Series 10 begins.
  • The Thirteenth Doctor outwardly doesn't seem to fit this trope well at all, what with her outward cheer, her generally bubbly demeanour, and eagerness to make friends seeming very at odds with the broody, melancholic loner image of the Byronic hero. However, in series 12, she reveals many traits of this character archetype: for all her outward friendliness, she keeps everyone, even her friends, at a distance; she is intensely secretive about her Dark and Troubled Past; her moods become erratic, switching from her typical happiness to moodiness on a dime; she mulls over her past traumas and even retraumatizes herself by going back to the ruins of Gallifrey on a regular basis; and she shows more of the trademark arrogance of Byronic heroes, seeing herself as the only one who can and has to make the hard choices. In "The Haunting of Villa Diodati" (which, incidentally, involved Lord Byron), the Doctor gives a speech demonstrating the latter to her companions:
    Thirteen: 'Cos sometimes this team structure isn't flat. It's mountainous, with me at the summit, in the stratosphere. Alone. Left to choose. Save the poet, save the universe. Watch people burn now or tomorrow. Sometimes, even I can't win!
• Harlan Judd (Tim Daly) of Eyes may or may not fit this perfectly. Though every episode of the show ended with the MacGuffin back in the hands of its rightful owner and somebody justly facing prison time or worse, Judd's interest is typically only in the former; he frequently admits that he doesn't really care if the kidnapper or thief get caught (unless they piss him off, which they almost invariably do). Daly described the character as "accidentally ethical".
• Game of Thrones
  • Tyrion Lannister is the lighter end of this trope. While he might not be physically attractive, he is quite charismatic, very passionate, driven, jaded, and emotionally unstable.
  • His brother Jaime Lannister also qualifies. The show treats Jaime more sympathetically than the early books, so he qualifies much earlier on, though is still the darker end of this trope. Killing the Mad King was the best thing he ever did, but doing so cost him his integrity and everyone hates Jaime for it. This has made him an outcast in Westeros society. He continues to be haunted by the Mad King's last words (the king came very close to torching all of King's Landing), and his true reasons for Kingslaying are a closely guarded secret very few other people know. As a consequence, Jaime decided to embrace his amoral image by doing dark things in the name of self-preservation — such as pushing Bran off the tower and killing his cousin — although he is trying his best to reform. Jaime is also handsome, a prodigy with a sword, both proud and self-loathing, cynical, and has a very sharp wit. Oh, and he's had an incestuous affair with his own sister for several years.
  • Robert Baratheon is a deeply flawed hero. He is charismatic and jolly but also jaded and brooding.
• House of the Dragon: Prince Daemon Targaryen is a brooding, selfish, passionate, mercurial, authority-flaunting and ruthless rogue outcast looking to make a place for himself in the world. And much like Lord Byron himself joining the Greek War of Independence just for the hell of it, Daemon likewise joins the war for the Stepstones completely electively.
• Jess Mariano from Gilmore Girls. Jess is rebellious, irreverent, witty, and literary, and his troubled relationship with his parents leads him to act out. Jess manages to attract the main character (Rory) with his brooding, looks, and intellect.
• Ryan Atwood from The O.C.. Ryan is a sullen, melancholic, intelligent, brooding outcast yet is sympathetic and compassionate to those less fortunate than him and manages to attract some female characters.
• Heroes:
  • Adam. The show's token immortal, he helped save Japan from the feudal warlord Whitebeard four hundred years ago, founded the Company to make a better world for evolved humans, and, in the show's second season, plotted to give his people a second chance through the release of a supervirus. He's cultured, cunning, and a man of many vices.
  • Noah Bennet (HRG). Sure, he's devoted to finding people with abilities to keep them safe (at times, anyway), but he's also partially responsible for Sylar's murdering spree. He tends to operate in a morally grey fashion at times (particularly while working with The Company).
• Annalise Keating from How to Get Away with Murder. Annalise hits all the checks, being a highly intelligent woman, who is complicated to point that even she is uncertain of her exact morality. She is heavily self-critical bordering on self-loathing. She is ruthless and amoral, yet at the same time remains sympathetic due to her past experiences and traumas while possessing a great passion and determination for her chosen profession.
