Decoy Protagonist / Live-Action TV

• 24's final season plays with this: after transitioning to Villain Protagonist, Jack still played a central role in the season's plot, but the show actually gave focus on Chloe while his screentime notably became more limited in the final episodes, making the real hero of the season her. This even comes into play after Jack's Heel Face Turn in the series finale, as he is wounded and spends most it offscreen being held captive while Chloe's efforts to expose the season's conspiracy and eventually save him are given the greater focus.
• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has Phil Coulson as the star of the show, being the one connected to the films, the leader of his own team throughout Season 1, and eventually the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. However as the show progresses, Skye (later Daisy Johnson) eventually shares the spotlight, especially as she unlocks her inhuman powers and becomes the face of all inhuman characters in the show. This eventually reaches its peak when Coulson dies for real at the Season 5 finale, and Daisy is the one finishing off the series' Final Boss in Nathaniel Malick.
• The Amazing Race:
  • Season 5 had the first half of the season mostly devoted to the rivalry between cousins Charla & Mirna and couple Colin & Christie. You’d think by the editing that one of them was the winner and that both of them were going to get very far into the season. The eventual winners, couple Chip & Kim, were mostly Out of Focus but they were methodically playing the long game via a Batman Gambit. Charla & Mirna got eliminated at the halfway mark and Chip & Kim’s scheming finally began to pay off. They had befriended Colin and played into his ego and just waited for the right time to play him. They beat him at getting a flight (which he’d been masterful at) in the finale and won.
  • Season 15 had Zev & Justin, who, when compared to similar editing of teams in previous seasons, appeared to be set up for a run late into the race, including a burgeoning rivalry with Maria & Tiffany, that is until they lost a passport in leg 4.
• Angel: Doyle was part of a Power Trio with Angel and Cordelia, was the team's link to the Powers That Be, appeared in the opening credits, had several episodes based around him, and appeared to be at the start of a long character arc related to coming to terms with his half-demon heritage. He died by Heroic Sacrifice halfway through season 1 and was replaced by Wesley. This may have been a case of Real Life Writes the Plot. Scuttlebutt was that he was terminated due to his drug addiction, causing problems with the filming. Joss Whedon likes to claim it was planned, but there are some disputes to this point and he may have just been putting on a nice spin to protect the actor's reputation.
• Black Mirror: In "USS Callister", Daly is initially the focus, and we are seemingly meant to empathize with his plight as another sad sack pining for a girl he lacks the nerve to approach and bullied by his peers. Once the digital version of Nanette awakens, it becomes obvious that she is the real protagonist, and Daly is the monster she and the crew must overcome.
• New viewers watching Blake's 7 might assume that the thoroughly likable Varon (Blake's lawyer) and Maja (Varon's wife) are going to be major characters, as they have a lot of screen time, and spend much of the episode attempting to help Blake. New viewers would be wrong in this assumption.
• Averted by Breaking Bad. Jesse Pinkman was originally going to be a major character only in the first season, being the one who would introduce Walt to the criminal underworld and then becoming a Sacrificial Lion halfway through the season to kickstart his Protagonist Journey to Villain. However once Vince Gilligan realized the character had potential he decided to keep him for a bit longer. By the time the show ended he ironically became the only character who got away of Heisenberg's empire.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • The Mirror Universe episode "The Wish" begins with Cordelia accidentally overwriting the universe with a very dark alternate continuity. You'd expect that the episode would center around her cleaning up the mess she caused... but she dies half-way through the episode, and the rest of it is solely about the mirrorverse characters until their own actions cause the timeline to be corrected.
  • In season 4's "Where the Wild Things Are", Buffy and Riley become established as a Battle Couple. They then get put in a spell where they have sex constantly so they have to be rescued by the rest of the Scoobies.
  • Tara, a recurring character since season four, was finally promoted to regular cast member in season six...and was killed in the same episode where she first appeared in the opening credits.
• Bunheads: The series appears to be about an awkward man sweeping a dancer off her feet after they drunkenly get married. Before the first episode is over, Alan Ruck's character dies in a car crash. It happens so abruptly that even critics appeared to be blind-sided.
