Who is your protagonist?

The most important question you'll answer as a writer

Because I lurk in Star Wars fan-groups, I’ve come to realize that one of the favorite things to discuss or argue over is how Leia is really the protagonist in Star Wars (meaning the first movie, A New Hope). Or if not Leia, then Han Solo or Darth Vader.

The argument usually hinges on two things. Well three. The first is clicks. Apparently these posts get a lot of engagement. The other two things are a redefinition of what a protagonist is and a desire to reframe everything as “the Force is female.”

So let’s get “the Force is female” out of the way first. I am not a fan of this concept. If you want my hot take on vagina-squad Star Wars here it is:

I don’t bother engaging in these groups any more because you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him think. True story.

[For the rest of this post, we will be leveraging heavily from Jeffrey Schechter’s excellent screenplay-writing book, My Story Can Beat Up Your Story (MSCBYS) (affiliate link)]

One criticism is that Leia lost her whole planet and just walked it off while Luke whined about the death of a guy whom he’d just met. Another is that Leia lost more than Luke did, so she was stronger than him. Another is that she was really responsible for the destruction of the Death Star (she really wasn’t).

While I agree with the first two criticisms, neither of those make her a protagonist.

It’s very feminist to argue that she did the “emotional” work of supporting Luke through his grief. Yes, she did, but whether or not you’re a feminist that subscribes to this notion, it has nothing to do with who and what a protagonist is.

It’s also easy to argue that it was a group effort. All those Bothans who died, all the people on Leia’s ship who died protecting her and the plans, all the Rebellion engineers and leaders who figured it out and came up with a plan, all the pilots and crew who died in the attack, were part of that group effort. That does not make them protagonists just because they influenced the outcome, or even facilitated it. This is a very collectivist/communist argument. It’s a very Team Friendship outlook, which will no doubt score you points with the “there is no I in team” people. It gets you exactly zero points with me, which is better than the negative points I award for the communist/collectivist argument.

Then there’s the Darth Vader argument positing that because he drove the story, i.e. he’s the one that attacked Leia’s ship and killed Kenobi, and he’s the one that had to be defeated, he was the protagonist. You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes. You’ve completely misunderstood “the protagonist is the person driving the story” definition of “protagonist.” By this definition the antagonist is the protagonist since you could apply this to any villain or any antagonistic force. If time (as in a ticking bomb or deadline) is driving the story, then time is the protagonist, amirite? If the character is scared of lightning, and it drives him to hide in a cave, then the lightning is the protagonist, by this logic.

Darth Vader is the henchman (a Deflector) and Tarkin is the villain/antagonist, and the Emperor and the Empire, are the antagonistic force. They have a lot of influence over the plot, yes, but that’s because that is what Antagonists do.

Protagonists respond to antagonistic forces and the antagonists representing them, at least in the first half of the story and sometimes throughout the story. Protagonists who aren’t reactive but proactive throughout are called Mary-Sues (and Gary-Stus) and it’s no surprise given our Mary-Sue-infested world that we’ve come to see anyone with power, influence, or agency in stories as the protagonist, given the definition that a protagonist “drives” a story, even if it’s just for a little while, and/or if several characters do, which is the case in most stories. These “drivers” are better known as Allies and Deflectors or more likely as supporting cast in the form of secondary and tertiary characters and in some cases even as spear-carriers (human furniture).

For any particular event, scene, or episode in the case of a series, particularly an episodic TV series, any person in the story may be “driving” the story or exercising their agency to cause things to happen.

This is why I’m watching people argue that Luke wasn’t really the protagonist, but Leia was. They’ve been watching Mary-Sues for so long that any character who gets help in any form is no longer a protagonist to them. They’re arguing that Han Solo was the protagonist because if it hadn’t been for him swooping in with the Millenium Falcon to save Luke’s bacon—mmm, bacon—he wouldn’t have made the crucial shot. While it’s true that Luke would not have made the shot, it doesn’t make Han Solo the protagonist.

Being influential in a crucial way does not a protagonist make. By that definition, Padme is the protagonist of Star Wars because she decided to have her twins instead of aborting them. Or maybe Anakin was because he broke the rules and had sex. (The irony of this does not escape me, by the way.) Or Owen and Beru were the protagonists because they took Luke in. Or the Organas for taking Leia in. Should we keep going? Should we go back to The Force impregnating Shimi Skywalker? What about Shimi’s parents?

