The Healer, longed for by those in search of cures, is yet an intimidating, perhaps unrelatable, archetype, providing a vital act of care but not typically the protagonist of the myth. How then, you may rightly ask, can I suggest that the titular heroine of Sean Baker’s Anora (2024), a twenty-three-year-old sex worker played by Mikey Madison, is one of the great Healers we have seen on the silver screen in many years?

Robert Eggers’ 2024 masterpiece Nosferatu affords us a powerful mythic mirror of the collective spiritual climate that produced it. Beyond the personal or childhood issues that motivated Eggers to re-make Nosferatu, we must contend with the universal transcendent appeal of the story and characters as they open up the mythic dimensions of the film.

For Elphaba, her powers expand beyond the boundaries of what is deemed acceptable to the society around her. Her healing journey is one of depth, a psychological shift of self-acceptance that allows her to see the gifts in what has been considered her affliction, to push against society’s limits and step into the power she has always held.

The BBC’s Sherlock offers a fresh, witty, and ironic take on the Wise archetype. By juxtaposing Sherlock's exceptional intellectual capabilities with his social awkwardness and moral ambiguities, the series offers a more complex and nuanced portrayal than traditional representations.

Guided by Ultima’s wisdom and inspiration, Antonio’s story arises from the center of those “conflicts of the soul.” Antonio and Ultima, however, have no conflict. An unshakeable bond unites them, even though they are young and old, male and female, innocent and wise. This love enables Antonio to occupy a place of witnessing the conflicts around him rather than reacting to them, allowing them to become available for Anaya’s creative work of storytelling. 

Gandalf embodies this dynamic spirit. He stands not as a relic of past glories, but as a living guide, willing to sacrifice and be remade for the sake of those who come after. He reminds us that true eldership is not about possessing knowledge—but about embodying wisdom.

embodying two of the most enduring archetypes Joseph Campbell identified in his studies of mythology: the Wise One and the Mother Goddess. In doing so, Maz Kanata offers a new way of seeing what it means to guide a heroic figure.

Gods and archetypes, as James Hillman loved to point out, never show up alone but in groups and, when the occasion arises, assemble the pantheon from which they rule the universe. The seeker is an unconscious curator of other archetypes.

At the heart of the Seeker's journey lies what we might call a "sacred restlessness"—that divine discomfort that propels us beyond comfortable boundaries.

They pool their courage and skills. The collective capacity of a team of Seekers is far more than the sum of each individual’s. 

Each of us may have varying degrees of the Fool, the Lover, the Trickster, or the Seeker active within.

Instead of being a conclusion, archetypes are instead flowing metaphors that exist and move both within us and outside ourselves

The Trickster mirrors shadow qualities; Jung, nevertheless, stresses this figure is by no means the face of evil. 

When the Trickster is at work, you don’t always know you were being tested until it’s too late.

The trickster jars the ego into a new perspective by subjecting it to frustration, embarrassment, terror, confusion, ruin

It is heroic to reckon that the fire-bringers will illuminate, perhaps even enchant, those lost highways and twin peaks that are necessary

For my entire life, romantic Love was supposed to last forever. That was the goal: Find "the one." Fall in Love. Live happily ever after.

Kristina Dryža explores the role fate and free will play in The Lover's life in the 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau.

Agatha All Along is not a love story per se. It is a superheroine fantasy with aspects of horror, comedy, and adventure. But, love is here

Love is the inducement to individuation, to becoming who one is