• Channel Zero pulls this in the Butcher's Block season. At first, it's pretty obvious that Alice is the heroine, being seemingly the only one aware of the strange things happening in town and trying to save her sister Zoe as she's corrupted by the Peach family. But by the time of the season's climax, her own fears of her encroaching hereditary insanity cause her to give into the Peaches' temptations and join them; meanwhile, Zoe is able to ultimately resist those same temptations, emerging as the true heroine of the story.
• In the first episode of Choujuu Sentai Liveman we're introduced to a group of five friends. Among them is an outgoing dude who wears red and a cheerful girl who seems to be in a relationship with him. Given typical Super Sentai tropes, you'd assume the guy will become The Leader and the girl will be his love interest or The Heart, but they're killed midway through the first episode and their three surviving friends become the titular team instead to avenge them.
• Fans of the Chris Gethard Show were told Random Messenger Bag would undertake a Hero's Journey, defending Chris from a full hour of attacks to the point where Chris actually referred to him as the Mr. Baggins to his Sam Gamgee. In fact, Messenger Bag betrayed Chris when given an opportunity for more screen time, leaving him to fend for himself while handcuffed to a chair. Messenger Bag was in fact on a villain's journey, Chris is the true hero.
• Class of '07 begins with Zoe as the POV character. Zoe also has the opening scene of the series, so it makes sense to assume that the series will be about her journey in facing her childhood battles. Instead, Zoe's narrative gets blended into a larger ensemble piece where stories like those of Saskia, Geneivive and Amelia get pushed to the forefront at different times.
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Parodied in the theme song for season four, which begins with a shot of a beautiful woman riding a bike through a park as the song sings, "Meet Rebecca! She's the coolest girl in the world!" The song then clarifies that's the wrong Rebecca and cuts to the actual protagonist, Rebecca Bunch, sitting on a park bench. After the theme song can't figure out how to describe our Rebecca, it cuts back to "other Rebecca," despite our Rebecca's protests.
• Cobra Kai:
  • At the start of the series' premiere, Johnny Lawrence is unquestionably the main character, as it centers around him struggling to adjust to life after his 1984 All-Valley defeat, to finding new purpose by training Miguel Diaz and reopening the titular Cobra Kai dojo. Daniel LaRusso is introduced in that same episode, but he's portrayed mainly as a Foil to Johnny and an opposing force to the show's main subject (Cobra Kai gaining relevancy as a haven for bullied students to learn karate). Things gets a little complicated when Daniel's Miyagi-Do becomes more and more prevalent to the series — effectively having Daniel share the spotlight with Johnny. However after Kreese usurps Cobra Kai from Johnny and Johnny aligns more with Miyagi-Do, Daniel become more and more the central character of the show — which reaches its peak when he becomes the de factor main sensei of the Miyagi-Fang alliance, and is the one finishing off Terry Silver in Season 5.
  • Throughout the start of Season 4, Miguel Diaz is arguably considered to be The Hero for the male Gen Z fighters, being the de facto student leader and the defending champ who is the favorite to repeat his title against his rival, Robby Keene, Cobra Kai's new star student. Then, things get more dramatic when Hawk loses his mohawk and joins Miyagi-Do as their unquestionable star male student — which reaches its peak when he ends up in the boys' finals after Miguel forfeits and defeats Robby en route to the Boys' championship.
• Protagonist Title aside, Columbo works like this. Any given episode of the show will open with an extended focus on the culprit murdering someone and hiding the evidence, and when Columbo eventually enters (which can sometimes take quite a while) it shifts focus towards his attempts to catch them.
• The documentary mini-series Conquistadors, hosted by Michael Wood, does this in its third episode "The Search for El Dorado". The story focuses at first on Gonzalo Pizarro but his expedition stalls so he sends some men led by Francisco de Orellana to find food. Orellana is unable to return the way he came so Pizarro went back to Lima. From this point, the story focuses on Orillana as he explores the Amazon river.
