Last of His Kind

Would the last one out kindly turn off the lights?

—Herbert S Watson

A character who is a species unto themselves, the only survivor of some calamity that has wiped out their entire civilization. If this civilization used to be important in the power balance between civilizations that still remain, it's now considered missing.

This might mean that they're the last survivor of a particular society or secret order, but for full effect they are actually the last of an entire civilization, or even biological species.

Such a character is liable to manifest some profound Survivor Guilt, and the prospect of avenging their kind may develop into an obsession that acts as an Achilles' Heel. It will also provide an excuse for them to be substantially different (read: "better") in skill, abilities, or morality than the rest of the characters. However, the writers still need to be careful as to how they construct this Survivor Guilt: owing to Angst Dissonance, even something as traumatic as this can still degenerate into Wangst if the character seems determined not to get over it and eventually move on, or if the character's pain is written in an unconvincing fashion.

Will often manifest qualities of the Warrior Poet or the Stranger in A Strange Land.

Since this kind of loneliness is the sort of thing that could easily drive you mad, evil versions are about as common as good ones, particularly of the Nietzsche Wannabe strain. In general, being the last of one's kind is a polarizing experience: the only folks who tend to survive the death of their species are either the very best examples, or the very worst. The evil version will often carry a thematic notion that their very existence is an affront to the natural order, as they "ought" to have died with the rest of their kind, and it's rather rude of them to keep hanging on to life well past their time. Some really evil versions might even be responsible for the deaths of the rest of their race in a way (see Lobo below), as may The Atoner every once in a blue moon (see Tetrax, further below). In either case, if it was an engineered genocide, it just backfired.

Very often, at least for the heroic sort, it will eventually be revealed that There Is Another.

It is fairly uncommon for such a character to be the lead character, even if they are an important member of the regular cast. Perhaps that level of isolation is just too much for the audience to really wrap their minds around—with most characters who are cut off from their own kind, there is at least the prospect of an eventual reunion. This character lacks even that prospect. However, a common Aesop (for the heroic ones at least) they learn is that, even if their race is gone, they aren't truly alone, having people with them who still love and care for them.

Compare Fling a Light Into the Future, Humanity's Wake, Uniqueness Value, and Living Relic. Genocide Backfire can cause this trope. Endangered Species and Dying Race are not as extreme versions. Sometimes paired with The Aloner for truly horrifying angst. Occasionally Played for Drama or Played for Laughs with Only You Can Repopulate My Race. Occasionally the Last of His Kind is of a previously extant Barbarian Tribe of some kind. If There Is Another, see Adam and Eve Plot. The Collector likely wants to put him in their Fantastic Nature Reserve.

If there was only ever one member of a species, see Single Specimen Species. Not to be confused with A Kind of One. Note that the very last of any species is called an endling.

Contrast with First of Its Kind and The Chosen Many. Compare Racial Remnant. Overlaps with Single Specimen Species. If this is taking place in an After the End setting or such, don't be surprised if The Last Man Hears a Knock.

Spoilers Ahoy!

Examples of Last of His Kind include:

Anime and Manga

• In Samurai Deeper Kyo, protagonist Kyo is the last True Mibu, a extinct Proud Warrior Race of god-like virtually-immortal berserkers who completely wiped themselves out through in-fighting because they literally loved battle that much.
• In Bleach, Uryu Ishida is presently the last Quincy, the tribe having dwindled to a single family line after a pogrom 200 years ago by the Shinigami. When Uryuu's father shows up, it adds an interesting subversion to the trope by questioning what constitues 'The Last'. Uryuu is the only active practioner, but Ryuuken is the only master of the Quincy techniques. Which is 'The True Last Quincy'?
  • And with the arrival of the Vandenreich, this is now a subversion.
• Tsukihime has a few. Arcueid is the last True Ancestor vampire, and Shiki is the sole-surviving member of the Nanaya clan, a family of elite assassins who specialized in killing demons and demon-hybrids.
  • Technically the Crimson Moon (sort of) and a few other True Ancestors are still around, they've just become horribly nasty demons. Ciel also suggests there may be a few others around who are simply hiding but that they're not really worth worrying about because they're rather low key.
• In Blood Plus, Lulu winds up as the last survivor of the Schiff.
  • The movie the anime was based on, Blood The Last Vampire, has Saya (here of a different species than her foes) as the last member of her kin
• Due to many wars and a good dose of Fantastic Racism, this trope is quite popular in Naruto:
  • Sasuke Uchiha is a lesser case of this. He is the last of his clan unless you count his now undead brother Itachi, who wiped out the clan, and Madara, brought back to life by the same forbidden jutsu that resurrected Itachi.
  • Kimimaro was the last of the Kaguya Clan, serving Orochimaru until his death. Ironically for such a warlike clan, he fell not to battle wounds, but to a terminal illness.
  • According to Zabuza, Haku was the last survivor of his clan, after most of the families with bloodline limits in the Hidden Mist were slaughtered.
  • Naruto is the last known descendant of the Uzumaki Clan. Later in the series, we learn that both Nagato and Karin have Uzumaki blood in their veins as well. Through the first one is mostly dead now anyway and it's not clear if the second one even knows about her heritage.
• The anime-exclusive villian Valgaav of Slayers is the final Ancient Dragon; the rest of his race was brutally slaughtered by the Golden Dragons out of fear. A young, naive Golden Dragon, Filia, initially refuses to believe this.
  • Filia herself doesn't fall directly under this trope, but during the climax of season 3, the Golden Dragons serving one of Ciefeed's four Guardians, Vrabrazard, are mass-murdered by Srius and Eurologos, making Filia the last Golden Dragon under Vrabrazard's service.
• Goku and Vegeta are the last of the Saiyan race on Dragonball Z. Each of them eventually had (part human) kids of their own, though Vegeta still likes to remind people of his status of 'last full-blood Saiyan'.
  • Of course, Goku Piccolo and Vegeta directly contributed to this state of affairs by killing Radditz and Nappa respectively, the other last two Saiyans.
  • And then there's Turles and Tarble from one of the movies and the new special, respectively. Turles is killed by Goku, and Tarble was apparently a weak embarrassment of a little brother to Vegeta who was sent to some backwater planet because he couldn't fight.
  • And Broly and Paragus, Broly later kills Paragus and since Broly is too psychotic he is eventually killed by the combined attacks of Goku and his sons. The movies are quite fond of this theme.
  • Barring the movies and OAV special, Future Trunks is depicted as the last person with Saiyan blood in his timeline.
  • Bebi from Dragonball GT is technically the last of the Tsufuru-jin, as he was created by Dr. Myuu using the DNA of their king.
  • Dragonball Z featured Majin Buu killing every human on Earth except Hercule, simply because he absorbed the good Buu whom Hercule was friends with.
• Although not the last of his ethnic people, (the Ainu, the aboriginal people of Japan), Okuru from Samurai Champloo is the last of his particular tribe, as the rest were wiped out by a rampant disease.
• Both Asagami Fujino and Fujoh Kirie are implied to be the last members of their supernaturally-empowered families in Kara no Kyoukai:. Kurokiri Satsuki is the only person on Earth who can still use the Unified Language.
• Not as impressive as some of the other examples here, but Sango from Inuyasha is the last of her village of demon-slayers (unless you count her Undead little brother). Wolf-demon Koga also had almost his entire clan wiped out. Both are determined to get revenge for their people.
• Kukuri of Mahoujin Guru Guru is the last of the Migu Migu tribe.
• Kurapika from Hunter X Hunter is the last survivor of the Kuroda Tribe who were massacred for their fire red eyes. Not surprisingly, he's keen to exert revenge on the group responsible for it.
• Vivio of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is the last member of the Sankt Kaiser royal family via cloning. Extinction was caused by the destruction of Ancient Belka with the few surviving members dying some years after without next of kin.
  • More of them seem to pop up lately though, as both the Sound Stage X and the new Vivid manga have revealed a survivor (in the Sound Stage) and one of as of yet unknown origins in the manga.
• Mime, Captain Harlock's companion.
• Fullmetal Alchemist's Hohenheim, who is the only survivor of the destruction of Xerxes 400 years ago.
  • In an end-of-series example, Pride ends up as the sole surviving Homunculus, though he has no memories or knowledge of the fact that he is one.
  • Ed and Al by descent are the last two ethnic Xerxes-ans. What would the proper term be?
• By the final episode of Eureka Seven, Eureka is the only known Human Coralian alive after Sakuya and Gonzy "disappeared". Though things will work out in future as evident of the final DVD cover art.
  • Also, in the movie version, Eureka is the 7th and last Human Image ever created before Image disappears from Earth in the ending.
• In the end of Wolf's Rain, Kiba is the sole surviving wolf, as well as the last living being on earth. He dies as Paradise begins to emerge.

