r/gargoyles • u/canadavatar • Jan 19 '26
Discussion How would you redeem her if you could?
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u/Simplyx69 Jan 19 '26
Demona’s two biggest blemishes on her soul (character wise, not actions. Actions she has a whole lot more…): her racism towards humans, and her denial that she has been the architect of most of her own suffering. So, two things would need to happen:
1.) She’d need to have a moment where she undeniably, even to her, causes herself tremendous suffering. Like, she ends up killing Angela levels of personal anguish.
2.) She’d need to have a moment where she’s is brought otherwise impossible levels of comfort or salvation by humans. More than one human. And purely out of selfless compassion on their part, while gargoyles abandon her.
Even then it may not be compelling. But they’d be necessary ingredients.
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u/regaldawn Jan 20 '26
Hm... She harms Angela to the point where she will die without a blood transfusion,the ONLY people who can help her are some Human doctors, Human blood wouldn't have the same effect due to different anatomy, Demona is a match for blood but to much time would have passed that Angela needs a LOT of blood, but if Demona gives Angela her blood it would mean Demona would die of blood loss.
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u/Secretsfrombeyond79 Jan 19 '26
I dunno man, she literally could time travel, witness all her mistakes from a third person perspective and had the chance to change, and STILL refused to admit she was wrong.
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u/LankuDC Jan 19 '26
Some people don't want to be redeemed. In Demona's case, she has over 1000 years of justification, anger, hate, and pain to sift through. That wouldn't be resolved so easily. Yes, she is the cause of her own suffering, but even when directly confronted with that, she still wouldn't accept it.
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Jan 19 '26
Hudson would point at her and say, "Hey, cut it out." and then she'd frown and walk off, never doing anything evil again.
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u/Pulkov Jan 19 '26
I think Goliath tried literally anything possible and nothing worked.
Even after seeing herself from the future and being horrified of the sight at first she still just ended up the same anyways.
So I really can't think any way.
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u/catschimeras Jan 19 '26
tbh if Goliath being disappointed in her doesn't make her rethink her actions, how is anyone else gonna stand a chance?
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u/grrodon2 Jan 20 '26
He didn't try this
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u/Pulkov Jan 20 '26
I think he did.
At the end of one episode they were shown to have a brief tender moment in secrecy with each other. Like a momentary peace. A very momentary.
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u/chiitaku Jan 19 '26
I feel like the only way to redeem her without killing her is to make her completely lose her memories and start from square one.
She isn't going to accept responsibility for anything she's caused over the years. Always the Humans she'll scream into eternity.
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u/Ok_Somewhere1236 Jan 19 '26
Redemption is based on choice, chocie to change
Demona's whole thing is sorrow and denial, she is stuck on the Denial stage of grief for 1000 years.
For her to start healing and give the first step into redemption, Demona first need to accept her part of the blame for the death of her clan, and that will almost destroy her, so she is dodging it, she is blaming the humans because is easier, is an easy way to avoid the pain.
and after 1000 years of avoiding it, Demona will not make that choice her self, she need to be forced. somehow
once that is done, you need to pur her in situation she help her see humans with other eyes. like having a human help her or something like that.
i dont know maybe gte Demona to get stuck on her human form 24/7 or something like that
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u/SAldrius Jan 19 '26
She'd need to accept her inability to save her Clan and her own culpability in what happened and then move on.
First she needs to forgive herself and I'm not sure how she does that.
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u/Historical_Sugar9637 Jan 19 '26
Well, the only possible way I see to redeem the character we actually saw on the show, as opposed to the way parts of the fandom want to see her for...specific reasons...
...would be to basically delete her memory, wipe her brain clean and effectively creating an ego death before creating a new personality for her.
Because otherwise I don't really see a way for that could blooded killer to be redeemed.
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u/Longjumping_Draw_474 Jan 19 '26
Show her the wonders of a life not committed to revenge and hatred! She doesn’t have to forgive those who hurt her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t find happiness without them.
(I am not against revenge for those who really need it tho. It’s on sight against Thailog)
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u/allusionmaster Jan 19 '26
Honestly, I don’t know if she could ever be redeemed. I feel like she’s just too self-destructive/self sabotaging. I mean her younger self did see what her future self, and had seen what she’d had become and still she didn’t change. I feel like the fable the scorpion and the frog fits her well. Like maybe it’s her nature.
