Trollhunters hot take: Toby Domzalski and Bad Decisions
First hot take: Is it bad to say that every major ToA character (except douxie the goat) has made at least one horrible and OOC narrative choice? Even Jim made bad OOC choices, because ROTT is in fact a movie.
Even hotter take: Toby's narrative arc in Trollhunters is bad. He started out good in Season 1, and then by Season 3 his character development was in the gutter.
I want to preface this by saying: no, I don't hate Toby. I feel disappointed with the way they took his character. Season 1 Toby used to be the smart, Watson-esque character, who put things together in the background while Jim was upfront fighting. Like when he helped Jim with the goblins and the changelings.
But once Claire got introduced as a reoccuring character at the middle of Season 1, the showrunners were like "welp, she's the smart one now! Toby can be... uh... the funny one!"
And now we're left with the consequences of that character assassination :(
I love fanon Toby, but objectively in the series he sucks post-S1. His writing improves significantly in 3Below, but in Trollhunters it gets pretty bad.
A handful of examples below:
When him and Claire got kidnapped by Otto in S2, this guy folded under ZERO pressure and admitted that he would divulge all of Jim's secrets just to save his own ass!! Like what?? Toby, you're supposed to be the loyal one!! If the show were 16+ I just know that the second Otto pulled out the tazers Toby would've told him EVERYTHING.
When they were trying to save Claire's life in the shadow realm, he was genuinely useless. Like, distracting Jim and actively getting in the way of saving Claire levels of useless.
In the Eternal Night, apart from saving Darci, he did jack. Even Blinky did more with the explosion stones than Toby did. Which is insane. Blinky's literally viewed as the town kook in Trollmarket with 0 battle intelligence, and even he one-upped Toby.
Oh, and now that I remember, when Toby got the triumbric stone in the Quagawump village, he shouted "I HAVE THE TRIUMBRIC STONE!!!" at full volume with Angor Rot in earshot and then immediately got curb stomped by Angor like an idiot. Like bro. If he hadn't done that, I'm actually willing to bet that Jim could've turned the tides and stopped Angor before he poisoned ARRRGH!!!. (ARRRGH!!! was already stabbed by then, whoops!!)
And then, because Angor Rot did poison ARRRGH!!!, he had to go to the Krubera caves to stay alive, but Toby literally ran off before letting ARRRGH!!! give him a proper goodbye. The only reason ARRRGH!!! stayed back was for him, which basically spells out Toby making ARRRGH!!! feel guilty for wanting to prolong his life. Which led to his eventual death. They got lucky that they had the cure for ARRRGH!!! in the Janus Order, but imagine if that didn't happen.
I'm not even going to number it anymore because I have too many gripes with his arcs to count.
When Claire first got her shadow staff after taking it off Angor, Toby immediately tries to sabotage her??? And is a dick to her??? What??? I'm supposed to like this guy?
Even disregarding the amounts of times that Toby almost sold his friends out or got them killed, his lack of situational awareness becomes such a drag. He almost feels like a magic 8-ball that the producers shake to get a joke out of every time that the show takes too serious of a turn. So that they can keep their 7+ age rating. It's like they just add him there to flatten the tone of a sadder or more angsty scene "for the kids".
For example: In the first scene of Eternal Night Pt. 1, Toby literally interrupts their battle plan twice to deliver some corny ass one liners that instantly took me out of the scene.
And for most of the episodes of S3, his lack of seriousness and inability to lock in is such a clash in tone against Jim and Claire. While those two were training non-stop, Claire was possessed and Jim became a half-troll, what was Toby doing?! Bumming around with ARRRGH!!! playing video games 💔💔 Literally never saw the guy in a scene with him training in the forge by himself. And it shows whenever there's a combat scene.
It sounds bad, but sometimes I wish that he had stayed home more during the S3 episodes and left some things to Jim and Claire. If Season 3 Toby was acting like Prime S1 Toby I wouldn't feel this way, but sadly that isn't the case.
But I do like character growth, and his development in 3Below is great. I will say that Toby was decent in ROTT as well, but for some reason that came at the expense of Jim, who was an asshole to Barbara??? IDK. Maybe it's because of his PTSD???
OK. that aside. yeah. hot take: canon toby is so poorly written at times. yes he always looks out for jim, but wow does he come with a lot of bs choices and antics.
omg i even forgot to mention him and darci. I feel especially bad for her, having to date the guy that asked out every girl in his class before her. eeeyuck.
I saw @losertriangles' Trollhunters hot take about Claire's poor writing and had the compulsive urge to add on to what they said. so, here's my own TOA ramble. If you made it all the way down here thanks for reading and LMK your own thoughts :)
hi aaron. i have an ask about the ending of wizards!! (hoping it hasnt been asked yet)
i believe(?) i read that one of the ideas for post-full-troll jim was for him to become a changeling. was there a reason he turned fully human again instead? thank you!!
For Wizards, we’d originally planned for Claire to use her new mastery over shadow magic to turn Jim into a changeling, just as Morgana originally created them back in the Middle Ages. (Merlin couldn’t do it or refused to acknowledge the possibilities of its powers, because he never learned or trusted dark magic.) Jim would have been able to shift between human, half-troll and beast form at will — or perhaps via his emotions, not unlike The Hulk.
This ending was altered when those working on the follow-up film determined Jim’s arc for the movie would revolve around him coming to terms with losing his powers and being “merely human” during the magic apocalypse. Sadly, our ending simply wouldn’t work with that direction for the film.
For the curious, I’ve attached a small snippet of the original outline grid to see how it would have slotted in rather elegantly.
im trying so hard to be mature about this. we couldve had an ending that was 3x as cool and way more of a testament to jims character but we didnt. and uh. cool! so cool. im okay with this. im fine. 🙂
helloo! i've written an ao3 oneshot based on your drawing of eli and steve meeting half-troll jim for the first time. it's sitting in my drafts ATM, and i was wondering if its okay for me to post it?
(you are credited and linked in the summary and top notes!)
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