9 Side Characters Who Took Over Their Franchises

Captain Jack from Pirates of the Caribbean
2003’s breakout success The Curse of the Black Pearl only featured the quirky rogue Captain Jack Sparrow as a side character. Will Turner was the hero, while Sparrow functioned as a “less intelligent Gandalf,” guiding Will on a journey while wisecracking the entire time. Naturally, audiences loved him, and every subsequent sequel has starred Jack.
Did it work? Critically, not so much—reviews for the franchise have trended downward. Commercially, though, he’s been popular enough to keep things sailing along. The fifth Pirates film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, is in production for a 2017 release.
 

Riddick from The Chronicles of Riddick
Vin Diesel’s Riddick starts out with a reasonably large role in Pitch Black, the escaped convict who’s the only one tough enough to save the protagonists from alien predators. He was originally going to die at the end, but Vin’s charisma triggered a rewrite, ultimately birthing a film franchise named after the character. He’s starred in two sequels, and if Diesel and his director get their way, he’ll star in two more.
Did it work? Not as well. Riddick loses some of his stoic mystique in the sequels, forced to play more of  a hero than an anti-hero. But he’s still fun, and definitely the best character in the franchise.
 

Duncan Idaho, from Dune
With a mythology sprawl as wide as Dune’s, side characters are always rising and falling, but Duncan Idaho’s rise is particularly notable: he appears in more Dune books than anyone else, despite the fact that he dies a rather mundane death in the first one. He’s reborn as a clone in Dune Messiah, dies again in Children of Dune, and comes back again and again (across three millennia) as a servant (and later assassin) of the sandworm God Emperor of Dune. He suffers his own string of assassinations in Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune, and appears in prequel and sequel novels by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.
Did it work? Well, he survived for the better part of 4,000 years. Hard to call that anything but a resounding success, even if it required dying a few hundred times.
 

Spike, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The sardonic vampire had a small plot arc at the beginning of Buffy’s sophomore season. He was originally going to die, but proved popular enough to earn a reprieve. A long one. By the time the show had wrapped up, Spike had sided with the heroes, fallen in love with Buffy, gotten a soul, and heroically sacrificed himself, only to return on the spinoff Angel, making him the rare side character to take over two franchises.
Did it work? Yup! He can be a controversial character, but he’s definitely a huge part of Buffy’s enduring popularity.
 

Death, from Discworld
Terry Pratchett’s anthropomorphized version of death turned up as a joke in the first book. He then went on to gain a personality much more fully fleshed-out than an animated skeleton has any right to be: he’s made an appearance in more Discworld books than any other character.
Did it work? Absolutely. Prachett’s comedic genius can’t be disputed.
 

Jason from Friday the 13th
As most people forget, the first Friday the 13th film had a clever plot twist: the deranged killer wasn’t Jason Voorhees, but his mother, who was unhinged after Jason’s untimely summer camp death. Most people forget that because every sequel forgot it too, turning the franchise into a supernatural horror tale about undead Jason’s hockey-mask-clad vengeance.
Did it work? That depends on whether you enjoy watching 11 similar horror sequels. Some of you must, or they wouldn’t exist. Jason is a horror icon at this point, so I’ll say that it worked well enough.
 

Burt Gummer from Tremors
The 1990 cult classic Tremors is a self-aware monster movie with a breakout character, Burt Gummer. His survivalist mentality made him the quirky comic relief for the first two films, but, since overt paranoia is the best way to survive a horror film, he ascended to the franchise star for the third installment. His character also starred in the short-lived TV show and will be the hero of the next film to boot.
Did it work? You bet. Gummer’s ridiculous habits and superhuman survival skills are a great fit for the low-budget horror-comedy series.
 

Slappy the dummy, from Goosebumps
The sadistic ventriloquist dummy barely even featured in the first Goosebumps book, 1993’s Night of the Living Dummy, in which a different evil puppet stalked the heroes. But you know the drill: just like most of the characters on this list, Slappy rose to an iconic role in the sequels. By now, R.L. Stine has penned eight books featuring Slappy, and he’s the main villain in the this year’s Goosebumps film.
Did it work? Yup! Slappy is the reanimated wooden face of Goosebumps.
 

The Terminator, from, well, you know
No one can argue that Terminator isn’t a long-lasting franchise at this point—after all, his catchphrase is “I’ll be back.” But the original 1984 film was more a horror thriller than an action film, and the suspense was greater when we were waiting for the murder robot to show his bionic face. In every film since, he’s been reprogrammed for the good guys, and this July will prove that he’s as popular as ever: the plot of Terminator: Genisys has been pretzeled entirely to justify an aging Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return.
Did it work? Definitely. The franchise works best when we’re rooting for the Terminator to blow stuff up, and he won’t be stopping any time soon.
Which sidekicks turned mainkicks are we forgetting?