Who had the most influence in the story in terms of putting Luke on the right path? Do you know? I’ll tell you—R2-D2. If it wasn’t for R2’s decision to go find Kenobi, Luke wouldn’t have lived through the attack on his homestead and we’d have had no story, or we’d have had a different story.

This is why a lot of writing books, including MSCBYS, start with “Who is your protagonist?” As in one. Exception: In dual-protagonist stories (usually buddy-cop or romances) you start with defining two.

Outside of buddy-cop stories and romances, dual-protagonists stories are hard to write, and I don’t recommend writing them, especially if you’re just starting out. Crawl before you run.

In MSCBYS Schechter offers us a way to determine who our protagonist is via his principles for characterization:

#1—The final battle is always the good guy [protagonist] versus the bad guy [antagonist] over stakes.

#2—The hero [protagonist] is the one that changes the most from the start to the end.

#3—The hero [protagonist] is exactly like the villain, but with a moral center.

#4—The hero [protagonist] drives the action.¹

Here we see that while #4 (the driver) does exist, it is not the sole definition of a protagonist like some people misunderstand it to be.

Okay, so let’s take these four principles of characterization and apply them to Luke, Leia, and Han Solo. We’re not going to entertain the notion that Vader is the protagonist because it’s absurd on so many levels. Darth Vader is the Deflector representing the antagonistic force, and Tarkin is the Antagonist.

Principle #1—The final battle is always the good guy [protagonist] versus the bad guy [antagonist] over stakes.

What are the stakes? If they don’t blow up the Death Star, a lot of people will die. This is the physical/public goal which affects everyone i.e. it’s the “save the world” goal. Luke’s personal goal, the one that affects fewer people was to save the princess and he did that. His private/spiritual goal however is to become a Jedi like his father. So not only do we have the stakes of saving the people of the galaxy from the Death Star, but we also have to look at that spiritual goal which is also part of the stakes. It’s part of the stakes because if Luke fails, he loses. The Finale is about how the hero wins, right? In this case it ties into the story’s theme of “faith vs technology.”

Since Leia is not in the final battle confronting Tarkin and/or the Death Star directly, she is not the protagonist.

“Aha, but Han Solo is,” I can hear you saying. Okay, he’s physically involved and you could argue that his goal is the same as Luke’s, I guess, in that he doesn’t want the people of the galaxy to suffer. But whom does he shoot out of the sky? It’s not Tarkin, is it? Ultimately the stakes in the final battle are about destroying the Death Star. Han Solo’s goal is to save Luke so Luke can save the galaxy. Had Han Solo launched the torpedoes when everyone else had failed, he might be the “hero” (not the protagonist) of the finale, but he didn’t. And if he had, the story would have disappointed us since up until this point it’s clear that Luke is the protagonist, not Han Solo.

Who had to kill Voldemort? It wasn’t Team Friendship, was it?

Principle #2—The hero [protagonist] is the one that changes the most from the start to the end.

Leia didn’t really change at all, did she? She started out as a capable heroine (not protagonist but hero) and she ended as a capable heroine. Her internal journey does not exist, at least not on-screen. I don’t recall if the book gave her internal journey more on-page time or not.

She is still a rebel leader, just like she was at the start. She had respect at the start and she has even more respect at the end. More respect does not count. More of any of the same thing does not count, because it doesn’t meet the definition of “changes the most.” This is one of the problems with Mary-Sues in general. They start out as competent/strong/brave and end up being more competent/strong/brave and that’s it. It’s not just that they don’t have to struggle or overcome, or even if they do, it doesn’t matter, because they’re the same person they were when they started, but with more story steroids—or hemorrhoids in the case of Kathleen Kennedy’s stand-in, Rey.

Does Leia figure into the thematic element of faith versus technology? Not really. She has no crisis of faith over anything, least of all technology.

What about Han Solo? Did he change? He was a rogue at the start and he was less of a rogue at the end, finally learning that Team Friendship matters. He was still the captain of the Millenium Falcon, just like he was at the start. His goal at the start was to pay off Jabba. His goal at the end was to pay off Jabba.

How does Han figure into the thematic element of faith vs technology? At the start, Han Solo thinks the Force is a hokey religion. Even after he sees the Force at work via the lightsaber training sequence, he doesn’t change his opinion on it. Does he change his opinion on it after Luke uses the Force to sink the torpedos? Does he? We don’t know because it gets no treatment. Why doesn’t it get treatment? Because the theme of the story had nothing to do with Han Solo. If he were to have a spiritual/private goal what would it be? What would he be discussing with his therapist? He doesn’t have Luke’s daddy issues, does he? He’s not Force-curious like Luke is. And he certainly doesn’t share Darth Vader’s faith in the Force as the ultimate power in the universe.

