Have you ever watched any form of entertainment media?  If so, you’ve probably met the lancer. They’re the hero’s sidekick: either the silent, cynical, badass or the optimistic, stubborn, best friend So, how can the term “lancer” cover such a wide range of characters?

The title of Lancer comes from mercenary knights in the medieval era who lacked the noble title but fought as equals on the battlefield with royal knights; the difference of course being that Lancers were considerably more disposable.. In literature, the Lancer is never the ‘chosen one’. They never get to be the knight in shining armor, or the grand leader of an army; that’s the hero’s job. The Lancers are instead their foils; they challenge the hero's great status, acting as their equal and opposite.

Lancers appear in nearly every form of media, and they exist for a specific purpose: to highlight and serve as a complement to their hero. They do this in several ways. Batman’s cynicism helps make superman’s optimism even brighter, and his paranoia and preparation clues us into superman’s naiveness. With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Raphael’s rageful and headstrong personality helps indicate Leonardo’s level headedness as the reason why he’s the leader. Lancers don’t just have to parallel heroes; they can also serve under villains. Megatron from the getgo was designed to be an intimidating monster, and by having his second in command be a sniveling coward, his fear factor is upped by proxy.

Lancers also allow for greater marketability. I know several people who find Luke Skywalker- naive and hopeful- to be a bit suffocating and boring. However, those people generally like his lancer Han Solo, rude and cynical. For movies like Black Panther, where the hero is played straight and arguably loses much of the character charm of their own, they are paired with a sassy sidekick that audiences who are not in love with the hero will like. These lancers also allow for the serious hero to still be funny without becoming goofy through interactions. 

The lancer, at their core, serves to round out the hero, giving them a foil to bounce off of and be characterized in conjunction with or in contrast to. However, the Lancer is not a villain, not a force to oppose: they are fundamentally on the heroes side. The lancer may challenge and squabble with the hero, like Iron Man and Captain America, but at the end of the day, the two work together. Or like Magneto and Professor X, the two are fated to fight until one finally causes the downfall of the other.