Comic Books

• In The DCU:
  • Superman is the last Kryptonian, and is the inspiration for most of the other DCU examples and quite possibly the non-DCU examples on this list. However, for much of the Pre Crisis era, Supergirl, Krypto, the bottle city of Kandor, and numerous villains from the Phantom Zone (among others) mitigated this status. John Byrne's Post-Crisis Retool attempted to make Superman Last of His Kind again, but Silver Age nostalgia and the success of the characters means you'll still see some other Kryptonians pop up from time to time.
  • Actually, right now, its Superman, Supergirl, the Phantom Zone criminals and 100,000 of their kin on New Krypton on the opposite side of Earth's orbit. This really the least Last of His Kind he has been in his entire history.
    • AND Powergirl - although, current continuity has her from Earth #2 so, if anything even MORE the last of her kind as she's pretty much the only one to make it out of that universe alive.
  • The Martian Manhunter is the last of the Green Martians, although a recent series teased There Is Another; these turned out to be White Martians brainwashed into believing they were Green.
    • Which turn out to have been brainwashed by an actual Green Martian. So J'onn isn't alone anymore, because There Is Another. Shame that she's a psychotic killer bent on his destruction.
    • There's also that one other evil Green Martian. When last seen, he was a disembodied psychic essence possessing a shark. He's still around, provided any writers still remember him.
    • Then J'onn died during Final Crisis, so the whole Martian thing was pretty confused for a while until he came back.
      • The whole "last Martian" thing is actually a pretty recent development - back in the Silver Age, he was not the last of his kind, and the only reason he couldn't return to Mars is because Martian technology had not advanced as much as human tech.
  • Lobo is the last Czarnian, and a mockery of the trope in general (in the comics, he killed fragged all the other Czarnians on a whim; in the DCAU, he blew up the planet for his high school science project and gave himself an "A"). Not that anybody ever considers it tragic.
    • Not necessarily "on a whim": he specifically wanted to be the last Czarnian. So much so that when another living Czarnian turns up later, Vril Dox (the one person Lobo will actually listen to) knows he'll find it particularly galling to be ordered to keep her alive until she gets to someplace safe. Lobo complies and then, as soon as Dox confirms that he completed his mission, kills her.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes member Element Lad is the last survivor of the Trommite race, the others having been slaughtered either by pirates or genocidal superbeings, depending on which continuity you're working in.
  • Another Legionnaire, Blok, is the last survivor of the planet Dryad.
  • And, for a while, Kyle Rayner was the last Green Lantern.
  • And Ganthet, the one who gave him his Ring, was the last of the Guardians of the Universe.
    • Before that, Appa Alli Apsa, also known as the Old Timer, was the last of the Guardians, not because the others had died, but because they had left for another dimension. The Old Timer couldn't take it, and the others had to come back to stop him.
  • American Eagle in Captain Carrot And The Final Ark is the last bald eagle in the United Species of America.
• Marvel Universe examples:
  • Galactus is the last of his entire universe, which was reincarnated into the one with Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, and all the rest.
  • The Elders of the Universe are somewhat younger, each of them immortal due to having become a one-person Species of Hats—they REALLY ticked off Death. The one exception is the Collector, who has a daughter who gained immortality too. So did his wife, but after a few million years, she lost the will to live and relinquished her immortality. This was, in fact, what made him realize he needed a hobby to keep from going mad, which led him to, well, collecting.
  • There's also Richard Rider of the Nova Corps, who became the last Nova in the Crisis Crossover Annihilation.
  • Spider-Woman was originally supposed to be the only one of her kind ever, since she was originally a very mutated Wundagore Widow spider, genetically engineered to be sapient and humanoid in appearance (Latrodectus sapiens?), but her origin was later retconned to make her just a genetically altered human being.
  • The alien prankster the Impossible Man started out like this. After Galactus consumed his planet, he was the sole surviving Poppupian. Eventually, however, he started an Adam and Eve Plot of a sort by himself; out of loneliness, he used the cloning method that Poppupians use to reproduce to create the Impossible Woman to act as his companion; in turn, the two of them spawned more clones of themselves, the Impossible Kids. His species has not come close to recovering yet, of course, but it's a start.
  • It was believed for a long time that this was true for the villainous Space Phantom, a servant of Immortus whose species destroyed their home world by using Time Travel far too much. However, this was changed via a retcon, which said that there were, in fact, many surviving Phantoms, all of which worked for Immortus. It was just hard to tell them apart, it seemed.
• James Proudstar AKA Warpath is the last living Apache of Camp Verde.
• Y: The Last Man
  • This was subverted in an early arc where a baby boy was born, meaning though Yorick is the last man, he's not the last male.
• In 2000 AD's Shakara, Major Thorn is a wisecracking astronaut who is the last survivor of the Earth's descruction. He is killed on page 3 to make way for the real main character, who it's implied is the last of his own kind.
  • This is later stated to be the case, although it turns that There Is Another, and he was the one who destroyed their race in the first place.
• Played with in the french Sci-Fi comic Sillage. The heroine, Nävis (no, she's not that kind of Navi), is the very last one living being of the planet she's from. Despite being the one and only human being aboard Sillage, there is very explicit hints that she's far from being the last human person in the universe.
• In Nexus, Drizripool was the last of the Merk, again, not because the rest of the Merk had died, but because they had Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence. As with the Old Timer in Green Lantern, he went mad, and another Merk, GQ, had to come back to stop him.
• Similarly to the Bleach example above,The Last Samurai had Katsumoto as the last leader of the samurai class, while Tom Cruise's character is an "adopted samurai" and the only survivor of Katsumoto's army's last stand. Also, many of the samurai (including Katsumoto) had sons and grandsons who were trained as swordsmen....
• The title character from Omega the Unknown, who was created by a race of aliens to be the perfect Ubermensch.
• In Lucifer, The Silk Man is both the last survivor of his species (whatever the hell that was) and, as with Galactus above, the last survivor of an entire lost Creation.
• The Last Metabaron, voluntarily.

Film - Animated

• Manny the mammoth from the Ice Age series. We find out in the second film that he, in fact, isn't.
• In Rio, Blu is the last male Spix's Macaw. He manages to father two sons at the end of the movie, as well as a daughter.
• Disney's Dinosaur features Baylene, the last of the brachiosaurs glimpsed in the movie's prologue.
  • There's a reason for it: the movie is set on the Cretaceous, when the species was already extinct.
• Kung Fu Panda plays this with Po, the only apparent panda in rabbits and pigs' village. The second film shows that his tribe was killed off by evil wolves. Subverted in the sequel hook sequence. Not only Po's real dad's alive, there are few pandas left around in a far and unknown area.
• At the end of the original animated film The Lorax, the Once-ler gives the very last truffula seed to the young person he's been telling his story to, along with the duty to grow a new forest and subvert this trope.
• In the original short film 9, 9 is the last surviving stitchpunk. In the feature he's not, but the scientist who created the stitchpunks is implied to have been the last human.