• The fourth season title sequence for Crazy Ex-Girlfriend plays with this. It starts on a beautiful woman riding through the park, with the song playing, "Meet Rebecca...she's the coolest girl in the world!" Then it sings that the woman's the wrong Rebecca and switches the camera to the actual protagonist Rebecca sitting awkwardly on a nearby park bench. As it goes through our Rebecca's confusing personality, the song decides that Rebecca is "too hard to summarize" and switches back to "the other Rebecca," the woman on the bike. Then the woman, who's actually named Deborah, reveals something bizarre about herself, which changes every episode. She never appears in the series proper.
• The pilot of CSI centered around Holly Gribbs, only to have her get shot in the end and die in the next episode.
• Many people preferred Pacey to the titular character in Dawson's Creek. By the final season, half the episodes don't even feature Dawson, with many of the ones that do feature him either using him in a glorified cameo or keeping him entirely separate from the rest of the regulars, with Pacey and Joey having become the show's Spotlight-Stealing Squad.
• While she doesn't die, having Sgt. Thomson turn out to have been the killer in the first episode of Death in Paradise is a perfect example of this trope. It turns out the woman the police have suspected for half the episode is, in fact, an undercover detective, who begrudgingly joins the team after the case is wrapped up.
• Desperate Housewives Zigzagged this trope in regard to Mary Alice Young: The pilot episode begins with her having a long monologue that details about her life... only for her to commit suicide at the end of it and reveal to us that she is the narrator while the main characters are her fellow housewives and friends. However, her death is the Driving Question of the first season of the show. Later seasons turned Mary Alice into the narrator because her storyline has wrapped up at the end of the first season but she still pops up here and there to further the other housewives' stories.
• Devs: The first episode follows Sergei, a Russian-American coder working for Amaya as he gets invited into the company's super-secret Devs program. He's killed at the end of the episode when he's caught attempting corporate espionage. The show then shifts focus to Sergei's girlfriend Lily, who investigates his death.
• Doctor Who: In "Bad Wolf"/"The Parting of the Ways", the Doctor meets a young woman named Lynda Moss and takes a liking to her, even giving her an offer to come on the TARDIS. Given the title of the second half of the two-parter, new viewers who remain unspoiled could be forgiven for assuming that she was going to replace Rose. She doesn't.
• The Expanse loves setting people up as main characters, and promptly offing them as soon as possible.
  • Ade is one of the few truly idealistic and compassionate characters in a Crapsack World, and is having a Forbidden Romance with Holden that seems ripe for drama. Then she gets blown up at the end of the pilot.
  • Shed Garvey is one of the few survivors of the Canterbury's destruction, and he's quickly set up as a main character. He serves an essential role as The Medic, he's given a rounded personality, has plenty of moments to shine, and even gets a bit of backstory. Then he has his head blown off halfway through episode four.
  • Miller is played by one of the biggest and top-billed names in the cast and gets a lot of focus throughout the first season. Season 2 promptly kills him off a few episodes in.
• The first episode of Flashpoint introduces Team One, the ensemble main cast of the show — except that at the end of that episode, one member of the team is promoted to Sergeant and given his own team, and never appears on the show again. It's his replacement, Sam Braddock, who becomes the seventh regular cast member.
• Freaks and Geeks: The pilot begins with a pan across a football practice before settling on a couple on the bleachers. The conventionally attractive couple, a jock and a cheerleader, spout clichéd dialogue about their relationship drama before the camera pans down to beneath the bleachers, where our real heroes, the titular "freaks", are hanging out, getting high and discussing rock music.
• Game of Thrones:
  • As with the book, the series opens with several rangers of the Night's Watch who end up getting killed or executed by the second scene.
  • Eddard Stark appears to be the show's main protagonist. He's played by the show's most famous actor and the plot centers on him more than any other character. However, he dies at the end of the first season, causing the drama to fracture into a large number of plot lines, each with their own protagonist.
  • Robb Stark after his father, whom George R. R. Martin admits he killed to subvert the standard revenge story.
