I have way more opinions on this, but I've been trying to articulate my feelings about retcons, in general:
A creator (much less a co-worker of some kind who wasn't creatively involved) simply asserting that material in a later text (book, TV show, movie, essay, whatever) overrides an earlier one I already liked does not automatically make it so. They don't actually have the ability to determine or define how I experience a story that already exists, how it feels, what does or does not happen in my imagination. They can persuade me into accepting something, sure. But persuaded is not compelled.
Claims to authority over audience's imaginations tend to be lazy at best, and often just franchise-poisoned corporate bullshit enabled by the extension (legally) of one work into shambling zombie franchise copyright hell—and lots and lots of money, of course. But even so, at the end of the day, our imaginations are our own and we can do whatever we want with them. As far as retcons are concerned, the work of any new story that follows a previous one is to do the actual work—as story—of convincing its audience of the retcons, convincing us that we do want to imagine it this way and not that way. That it's worth it to us.
Stories have to actually do that work, though, not just get accompanied by an edict, legal or not. And the more beloved the original work, naturally, the more difficult it is to convince audiences to get onboard with a new version, especially a new version that, if we accept it, displaces details or themes or characterization from the original that we liked the way it was. Whether it's technically possible to reconcile new details of setting or characterization or history to the original without direct contradiction is not the essential issue, either; a sequel or prequel's approach can undermine everything about the original without technically contradicting it, but also doing nothing to persuade us this version is worth engaging with. Stories of any kind need to respect their audiences enough to bother convincing us to enter into the story imaginatively.
More tentatively, I think there are three basic solutions wrt retcons for storytelling that follows up a beloved earlier story. The new work can a) navigate around the original at enough of a distance that it doesn't often need to override/reconcile details or themes because they don't ultimately have that much to do with each other; b) accept the challenge and put the work into convincing the audience that the retcon baked into the later story is actually allowing for something better than what it's displacing; or c) split off the new story into its own iteration (reboot, re-telling, adaptation, whatever—this has happened for pretty much as long as written literature has existed) that doesn't seriously make claims about another iteration in the first place.
We hate retcons that sloppily rewrite a whole character and pretend it’s clever but don’t be sleeping on:
“Narrator just didn’t want to see them as multifaceted and now here’s the truth” retcon
Or
“Character kept this part of themselves under lock and key but now they’re dead and I have the receipts” retcon
Or
“Characters decided X never happened to them but the past has come back to haunt them and oh look, they’re not who you thought they were” retcon
OR
“Character is set up to look shallow/petty/egotistical on purpose to play on audience expectations and now here’s the mess you smugly thought could never be there” retcon
Bonus points if the retcon doesn’t even matter in the end. Like, that’s nice, this is who they could have been, this is the face they could have worn, but they didn’t, and what we saw before is all that history will remember them by in the end.
Heck, even pre-planned redemption arcs can’t get this right half the time.
And to be clear, the difference between character development and retcon is that there is no buildup, there is no growth. This new information drops like a secret will and the room erupts in pandemonium.
You can do a lot without pre-planning every little detail if you know the message you want to send with the changes. Even if it is pre-planned or at least an idea, a good retcon makes the audience go “omg it all makes sense now!” Or “holy hell why didn’t I consider this before?”
A bad retcon makes the audience cock their head like a confused dog and go “wait wut.”
Honestly, my only real issue with Tears of the Kingdom's various retcons is that "Purah Pad" sounds like it should be the name of a celebrity-endorsed menstrual hygiene product.
I really enjoy Geoff Johns' run on the Flash. However, his inordinate love of retconning earlier stories really frustrates me.
Thus, I have decided to make a series which catalogues the various retcons that Geoff Johns makes to earlier Flash continuity during his run.
I'll start off with his retcons surrounding the Top (Roscoe Dillon), because they are....extensive.
In Flash vol. 2 #215, Barry Allen describes the Top thusly:
"His name was Roscoe Dillon. But you know him better as the Top. For a long time, he was just another one of the Rogues. A small-time crook from Central City who got creative, like Len Snart and Digger Harkness. He had a talent for inventions and explosives, and an obsession with, of all things, tops. The only good memory of a horrible childhood, he claimed. Like every one of the Rogues."
This is all fine so far as it goes, though since Roscoe almost blew up half the world with a giant spinning nuke in his first appearance, the claim that he's solely small-time is somewhat dubious.
"But unlike the others, behind his illusion-casting and shrapnel-spewing tops, Dillon had a power. He could spin his body at speeds that even made me think twice. He did it through a kind of telekinetic activity."