Film - Live Action

• This trope gets a lot of play in Hellboy II: the Golden Army.
• Draco (no, not that Draco) in Dragonheart is the last dragon. In a less literal example, his nemesis-turned-friend Sir Bowen is the last Knight of the Old Code.
  • Thanks to the sequel, this title has passed onto his son and blatant kiddie-expy, Drake. The film also introduces Griffin, an evil dragon that is implied to have been one of Draco's contemporaries, and who is still living in the sequel on account of ensuing humanity.
    • This retcon is only one of many reasons this "New Beginning" never left the ground.
    • It's not necessarily a retcon. Griffin is a Chinese dragon (with a non-Chinese name). It's entire possible that a dragon living in the British Isles may not know about him.
• The low-budget but still enjoyable movie The Last Man, basically. Well, almost.
• Certain Adaptations of I Am Legend will play it straight, as in the novel and graphic novel adaptation. The Will Smith and Charlton Heston movies have normal human survivors in government enclaves. The Vincent Price version not so much.
• Jen in The Dark Crystal is under the impression that he is the last of the Gelflings until he discovers Kira. But even then, they are the only two survivors of their race.
• Quorra is the last ISO after the ISO Holocaust The Great Purge in Tron: Legacy.
• Riddick of The Chronicles of Riddick is one of the only Furyans to survive the planet's destruction.
• In Peter Jackson's King Kong, it is implied that Kong is the last giant ape on Skull Island: the most telling evidence is a shot of him entering his cave and walking past multiple skeletons of giant gorillas. This loneliness, along with the hostility of Skull Island's environment, accounts for both his ferocity and his need for company, which Ann Darrow supplies.

Furthermore, as stated in the background materials, Skull Island's entire ecosystem is dying because the island is submerging due to geological activity. Those V. Rexes that Kong killed, for instance, may have just been the last three members of their entire species.

• The eponymous Last of the Mohicans (film version, see below.) The title says it all.
  • Cingatchgook suggests they find "a Delaware-speaking woman for Uncas" to repopulate his race.
• Before his death, Yoda says in Return of the Jedi, that Luke Skywalker is the last of the Jedi.
  • Don't worry! There Is Another. Also, Yoda himself may very well have been The Last Of The Wrinkly Green Muppets.
  • Although plenty of other force users do show up in the Star Wars Expanded Universe. Whether they count as Jedi is a different matter.
• In Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen, Optimus Prime is said to be the last of the Dynasty Of Primes. Which becomes especially true at the end of the film in which he kills The Fallen in combat (The Fallen used to be a Prime until he decided to kill his brothers).
  • In the follow-up, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, it is revealed that Optimus isn't the last one; it was merely assumed he was. This revelation is made by the discovery of Sentinel Prime; Optimus' mentor and father figure, who was thought killed centuries ago, but in reality his ship, the Ark, was disabled and eventually crashed on our moon, whilst Sentinel slipped into stasis. He is reactivated for the events of the film, whereupon the more shocking revelation that he had allied himself with the Decepticons occurs, becoming the film's Big Bad via usurping command from Megatron. Optimus is left with little choice but to kill him at the end of the film, presumably leaving himself as the last Prime for certain.
• Mildly subverted in Pirates of the Caribbean where, while Jack isn't specifically the last of his kind, pirates are still a "dying breed" and by the third movie are bordering on extinction. Then it's lampshaded when he discusses with Barbossa how cool it might be to have the nickname "the Last Pirate".

Barbossa: You know the problem with being the last of anything, by and by there be none left at all.

• • Early drafts of the third film's screenplay imply that the Kraken was the last of its kind.
• The trailers for The Last Airbender movie has the narrator mention this trope by name: "He (Aang) is the Last of His Kind, all that remains of a once powerful nation..."
• In The Fountain it is implied, but not known, if Tom the astronaut who has become near-immortal, is the last surviving human... not least by the soundtrack theme entitled The Last Man...^[1]
• Attempts to avoid this trope formed the plot of Pixar's now-cancelled film Newt.
• In the Tremors franchise, El Blanco is the last known Graboid alive, and Messerschmitt is the last known ass-blaster.
  • Of course, others pop up in some episodes of the TV series, being promptly eliminated by Burt.
• The prey in Hunter Prey.
• Zac Hobson appears to be the last human in The Quiet Earth, after everyone else suddenly vanishes. Later, he finds two other people. However, at the end, he is certainly alone.
• In Children of Men, "Baby" Diego is the youngest human and a worldwide celebrity. The film begins with the news that he has been stabbed to death.
• In Cowboys and Aliens, Ella is implied to be the last of her species. Then she performs a Heroic Sacrifice.

Literature

• In C. S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew, Queen Jadis (who "later" becomes the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) is the last survivor of Charn, after having wiped out the remaining population herself in a war against her sister and by using the Deplorable Word.
• One must mention characters created by C. J. Cherryh, including:
  • Morgaine in the Morgaine Cycle, last survivor of a group sent to close the Gates, and (at least until Exile's Gate) last of a pre-qhal race
  • The hero/heroine protagonists in The Faded Sun, last (apparently) of the Mri
  • Arafel, in The Tree of Swords and Jewels
  • Possibly Tristran, from the Fortress books.
• Animorphs has The Ellimist as the last Ketran, depending on whether you count the Mind Hive in The Ellimist Chronicles.
  • There's also Quafijinivon,last of the Arn, in The Prophecy.
• One might also mention several Moorcock characters, usually incarnations of the Eternal Champion, e.g., Elric, Corum, Erekose, Von Bek, all "lasts" in various ways. In the case of Elric, multiple ways.
• A comedic example would be Arthur Dent and Trillian in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who are the last humans (though in the movie, Earth is brought back by the Magratheans at the end; and in the books, although the Magratheans drop the project of recreating it after the mice withdraw their funding, the Earth reappears in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish).
  • Arthur Dent also manages to partially subvert the usual version of this trope, being neither the best nor worst of humanity, but in all ways completely average and somewhat dull.
  • The sixth book written by Eoin Colfer, And Another Thing, subverts the trope even further when it turns out an entire colony of humans was established on the planet Nanos
  • Ford Prefect's father was the last native of Betelgeuse Seven, all the others being wiped out in the Grest Collapsing Hrung Disaster of Gal./Sid./Year 03758. The rest of Ford's parents were from Betelgeuse Five.
• James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans, which makes this Older Than Radio.
  • Sort of. There's other Mohicans, but they're either drunks or have been absorbed by other tribes, so they don't count.
  • Parodied on The Simpsons; the students are introduced to a Mohican who explains that "Chicks really dig when you're the last of something."
• This is an even older Oldest One In The Book than Cooper, as it predates books. In at least some of the King Arthur legends, Merlin is the last of the Shape Changers (In Mallory, for instance, he never appears in the same shape twice running).
• Harry Potter contains several characters who are the last of their families or family name:
  • Harry is the last Potter. (That is, until the Distant Finale of the seventh book, where he ends up having a wife and three kids.)
  • Sirius is (was) the last Black, although the bloodline itself remains in his cousins Andromeda Tonks' grandson, Narcissa Malfoy's son and grandson, as well as many other wizarding familes whom the Blacks married (and re-married) into.
  • Voldemort, the main reason behind why so many families are at the last of their names, is the last descendant of Salazar Slytherin.
• In Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Earth, R. Daneel Olivaw is the last surviving sentient robot in an age where robotics are Lost Technology.
  • There are some other robots on Solaria, and Daneel created other robots to help him; but he's the last one from the era he was created.
• In Frank Herbert's God Emperor of Dune, Leto Atreides II becomes the last living sandworm, after first merging with several hundred larval worms and then allowing the rest of the species to die off due to climate change. His death at the end of the novel causes a new breed of intelligent worms to arise.
• The female dragon in David Eddings' Belgariad is the first and last of her kind, since only three dragons were created and the two males killed each other in the very first mating season. As a race, known for being stupid.
  • Taiba is also the last of the Marags after the Tolnedrans nearly wiped out the entire race. She only existed because the Tolnedrans sold some of the few captured Marags into slavery in another (human sacrificing) country. She only survived that because destiny said so.
• For a good chunk of the Star Wars Expanded Universe's timeline, Luke Skywalker is the last and only Jedi. Also, by tradition and design, Palpatine is the only Master Sith Lord.
  • There were more of various other traditions, but it gets messy quick on what counts as a jedi or sith.
  • In The Thrawn Trilogy, Luke has a moment of despair when Obi-Wan's spirit contacts him to say goodbye, thinking that that's it, now he's the last one. Obi-Wan corrects him.

