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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Obi Wan:''' That boy is our last hope.
'''Yoda:''' No. [[Trope Namer|There is another]].
|''[[Star Wars]] Episode V - [[The Empire Strikes Back]]''}}
So, you are a writer, and you establish, for the purposes of building up drama and depth, that a character is the [[Last of His Kind]]. However, this severely restricts the options available to you, especially if we have previously seen others of his kind, [[Everybody's Dead, Dave|who are now, obviously, gone]].
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Compare: [[The Chosen Many]], [[The Last Man Heard a Knock]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime
* Michel in ''[[Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch]]'' {{spoiler|is kept from realizing the existence of other Ancients by Fuku, the ''real'' [[Man Behind the Man]] (as opposed to the fake, the Great One), as they would spoil his delusions of turning the world into a flying fish-ridden [[Mordor]].}}
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', Ishida is supposedly the last living Quincy after the death of his grandfather because his father never became a true Quincy. {{spoiler|Later on, it is revealed that his father actually is a Quincy and had just been lying about his lack of skills.}}
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==
* ''[[Superman]]'' and the Kryptonians. This got to ridiculous levels in the [[Silver Age]]. [[Post-Crisis]], it became editorial policy that Superman must be the ''only'' Kryptonian, ''ever at all even for a moment''. So we got [[Supergirl]] the Earth Angel, [[Superboy]] the human clone with grafted powers (because Kryptonians couldn't even be cloned) and [[Power Girl]] the Atlantean. {{spoiler|They changed their minds.}}
** The Martian Manhunter was likewise the last Martian. However, it turns out that he was the last ''green'' Martian, and there's a race of [[
*** Which has changed again in the new Martian Manhunter retooling. Not only are there other White Martians, but {{spoiler|another Green Martian... and female. But she's evil}}.
*** After another apparent retcon in ''[[Brightest Day]]'', {{spoiler|this is still the case. It's a ''different'' Green Martian. Who is also female. And insanely evil.}}
* Subverted in ''[[Y: The Last Man]]''. About ten issues in, it's revealed that {{spoiler|two male astronauts avoided the [[Gendercide]] because they were [[But What About the Astronauts?|in space at the time]]}}. A bare bones effort to ensure a safe landing ensued... but {{spoiler|both male astronauts died on reentry}}. The only one to survive was their female cosmonaut partner... {{spoiler|who was pregnant with the (male) baby of one of them}}.
** In the [[Story Arc|penultimate arc]] we find another survivor: {{spoiler|Dr. Mann's father, who blames his cloning experiment and/or efforts to sabotage his daughter's for the disaster... and decides that the world would better off with the menfolk out of the way completely since his daughter([[Replacement Goldfish|s]]) can continue his work}}.
* ''[[Elf Quest]]'' does this with the Wolfriders, who believe they are the last of their kind. Imagine their surprise when they find out {{spoiler|not only are there more tribes (three [later four] to be precise) but a High One survived as well}}.
** It's just as much of a surprise to the Gliders, one of the other tribes, when they discover there are elves out there who can still have ''children''. Their leader, [[Big Bad|Winnowill]], also discovers that she has a non-evil counterpart in Savah (of the first tribe the Wolfriders encounter).
** In ''Wavedancers'', there is an inversion. {{spoiler|Wavelet is an elf who was raised by humans, and does not know there are tribes of elves in this world. She is introduced in a side-plot after other elves discover her, rather than being treated as a protagonist.}}
* ''Lobo'' in his first own series "The Last Czarnian" has to discover that another Czarnian survived his genocide on his own race, and worse, it's his fourth grade math teacher (probably one -if not the one- member of his race he hated most). And he has to bring her to Vril Dox unharmed. {{spoiler|However after his contract with Vril Dox is fulfilled he quickly fixes that mistake by snapping her neck.}}
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== Literature ==
* In ''[[Inheritance Cycle|Eragon]]'', we are led to believe that Eragon and [[Big Bad|Gallbatorix]] are the only Dragon Riders left in the world, Gallbatorix having slaughtered every Rider and Dragon, with only two eggs {{spoiler|and one dragonless Rider}} left in the world besides them. In ''Eldest'', we find out that Gallbatorix missed one. The elf [[The Obi-Wan|Oromis]] and his dragon Glaedr are crippled but alive, and become Eragon and Saphira's teachers. {{spoiler|And at the end of the book, we find out that another of the eggs has hatched...}}
** The last egg (a green one) is expected to hatch in book 4. In this universe, eggs wait to hatch until they sense the proximity of a worthy rider, so ... [[Mary Sue|three guesses who's likely to hatch it.]] * cough* {{spoiler|Arya}}* cough*
* The first book in the Deathgate Cycle makes Alfred out to be the last Sartan alive. Two books later we find out there are others. Many, many others, living on other worlds.
