About redemption arcs in ACOTAR
In my humble opinion, Tamlin shouldn’t get a redemption arc because he already got the chance of having one and wasted it. That turned him into a character way more interesting and dimensional than he would be if he somehow changed his entire personality to fit the Inner Circle perception of a “good person”. He is awful and that’s good from the narrative point of vew.
It was okay to give Rhysand some kind of redemption, but for me SJM went too far, and for certain things he has done in the past she, instead of making him suffer the consequences of his mistakes, she made him the victim. She literally made him the victim of being a serial killer and ruined him for me. I feel like Rhysand would be a way more interesting character (as well as the rest of the Inner Circle) if they were allowd to be grey. For me the concept of fae having a diferent morality than we have is pretty cool and I think now we wont have that in this saga.
Eris doesn’t deserve a redemption arc. I think the meaning of this concept is often mistaken. Redeeming a character and geting deeper on their psyche and past history is not the same as using their past as a excuse for everything they have done. The introspection has the purpose of understanding why they have done the thing, not to make an excuse for it. Also, in this saga I think we are missing morally corrupt characters. We have the villains who atack the main characters literally, but it lacks people who are villains because they are evil even if they don’t cause physical harm.
Finally, I don’t think Nesta and Lucien need a redemption arc because I simply don’t think they have anything to be redeemed from. Nesta was a bad sister, but she has paid for it. She, while trying to help Feyre and make it up for their previous years together, was not only kidnapped, but also killed and made into a different spieces she is terrified of. Since then, she has lived among them for a couple years now. Lucien made bad choices, but he suffered from them more than Feyre did. He endured Tamlin’s abuse for a longer time, and he didn’t leave to find a new family, he is still on his own. All in all, in my opinion their actions and the consequences of theese are well balanced and now Nesta and Lucien deserve to be happy.
