Did Morning Star Change Anyone Else’s View of Darrow?
I just finished Morning Star for the first time a couple of days ago, and ever since then I’ve been thinking a lot about Darrow and the way people talk about him online.
And honestly, I feel strangely conflicted about him now.
I still think he’s one of the most compelling protagonists I’ve ever read. He’s charismatic, intelligent, emotionally intense, and the books do an incredible job of making you feel the weight he carries. But at the same time, Morning Star was also the point where I started emotionally distancing myself from him more and more.
For me, that shift really started when he essentially decided to leave the Sons of Ares on Jupiter behind and the „destruction“ of Ganymede. I completely understood the strategic logic behind it. From a military perspective, it probably made sense. But morally, it made me feel cold toward him in a way I didn’t expect.
And that’s what made me start questioning something I rarely see discussed in the fandom:
Why do so many people praise Darrow for traits that dystopian fiction usually warns us to be afraid of?
Everywhere I look, whether it’s rankings, TikTok, YouTube, Reddit discussions, or Booktube videos, people mostly talk about how “insane” his aura is, how he’s the greatest sci fi protagonist ever written, or how he’s this perfect revolutionary hero and “true philosopher king.”
And I do understand why people think that.
Darrow understands both lowColors and Golds. He understands suffering, propaganda, war, sacrifice, manipulation, leadership, and power. He constantly carries impossible burdens and makes decisions that most people could never make. In many ways, he really does fit the idea of the “philosopher king” who believes he alone can see the bigger picture clearly enough to shape a better future.
But isn’t that also exactly what makes him dangerous?
That’s what I keep coming back to. Because the more I thought about it, the more I started seeing parallels between Darrow and Alma Coin from The Hunger Games.
Not because they are morally identical, and not because Darrow secretly wants dictatorship or power for himself in the same way Coin does, but because both characters seem built around the same terrifying political idea:
That morality can become secondary once someone convinces themselves they are fighting for the “right” future.
Both characters:
• come from systems built on oppression
• are highly strategic and emotionally intelligent
• know how to present warmth and humanity while still making brutal decisions
• are willing to sacrifice people for what they believe is the greater good
• slowly begin operating on a scale where individual lives become secondary to long term outcomes
And honestly, Coin’s symbolic Hunger Games proposal at the end of Mockingjay felt weirdly “Darrow-like” to me. Obviously it was morally horrific. But politically? It was smart.
It would unify the districts through shared revenge, create emotional solidarity after the war, redirect hatred away from internal conflict, and strengthen Coin’s authority at the same time. And the smartest part was making the victors vote on it, because it allowed her to distance herself personally from the decision while still benefiting politically from the outcome.
That kind of cold strategic thinking honestly feels like something Darrow could also justify under the right circumstances.
And I think that’s why Morning Star unsettled me so much.
Because while reading the trilogy, I slowly started realizing that Darrow often acts first and only emotionally processes the moral consequences afterward. He constantly crosses ethical lines because he believes the scale of the war justifies it. And while the books absolutely show the psychological cost this has on him, I sometimes feel like the fandom romanticizes those traits instead of critically engaging with them.
One thing I find especially interesting is how much perspective changes the way we judge characters.
We experience Darrow entirely from the inside. We feel his grief, guilt, trauma, fear, rage, and love directly. The narrative emotionally aligns us with him almost all the time.
But with Coin, we only really experience her through Katniss Everdeen’s perspective. We are naturally suspicious of her because Katniss is suspicious of her.
And that honestly makes me wonder:
If Red Rising were written from the perspective of civilians caught in Darrow’s wars, or from people destroyed by his decisions, would readers still describe him as heroic? Or would he feel terrifying?
Because I genuinely think there’s a version of the story where Darrow looks much less like a savior and much more like a revolutionary force of destruction that tears entire systems apart while deciding for everyone else what the future should look like.
And to be clear, I’m not saying Darrow is evil. I actually think the fact that I’m this conflicted about him proves how brilliantly written he is. I also don’t think Coin was “just evil” either.
I think both characters are survivors shaped by violent systems. Both genuinely believe they are acting in service of their people and their countries. The difference is that Darrow still holds onto empathy and personal guilt much more strongly, while Coin becomes colder and more politically detached.
But I still think the comparison is fascinating because both characters raise the same uncomfortable question:
Is someone automatically good just because they fight for a just cause?
Or should we still question how many people they sacrifice, how much destruction they create, and how often they justify morally horrific actions in the name of a better future?
That’s honestly one of the reasons I love both series so much.
A lot of dystopian fiction isn’t really about “good rebels versus evil governments.” It’s about what power, war, revenge, and ideology do to people over time, even to people who begin with understandable motives.
And I think Suzanne Collins and Pierce Brown both explore that idea in really interesting ways.
Also, small side note: I saw someone compare Red Rising to Avatar recently, and honestly I don’t really see that comparison 😅 Outside of both being somewhat dystopian or socially critical, the stories feel extremely different to me in themes, tone, and especially in how they handle morality and revolution.
And maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but by the end of Morning Star I had actually reached a point where part of me almost wanted Darrow to die, not because I hated him, but because it felt like the only possible absolution or consequence for everything that had happened and everything he had done.
Which honestly says a lot about how emotionally complicated his character became for me over the course of Red Rising, Golden Son, and Morning Star.
I still absolutely love the series and would easily give it a 5/5. In fact, this moral discomfort is probably one of the biggest strengths of the books for me. They force you to actively think about morality instead of simply celebrating someone as a hero.
I’ve only read up to Morning Star so please no spoilers beyond that.
But I’m genuinely curious what other people think about this, because I rarely see Darrow discussed critically in fandom spaces, and I can’t tell if I’m completely overthinking things or if other people also started feeling uncomfortable with him by the end of the trilogy.