This is another reason why Han Solo and Leia are not protagonists, and giving them equal screen-time and/or equal influence in the outcome would still not make them so, not without the “changing the most” element strongly built in.

The danger of doing that is that it confuses the reader as to whom this story is about. You’d have to stop Luke’s story and switch to Leia’s story and Han’s story², and while doing some of that is often necessary to flesh them out as characters, you will dilute the story and slow the pace of it by imparting equality to them. Confusion as to whom the protagonist is, along with pacing issues, are two reasons to pick a—as in one—protagonist and stick with telling their story from the start. If you find your secondary characters taking over, you might have picked the wrong protagonist or the wrong story focus (the story’s Central Question). You can always give them their own book in the series later rather than confound the current story by giving them their own Central Question to answer in this one.

Principle #3—The hero [protagonist] is exactly like the villain, but with a moral center.

This one is, by far, my favorite. Make your hero and your villain opposite sides of the same coin and you’ll have a winning dynamic every time.

What does Tarkin believe in? Technology. That is why he’s on the Death Star and remains there even after being warned of a possibly fatal design flaw. He is unapologetically arrogant about the superiority of technology throughout. While he is initially Leia’s foil, her role in the destruction of the Death Star ends with the delivery of the plans to the Rebellion. Plus, Leia never has a crisis of faith about the role of technology the way that Luke does.

Tarkin is a true believer. To him, technology is his religion. He believes in it so much that he’s willing to die to prove it. And Luke does the same exact thing. As he’s making that final desperate run (after being saved from Darth Vader and his TIE-fighter by Han Solo), he turns off the targeting computer in order to prove his faith in the Force. He’s no longer Force-curious, but a true believer—just like Tarkin.

Now, as to whether or not that makes sense, may be a matter of opinion. I’d have bitch-slapped the snot-nosed brat. I’d be going, “You did what? You could have killed us all, you idiot.” But when I was in the theatre, they got me to root for the snot-nosed, whiny brat, because I got pulled into the story because I knew who the hero was and why. I wasn’t ping-ponging between principals trying to figure out who the hero was. Even after the Millenium Falcon showed up I was not expecting it to make the trench run. Nor was I thinking that Leia had snuck aboard the Death Star to kill Tarkin in revenge for destroying Alderaan.

And one of the reasons I wasn’t expecting these things from Han was because on some subconscious level I knew that Han’s foil was Jabba the Hut, not Darth Vader, and not Tarkin. I was also not expecting them to defeat the Empire then and there because they were very careful to set up the Antagonist to be Tarkin, not the Emperor.

All of this set-up goes to showing, rather than telling, which is why, if you’re not the analytical type, you may not think about it too hard and just enjoy the story. A lot of showing is subliminal and subtextual and requires you to step back from the enjoyment of the story and boot up the analytical portion of your brain. Especially when it comes to theme. You may not like to think about it or to analyze a story for it but that doesn’t mean it’s not there or wasn’t woven into the plot, or that without it some characters would not exist at all.

Principle #4—The hero [protagonist] drives the action.

Up until the Midpoint and Mirror Moment where Luke goes “She’s rich” to Han Solo in order to manipulate him into saving Leia, who drives the “action”? It’s not Luke, I’ll tell you that for nothing.

Luke really doesn’t have much power. He’s stuck on the farm, taking orders from his uncle, whining about this and that and the other. R2-D2 has more agency than he does and again, if R2 hadn’t decided to take off we’d not have the story we do. As is proper, in the first half of the story, the protagonist is reactive rather than proactive, even if he has tons of agency, which he often doesn’t. We see Leia being heroic, but not Luke. Then he meets Kenobi and we see Kenobi saving him. Sure, it was Luke’s decision to take the restraining bolt off R2 , but was it agency or a plot convenience?

“H'm? [sic] Oh, yeah, well, I guess you're too small to run away on me if I take this off!”

However, it was Luke’s decision to go after R2 before his uncle found out, but that was not a heroic act—it was punishment avoidance. Snot, meet brat.