"Not the last of the old Jedi. The first of the new."

• Roland Deschain of The Dark Tower series is the last gunslinger, representing a past that most people remember only from stories. The fact that he's somewhere between several hundred and several thousand years (time is a face upon the water) old helps.
• In Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, the title unicorn sets out on her quest after hearing hunters speak of how there are no more unicorns.
• Eilonwy, in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain series, is the last descendant of the royal House of Llyr. As the last Princess of Llyr, she alone is heir to a sizeable number of enchantments and magic powers, which reside in her by birth; however, because her father was a commoner, she tends to refer to herself as being only "half an enchantress." This only really becomes relevant starting from the third book in the series, when she is returned to her ancient family castle, Caer Colur; having been kidnapped as an infant, she never realized the scope of her magical heritage. Because of the events of the final book in the series, the magic inheritance is effectively wiped out of her, leaving her an ordinary girl -- albeit a queen.
• In Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings, Tintaglia is the last living dragon, who attempts to revive her kind by shepherding the aging serpents to their ancestral cocooning grounds. Later on, in The Tawny Man trilogy, it's revealed that the serpents were too weak to become dragons, but another, male dragon is discovered preserved in a glacier. In a weird inversion, two of the protagonists of The Liveship Traders become the first of a new generation of Elderlings: Malta and Rayn.
• In Douglas Hill's Last Legionary series, Keill Randor is the last of his space-ninja-mercenary-with-principles order.
• Poul Anderson's Technic History: Recurring villain Aycharaych is the last survivor of his long-lived, telepathic species. But he keeps it a secret for a long time.
• The protagonists of Poul Anderson's Tau Zero probably qualify after the first few chapters. They certainly do by the end of the book, what with the Universe having ended and all.
• In Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novel First & Only, Caffren, having been thrown away from his company by a bomb, ending up with a Vitrian soldier to whom he recounted the death of Tanith and how the regiment held the only survivors, and seeing a barrage, invokes this: if no one else got away, he is the last of Tanith.
• Thomas Burnett Swann's Minotaur Trilogy (which was written backwards), Eunostos is the last of the Minotaur race following the untimely death of his uncle Silver Bells. At the (chronological) end of the story he has a human girlfriend, so the possibility of half-Minotaur offspring is not ruled out. (Certainly not for want of trying, if his girlfriend's wry innuendoes are anything to go by.)
• In Gav Thorpe's Warhammer 40,000 novel 13th Legion, Kage is the only member of the four thousand strong penal legion to survive to the end and the pardon. He ends up throwing away his pardon by starting a brawl; the pardon was conditionally on staying out of trouble.
• Mary Shelley's The Last Man tackles the disappearance of the human race; the protagonist, as it says on the tin, ends his life as the last man on Earth.
• Mau of Terry Pratchett's Nation is the Sole Survivor of a tidal wave that destroys his entire village (the eponymous Nation). Other people are still around, obviously, and eventually start to show up, but since the Nation is an island it takes a while.
• Jame in P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath is the only female survivor of the house of Knorth, ruling house of the Kencyr people. The only male survivors of the Knorth bloodline are Jame's brother Torisen and a cousin. The women of the Knorth were slaughtered by assassins and the men died in the war of ill-thought revenge that followed, or in the self-imposed exile afterward.
• In Dragonriders of Pern, Lessa is the last full-blooded Ruathan of the Noble Ruling family's bloodline (and as far as anyone is really concerned, the last on Pern) by the time Dragonflight takes place.
• In Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, a human stows away on a ship to the world of the Overlords, an advanced alien race. By the time he returns, the children of Earth are evolving into a higher form of life, and all adults have died. The author hangs a lampshade on this when mentioning the last human's love of music: "He had always been a good piano player, and now he was the best in the world."
• In the original Shannara trilogy by Terry Brooks, Allanon was the last of the Druids. He eventually got a successor in Walker Boh, who was also the last Druid for a while, until he died and was succeeded by Grianne Ohmsford, who refounded the order of Druids, recruiting many others.
• Nathan Brazil, the guardian of the Well of Souls in Jack Chalker's Well World books is rumored to be the last Markovian. This is eventually confirmed in the final series, ironically through the There Is Another plot device. Much of the confusion is due to Brazil deliberately obfuscating his origin by claiming to be everything from a mere human custodian to the last Markovian Guardian to God himself at various points within the series. In the end it's shown that his role of Guardian is entirely self-appointed; originally he was just the only Markovian smart enough to beat the system, making him sort of the 'white hat hacker" for the entire universe.
• In The Wheel of Time, several books after he dies, it is revealed that the Green Man was Somestha, only Nym to have survived the War of Power and the Breaking of the World.
  • In addition, when Rand integrated with the personality of his past self, he started thinking of himself as the last male Aes Sedai.
  • Al'Lan Mandragoran isn't the last Malkieri in the series, but he's the last king of that nation, born just months before it was overrun by the Trollocs. It's a nation of refugees now, the survivors scattered to half a dozen nearby countries.
• In John C. Wright's The Orphans of Chaos, Miss Daw explains that she is the last surviving Donatist.
• Keill Randor of Last Legionary, the last survivor of a mercenary race which is wiped out by an intergalactic warlord who fears that they might intervene in his plans for conquest.
• In The Railway Series by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, there are some examples. Engines whose real-life brothers and sisters were all scrapped.
  • Thomas. All the other London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway E2 class engines were scrapped by the end of the 1960s.
  • Edward. No other Furness Railway K2 "Larger Seagull" class engines remain either.
  • Toby. The LNER J70 class steam trams are gone too.
  • Gordon is almost this, with just one real-world brother remaining: No. 4472, Flying Scotsman.
  • The North Western Railway itself. The only Class 3 rail system to still use primarily steam traction.
    • It is worth noting that Gordon is the only one who has ever really been seen to angst about this.
• In Jericho Moon, a merchant who was out of town when the Hebrews annihilated his city and people seeks vengeance against the biblical Joshua.
• Jimmy/Snowman believes himself to be the Last of His Kind in Oryx and Crake, the only human left on earth among a new species of genetically engineered humanoids. This belief is blown all to hell at the end of the book and also in its companion novel, The Year of the Flood.
• Jane Yellowrock is the last of the known Skinwalkers who used their talent for purposes other then self-centered ones.
• Zerika in the Vlad Taltos series is the only member of House Phoenix in the Dragaeran Empire. However she technically can't be the last because when the Phoenix rolls around again of the cycle, the universe will see to it another one exists to take the throne. Zerika herself was born after her parents' deaths, which was made possible to provide a Phoenix empress.
• In the Swords Trilogy by Michael Moorcock, Corum Jhaelen Irsei is the last Vadhagh until he meets and proceeds to accidentally kill some. And then until some come over from another plane of existence.
• In Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, Kahlan Amnell is the last Confessor, Darken Rahl having killed all the others.
• In Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Death Gate series, Alfred Montbank is the last and only living member of the Sartan race. Of course, Samah and his fellow Sartan on Chelestra popped up in the fourth book. Not to mention the countless animated Sartan corpses on Abarrach in the third book.
• Averted in World War Z. During the campaign to clear the zombies from the U.S. mainland, the Army encounters hundreds, if not thousands, of survivors who all believed themselves to be the last human being alive.
• In Warrior Cats, before SkyClan's rebuilding, Skywatcher is the only cat descended from the old Clan that still tried to live a life following the warrior code - in fact, he was the only cat in the area that even knew about the Clan.
• In the Iron Druid Chronicles Atticus is the last of the ancient Celtic Druids who were wiped up by the invading Romans. Atticus only survived because he found new ways to use Druid magic and thus was not trapped when the Romans destroyed the Druids' sacred groves. He can train new apprentices but the training takes years and every previous attempt failed when the student was killed before completing the training.
• Invoked by O'Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four: "If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are non-existent."
• In Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, the Hive Queen is the last of the Buggers, after Ender unwittingly destroys their homeworld. She is kept by the repenting Ender in a cocoon for nearly 3000 years before he finds an appropriate planet for her to settle. Unlike Ender, who experiences the 3000 years as a considerably shorter time due to relativistic travel, the Queen's mind works differently, and her thoughts are unaffected by Time Dilation, meaning she has been conscious for 3000 years as a cocoon. This changes at the end of Speaker for the Dead, when Ender finally allows the Queen to hatch on Lusitania. Technically, even after that, The Queen remains the last of her kind, as all others are merely drones with no will of their own (in essense, due to their Hive Mind, they are her extentions), until she bears other queens to send to other planets.
  • Interestingly, for the longest time in Bugger history, there was always only one Hive Queen, as she would always kill her queen daughters in order to prevent wars for domination. It wasn't until the queens learned to co-exist in peace that there was more than one queen in existence.
• The epic of Beowulf has the "Lay of the Last Survivor" (lines 2247–66), a flashback to how the last remaining descendant of a forgotten people walls up the riches of his extinct race in a barrow.
• The short story The Island of the Endangered is about an entire island of these.
• In The Book of Mormon, there are two: one being Moroni, son of the eponymous Mormon of the Nephites. The other is Coriantumr of the Jaredites. Whereas Coriantumr was able to find a peaceful people to live out the rest of his days, Moroni wasn't so lucky.
• Elaith Craulnober in Songs & Swords Forgotten Realms series. May count as a deconstruction of the common approach, because instead of "glorious rebirth" plot this situation led to a horrible shipwreck: Elaith was overeager to claim his heritage, but had no one to instruct him about it. Which in this case would be immediately fatal if he wasn't the last detectable heir of the bloodline, and did cost him too much as it is. The author had to tie loose ends in the anthology when the big series got scrapped, but the gist of it is here.