This is our first clear retcon. While Roscoe could indeed spin at super speeds, in his first appearance in Flash vol. 1 #122 (1961), the spinning was something he taught himself how to do, rather than an innate power as such. More importantly, he spun well before he showed any signs of telekinesis. Since his telekinetic powers appear in the same issue where he dies (Flash vol. 1 #243, 1976), it would appear that they were not intended to be the means by which he spun at super speed.
"And over the years. that mind-over-matter power grew. Dillon became faster. Worse. He got smarter."
Roscoe did claim that the spinning increased his brainpower, but that happened prior to the start of his supervillain career. And it wasn't his telekinesis that made him smarter. If anything, he seems to have developed the telekinesis because he became smarter (as a result of the spinning).
"For months, he eluded me. Over eleven police officers gave their lives trying to stop him. And I nearly lost mine. The only reason his spree eventually ended was that Dillon got sick. He claimed his mental powers and my super-speed vibrations were at fault. A kind of super-powered brain tumor. He died a few weeks later. An autopsy could never be done because the body was stolen by the Rogues. Who knows what they did with it?"
This appears to be a retelling of the events of Flash vol. 1 #243-244 (1976)...but retconned nearly beyond recognition. In those issues, the order of events is as follows:
Roscoe Dillon robs a train carrying gold with his newly-developed telekinetic powers.
The Flash tries to stop him, but fails.
Roscoe discovers that he is dying because of the interaction between his telekinesis and the Flash's super-speed.
Roscoe goes on a week-long crime spree, during which he plants his top bombs around the city. No one is killed, let alone 11+ police officers. (At this time, death was an enormous deal, and the death of a police officer was an even more enormous deal. Notably, when Goldface later has a police officer killed, the impact lasts for years and is treated as a uniquely horrible act. There is no way that more than 11 officers died off panel with no one mentioning it.)
Roscoe records his evil plan for the Rogues and dies.
Mirror Master discovers Roscoe's body.
The Rogues hold a funeral and uncover the evil plan to blow up Central City.
Apparently one of them turns the body over, because the state then holds another funeral for Roscoe, complete with newspaper reporters and a priest.
The Rogues run around trying to stop the bombs.
Barry successfully defuses the bombs.
No one dies (except Roscoe himself). And the events described last about a week, not months.
Bates later added that Roscoe met with Lisa Snart, his girlfriend, at some point in this crime spree to tell her he was dying (Flash #300).
In Flash vol. 2 #215, Barry continues:
"Not long after [Iris died], things took another turn. My parents were in a car accident they barely survived. After that, my father was different. His eyes...there was something new in his eyes. When his heart stopped, something entered into his body. Roscoe Dillon's mind. It was so powerful, it had survived death....The Top tormented my mother for weeks, and teamed up with his old flame the Golden Glider, until he finally revealed himself to me....Eventually, I exorcised the Top's spirit and saved my father."
This is a take on the events from Flash vol. 1 #297-303.
In that arc, Nora and Henry Allen are driving home to see Barry when a teenaged driver crosses the white line and slams into their car (he was paying more attention to his girlfriend than the road). Nora is sent into a coma; Henry's heart stopped and the teen resuscitated him via CPR.
Barry visits his parents in the hospital and invites Henry (whose body is now possessed by Roscoe) to live with him. Notably, he does not notice that his father is different in any way, and indeed, in Flash vol. 1 #299 Barry says that he feels closer to his father (really Roscoe) than ever, and reveals his secret identity to him. So he had no clue that his dad was acting oddly--it takes him to issue #303 to work it out!
Furthermore, Nora does not wake up from her coma until issue #301, and, while she does suspect that her husband is not himself by issue #303, Roscoe does not appear to do much of anything to torment her directly, let alone for weeks. Instead, he and Lisa launch into their plan to kill Barry and take his body for Roscoe pretty much immediately, and Barry frees his dad before his mom ever leaves the hospital.
The overall scheme did last weeks, but Nora was unconscious for most of it, and at no point do we see Roscoe directly interact with her in a cruel manner. Now, he is pretty nasty about her and pretending to love her over the phone with Lisa, but it is not the sort of cruelty that Johns implies in his retelling.
And then Johns starts making up stuff wholecloth.
Barry claims that Roscoe returned from the dead once more a few weeks later, attacked Patty Spivot, attacked Nora and Henry again, and tried to dig up Iris' grave.
Barry then claims that he had Zatanna brainwash him into being good. Over the next few weeks, the guilt drove him insane, and then he brainwashed the other Rogues into reforming with the telepathic powers he never had outside of this retcon, before committing ghost suicide by abandoning his host body.