* A variation. Grand Admiral Thrawn died in [[The Thrawn Trilogy]]. He was far from the only one of his species - Chiss are isolationist but not endangered - but there's only one [[Magnificent Bastard|Thrawn]]. Luke and Mara found his clone floating, asleep or not yet alive, in a [[People Jars|Spaarti cylinder]] underneath his hidden fortress in the [[Hand of Thrawn]] duology. They sort-of-accidentally killed it while escaping. But the incredibly elaborate Chiss [[Gambit Index|gambiting]] in [[Outbound Flight|Survivor's Quest]] has enough elements of Thrawn's style to cause Mara Jade to wonder if he had another clone. [[Timothy Zahn]] has said that he'd be interested in writing a book involving Thrawn's clone, who, unusually, would not mentally be Thrawn (while he'd have Thrawn's memories, he'd still know they were just copied memories) and would feel [[Cloning Blues|tremendous pressure to live up to the original]].<ref>Which, given Chiss skin tone, would make him a [[Just for Pun|Blue Clone with Cloning Blues]]</ref>
* Arthur Dent discovers his entire planet has been rebuilt in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish|So Long And Thanks For All The Fish]]''. Then he discovers a parallel version in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/Mostly Harmless|Mostly Harmless]]''. Then, once the Guide Mk2 has ensured that {{spoiler|every parallel Earth in the Whole Sort Of General Mish-Mash has been destroyed}}, he discovers {{spoiler|an Earth colony}} in ''[[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy/And Another Thing|And Another Thing]]''.
** Trillian. Sure, Arthur runs into her only a few hours after the Earth is destroyed, but up till then he believed himself the [[Last of His Kind]].
* Shelmerdine in [[Virginia Woolf]]'s ''[[Orlando]]''.
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* ''[[Doctor Who]]'' did this a few times.
** Every time you think the last surviving Daleks are all but gone, another one (four, one million) pop up from an [[Alternate Universe]], an [[Sealed Evil in a Can|evil-sealing can]], or somewhere else.
** In the third season of the new series, it was revealed that the Doctor himself was not the last of the Time Lords as he believed, as the Master also survived the Time War, unknown to him. The Master, being the Master, has since died, come back to life, and "died" again in less than three years.
** The fourth season introduced an [[Opposite
** In the 11th Doctor's second series, {{spoiler|Doctor River Song}} was confirmed to be ''part''-Time Lord.
* In the [[Stargate Verse]], the original movie mentioned that Ra's race was dying, leading many to believe he was the [[Last of His Kind]]. In the series, this is apparently ignored: the Goa'uld are numerous, and are the dominant galactic power. This was partially reconciled with the movie later on, when it was established that the Goa'uld were indeed dying out at that time, desperately looking for a host species (which they found in the [[Humans by Any Other Name|Tau'ri]].) The nature of Ra's species was also changed (from [[The Greys]] to snake-like symbiotes), among the many [[
* In ''[[Power Rangers SPD]]'', the Sirian Anubis "Doggie" Cruger was thought to be the last of his kind after the Troobian Empire destroyed his home planet. At the end of the series, it's learned that his wife, Aisinya, was kept alive within the Troobian Emperor's personal chambers. [[Fridge Logic|The logic behind this has yet to pass a cursory examination.]]
* In [[Red Dwarf]], Lister is believed to be the last human, with his companions being an evolved cat, a hologram, and an android. In the books and the series, an alternate universe version of Christine Kochanski is added to the cast (though how she arrived is very different between the two media.) He also loses the status as last human native to ''this'' universe in different ways:
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* In ''[[The Sarah Connor Chronicles]]'', John Henry delivers the line, implying that {{spoiler|Skynet is already starting to develop into a complex AI.}}
* Until season 4, Kilgarrah was the last dragon in the BBC's ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'' . But now another dragon, Aithusa, has been hatched.
== Webcomics ==▼
* In ''[[Impure Blood]]'', [http://www.impurebloodwebcomic.com/Pages/Chapter005/ib025.html the last Ancient may be the Last of His Kind, but to Roan, it means there is someone else out there with Ancient blood.]▼
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* Very similar to the original ''[[Star Wars]]'', ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] 2'' states the player character to be the "last of the Jedi". Except for all the others. It's rationalized as the player character to be ''perceived'' as the last of the Jedi, as few others self-identify themselves such {{spoiler|and those that do, aren't}}.
* ''[[The Legend of Spyro]]'': Spyro is thought to be the only purple dragon (since they're only supposed to be born once every ten generations), but the second game reveals that {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|The Dark Master]] (aka Malefor) is also one}}.
▲== Webcomics ==
▲* In ''[[Impure Blood]]'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20130607135128/http://www.impurebloodwebcomic.com/Pages/Chapter005/ib025.html the last Ancient may be the Last of His Kind, but to Roan, it means there is someone else out there with Ancient blood.]
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[[Category:Characters As Device]]
[[Category:Solitary Tropes]]
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