• Kamen Rider Gaim has Kaito Kumon. He's charismatic to the point of almost seeming like a Magnetic Hero and tends to speak in a very absolute manner about how the strong exercise their power against the weak, albeit not treating strength as just power alone and acknowledging peoples' strength relative to their abilities (his Establishing Character Moment is encouraging a boy to jump down from a tree he's stuck in, catching the boy when he does, and praising him for his strength, and he acknowledges Mai's emotional strength). This is because of his past, where his family were driven out of business by the MegaCorp Yggdrasil, with his father sinking into alcoholism and eventually committing suicide. This understandably left Kaito very cynical about the world. In spite of his Social Darwinist speeches, he comes with the interesting twist that he considers himself weak and constantly seeks more power and his ultimate desire is to create a world where the strong no longer oppress the weak. The only reason he's the Final Boss is that he thinks he has to destroy the current world to do it.
• Doctor Cal Lightman from Lie to Me is sometimes unusually morally driven to help others to the point of putting himself in danger, but usually is a cocky, often cruel bastard who thinks he is always right. He'll also put others in harm's way if need be, but the end result is usually for the better good. Also, don't date his daughter.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: This version of Galadriel is not the Big Good she usually is in the books; she is a beautiful She-Elf, proud, arrogant, unyielding, and driven by her desire for revenge. She has a darker side, lapsing into She Who Fights Monsters territory, including desiring the extermination of all the Orcs, which she considers abominations, along with wanting to torture Adar by forcing him to watch, taking such pleasure in doing so that Adar considers her worthy of being Morgoth's successor. Despite this, in private with Halbrand she reveals a more emotionally vulnerable side when the pair open up to one another about their pasts and traumas.

• Todd Manning of One Life to Live is kind of a Heel–Face Revolving Door version of this, sometimes a villain, other times a hero, but always Byronic.
• The Originals: Elijah is tormented by his dark deeds and battles against his vampiric nature. He's also ridiculously good-looking and a terribly dapper dresser. His brother Klaus is a Byronic understudy but falls short because he's a bit Axe-Crazy.
• Tommy Shelby from Peaky Blinders, being very intelligent, handsome, cynical, brooding, with a propensity for drinking and he is The Don of the Birmingham mafia.

• Cleaver Greene from Rake. Cleaver hits pretty much every trait; intelligent, passionate, cynical, selfish from time to time, and endlessly self-destructive.
• Riverdale:
  • A rare example who is also a Nice Guy. Archie is known for being jovial, easy-going, talented, intelligent, loyal, honest and carrying, but also prone to anger blasts, is moody, extremely passionate and reckless, and will go against the law if necessary, as seen when he created the Red Circle to hunt down criminals. Even his character description introduces him as an "intense, conflicted teen".
  • Cheryl Blossom is an intelligent Ice Queen, intuitive, and a huge narcissist and snobbish Attention Whore prone to violent mood swings and switching sides at the blink of an eye. She has a domineering personality, but she is also extremely emotionally dependent on people, such her her brother, Jason and Toni Topaz. No wonder she is such an emotional mess, she is the heir to an aristocratic family, and both of her parents are abusive and cold and didn't provide Cheryl with much love and support. Her twin brother Jason, who she was extremely close to, ended up being murdered by her own father. After his death, she completely lost it and never recovered emotionally. Cheryl is also a Goth girl wo loves to quip, pull most macabre pranks on people and has a passion for painting.
  • Jughead Jones is known to be very intense. He is a a brooding Tall, Dark, and Snarky loner who aspires to be a writer. He is often compared to famous Byronic teens from movies and novels, such as Donnie Darko and Holden Caulfield. He is the son of of FP Jones, the leader of a notorious biker gang called the Serpents, and as such he is part of that gang too and does several illegal stuff and get into fights. Among the 5 main characters, he is the "bad boy".
• The Sandman (2022): Dream of the Endless/Morpheus. His aloofness makes him exteremely pervasive and leads to him acting cold-hearted, brooding, overly serious, and socially inept. There are times when he appears downright cruel, and he is slow to forgive, but he has good intentions and is even heroic. Although the vast majority of his morally questionable actions serve the greater good, he never thinks to soften or explain his actions to the people he affects. In spite of this and spending thousands of years as a loner who insists on doing everything for himself, he isn't devoid of empathy and has begun to realize how important people are to him.
• Dr. Percival "Perry" Ulysses Cox of Scrubs is a comedic example. He's a brilliant doctor with an extremely antisocial personality, a fervent hatred of his superiors, a succession of very self-destructive relationships, a drinking problem, and an abusive childhood.

• Skins: Definitely Cook from the second series; possibly Tony from the first. A rare female example could be argued for Frankie from the third series.