  • Viserys Targaryen and Khal Drogo are Decoy Antagonists.
• Hurlan in The Heart, She Holler was the Protagonist from the beginning, but this is changed in 'The Comening' when he is Killed Off for Real, and Hershey becomes the new Mayor.
• House of Cards (US):
  • Zoe Barnes is the deuteragonist of the first season, with the story focusing almost as much on her journalistic career as it does on Frank Underwood's rise to power. When Underwood becomes Vice President of the United States at the end of Season 1, and Zoe finally begins to piece together the clues about his involvement in Peter Russo's death, one could assume that the next season would feature her as the Hero Antagonist to Underwood's Villain Protagonist. Nope. Underwood throws her in front of a subway train in the first episode of Season 2.
  • It's then Double Subverted when Zoe's love interest Lucas Goodwin becomes an Ascended Extra in Season 2, and seems poised to replace Zoe as the Hero Antagonist as he gets involved with underground hackers and sets out to expose Underwood's corruption. Also nope. He doesn't even make it halfway through the season before he's sent to prison for cyberterrorism after his hacker ally betrays him to the FBI.
  • And then again with Rachel Posner, who gets a hefty amount of screen time during season 2 and build up in season 3, who is seemingly the one remaining piece that could threaten Frank Underwood. And then as before, she is killed and Frank's trail grows ever colder.
  • The Final Season does this with Doug Stamper of all people. He is positioned as a Villain Protagonist who might make a Heel–Face Turn to stop Claire Underwood. Instead, he helps Claire destroy her last remaining enemies, only for Claire to kill him, eliminating the final loose end and getting away with all of her crimes.
• The Last of Us (2023): Even more than in the source material, Sarah is built up as this. The entire first half of the premiere episode focuses on her as we see the beginning of the violent collapse of civilization from her point of view. Then she is shot by a soldier and dies painfully in her despairing father's arms as he takes the position as the true protagonist.
• Lexx:
  • An early episode begins with a man drifting through space in a small shuttle, playing a radio message which details his backstory and the plight of his home planet "Gworim". Then the Lexx runs him right over, and nobody even notices due to his comparatively small size.
  • In I Worship His Shadow, episode 1.1 (not the 1.1 that's also 2.1, the other one that's also the one and only 1.0), Barry Bostwick plays rebellion leader Thodin. He would have been the obvious hero... in some completely different series, where heroes are actually a thing that exist. TPTB shamelessly used Bostwick's name to attract viewers, presenting Thodin as the main character in marketing materials only to kill him off one hour into the movie-length installment. Thodin's killer, the undead assassin Kai, on the other hand did go on to become a main character for the rest of the series.
• Jack from Lost was originally meant to be one of these, played for the single episode by a big-name actor — Michael Keaton being a top choice — to reinforce the audience's assumption that he was the main character. Executives decided that the audience would feel betrayed and tune out if he was promptly killed. Thus, Jack was made the actual leader of the group and a regular, thus necessitating a cheaper actor.
• Mayor of Kingstown heavily promoted Kyle Chandler's involvement but his character, Mitch, is suddenly killed halfway through the first episode.
• Midnight Mass (2021): Riley is the first major character introduced and has the most emotional baggage to work through, all of which makes it clear he's the main character... and then he dies midway through the show after becoming a vampire and choosing Suicide by Sunlight.
• Midnight Sun (2016): Peter Stormare's character Rutger dies in the first episode after being given a lot time to establish his character and personality effectively setting him up as the third most important character after Kahina and Anders.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus:
  • Played with in the "Up Your Pavement" sketch. It starts as the intro to a television show about a pair of happy-go-lucky homeless people, who are abruptly run over by a James Bond-type international crimefighter and spy. The sketch then quickly features a renowned surgeon, a Royal Navy Admiral, his daughter, a flasher, and the chairman of Fiat Motors, then goes through about a dozen random, tenuously-related people before finally setting on a legendary RAF fighter ace of World War II...and the story of the men who flew with him.