Then his aunt and uncle are killed and Kenobi drives the story for a while. It comes in the form of Kenobi using his Jedi mind-powers (“These are not the droids you’re looking for.”) and using a lightsaber and calling the shots in the negotiation with Han Solo. We don’t really see Luke doing something heroic until we see him firing the Millenium Falcon’s guns, which is part of Pinch Point 1 (1/3 or 3/8 of the way into the story) and we are solidly in the Wanderer Phase of Act 2A.

Nevertheless, at the end of Act 1 (when Luke decides to go with Kenobi) aka the quarter mark, we can articulate the story’s Central Question: Will Luke be able to destroy the Death Star, save the princess, and become a Jedi like his father? Luke can’t articulate it since he doesn’t know about Leia needing rescue or even that he’s going to have a hand in the Death Star’s destruction, but we, the audience can.

Why is that? Partly because he’s not a Gary-Stu. He doesn’t know he’s the hero of his own story, unlike some—cough, Rey, cough. Partly because, despite the action-heavy plot and special effects, and the “pulp” genre, this is a character-driven story.

Ch. 4 of MSCBUYS affiliate link

This “who is driving” question, is why, I think, so many people get confused about who the protagonist is. Sometimes it’s not “who is driving” so much as “who has agency” and we’re in lust with agency whether or not it makes sense for the story. This lust comes out of a desire to demonstrate our compliance with rightthink and thus we allow rightthink to infect how we look at everything. Hence the plethora of Mary-Sue garbage we’re drowning in.

Luke is the protagonist because he drives the action in the sense that the story comes out of his wants, needs, and desires—not the author’s, not the producer’s, not the fans’, not the studio exec’s, not the other characters.

The story comes out of his desire to become a Jedi like his father (end of Act 1), his decision to con Han into helping rescue Leia (end of Act 2A), and finally, his decision to shut off the targeting computer and use the Force.³ They all tie together beautifully, with the personal goal of rescuing Leia being fulfilled at the end of Act 2B (Kenobi’s death, which then precipitates Luke’s Dark Moment of the Soul), the Climactic Moment of shutting down the computer and using the Force, and the story solution of dropping the torpedoes.

Did Luke come up with the story solution? No, he did not. The Rebellion engineers did. He was merely the mechanism of delivery. He did, however, demonstrate agency and heroism by not running away with Han. And Han had agency in returning to save Luke’s bacon. So, as the story progressed, Luke’s agency increased but it was still all driven by his wants, needs, and desires, primarily his private goal of becoming a Jedi like his father. Ultimately it was his internal arc, not the plot arc or the external arc, that gave us the Confrontation and Climax of the Finale.

In summary, Luke is clearly the protagonist of this story because he not only meets all four principles of characterization, but because the Central Question of the Story and the story’s Theme, all rise out of his wants, needs, and desires. Additionally, his needs, wants, and desires are all context-compliant. We don’t have authorial intrusion via the insertion of “modern (meaning contemporary) sensibilities” in service of “The Message.”

Most stories feature one protagonist, one character whose needs, wants, and desires drive the Story via goals, stakes, and theme.

Inevitably this is where someone points at either episodic series where individual episodes or storylines concentrate on one of several principals, or to ensemble movies.

Yes, there are ensemble movies, like the Avengers, but even there, Tony Stark is (arguably) the protagonist, being slightly more equal than the others. Also, even the MCU didn’t start with the Avengers, but introduced the principals (not the same as protagonist) in their own installments. And then there’s the history of them as comic book characters that goes back, what, 80+ years. Look in the mirror and ask yourself: Am I Stan Lee?

As to long-running series with multiple storylines, especially episodic ones, I would argue that each storyline and often each episode has a single protagonist and the same principles apply. Kirk usually solves the story problem, but in some episodes, Spock does. In others McCoy does. Sometimes we have Team Friendship solutions, but whose needs, wants, and desires were the primary driver? There are stories in the Star Wars IP where Leia or Han Solo are the protagonist, yes, but none of that invalidates the fact that Leia and Han Solo are not and could not be the protagonist of Star Wars: A New Hope.

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1. His book would be a lot clearer if he’d stick to “protagonist” instead of using “hero” to mean “protagonist.”

2. And by switching, I don’t mean changing perspective or viewpoint. That is a house-keeping detail. I mean stopping one story to start another.

3. The end of Act 2B, Kenobi’s martyr moment, is not Luke’s decision or a demonstration of his agency, i.e. it belongs to Kenobi. Kenobi had agency there.