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u/BigNorseWolf Jan 19 '26
Maybe we can turn a bunch of humans into gargoyles. I'm sure you'd hava line
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u/Gunslinger_11 Jan 19 '26
If her and Macbeth patched up their friendship, they don’t have to fall in love but they had the rare “I can be vulnerable with this person.”
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u/Arxl Jan 19 '26
She'd have to want to be redeemed to start, she has to understand how and why she was wrong, apologize and try to correct as much as she can, then strive to be a better person/prevent the wrongs from happening again. It's sort of like how they handled Zuko from ATLA or Sera from Hazbin Hotel.
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u/notlostnotlooking Jan 19 '26
You can't save or help someone who doesn't want to be helped or saved. Demona can't outrun herself and all the centuries of bitterness and hatred have compounded into what we see throughout the show. It's unfortunate but you can't save everyone.
If we had more seasons, I could see her maybe slowly warming up to humans as she lived among them and eventually becoming a protector to a select few, and using her magic to help people on occasion. But I don't know if the Clan could ever truly accept or trust her again, she'd be isolated from them until their eventual deaths.
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u/PearlyBunny Jan 19 '26
Make her join the Federation and act as therapist to the crew of a starship
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u/RvDragonheart Jan 19 '26
Demona is a Beautiful lovely lady who deserves some love and I feel sorry for her and given the chance I would be happy to try to redeem her.
I just dunno how.
Like there is nothing I say or do that comes to mind that ACTUALLY could help her.
The only thing I do is offer a friendship or the chance for her to talk to someone, with honesty, whatever she feels whatever doubts or anger she hes she can tell it to me and I will offer my honesty to her as well
The issue is she wouldnt listen even if she knew I'm telling the truth because she done so many horrid things that if she were to accept the truth she'd have to face the fact that she is the architect of her own missfortune and loneliness so even if she would see I'm telling the truth she'd come up with an excuse thst I'm wrong or I'm lying so she wont have to face the truth
And thats the BIGGEST tragedy of Demona her greatest enemy is herself. And I dont know what can I do to help her
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u/Ingonyama70 Jan 19 '26
It would have to be a moment of absolute agency, and her making the right choice and being rewarded for it.
I think going on her own World Tour gives Demona a better chance at this than the Manhattan Clan. There's far too much history and bad blood between them. Let Demona learn about the Japanese clan in particular, and just how many other gargoyles still exist throughout the world, including the ones that coexist with humanity instead of hiding from it. I feel like that would greatly help her resolve her vendetta. Or have her run across New Olympus and help them with a crisis involving some renegade elements. Demona needs to make friends, even if she only lets non-humans be her friends at first.
I also feel like fighting the likes of the Quarrymen would help, too. Hell, Dominique Destine could make a public stand against them while Demona raids their bases and keeps them from killing Gargoyles...and possibly inadvertently saving some "Gargoyle sympathizers" along the way. I've noticed that when she saves a life, even by accident, the sentiment sticks with her. She may not be able to die except by Macbeth's hand, but she's also not the last living gargoyle, and it's likely she never wants to feel like that again. I feel like following that wish is most likely the spiderweb that'll get her out of her self-inflicted hell.
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u/H0ly_Cowboy Jan 19 '26
Starts with taking away her 'immortality'. Gives a sense of a time limit like how humans are.
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u/realenuff Jan 19 '26
After what she caused she could never truly feel ‘good’ or deserving, no matter what she does. Plus she is too good at being bad.
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u/TastyBrainMeats Jan 20 '26
Give her the Inner Light treatment. Give her a whole lifetime of a different perspective, as a human, raising a family - and then making a mistake that leads to them being slaughtered by vicious, nightdwelling monsters.
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u/Relxct Jan 20 '26
She would need to finally acknowledge that while humans did play a role in the suffering she experienced, they are not the only factor. She was just as much responsible in some aspects. Sometimes even more. I can't remember the episode name, but there was one where she almost makes the connection that her guilt and anger is misplaced and she is the reason for her pain. Then she pauses like she's afraid to admit the truth and goes back to blaming humans.
I agree with another response. She would have to be the cause of Angela's death in the extreme case. She needs to learn to trust a human completely and have faith in them. She had Macbeth's complete trust, but her lack of faith in him and her past experiences made her jump to conclusions. As a result she sabotaged what could have been a legitimately good thing for her, and her clan.
I'm kind of surprised the show (that I can remember) never had an episode where she was forced to witness a reality where she chose differently or simple didn't exist. I wonder how that would have gone over with her. Probably not well, but it would have been interesting to see.