  • Similarly played with in the "Science Fiction" sketch (about giant blancmanges from the Andromeda Galaxy). Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Brainsample are introduced as if they were the focus of a sport-sketch but they're immediately abandoned for one about Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever. Then they show up at the end: turns out they were responsible for the destruction of the blancmange at Wimbledon.
• Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2024): The series starts with a couple, played by Alexander Skarsgård and Eiza González, at a remote house, about to celebrate when an alarm goes off, alerting them to someone coming. The husband gets ready for them to run, only for the wife to tell them that she's tired of running, and he agrees they should stay and fight. Then he gets killed by a gunshot, and while she puts up more of a fight, she also gets killed. Then we meet Jane and John.
• In the Mystery Science Theater 3000 viewing of Time Chasers Mike and the robots voice their desire that Nick be an example. After a few scenes, they begin hoping that Nick will cross paths with a new character who turns out to be the real star.
  Crow: This... is not our star, is it? I will not accept this as our star, sorry.
• The Office: when Michael Scott left the series, his initial replacement was DeAngelo Vickers, who was very similar to Michael and played by frequent Steve Carell collaborator Will Ferrell. He only appeared for four episodes before disappearing after a total physical and mental breakdown.
• The Outer Limits (1963) episode "The Man Who Was Never Born" begins with astronaut John Reardon accidentally travelling into the future and discovering the world has been reduced to a post apocalyptic wasteland. He meets a mutated man named Andro who he takes back into the present to try and avert the disaster. It appears that Reardon will be The Hero with Andro as his sidekick, but in the journey back to the past Reardon dies, leaving the episode focussed on Andro from there.
• Oz's Dino Ortolani, a young Italian mafioso who's introduced as the "sponsor" of series protagonist Tobias Beecher in the pilot episode. Roughly half of the pilot's plot is devoted to him, heavily hinting at a character arc involving his struggle with his own violent nature and his relationship with his family on the outside. But then he's abruptly burned alive by his enemies at the end of the episode, hammering home the fact that Anyone Can Die in Oswald Penitentiary.
• Revolution: Ben Matheson in the pilot from this new series. The show spends the first several minutes centered around him and you would think he would become the main character who ends up knowing how the blackout started and trying to atone for his sins. Instead, he gets shot before the first commercial break, and his daughter steps in as the real protagonist.
• The Swedish thriller Rig 45: Murder at Sea begins with a corporate damage regulator, Andrea Burrell, being sent out to an oil rig in the North Sea to investigate a suspicious death, which becomes even more suspicious after further incidents of violence and sabotage occur. Despite being the PoV character up to that point, she gets stabbed by the killer at the end of the second episode (of six) and is seen at the beginning of the third being zipped up into a body bag.
• The first (feature-length) episode of Rush (1974) builds up Richard Lucas as the miners' representative, standing up to Gold Commissioner Fitzalan's unfair administration of the goldfield. But after his breakdown following his brother's death, he is forced to go on the run for assaulting Corporal Colvin and only appears once later. The rest of the series has his partner George Williams in this role.
• Search: The series starts in 1997 with Jo Min-guk leading a group of soldiers into the DMZ and discovering a North Korean defector. You'd be forgiven for expecting him to be the main character. But then the series jumps forward twenty years, and Min-guk only appears in flashbacks until the end.
• In the Sesame Street prime-time special When Families Grieve, the initial focus is on Elmo learning what death means and then feeling sad that his Uncle Jack is never coming back. But soon the spotlight shifts to Elmo's cousin Jesse, Uncle Jack's daughter, dealing with the loss of her father.
• The pilot episode of Shōgun (2024) focuses on English pilot John Blackthorne after he washes up on the coast of Japan. While Blackthorne's struggles play a major role in the story, it quickly becomes apparent that he is just another pawn of Lord Toranaga and his plot for the titular position.
• Cassandra is set up as the main character of The Society at first. She's the most level-headed character in the show, who uses smart judgement when making a decision. She has a tragic backstory of having a genetic heart condition and survives off a pacemaker. Even her little sister Allie calls her The Hero of the situation they find themselves in. She is murdered in episode 3 after she officially becomes the leader of the town. Allie then takes over as leader and tries to find who murdered her sister, officially making her the main character of the series.
