Soon after the Happiness, stephenjrking wrote “The Echoes Will Remain” (quoted by Brian in “National Championship Bric-a-Brac”), about the plot of the season, and the people we’ve rooted for: “One may enjoy the action and the plot of a good epic, but what truly keeps us coming back for more is the characters. They are not merely actors moving along the plot, but friends to whom we grow attached, whose fates we care about more deeply than even the universe they fight to save.”

Steven’s wonderful observations inspired me to a thought filtered through Aristotle’s Poetics (aka, theater), by way of the screenwriting guru Robert McKee (fictionalized in the movie Adaptation):

Character has two meanings, a fictional role and a person’s inner nature. Good plays and movies merge those meanings in a specific, functional way. The choices a (fictional) character makes reveal their (inner) character. That is, audiences learn about the character’s nature by how the character deals with bad times and good times.

Also, the characters’ choices create the plot in a good play or movie.

By Aristotelian reasoning then, last season was not only a good story. We got to see and enjoy great character choices that revealed the character of so many people who faced adversity yet persevered, to create that wonderful story.

So, as stephenjrking noted, we honor those admirable people, and I add we honor them because they made admirable choices, revealing strong character.