Okay, can I just give a brutally hot take? I'm probably going to piss some people off, but I'm bold enough to say it.
I actually don't think that Taranza has anymore of a solidified redemption than Susie does.
There's been so much controversy over whether or not Susie has redeemed herself, but a lot of people just seemingly believe that Taranza is totally undoubtedly redeemed and is unambiguously a good person after his debut. But does he really deserve that much credit?
They're both on the same boat of where they help Kirby by giving him things to fight Sectonia and Star Dream with, and then aren't given explicit redemption arcs after that.
You could very well say that Susie's action of giving Kirby an Invader Armor was done out of pragmatism rather than genuine goodwill because Star Dream was going to kill everyone, but honestly, I think the same could be said about Taranza throwing that Miracle Fruit to Kirby. It is very possible he only did that because he knew how dire things were getting and that Sectonia was going to kill everyone. Not sure how that's any less pragmatic than Susie giving Kirby the armor.
And when the final bosses get defeated... okay, sure, there's sort of a difference. Susie seemingly just leaves Popstar at the end while Taranza actually sticks around for a bit, but he's not really doing anything other than just help carry King Dedede in the air, and they still don't give Taranza any sort of post-Triple Deluxe arc that further solidifies redemption for him. So I'd say that's not much better than Susie leaving Popstar.
It's also worth pointing out that both Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot have been absolutely botched in terms of their storytelling. Like, it says something that they've had to make Miiverse posts for both games. With this considered, the ending cutscenes of both games could probably be somewhat put into question altogether anyways.
Like I said, neither Taranza or Susie have been given explicit redemption arcs after their games. Magolor has more of one in the form of his epilogue in RTDL DX than either of them do. (And honestly, I think even Magolor's redemption has some grey area to it. Like, is he only redeeming himself because he just doesn't want Kirby to kick his ass again? But I digress, this post isn't about him)
And then let's take a look at their Star Allies descriptions...
Susie's English SA description of her still mechanizing planets and people is blatantly mistranslated bullshit (and I'm pretty sure Star Dream was needed for mechanizing planets in the first place, so how is it even possible after Star Dream blew up?) and so let's look at her Japanese SA description. It says that she wants to help families and bring harmony and happiness, but it also says she wants to "exterminate savages" which, not gonna lie, that is indeed pretty sketchy.
But I think it can genuinely be reasoned that this sketchy line is directed at the Jamba Cult because they're threatening the harmony and happiness talked about and they're who you're fighting as Susie, and it can be reasonably interpreted that Susie is trying to improve herself but still has bad practices that she needs to unlearn. Which, in my opinion, that's okay. She's not perfect and I don't need her to be.
Now let's look at Taranza's Star Allies description. It appears that he wants to bring Sectonia back to life, basically necromancy. I feel like people have been glossing over the potential moral dubiousness of this, especially when considering how in-universe people could see it as him wanting to bring a dictator back to life. He's likely well-intentioned with this, but I don't think it's certain whether he strictly wants spider Joronia back or if he'd be fine with her coming back as the evil tyrannical wasp she became. He does have that Queen's Phantom attack, after all.
Basically what I'm getting at is that Susie and Taranza both still have issues, it's plausible to call them redeemed but we don't actually know just how redeemed they are, because neither of them have been given arcs after their debut games. So in my opinion it's not really fair to treat them super differently in terms of redemption.
I can definitely buy that Taranza is overall the better person of the two, but I think they're a lot closer to each other on the redemption/morality scale than many people seem to think.








