Should amoral characters pay for their crimes?

Audiences might be unintentionally pining for the days of the Hays Code, or maybe they're responding to something else.

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March 13, 2026 - 15:10 UTC

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I think you mean "immoral" not "amoral"
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"We’ll do it before anyone passes a law that makes us do it, was the thinking."

Marvel readers: Oh hi, Tony.
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Reading this made me think about the Paramount/Warner Bros merger. We all seem to agree it'll be used to restrict our imaginations and launder right-wing propaganda, but somehow criticizing a landscape full of antiheroes and nothing else is "puritanical." It's interesting.
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This is a great point, I’m gonna think about this more!
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Obviously a return to the hays code would be awful, but it wouldn’t surprise me if we saw a natural cultural shift back towards “comeuppance”
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"... a lack of shared references.". You touch on something important here, that transcends the genereational divide. People no longer share references concurrently, either. We're all siloed by the algo and the way media consumption is structured these days. This inhibits art's power considerably.
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It really does!
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Very good piece.

I've coincidentally been thinking about whether the Sopranos and similar shows actually go against the Hayes code. Tony technically comes out on top (maybe) but it very clearly shows the costs of his actions.

The one that most clearly does break the code is The Wire, interestingly
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Which I think actually goes along with your point that people don't want the code itself, they just want to see evil powerful people face consequences.

All those shows are still grimly pessimistic about amoral, powerful people actually being defeated.
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I bring this up because the Hays Code was mentioned in a social media post that caught my attention

buttondown.com/NinaWatchesEverything/archive/should-amoral-characters-pay-for-their-crimes/
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Omg, 2nd time today.
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Oh, don't forget this one...
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The reason some audiences aren’t saying “wow, that’s really silly” to such a square idea — of comeuppance or consequences or getting a taste of their own medicine — is because it doesn't *feel* silly

buttondown.com/NinaWatchesEverything/archive/should-amoral-characters-pay-for-their-crimes/
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Id settle for gun violence to be more accurate. Its not fast. Its not clean.
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Thank you. This is a rare look at ethics in cinema.

My family and I are cinephiles and talk incessantly about how pop culture went from heroes to anti-heroes to villains.

Writers seem to be in a contest to make the most evil people imaginable palatable. Bill Hader's Barry was so disappointing.
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Great piece, and MICHAEL CLAYTON is a great call-out; flawless heroes and purely villainous villains remain, mostly, a bore.
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"Hollywood is run by captains of industry, who are the real world equivalents to amoral protagonists, certainly when it comes to labor issues.

Perhaps they don't want audiences to believe it’s possible to defang those with the most power."
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I don't watch much television or film, but from what I have seen, there is no recent trend of bad people getting away with it leaving a bunch of defeated heroes and jaded audiences. This century we've gotten LotR, Harry Potter, and the MCU, all very simple stories about Good Guys winning in the end.
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Over the same amount of time, there have been 4 tv shows with wide ranging cultural influence (saw my very first little girl named Khaleesi just the other day) that I think support the idea better. Those are The Sopranos, Lost, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones. Of those, I've only seen Breaking Bad
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If you're worried about people misunderstanding your intent here, it might be a good idea to clarify that a bit? This isn't a criticism btw, just a friendly suggestion. I read your article and feel like you might be getting some push back bc your blurb here is a bit misleading, I think?
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When we live in fandoms overrun with purity culture, people are gonna be ultra sensitive to seeing hints of it. Though I understand that wasn't your intention!

(I really do mean this all in the friendliest way possible, I don't think you're pushing purity culture in your article at all)
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Do you think all of this is meaningfully related to what seems like an odd sort of puritanism among younger people about sexual/erotic content in movies/TV?
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I’m genuinely curious if there *is* a puritanism … or if that’s just the perception based on how often those sentiments show up on social media?

I do think there’s an uptick in people identifying with media/characters (which is very different from my own experience!)
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Forget it Nina, its Chinatown.
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Or was that comeuppance for the villain but he was too evil for it to even land? Noir you got me thinking...
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The Sopranos features comeuppance, yet it takes so long.

As with Breaking Bad, the audience admired the villain protagonist - oops.

Online polls during the Sopranos did suggest a consensus that all the characters deserved to die, except the kids and Charmaine Bucco.
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It's also: How does someone conceive of comeuppance? Most characters in these kinds of stories are indeed miserable. That's a kind of karmic justice. But the material reality of their lives remains unchanged (or they get even richer!) and they remain out of reach of the long arm of the law
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Great piece. One thing i can mention is that many times in fiction, the "good guy" has to break the rules to win the day.

Many comic book fans prefer the dark, brooding Batman over "boy scout" Superman.
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Rebels/renegades are usually sexier in fiction lol!

The reality is that fighting back is often messy — you sometimes gotta break rules (be they established laws or rules you what to live by) which is what can make these kinds of stories so interesting and encourage us to think thru these dilemmas
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Hell no
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Did you even read the piece?
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