Live Action TV

• Star Trek has played with this a lot, usually with alien menaces such as the salt-sucking creature from "The Man Trap", or godlike aliens, such as Apollo.
  • The Horta from the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Devil In The Dark" have a complicated life cycle where, every 50,000 years, most of the species dies off, leaving a single female last of her kind, laying a huge number of eggs to repopulate the species.
  • For the first two years of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Odo had no idea whether there were any more of him, and it caused him all sorts of angst. Of course, that angst only got worse when he discovered there were lots more of him—all evil.
• Babylon 5 has Lorien, last of the very first species of beings to evolve in the galaxy. In fact, he was the first sentient being in this galaxy.
  • Lorien is only the last of his kind in this galaxy - as with all the First Ones, the rest of his race either died or went beyond the Rim of known space, as he tells Sheridan on Z'ha'dum.
  • Deathwalker of the episode of the same name was the last of her unlamented kind.
  • Dureena Nafeel of Crusade seems at first to be the last of her kind, but there is a surviving colony.
    • The colony is infected with the Drakh plague, and their species is more susceptible to it than humans, leaving them only a year if no cure is found. Since the series was cancelled before the end of the first season, this is one of many story arcs that will remain unresolved.
• Starting with the new series, the Doctor and his TARDIS from Doctor Who. A rare heroic example of the survivor who's responsible for his people's extinction (The rest of his species were going to destroy the universe.) It later turned out the Master was still alive, but he's since died (Twice).
  • The new series has also shown us the last Dalek in existence too. Several times in fact, because they keep coming back, and generally in greater and greater numbers, and thus arguably somewhat reducing the impact of them being totally wiped out.
  • This is not the only time Doctor Who has explored such a character. To name two, Delta of Delta and the Bannermen is the last survivor of her species, and Cassandra of "The End of the World" is the last human being. The later case has an interesting subtext, as it turns out that she is only the "last" of her kind by her own racist metrics.
  • Although it didn't come up much on the show, Nyssa was the last of the Trakenites after her planet was destroyed. along with the rest of her native galaxy, and all its neighbours.
    • Subverted in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio drama Primeval, where it turns out that at least one Trakenite colony survived the destruction of the Traken Union.
  • Davros, creator of the Daleks, is the last living Kaled, although don't expect much angst from him - he turned on them in order to keep his precious creations alive (not that the Daleks were particularly grateful).
  • Chantho from the New Series episode "Utopia" is the last of the Malmooths.
  • The Star Whale which forms the engine of Starship UK in "The Beast Below" also fits the trope.
  • In The Hungry Earth, a captured Silurian claims to be the last of her kind. The Doctor knows she's lying, as he is the last of his species, he knows "how that sits in the heart", and tells her that faking it is an insult.
• Dylan Hunt of Andromeda is not the last of his species, but for much of the series he is at the least, the last of his civilization.
  • As of the end of the forth season, Dylan is revealed to be the last of his species... the last Vedran
  • Tyr Anasazi is the last surviving member of the Kodiak Pride, though by no means the last of his fast breeding and highly factional species. Part of the reason why he even bothered siding with Dylan for so long was to get revenge on the Drago-Kazov Pride.
• Kai of Lexx is the last of the Brunnen-G. In a slight variation, he isn't actually a survivor, but a technologically reanimated corpse.
  • He is eventually brought back to life, but only because he's about to be destroyed anyway.
• The Cat on Red Dwarf is the last known felis sapiens; the holy book of his people claims two arks of his people left Red Dwarf in search of "Fuchal" (Fiji). One ark flew straight into an asteroid; the other carried on into space. An episode was written for the seventh series that would have dealt with the Cat encountering the survivors of the remaining ark, but it was never filmed due to budgetary constraints. Effectively, then, both Lister and the Cat are the last of their species - neither knows this for sure, but both are unlikely ever to meet another survivor, even if they exist. Lister's isolation is reversed in the eighth series, however, when the crew of the Red Dwarf come Back from the Dead.
  • It's hard to count Lister as the last anything, being his own father and mother of two in the distant future not to mention all the alternate dimension versions of Red Dwarf they seem to bump into.
• Anubis "Doggie" Cruger in Power Rangers SPD is the last Syrian—at least until the Grand Finale, in which his wife turns out to have survived as well.
• Garulu (a.k.a. Jiro), Basshaa (a.k.a. Ramon), and Dogga (a.k.a. Riki) from Kamen Rider Kiva are the last of the Wolfen, Merman, and Franken races, respectively. This is thanks to the Fangire, and you can bet they're none too happy about it.
• In one episode of Stargate Atlantis John Shepperd is thrown 40,000 years into the future. Atlantis has long since been abandoned, and the McKay hologram informs him he might very well be the last human in the galaxy.
• In Stargate SG-1, the Goa'uld Nirrti, in setting a trap for the Tau'ri, killed all the inhabitants of an entire planet except for one nine year old girl named Cassandra. Cassandra was also stranded on the planet, surrounded by the dead bodies of everyone she knew and everyone she didn't for days before SG-1 found her. Needless to say, she was traumatized.
• John Crichton of Farscape isn't by any means the last human. But, he's the sole human in that part of universe and once the wormhole to Earth was destroyed, it pretty much ended any possibility someone from Earth would be joining him.
  • Technically, Sebaceans are genetic offshoots of humans, but there were DNA alterations, and it happened thousands of years ago.
• Battlestar Galactica Reimagined has a few of these, particularly D'Anna Beirs, who becomes the last model Number Three Cylon in existence, and the Final Five, who not only prove to be the last Cylons revealed to the audience, but the last of the original Cylon race predating the modern models.
  • The eponymous ship itself, after the death of Pegasus at the hands of Fat!Lee.
• Liam Kincaid from Earth: Final Conflict, whose proper name would be something more akin to Liam Sandoval-Beckett, son of Ha'gel. Whilst also a Half-Human Hybrid he's also the last of the ancient Kimera race who were killed by the Taelons eons back. He's the son of Ha'gel, probably the original Last of His Kind in the show died just after Liam was conceived. Unlike his alien daddy, Liam was the lead character for three seasons and sadly the show didn't play up this trope much.
  • Part of that was that Liam himself appeared to dislike Ha'Gel immensely, and only acknowledged his Kimera heritage when absolutely necessary. Being the product of Ha'Gel's rape of his human parents probably had something to do with it.
  • There's also Ra'jel, the first and last Taelon (It Makes Sense in Context). While Zo'or is briefly revived by the Atavus, he is almost immediately turned into one of them, leaving Ra'jel once again the last Taelon.
• In the 1998 Merlin series, the eponymous character is the last of the wizards, as he says himself.
• Subverted in an old Sesame Street skit where Cookie Monster claims to be the last Cookie Monster in the world - even though in later seasons he was shown having full family - just so he could buy himself cookies from the money he had been collecting for endangered species.
• The BBC's Merlin has Kilgharrah, the last dragon. The rest were slain by Uther and he was imprisoned through trickery. After Merlin stops him from destroying Camelot in revenge he begs Merlin not to be responsible for the extinction of dragons, as he is the last one.
  • Not true anymore, with the birth of Aithusa. Although given they're both male, we still have a problem.
    • Merlin himself is the last of his kind, the last dragonlord.
• In an episode of Legend of the Seeker, Richard ends up trapped in the Valley of Perdition, where he's trapped in a nightmarish vision of the future, in which the Keeper has won, and all the living humans have been killed... except Richard. As the spirit of Darken Rahl (his half-brother) points out, there's no one left to kill Richard, meaning he is left to wander the empty world for the rest of his life. Fortunately, he quickly snaps out of the vision.
  • Interestingly, unlike the books, Kahlan is not the last Confessor. There are several others remaining. Then, it's revealed that all the others have been killed, including Kahlan's sister Dennee and her infant son. However, Denee's spirit is later brought back in the body of a prostitute and, as far as anyone knows, she's still alive and has her Confessor powers.