• Commander Shran of Star Trek: Enterprise. In fact, ALL Andorians are walking Romanticism incarnate, praising emotion and the experience of passion, ritualizing the concept of a "duel" to settle differences, housing probably the greatest Art Academy in the United Federation of Planets, and thoroughly disagreeing with Vulcans (Realists and Rationalists).
• Supernatural:
  • Sam and Dean Winchester practically embody this trope in the later seasons, as they get tortured emotionally, physically, spiritually, and mentally more and more throughout the show. Dean especially, given his constant self-loathing, death wish, and Dark and Troubled Past. Sam doesn't fare much better either, as the series started out with the death of his girlfriend, and his life has only gotten worse and worse from there.
  • And before them was their father, John Winchester, who became a vengeance-obsessed man after his wife Mary died, raising his children in to become Hunters and spending the rest of his life searching for the demon who killed his wife.
  • Even Castiel could qualify for this, as he is constantly trying to obey his father's orders to protect and love humanity, but gets put in conflict with his angel brothers and sisters as a result, who are either trying to destroy the world or fighting each other.
• Taboo: James Delaney is a rather pronounced example. A brooding, morally ambiguous schemer with a dark past, he was born the son of an unpopular skinflint English trader and a Native American woman who supposedly passed her knowledge of magic on to him before she went mad. He used to serve the East India Company in Africa before falling out with them and now uses his intellect to manipulate and undermine the societal powers in Regency England that he has so come to detest and sees him as a savage. He has very little regard for classical societal norms as well, between his activities in the London underworld, his rumored atrocities abroad such as cannibalism, and his pursuit of a sexual relationship with his own half-sister.
• Teresa is a rare telenovela example and even a deconstruction. Teresa is a young, ambitious, and sophisticated Brainy Brunette who grew up in a poor neighborhood, sometimes she was so poor that had nothing to eat for days and was ridiculed her entire life for being poor by her rich classmates. She swears to escape poverty by any means one day, and once her sister, her only Morality Pet, dies from a disease that her parents cannot afford to pay the treatment, she becomes a manipulative, cold and bitter woman. Her arc is mostly about money vs love, she is impossibly intelligent, cunning, and beautiful, and uses her charms to manipulate people around her to climb the social ladder, she gives up Mariano, her first love, by marring, Arturo, a rich lawyer. She then genuinely falls in love with her husband, whom she married for money at first. But Arturo becomes penniless after losing a case, and she starts to seduce his best friend Fernando, who was dating Arturo's sister. In her destructive ways of trying to escape poverty, Teresa destroys other people's lives and remains without friends, family, love, and bitterly Lonely at the Top.
• True Detective's Detective Rustin Cohle embodies many of the Byronic tropes: deep intelligence, a Dark and Troubled Past, an overall broody mood, a world view deeply at odds with society, and a strong moral code despite his intense cynicism.
• Damon Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries, whilst being the primary antagonist in Season 1, he is always been a representative of this trope.
• The White Queen has Richard of Gloucester, later King Richard III, as a dark-haired, stunningly pretty, brooding contrast to his traditionally handsome older brothers. Early on, he's a shy adolescent in Puppy Love with his cousin Anne. When she is reunited with him after The Battle of Tewksberry, Anne finds him a warrior prince with a ferocious temper who woos her and protects her. They are happy for a time, but his personality takes a dark turn after he seizes the throne and their only son dies.
• The Wire, most obviously, Jimmy McNulty, who is immensely self-destructive and arrogant, though good-hearted. His fifth season story arc especially shows his Byronic side. Other characters, such as Omar, Michael Lee, Slim Charles, and Nicky Sobotka, have their Byronic qualities as well.
• The Witcher (2019) has Yennifer. Much like her book and game counterpart, Yennefer is a woman full of passion, with a gothic aura around her, has an immense distaste for anything the medieval society she lives in tries to impose on her and her arc is mostly about seeking a place to belong to at any cost, in a very self-destructive manner. She is not evil, but is relentlessly ambitious and rebellious even when not necessary, which means that she can walk on any grayish morality area, up to being an Anti-Villain. In terms of personality, she went from being an abused ingenue, to a cynical, emotionally conflicted woman. She is also impossibly beautiful, intelligent, determined and insightful, yet so impulsive, self-centered, jerkish, and borderline misanthropic in the same time.
• Fox Mulder of The X-Files: Brooding and comely FBI agent whose quest for the truth is just and right, although his means of trying to achieve that can be over-the-top and jackassery. Only very few people in the show's world seem to appreciate him.

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