Needless to say, there is zero indication of any of this in the Bronze Age comics.
In issue #216, Wally has Zatanna undo the brainwashing, and Roscoe becomes both sane and evil immediately.
The problem with this is...
Roscoe came back sane (and evil) in the 1990s Hawk and Dove series and possessed Senator Thomas O Neil. Then, in the Flash vol. 2 #120-121, Roscoe tried to become president, failed, and went crazy after being attacked by the soulless bodies of the Rogues who died in Underworld Unleashed.
This would imply that he was no longer brainwashed for awhile after he came back to life the third time, since he was neither benevolent nor insane.
But if that was the case, then Zatanna should not have been able to remove the brainwashing or make him sane. But she did.
Dear authors — especially published ones and their fuck-ass editors —
do the fucking math!
You will fuck up the chronology/age and that's it, any "point" and "theme" that you are trying to promote will become absolutely irrelevant at best and outright disgusting at worst.
A couple of years ago, as I was taking advantage of my Paramount+ subscription to rewatch All The Star Trek Ever, I had an epiphany:
The Star Trek universe has been experiencing timeline alterations since the very first time-travel episode in TOS Season 1.
The Doylist explanation, of course, is that they were still working out the vague details of their Generic Space Opera Setting, but from a Watsonian perspective, the now-familiar elements of what we now think of as "the Star Trek Universe" don't really start settling in until after "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (Season 1, Episode 19). Immediately after, in fact: I think that the very next episode, "Court Martial" (S1 E20), is the first time we hear the term "Starfleet" used to describe the uniformed service under which Kirk's Enterprise operated. Previous episodes bandied about terms like "Star Service", "Spacefleet Command", "Space Central", and everyone's favorite, the "United Earth Space Probe Agency". The first mention of the "Prime Directive" comes in "The Return of the Archons" (S1 E21), and I don't think we hear about the "Federation" until "A Taste of Armageddon" (S1 E23).
Even with all these key pieces on the table, though, there are still some peculiarities. Starfleet is sometimes referred to with the definite article, and isn't quite a compound noun yet: "The Star Fleet". There are a few other odd quirks that I noted at the time but don't quite recall right now, but ultimately, it's not until after "The City on the Edge of Forever" (S1 E28) -- another time travel episode, and one that definitely left some butterfly effects on the timeline -- that things start to feel like the Star Trek setting that we all know and love -- making it a milestone in more ways than one.
Doylisticly, of course, a big part of that is that there was only one more S1 episode after "City", and then they had a production break of several months to finally pull all of these ad hoc script elements into a coherent, largely consistent setting.
The fact that so many of these defining elements show up shortly after time travel episodes is just a bonus for the Watsons out there.
What’s the difference between retcons/inconsistency and unreliable narrators?
That's a great question! To me the biggest difference is framing, and how through framing / pacing often times we can discern intention, which is arguably the biggest difference between "the story changed and/or things were forgotten (retcon)" and "the story had this planned ahead of time / did it this way on purpose (unreliable narrator)".
Retcons are also not always a bad thing —occasionally, they can make a story better — but they are, usually, a noticeable break from continuity, and thereby have a greater risk of mitigating setup/payoff. I still remember playing Uncharted 3 when I was young and we finally get more of Nate's backstory, of him being around 13/14 years old when he gets into a skirmish that his mentor-turned-accidental criminal dad figure Sully gets him out of as their first meeting / that Nate had been alone for a while (he has case files, they say his family is dead / implies that the rest of his family is too), and I loved it... only for Uncharted 4 (another very good game!) to reveal that Nate had an older brother who he was with around that same age range and only lost at a significantly older age. We gain an interesting dynamic with his brother and another version of his backstory, but for me it significantly lessened the impact of his and Sully's bond and the character work done in the previous game. Yippee?
For a better more specific example, I'm going to use two fantasy cartoons, The Owl House and The Dragon Prince, to illustrate the difference in meaning, since the former retcons quite a bit, and the latter is a really good example of unreliable narration.
TOH retcons mostly in its character introductions. It is common — and in fact it happens like, 7 times across the show — for a character to be introduced in a more antagonistic way / specific kind of setup, and then for that to be completely hand-waved or never brought up again, like that set up didn't exist.
An example I always come back to is Lilith and Amity. I like both of them well enough as characters, but I I think a lot of discourse around Amity comes from the fact her defining features of her very first scene / dynamic is quickly retconned within the same season. We see her stroll in alone to the scene, bully another girl named Willow for her lacklustre magic skills, and then merrily carry on her way. However, later on in the show, we find out that Willow and Amity used to be best friends till Amity's parents step in and both enforce that Amity needs to end the friendship. Amity does so, immensely hurting Willow's feelings, and modern day Amity expresses a lot of regret over not standing up for her.