Music

• The song "Sole Survivor" by Blue Öyster Cult.
• The song 'last of a dying breed'.

Professional Wrestling

• The Undertaker recently picked up the nickname "The Last Outlaw," and recent promos are playing up his status as one of the last remnants of the old-school era of wrestling's high-concept comic-book-style characters (Really, the only other one is his storyline half-brother Kane.)

Video Games

• In Noctis, a space exploration simulator, the player is a member of the "Felysian" stardrifter explorers. Hundreds of ships left their home planet to explore and map the galaxy, they returned after several hundred/thousand years. When they arrived, all that was there was ruins; the only thing that proves they ever existed are scattered, ruined buildings. The stardrifters left, continuing to explore and map until they die of old age, since they lacked the numbers to re-populate. It's very depressing.
• Knuckles in the Sonic the Hedgehog series is the last echidna, the species previously having powerful tribes long ago. This is void in several comic series, where there's no shortage whatsoever.
  • Knuckles was last of his kind in the British Sonic the Comic continuity, which made him overjoyed when he met fellow Echidna Dr Zackary. As expected he turned out to be yet another person to use Knuckles' gullibility against him, turning out to be a nutso terrorist and later joining up with Robotnik. He met another one later on, though this time he was much more suspicious (Ironic, as this one was actually good).
  • Recently, the Archie comics wiped out most of the echidnas. There's still a fair number of them, but they're now an endangered people and their highly advanced modern city is now long destroyed.
• Final Fantasy loves this.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, Aerith is the last of the Ancients, a, well, ancient race who were nearly wiped out two thousand years ago when the Big Bad arrived, but managed to seal it in a can. This led to a rather disturbing sequence in which a rather amoral scientist attempted to breed her with Red XIII, a member of a sentient (and nearly extinct) race of canines, in an attempt to "save two endangered species". Given Hojo was also indirectly responsible for the creation (and mentally imbalanced psyche) of the Big Bad of the game, among other things, this is actually rather tame for him.
    • Interestingly, Aerith herself is only Half Ancient, as videos with her Ancient mother and human father in Icicle Inn show.
      • Word of God states that there is no "half". Ancients were distinguished by their magical native lifestyle; a club, not a species. Aerith is simply the last person to be raised as an Ancient, and died without passing it on.
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Rydia is the last of the Summoners. The reasons for this hinge on the main character Cecil's sheer gullibility, making this also a case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
    • Talking to the survivors of her hometown reveals that they're also summoners, although they don't have much hope for the tradition's survival.
  • Garnet and Eiko in Final Fantasy IX are the last two summoners during the events of the game.
  • In Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the Judge of Wings becomes this... by killing off the rest of her race.
  • Also, in Final Fantasy VI, Strago is the last Blue Mage, and Terra is all that remains of the Espers. After the breaking of the world Mog appears to be the last remaining moogle.
  • In Final Fantasy X, Seymour kills almost the entire Ronso tribe, making Kimahri one of the last Ronso. However, there are still a few left, like the Ronso Blitzball Team. The Lighter and Softer Final Fantasy X-2 reveals that a good amount of Ronso survived Seymour's slaughter, so they'll probably be fine.
  • Fang and Vanille in Final Fantasy XIII are the last two Gran Pulsian humans left in the game. The rest are either killed or turned into monsters and stones years ago.
• So does RuneScape.
  • Thurgo is said to be the last of the Imcando dwarves, although a second one, Ramarno is found later.
  • Commander Zilyana is the last of the Icyene, winged humanoids that have been compared to angels. However, Safalaan is suspected to be an Icyene.
  • General Graardor is the last of the Ourgs, a race known for their immense brute strength.
  • K'ril Tsutsaroth is thought to be the last Elder-demon.
  • Char is the last Auspah, a race of fire-controlling humanoids.
  • The unnamed Phoenix is the last of her kind when her brother Si'morgh is killed by a dragon. However, players get to hatch baby phoenixes out of hidden eggs.
  • K'klik is the last known Fairy dragon.
  • Nex is the last of a race of unbelievable power, whatever that is...
  • It is unclear whether the Dramen tree is the last of its kind of the only one of its kind.
  • The White tree, however, is truly the last of its kind.
  • Fyburglars tree is also likely to be the last of its kind.
  • Enakhra is the last female Mahjarrat, a race that could have as few as 7 individuals depending on the player's choice.
• In the strategy game Master of Orion II: Battle At Antares allows the player to recruit a captain called "Loknar, the Last Orion" and his rather badass battleship, the Avenger, if they're the first to colonize the Orion system.
  • This is only if you have less than 4 commanders. If all 4 slots are full, then you will instead find the Avenger with no one aboard.
• In The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the player can encounter a blight-infected guy with mechanical legs who claims to be the sole survivor of his race, the Dwemer (the Elder Scrolls' rather alternative interpretation of dwarves). Considering how little is known about the Dwemer so far, though, as they're really only mentioned in passing, exactly how accurate this is is debatable. He is, however, almost certainly the last of the Dwemer in Morrowind.
  • In Oblivion, Martin is the last of the royal Septim family, whose particular version of divine mandate means he's the only chance of stopping the daedric invasion.
  • And now in Skyrim, the player is the last survivor of the Dragonborn lines, bloodlines imbued by the gods with the power to fight against dragons.
• In Star Control II, Tanaka claims to be the last of the Shofixti. He was late for the final battle, during which they caused a nova and destroyed their home planet. If you kill him, his brother Katana will show up a month later, also claiming to be the last of the Shofixti for the same reason. However if you rescue him (or his brother), you'll find out that they were both wrong, and there's 16 cryogenically preserved Shofixti Maidens in the possession of a collector of unique aliens. Collect them, and Tanaka/Katana can repopulate the entire race, so it's a Last of His Kind of a very limited sense.
• The eponymous character of the Funny Animal game T'ai Fu: Wrath of the Tiger is the last of the Tiger clan, wiped out by the Big Bad to prevent the other animal clans converging under their natural leadership and opposing him.
• Ryu from Breath of Fire 3 is believed to be the last living dragon, the rest having been killed in a war centuries ago. Later, it's revealed that his childhood friend Teepo was also a dragon and didn't know it. Ryu is forced to kill him shortly after their reunion, leading Ryu to truly be the last dragon.
• Spire in Metroid Prime Hunters is the last of the Diamonts, and his quest in the game is to find out what happened to his species. Samus herself sort of counts, in that she's human, but was raised by the now-vanished Chozo and has Chozo blood and technology. She was also the only survivor of the Space Pirate attack on the human colony K-2L. And post-Fusion, she's the last Metroid, too.
• Both the hero and the Big Bad in Ratchet and Clank Future Tools of Destruction are the last of their respective races. (Or at least in this universe...
• In Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories, Adell is the only remaining human on Veldime, with all others being turned into amnesiac demons by Zenon's curse. Is there another human? Nope. In fact, there isn't even one. Adell wasn't affected by the curse because he is a pureblood demon by birth.
• In Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure protagonist Cornets mother presumably was the last pure blood of her kind.
• In Jade Empire, the protagonist is the last Spirit Monk.
