Shogun Has a Dumbledore Problem

June 2024 ยท 1 minute read

You don't want your hero to be so ahead of everyone else that it ruins the tension, though. In comics, both Black Panther and Batman run into this problem from time to time. It's satisfying to have the hero reveal that he's secretly been five steps ahead of everyone else once in a while, but if it's consistent, it gets boring.

Dumbledore is a tricky case, and if a particular reader finds that he drains the tension from the books or movies, I can't argue. He definitely has things he regrets, and he has access to a lot of prophesies, but he does usually end up being several steps ahead of everyone else. And some of Harry's arc of maturity is learning to trust Dumbledore, but yeah, at the end of the day if he ruins the story for you, I can't argue.

(FWIW, my reading is that Dumbledore takes several very risky chances, including putting Harry in phenomenal danger and trusting Snape, and that they very easily could have gone wrong but thankfully didn't.)

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