Back in 2007, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan said: “The disturbing thing is that, although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.” When even the military asked producers to tone down torture on 24, it’s sometimes difficult to explain why I watched all eight seasons.

In fact, I confused some of the ACMI audience by accidentally sounding so pro-death penalty. In fiction, it’s surprisingly easy to say that some people ‘deserve to die’. In reality, I’m a bleeding-heart liberal crybaby. But I still enjoyed much of 24’s car crashes and inexplicable traitors and clenched fists and, yeah, even torture scenes. I guess I’m with Sarah Vowell, who wrote back in 2006 that “…there is a jarring disconnect between what I want my real-life intelligence officers to be doing versus what I want my fake TV intelligence officers to be doing.”

My lecture mostly focused on Showtime’s Dexter as the pin-up boy for loveable murderers everywhere. (Come on, he’s pretty dreamy.) But what’s the real difference between Dexter Morgan and Jack Bauer? Is there a slippery slope between how Dexter justifies his kills with ‘Harry’s Code’ and how Jack Bauer tortures in the name of patriotism?

I asked Dr. Jessica Wolfendale. She’s an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at West Virginia University, and the author of the book Torture and the Military Profession. You can listen to her response here:

Jack vs Dexter

In essence, what separates these men is that Dexter enjoys what he does, and Jack does not.

Further, as Derek Johnson noted recently, 24 does happily suggest torture results in “actionable intelligence”, but it also shows us what it does to the torturer. “Jack may repeatedly stop terrorist attacks,” he writes, “but at the expense of his loved ones, the health of the American political institution, and ultimately, his own humanity.”

As it continued, it was fascinating to see 24 slowly begin a new war – one against its own perceived politics. Season seven introduced a barrage of ways to address qualms over Jack’s actions. Jack was called to government hearings to justify his violence; he offended and befriended an Islamic imam; he explained that while he knows that laws have to be the most important thing, his heart won’t let him stand back when he thinks something needs to be done.

The series’ final shot – Jack, staring up into the camera of a high-flying spy drone, saying goodbye – was a suitable finish. Jack doesn’t get a happy ending. No well-deserved peace. Like John Wayne, walking away from the family he’s helped reunite at the end of The Searchers, he’s got too much blood on his hands to re-enter civilization.

(And the surveillance aspect was fitting, too, considering the obsession with mediated communication required for 24’s real-time gimmick to function.)

But it’s the ending of the penultimate episode, though, that might’ve sealed Jack’s fate. Pushed too far, out for revenge, Jack gets an old enemy in the crosshairs of his sniper rifle. Just before the familiar ticking clock ends the episode, we see him smile.

Jack’s enjoying himself. Suddenly, he’s Dexter Morgan.

Jack’s fate is typical of how the never-ending stories of TV series and comic books guarantee these violent heroes will never know peace for more than a few minutes or pages at a time. At the end of 24’s (admittedly terrible) season six, Jack Bauer had had enough. After all these years of torture and gunplay, he wanted his “life back”. He was told in no uncertain terms:

“Jack, simply getting your life back isn’t gonna change who you are… and you can’t walk away from it. You know that. You’ve tried it. Sooner or later you’re gonna get back in the game…”

We’ve seen this in endless Hollywood Westerns: the hero, the only one capable of Doing What Must Be Done, has to walk away from the domestic life he dearly desires. In 1992, Clint Eastwood’s meta-mythic Unforgiven bundled up every cowboy he’d ever played into the story of William Munny, dragged inexorably away from his family and back to the gun. The coda says that he returned home, sure, but I’m not entirely sure we’re meant to believe it.

At least once the credits roll, William Munny’s story comes to an end. While ratings hold, Jack doesn’t have the same option to put down his gun. Somehow I don’t think Jack Bauer: Kindly Grandpa has the same network appeal. (Opening voiceover: “The following visit to the zoo takes place between 11am and 12pm.”)

It’s worse for violent comic book characters – and aren’t they all? Wolverine, for example, is basically immortal. His mutant healing factor keeps him in fighting shape, year after year, so he looks just the same now as he did fighting in World War II. In New X-Men #148 (2003), there’s an example of how all this death has taken its toll. “All I’m good for’s killing,” Logan thinks at the telepathic Jean Grey. “If you knew what I was, you’d hate me.”

Recently, he too had a moment of peace, albeit in a story called ‘Old Man Logan‘ set in a grim possible future. And he was older, too, finally, a grey-haired pacifist and family man. But – you guessed it – he was forced away from his spartan home for one last job. It’s an utterly shameless steal of Unforgiven, except with all Eastwood’s well-earned heartbreak replaced with pointless Marvel Comics trivia for long-term fans. I don’t think William Munny would approve.

Back in regular comic book continuity, the needs of the status quo have been crueller to Wolverine than most. After his debut in 1974, he seemed to be on a decades-long character arc to a better place. He turned from an amnesiac, animalistic killer to a more noble sort of warrior: self-controlled, samurai-influenced, and even a mentor to young X-Men like Kitty Pryde. Wolverine’s readers don’t want to give up their favourite hack ‘n’ slash antihero, though, so Logan is never allowed to put his berserker rage behind him once and for all.

But Jack Bauer’s lack of a mutant healing factor is, in fact, his secret weapon. Day by day, his mortal host – Kiefer Sutherland – is getting older. At some point, suspension of disbelief will snap and he’ll be judged too decrepit to be kicking ass on 24. Only then Jack will get some well-deserved peace.