Why do all the immortal protagonists hate immortality?

One my husband’s favorite TV shows of all times is The Highlander. As I’m heading to bed, he pulls out the DVDs and watches Duncan McCloud nobly behead other immortals in cheesy, low-production-values fight scenes. There’s one song they play over and over in multiple episodes that often gets stuck in my head - “Who wants to live forever?” by Queen. And it totally encapsulates my pet peeve about the way immortality is often represented in TV and movies.

Duncan McCloud, like many other fictional immortals, is dark and broody about his immortality. Immortality is portrayed as a burden he would gladly get rid of if he could. He has to watch friends and lovers grow old and die while he stays young and handsome until the end of the world (or until he gets be-headed by another immortal). Many episodes are about a moody Duncan reminiscing over friends or girlfriends that are long gone.

Well boo-frakking-hoo. Poor baby. Too bad the fact that YOU GET TO LIVE FOREVER doesn’t make up for it. Oh wait. It does! Sure it sucks to see people die and it’s hard making new friends every few decades, but let me remind you that YOU GET TO LIVE FOREVER!!! Let’s just pretend, Duncan, that you get turned back into a mortal. You settle down, have a few young-uns, work a respectable job, and retire to Florida. As death approaches after a rousing game of bridge, is the last thought on your mind going to be “Gee, I’m sure glad now that I’m staring into the abyss that I gave up that pesky immortality thing”? I think not.

This phenomenon of immortals hating their immortality extends well beyond Duncan McCloud (and his cousin Connor). Other fictional immortal protagonists whining about wanting to become human again are:

Angel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and his eponymous show Angel) – Poor Angel. He can’t have sex with his true love, Buffy, because of his vampire-with-a-soul-curse. Now don’t get me wrong. I love sex with someone you deeply love as much as anyone else, but I would gladly trade it for immortality. (Sorry, David.) He was offered a possibility of a future Shanshu (Buffy-verse speak for mystical reward that will turn Angel human), but thankfully signed it away by the end of the series. So now he’s free to be a vampire detective for another few centuries. Angel’s guilty of muttering the horrible pun “Immortality? I’m dying to get rid of that.”

Nick Knight (Forever Knight) – another vampire detective who desperately wanted to be mortal again. He was all morose about all the bad things he did – blood sucking, pillaging, killings – that he used his well-hones vampire instincts to fight crime in Toronto and atone for his sins. In the end, he gets his vampire mentor to kill him and so that he doesn’t have to turn his dying human girlfriend into a vampire. Wow. He must have really loved her to want them both dead and rotting in the ground.

Mick St. John (Moonlight) – the most recent in a time-honored tradition of vampire dectective heroes wishing they were mortal again. Mick wants to be mortal so badly that he takes a “temporary” cure, and then proceeds to get beat to a pulp by sensible I-like-being-immortal-and powerful vampires.

John Amsterdam (New Amsterdam) – I didn’t watch this “blink and you miss it” show from last season. However, the main plot is that John Amsterdam will become mortal when he finds true love. Isn’t that sweet? Then they can be dead together . . . forever.

Arwen (Lord of the Rings) – The elf who gives up immortality for to be with her human love, Aragorn. While the elves say they viewed the mortality of humans as a gift, how many of them besides Arwen actually stayed behind in Middle Earth instead sailing to Valinor (where they would stay immortal)? I believe the answer is none.


So why do we have these fictional immortals who are so willing to give up their immortality? While short-sightedness is the first thing that comes to mind, there is clearly something deeper going on here. We have to remember that these stories are created for human consumption. As mortal beings who are typically obsessed with death, there is clearly an allure to the idea of immortality. However, a narrative about a happy, go-lucky immortal who loves his/her life and has no problem living forever would not make an exciting story (These kinds of characters are often sidekicks, mentors, roguish friends, etc. – Methos in Highlander, Spike in Buffy/Angel, Josef in Moonlight.) We the viewers need conflict, inner turmoil, something for to propel the narrative forward. And while we can fantasize about being immortal ourselves, we ultimately come to feel good about our own mortality when the protagonist we secretly envy actually envies our mortality and normalness.

Except for me. I totally want to be immortal and think these characters are being silly. That’s why I’m investing in cryogenics. You may think I’m joking . . .

There’s an academic paper in here somewhere.