• Yoshimitsu from Soul Calibur, was the last of his Manji Clan in his backstory, until He brought some local ruffians and formed a new clan, called the Manjitou clan, in homage to his old clan. Technically, he was the last true Manji, so his new clan does not count. He's really a dumbed down version of Last of His Kind, since he's not a completely different race. Being last true clansman, he is the only person who knows Manji Ninjitsu, and how to forge the weapons of his clan, so he is also an owner of Forgotten Knowledge.
• The Demoman in Team Fortress 2 mournfully laments; "I'm a Black Scottish Cyclops! They got more [rather long bleep] than they got the likes o' me!"
• Ty from the eponymous Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series of games starts off this way, as the last of, well, the Tasmanian tigers.
• In Romancing SaGa, Aisha has the entire Taralian tribe up and vanish on her while she's off adventuring. Later, she learns that they just withdrew to the underground Temple of Nisa, same as their ancestors did a thousand years ago... and that said ancestors emerged once the war between the gods ended to a world drastically changed from that which they knew.
• SaGa Frontier has a variation of this trope: Asellus is actually the first, and the world's only half-human half-mystic hybrid, and was originally human. How she came about was not by birth, but from a Mystic Lord saving her from death from being run over by a carriage with a blood transfusion. This makes her the scorn of both full-blooded humans and mystics. Depending on certain actions one makes in Asellus' story, she can either remain a half breed, become human again, or become a full mystic.
• The heroine of Final Fantasy Adventure (and its remake, Sword of Mana) is the only member of the Mana Tribe remaining in the world, and also the only possible replacement for a seed of the Mana Tree. The Tribe is more or less extinct at the end of the game when the Tree begins to die, and its host, the heroine's mother, asks her to become the new tree.
• Richea Spodune is the last Quartz in Tales of Hearts. Subverted and re-subverted by two other Quartz, Creed Graphite and Flora Spodune, who have also survived but choose to touchingly die together at the end of the game.
• In Gitaroo Man, U-1 is the last of the Gitaroo Men, told by his talking dog, Puma.
• Krystal the blue fox of the Star FOX franchise is the sole surviving citizen of her home planet, at least according to supplements. Take note that she never mentiones it in-game.
• This ends up happening to R.O.B. in The Subspace Emissary.
• In Halo, the Master Chief John-117 is the last of the Spartan-IIs, a group of SuperSoldiers that were wiped out when the Covenant destroyed Reach, the planet where the Spartans were created.
  • The Expanded Universe reveals the survival of at least half-a-dozen Spartan-IIs by October 2552.
    • Also, there were still a good number of Spartan-II Is still alive even after the Fall of Reach and the Battle of Onyx. Obviously, the Chief didn't fact-check when he started calling himself "the last Spartan"
• The Nihilanth from Half Life, states it is the last of his kind, probably after the Combine had invaded his previous home-world.
• The absolutely adorable Whacka from the Paper Mario series is this, his species all but extinct from poaching. Hit him over the head, and you'll find out why—the bump falls off, and is one of the best healing items in the game (and according to the items's flavor text, is quite delicious.) Do it enough times, and you'll have killed the last Whacka, you bastard! I hope those Whacka Bumps were worth the cost of your soul.
• Anduin Lothar, in the Warcraft series, is the last descendant of the Arathi bloodline. It is this trait that allowed him to bring high-elves into the Alliance of Lordaeron as a way for the elves to pay off their life-debt owed to the Arathi during the Troll Wars.
  • In the original timeline, Malygos the Spellweaver was the last of the Blue Dragonflight after Neltharion the Earth-Warder became Deathwing and killed all other blue dragons. However, thanks to Krasus/Korialstrasz and Nozdormy the Timeless, a number of blue eggs survived. Unfortunately, this brought Malygos out of his madness, and he began to blame mortal magic-users for all evils (not entirely unreasonable). In the end, he is slain with the help of some other dragons.
• Solid Snake fits this trope since by the 4th Metal Gear Solid game, he is the only clone of Big Boss who survived the battles.
• In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword, one of the main characters, Lyn is one of the last of the Lorca tribe, who were wiped out by bandits.
  • And in Sword of Seals, Yahn is the last of the Fire Dragons living in Elibe and still has his power fully intact, due to sealing himself in the Dragon Shrine.
• The title character of the ZX Spectrum game Xavior is scouring a HUGE underground research complex, trying to find DNA fragments so that the site's supercomputer can use them to resurrect his race.
• While Suika Ibuki of Touhou is not technically the last oni she fits this trope in its application, being the only oni not in hiding or underground after some unknown event many years before the timeline of the games. Indeed the events of Immaterial and Missing Power was Suika's attempt to revert this, intending to draw her former compatriots together again by throwing an endless series of parties.
• In Arc the Lad II, Elc is the last living Pyrenian. Inverted in Twilight of the spirits: Darc and Kharg are the first Human/Deimos hybrids which is ironic since intelligent monsters where created by using kids with spiritual powers like Elc.
• In Dragon Age Origins, your main character and Alistair are the last two Grey Wardens in Ferelden, after your entire order is wiped out during a disastrous battle culminating in Cavalry Betrayal.
  • If Awakening's Golden Ending is to be believed, the Fereldan branch of the order regains all its lost strenght and some more: it's not easy to get rid of an institution that stopped five apocalypses
  • In Dragon Age 2, Hawke, the protagonist can end up being the last of the Hawke Family, depending on your actions.
• Mortal Kombat's Reptile is believed to be the last of the Saurians; a race of reptilian humanoids who evolved from the dinosaurs. Due to the trauma of having his entire race wiped out, Reptile is caught in a delusional state of mind; obsessing over finding another remaining member of his race, or freeing his homeworld from Outworld's grasp.
  • It was later revealed in Mortal Kombat Trilogy that there is indeed another member of his race: the female Khameleon.
• In Odin Sphere, by the time the dragon Leventhan is hatched he is the Last of His Kind since Hindel, Wagner, and Belial have all been slain. Hence his Boss Subtitle "The Last Dragon".
• Solatorobo has Elh and Béluga, the last two Paladins ever since Baion burned their home Ragdoll to the ground. There is no mention of an Adam and Eve Plot or Only You Can Repopulate My Race from either of them, however.
• In Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, the new White Kin reveals that, as far as she knows, she is the last of the Draic Kin. However, her exact wording means she can't feel the Blue Kin anymore. It's not stated that he's dead. He could've simply left Arcadia. Also, the Draic Kin are specifically stated to be extraterrestrials, so it's entirely possible there are other members of this race somewhere in space.
  • Additionally, there's the case of Never Found the Body for the Green and the Red Kin, who fell from a skyscraper, tangled in combat.
• The rachni queen on Noveria in Mass Effect is the last survivor of a genocidal Bug War. You meet her in a research facility where her offspring are being used for scientific experiments, in the hope of turning them into supersoldiers. Unfortunately they're taken too soon from their mother and go insane. Shepard can choose to free or kill her.
  • In Mass Effect 3 there is Javik, who is a Prothean who has been locked in suspended animation for fifty thousand years.
  • Also in Mass Effect 3, if you choose to upload the reaper code to the geth, and cannot convince the quarians to stand down, the quarian flotilla will be destroyed. This will make Tali the last quarian, if only for a few minutes.
  • Also, Falere, Samara's youngest daughter is the last Ardat-Yakshi after all the others are taken and "processed" by the Reapers into Banshees. Unless, of course, you kill her. Subverted in that there can always be more Ardat-Yakshi as a possible result of a mating between two asari.
• Solo in the Mega Man Star Force games is the last child of the continent Mu. He's, shall we say, a trifle bitter.

