I really dislike the trope of āIf you kill the bad guy, youāre just as bad as themā, along with its cousin viewpoint of āYou could kill all of those henchmen but then when you get to the villain you suddenly canāt kill because that would be wrongā
But I think what disappoints me most about it is people not getting why thatās not it
Thereās a difference between killing in self-defence and making an active choice to kill. Proportionate force (using only the amount of force necessary to protect yourself or others from danger) can include taking a life if the risk is high enough. Killing someone who is actively trying to kill you absolutely counts as self-defence, and thus is morally neutral ā it doesnāt make you as bad as someone who goes out of their way to try and kill someone who isnāt presently a threat
So killing henchmen, who are all ganging up on you and trying to kill you first, is morally neutral. If you do not have the opportunity to make an active choice about whether or not to kill or just incapacitate them, you canāt possibly be held morally responsible for their deaths. But once heroes reach the villain, thereās typically a point where the villain is downed with the heroās weapon pointed over them, and the hero has to choose between killing an already defeated opponent or ānot being as bad as themā by letting them live. THAT is an active choice; theyāre no longer in active combat, the villain is now defenceless and already defeated, killing them will serve no defensive purpose. So killing the villain will be a moral choice, but killing the henchmen isnāt
But say that the villain has been granted mercy many times, and has repeatedly shown that they can break out of whatever prison theyāre thrown in, and will go on to be even more dangerous every time theyāre free again. Take the Joker, for example; every time Batman defeats him and locks him away in Arkham, he comes back to commit even worse atrocities. And now most people, both in and out of the story, are at the point of saying that Batman might as well just kill him, because leaving him alive is clearly not going to stop him and is only allowing him to come back and cause more harm
When it gets to a point where the options are ākill themā or ālock them up briefly before they inevitably break out and cause more harmā, I canāt see killing them as being just as morally reprehensible as frequently causing significant harm and casualties through senseless violence. At that point, you might as well just go it, because clearly the ethical approach is only enabling them to continue committing much more significant atrocities than killing someone
Although I will say that there are versions of Batmanās no-kill rule that I can respect; he avoids the pitfall of saying āIf I kill Joker, Iām just as bad as himā by saying āIf I kill Joker, Iām just as bad as corrupt copsā. He believes that if he kills once, even when nobody would hold it against him, then he would be more open to killing again, and if he starts to be the one who single-handedly decides who lives and who dies, all in the name of justice? What makes him any different from the bad apples in law enforcement, whom he is also trying to stop?
By comparing himself to a lesser evil, the comparison is a lot stronger; killing one guy doesnāt make you as bad as the shits-and-gigs serial killer with a three-figure minimum body count, and nobody should be unironically arguing that. But abusing your power because you believe that your interpretation of morality is correct does indeed put you around the level of those abusing their power because they believe that their interpretation of morality is correct
So kill in self-defence, consider your morals with a defeated opponent, and if you kill an unstoppable villain and lose a level of morality in the long run, youāre still at a higher level than them