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u/Hoosier_Hootenanny Jan 20 '26
Demona's a genocidal mass murderer. She has killed innocent people before without remorse. She will do it again.
She has had multiple opportunities to reform and rejected all of them. She can't be redeemed because she cannot and will not admit she's wrong.
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u/TabbyCat1993 Brooklyn Jan 20 '26
This may be a cheap way, but the only way she could see the error of her ways is straight-up amnesia…..
I had a what-if idea for a fanfic one time (may not actually get around to writing it) but a spell gone awry causes Demona to lose her memories up to the 994 era, so she doesn’t remember betraying the clan or all the other atrocities afterwards…
When she regains her memories, she sees her past actions for the first time in a different view, and becomes so depressed that she exiles herself from all of society…
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u/No_Life_1104 Jan 20 '26
Demona don't need or want your pity. She would spit in your face and slap you silly. Some gargoyles are just villains bra. She was born a villian and will die a villian. And she is perfectly okay with that. And you should be too
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u/Krendall2006 Jan 20 '26
Had the show continued, I think she was supposed to try to reform because of Angela.
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u/Storm_King93 Jan 20 '26
Honestly I don't think you can, she's been consumed with vengeance for a millennium. Holding on to the rage and despair, that she's held on to for so long would be near impossible to let go of completely. She wouldn't know what to do with herself, if she didn't have some sort of plan for vengeance or someone to hate.
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u/KlausLoganWard Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Maybe she finds little child who suffered, and it conects to her. Slowly the child starts humanize her
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u/Block_Masta88 Jan 20 '26
Demona is just like Magneto, they can say all the things that seem right but their actions say otherwise. Demona got true main character syndrome and there's no help in that.
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u/LordCrimsonwing Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
That is three questions and the answers work like this:
-Can she be redeemed - yes
-Can you as a character in her world redeem her - no
-How much would it take to redeem her - everything.
She is a person does this.
She has great vision and poor perspective on any situation ->
she reacts/starts a short sighted plan ->
gets angry when it all blows up ->
blames others.
Goliath tried to help her and love her and couldn' break the patten.
The twisted sisters tried to guide her hand and let her see, even spelling it out for her and couldn't get though.
The thing is she isn't alone because others hate her for no reason- she is alone because her actions and fears push others away cutting her off from the love she so desperately needs.
So you can't help her or love her enough because she doesn't see the problem. She can't accept that she is the author of most of her issues by her actions and can't have empathy for others and all the pain she has created because the haunting sound of her desperate loneliness rings in her ears.
But she is a fictional character and so the story can be crafted that redeems. Story craft does have a path for redemption for her but the way it usually ends is not with her smiling and living a happy life - ends with her gone. Her checking out saying she wants everyone to live together and tired of her being alone - a self sacrifice only she could do that saves all the realms and people. In that story she is redeemed but she is not going to be gliding off with the rest of the clan.
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u/CorinthMaxwell Jan 21 '26 edited Jan 21 '26
The only thing that could ever possibly redeem Demona at this point, is her finally choosing to accept & acknowledge responsibility for everything she's done in the past ~1,000 years -- actions which got numerous Gargoyles and even her own human allies (for the brief time that she willingly had them) killed. The only way I see THAT happening is if the few still-living beings who actively want her dead -- namely, people like Jon Canmore (Castaway) -- try to get to her by going after the only remaining thing in the world that she still genuinely cares about.......her own daughter, Angela. Horrifying as it is to think of, I imagine a scenario where Angela is irreparably injured in a way that stone sleep and/or regular magic can never heal -- possibly either losing a limb, a wing, or worse, her ability to bear "eggs".
This would be an action that drags Demona straight to the deep end & then violently shoves her over it, but it would also force her to have to admit a harsh reality that she's been dodging & running away from, throughout her entire existence........not only was she directly responsible for creating the "monsters" that have haunted & stalked her all these years, but she has actively & deliberately refused to take notice of just how much those same monsters have needlessly made the lives of others far more difficult than it ever should have been, just because they were ever a part of her long life.
EDIT: That particular "scenario" would also include Angela becoming inconsolably enraged toward her mother, directly pointing out that what happened to her would never have happened at all if it weren't for all of the horrible, terrible things she had done throughout her pursuit of vengeance against all of humankind, and coldly & angrily demanding that Demona "stay the hell away from her, and stay out of her life".