• Multiple layer example in the first episode of Saul of the Mole Men. The opening credits feature the S.T.A.R. Team, who promptly die seconds later in a meteor shower. Following are the replacement credits for Johnny Tambourine... who is a complete moron. Then the opening credits for The Molemen (as a funny sitcom)... and finally the real credits for Saul himself.
• In The Shield's first episode, Captain Aceveda asks new detective Terry Crowley to go undercover in the Strike Team and gather information on Vic's criminal activities. Crowley appeared to be set up as a Deuteragonist or Hero Antagonist, and appeared in the opening credits and advertisement for the show, suggesting he would be a main character. He is shot and killed by Vic at the end of the pilot, although his death does start off the years-long chain of events that results in Vic's fall.
• Byung Hee in Shut Up Flower Boy Band, who was killed at the end of the second episode. He was played by a well-known actor, had a Love Interest, got the most screentime, and was the lead singer of the band. The focus shifts to guitarist Ji Hyuk.
• Stargate:
  • Stargate SG-1 has a non-protagonist example: Kawalsky was the only character from the film to return aside from Jack and Daniel, in addition to being made the head of SG-2. He gets more screentime in "Children of the Gods" than Teal'c (who went on to be in the most episodes of any cast member) and was played up as being a regular character in the show. Unfortunately, he gets taken over by a Goa'uld at the end of the pilot and dies in the second episode.
  • Also, the first episode starts off focusing on what seems to be a Five-Man Band, who will take over as the new protagonists. Instead, all of them wind up dead.
  • Colonel Sumner from Stargate Atlantis.
• Non-death example: The Thick of It begins with a minister entering his office, greeting his staff, and getting ready for a meeting with Malcolm. Then, in the meeting, Malcolm suddenly forces him to resign. Quick cut, and the new minister (and the show's protagonist) appears. Basically, rather than Anyone Can Die, this is Anyone Can Be Sacked.
• Too Old to Die Young begins with several scenes of Larry, a corrupt and philandering cop, giving a lengthy misogynistic monologue about wanting to kill his mistress and then making creepy advances on a woman he's pulled over, all while his partner Martin says almost nothing. Seems like we've got a Villain Protagonist on our hands. Then Larry is suddenly killed in a revenge shooting, and Martin is revealed to be the main character.
• Torchwood: Suzie, presented in the pilot as a key part of the team, was in the credits (for that first episode only) and was featured in the advertisements and publicity as if she were one of the leads.
  • Series 3 introduces Rupesh, a young doctor who becomes interested in Torchwood when they discover an alien parasite from one of his patients. Though presented as a potential new member of the team similar to Gwen in the pilot, it is revealed he was actually working for the government to inflitrate Torchwood before being murdered by his superior when he became a liability. This is in the first episode. Interestingly, the agent that executed him ends up switching sides at the end of the story arc.
• The Wire features an extended example: in the first season, D'Angelo Barksdale is the POV character for the criminal side of Baltimore, just as McNulty is for the cop side. However, he's killed off early in the second season, while McNulty lasts through the entire show and other criminal figures step into the spotlight. This seems natural, as Baltimore drug dealers tend to live short lives. As the show's plot expands, new protagonists come and go, while a few like McNulty remain but are often Out of Focus. If Baltimore itself could be considered a character, it definitely has the best claim to being the "real" protagonist.
• Z Nation pulls this twice in one season. First Hammond bites it, then Garnett takes a bullet to save Murphy.
• Zero Zero Zero: Wealthy drug broker Edward Lynwood, played by Gabriel Byrne, is the first character we see, and he provides the narration for the first episode. He's been shot in the first scene, but a How We Got Here flashback reveals that he's wearing a bulletproof vest. But this is a double fake-out, as Edward dies of a heart attack over the ordeal in the second episode, leaving his two children to take the reins for his storyline.