Fair enough... but why have Amity bully Willow on screen? Why have Willow react and imply that this has been happening for years? Amity did not have to bully Willow; her parents didn't tell her she had to. Amity expresses feeling a lot of social pressure and expectation, to be fair, but why not just have Amity only bully Willow or only be a bystander to it when around her popular clique (since we see Amity's friend Boscha regularly bully Willow later anyway)? They clearly came up with a concept/plot line, didn't follow through on their set up in Willow and Amity's character introduction episode, and then let the conflict get retconned swept under the rug.
They do this multiple times in the show, but other ones that stood out to me was Lilith (who again, in her introductory scene in the whole show!! is introduced as Amity's longstanding teacher/personal mentor) and Amity's parents, as the bad parenting choices get entirely retconned and heaped onto her mother's shoulders, and her father is absolved of all of it. I get needing to retcon some things sometimes, but first impressions particularly for characters do matter, as it teaches us what to expect and what to get invested in, and the fact that TOH does it repeatedly (seven times is not minimal, for ex!) is one of the things that I think makes it a very enjoyable but not a very well written/consistently written show.
Alternatively, "The Dragon Prince" never does character retcons. The show steadily reveals how characters — namely Viren, a dark mage, and Aaravos, a mysterious figure who manipulates others from the shadows — are unreliable narrators, or that the lore and history of the world as we understand it is missing and incomplete.
The longest lore unravelling that the series has is based on its magic system, which has taken 7 seasons to unravel (with further to go, honestly).
In the season 1 intro / season 1 in general, we're told that the land in Xadia was rich in magic, that elves and dragons are connected to magic, and that humans invented dark magic (because they couldn't access primal magic), which required taking from magical creatures (elves and dragons included!) to work. We learn later that like... none of this is true? Or at least not the way we thought, down to the framing and information being withheld or revealed in the 1x01 vs 3x01 opening scenes.
The neat little intro scene that you thought was just there to explain the magic system and some important lore events is, shot for parallel shot, about a dragon falling into the ocean to put out the fire a dark mage (who was protecting his city from annihilation) branded into his eyes. The lie that humans aren't able to naturally have primal magic is also steadily broken down throughout season 2, 5, and particularly 6, with characters lampshading that others regularly withhold the truth, or display things because of their own biased perspectives (for both antagonists and protagonists).
The show does this kind of thing all the time, even in more subtle ways. For example, for the first five seasons, we think we know who the title refers to — the Dragon Prince Azymondias, wrongly believed to have been killed by humans, and the quest to return him to his mother makes up the bulk of the first three seasons. However, there's another Dragon Prince in this tale who was instrumental in beginning the cycle of violence (twice) in this world, with us going back 1,000 and then closer to 2-3,000 years further back respectively. Or, for example, despite being told in the S1 intro that both halves of Xadia were rich in magic, the western (now human) half of the continent is notably lacking, even in season 1. We only get the answer of WHY in S7, but it makes sense with what we know of the world (and is indeed what I'd always suspected) AND fits with throwaway historical lines from S2. In TDP, chances are you can always trace back any 'inconsistencies' in the lore or history even further back, and realize we were always supposed to be letting them stack up and/or questioning what we've been told...
Even something like betrayal is a matter of perspective, after all, and I think it's allowing grey room between perspectives — who is the traitor? Who is right? Who is wrong? — that allows TDP to build complex characters and dynamics. Their antagonists aren't wholly wrong, and their protagonists aren't wholly right. Finding our way into the middle, then, is the sticking point.
For a few wonder-filled years, we each have innocent eyes to experience the world’s beauty in a simple way. I have seen generations of humans and elves accept the darkness that lurks in all of us beside the light. There is no black or white, only shades of gray. We must all carry complexity. But please believe me that there is beauty in this burden. Your heart will be a little heavier. But now, there will be no more half-truths.
TLDR; character retcons are very difficult to do well because they break setup, payoff, and make first impressions useless or, if it comes enough out of nowhere, makes audience members feel like they were wrong to be invested. Inconsistent writing steadily chips away at your audience's ability to be invested. Unreliable narrators are always evident, should be steadily built throughout the story, and lore/history being revealed to be a lie is much easier for your audience to accept emotionally because it preserves or enhances character investment; you just have to make it clear early on that this is a feature of your storytelling choices, not a bug.