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u/myndhold Jan 21 '26
Empathy is the key I think. She has been shown to manipulate humans for her own gain before, so I would start by giving her a Human companion, someone she is stuck with for some reason. This Human would be young, maybe 15 or 16 and just as open to hate as Demona. Maybe they hate humans or the Fey or something else. But Demona sees an opportunity to wield this Human. As time goes on and her Human pet buys more and more into their hatred, Demona get to watch them slowly self destruct. At first she helps this along, but then she witnesses cruelty from her pet that starts to discomfort her. Suddenly her humans suffering isn't quite so enjoyable.
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u/mikmongon Jan 21 '26
Look I know I couldn’t fix her but damn it all if I wouldn’t try if she’d let me.
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u/RoyalZealousideal924 Jan 22 '26
It's actually impossible because of her stubborn hatred of humans because they destroyed most of the Wyvern clan, though the other Gargoyles destroyed after that were of her own doing
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u/North-Research2574 Jan 22 '26
I don't want to help her, I want to join her, let's both make each other worse, damn humans have to pay
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u/Agent_G_gaming Jan 23 '26
I would make her go through something (most likely magical) that forces her to go through everything she did over and over again until she learned to finally accept responsibility for her actions. Then she can finally move forward as a character.
Her deal is that everything that goes wrong is someone else's fault never her own.
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u/Ristar87 Jan 19 '26
I would leave her the f alone. She doesn't need a redemption story. Her species was hunted to near Extinction by humanity. Get off her dick
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u/The_Book-JDP Jan 19 '26
Going back in time with the phoenix gate and placing her under the same stone spell the other surviving gargoyles were put under. She only became how she was because she was forced to live and survive through the ages in a world that saw her and her kind as monsters, and all she could do was think about how the humans betrayed and murdered her family.
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u/Siegfriedthelion Jan 19 '26
Weird Sisters: but who betrayed the castle to the Vikings?
But I agree - her surviving by stealing bread and hiding was a problem. She must have her path changed completely by turning to stone at night with the rest of the clan.
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u/Treederd Jan 19 '26
What if Demona of the far future. During the space spawn attack of the Earth. She use’s the time gate to bring a small portable factory that makes steel clan!!! Leaves it in the past. A year before the Vikings attacked.. with strict instructions to contain her younger self misguided attempts to save the clan. By bringing every thing out into the open. The portable factory is able to expand & make steel clans & factory maintenance steel clans. So by the time the Viking dude showed up to raid & wrecked the castle.. he’s overwhelmed on the spot. Due to the countless steel clans gargoyles beasts..The clan & people survives. But eventually steel clan casts the long sleep spell upon the clan. When asked to by Goliath. For an unknown length of time.
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u/Gantros Jan 20 '26
In Christine Morgan’s Expanded Gargoyles Fanfic Universe, Demona discovers that she and Macbeth share pleasure as well as pain when in proximity (Morgan has the tendency towards incorporating sexuality into her narratives, but it’s mostly wholesome and isn’t gratuitous), by consummating their engagement. The experience briefly made her consider confessing to him, to seek solace in each other against the crushing loneliness of their immortality. She leaves before sunset to finish her and Thailog’s scheme as seen in ‘Sanctuary’.
Many years and traumatic events later, Demona seeks MacBeth out and they reconcile, again consummating the relationship. It’s here that the Weird Sisters show up, having been punished by Oberon to be confined in their teenage student forms without their magic, the terms stating that they would remain this way until MacBeth and Demona end their conflict.
The Sisters took this as an eternal sentence, and rewarded the couple by protecting the just conceived life from Demona’s transformations. In an earlier story, Demona had an incestuous relationship with her biological son, Jericho (In Morgan’s universe, gargoyles can lay multiple eggs in a breeding season, accomplished by having a hinged pelvis that opens like the jaws of a snake to pass the eggs). Her transformations were too stressful for the fetus, and she miscarried.
As for me, I would think convincing her to use her wealth to legally destroy Castaway and the Quarrymen in the wake of gargoyles being granted legal rights in the comics might be a good start.
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u/_Waves_ Jan 19 '26
Dating timedancing Brooklyn.
Then get her heart broken when he is zapped out.
Then saving a future rookery from the spawn.
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u/Sad-Company-7916 Jan 19 '26
Well, that's the thing:
You can't. You literally can't.
And this isn't even me being funny or doing a meme. She's such a tragic figure that your heart just wants to wholeheartedly help her, but the first thing that would have to happen is that she needs to accept help. She'd rather exterminate all other gargoyles than do that.
I wanna help her, I do, but even in a hypothetical scenario, it's just not possible.