Web Comics

• In 8-Bit Theater, Red Mage claims to be the last of his order. Mind you, Red Mage is a Munchkin and seems to think purely in RPG tropes. But is later revealed that he is the last RM because everyone in the order was a munchkin as well (to the point they started to hit each other with spells and swords to calculate "damage points"). Dragoon is also the last of the Dragon Knights, because of both the risky activity of slaughtering dragons, and due to a scheme by the dragon Muffin.
  • Fantastically lampshaded in the epilogue, where Red Mage starts a support group for the last members of secret groups. Red Mage and Dragoon are the only members of the support group Sects Buddies.
  • Red Mage is still incorrect, as we know of at least one other surviving Red Mage, named Barry. The real question is if he genuinely is unaware of the other survivors, is delusional, or if he just made up the whole story for roleplaying XP and his support group is actually a Zany Scheme. Knowing Red Mage, it could be all three simultaneously.
  • Also "Muffin" made herself the last Dragon by founding (then disposing of) the Dragoons in order to kill off her rivals.
    • Though this didn't work as well as she wanted, what with Bahamut and all the dragons in the revamped Chaos Shrine that the Light Warriors meet.
• Koark from Order of Tales is the last Teller in the eponymous Order. This gives him knowledge of many forgotten stories, and motivation to seek the one tale that can save the Order.
• Subverted twice in Poharex. Poharex thought he was the last dinosaur alive until discovering Mesociam, and the last T-Rex alive until finding out there was a whole population of them on an island in the Oticum Inland Sea.
• Anyone who plays Sburb in Homestuck. Although, they are retroactively clones of themselves and thus products of the game, so the extent to which they can be considered "members of the species" is debatable.
  • Dirk and Roxy are the last two humans alive in their time period. They can still communicate with Jake and Jane thanks to the series' trademark weird time shenanigans.
• Lothar Hex is one of the last of the Echidnas in Exterminatus Now, and he was apparently grown in a lab. Word of God confirms that they are practically extinct. It's not really a major plot point but it does explain why Yuri doesn't believe he is really an Echidna.
• In Impure Blood, Roan, growing up, didn't know of any other Half Human Hybrids with Ancient blood, besides his mother. Apparently there is a full-blooded one out there.
• In Endstone, Kyri having survived the massacre of her tribe joined the nuns Then they were massacred, leaving her once again the last of her kind.
• In Soul Symphony, Carl is the only survivor of a race of magical rabbit-creatures. He also became mutated with new special powers in the process of all his pals dying. Doesn't usually talk about it.
• Sluggy Freelance the author Pete seems to enjoy this trope. Aylee is the last Xenomorph (at least in our dimension), Percy is the last wooly mammoth, Sam is the last vampire of the Lysinda sect vampires (or the first and only member of the Sam Cirkail Mamajama), Lord Grater and Princess Princess are (briefly) the last survivors of the Punyverse, Zhoas is most likely the last of her type of zombie seeing as how the only survivors were slaughtered by Oasis, and Dr Schlock is the only surviving member of a future that no longer exists who knows what the world would have been like had the Deadels won.
• Savage Chickens shows exactly how it's possible that Tigger is "the only one".

Web original

• Bitey, of the Brackenwood series is the last of a super fast race of creatures known as the Dashkin

Western Animation

• As mentioned in the title of the show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang is the only living Airbender, due to the Fire Nation launching a massive genocide against the Air Nomad race in an attempt to eliminate the next reincarnated Avatar before he reached maturity.
  • Appa, possibly Momo, Ran, Shao, and the Lion Turtle are also the last of their species. Although Word of God at least confirmed that Momo's species isn't extinct and that there are bunch of other lemurs we never got to see.
    • The new series The Legend of Korra reveals that this trope is no longer the case for the Airbenders and the Sky Bison. After the events of the first series, Aang found a wild herd of Sky Bison that are apparently a different subspecies from Appa, as they have a slightly different pattern. Aang and Katara also had a son named Tenzin who can airbend and will be Korra's Airbending teacher; and Tenzin himself has three children who can bend air.
• The starring Manhattan Clan of Gargoyles, were led to believe they were last of their kind. That made the later world tour arc a heartening experience for the focus characters when they discover gargoyle clans all over, and beyond, the world.
  • Demona believed herself to be the last surviving gargoyle for centuries.
    • Maybe; when asked about her comment that she knew "every living gargoyle," Word of God says that she probably knew about the London Clan and possibly the Ishimura Clan (though probably not the Guatemalan Clan).
• In the Ben 10 Made for TV Movie, Secret of the Omnitrix, it's revealed that Tetrax (credited as Hoverboard in his previous appearance) used to work for Vilgax, the Big Bad of the series, until he wound up bringing Vilgax something that allowed him to conquer Tetrax's homeworld. After the populace refused to submit, Vilgax destroyed the planet, and Tetrax vowed never to let Vilgax claim a powerful weapon again, becoming The Atoner.
  • This is no longer the case, as the planet was brought back to life, along with its people in an episode of Alien force
• Subverted with Turanga Leela from Futurama, who knew nothing about her species and wondered if she was the last in existence. It's later revealed that her parents were mutants banished to the sewers beneath Earth's cities, and they dropped her off at an Orphanerium and passed her off as a humanoid alien.
  • And The Movie Into the Wild Green Yonder centers around an attempt to save the last Encyclopod from destruction at the hands of the last Dark One. The Encyclopod itself contains as part of its body recreations of every creature that has ever gone extinct.
• Poor little Woody Allen-esque Wendell T Wolf from Taz-Mania is the last surviving Tasmanian wolf and is often mistaken for a silly-looking dog. He's The Woobie for sure!
• Winx Club has Bloom as the princess, and lone survivor, of Sparks. Strictly speaking, she's not the last of her kind, since it's revealed later in S1 that her parents are in exile.
  • She officially stops being this after The Movie.
  • Played straight and subverted again in Season 4 with Roxy, the last Earth Fairy, which is no longer this after episode 17. many fans commented/complained on how Roxy's story was identical to Bloom's.
• War Planets: Princess Tekla is the last survivor of Planet Tek, which is devoured by the Beast Planet in the first episode.
• In the animated movie, Justice League: New Frontier, aside from Superman obviously being the last Kryptonian (as is mostly usual), this actually happens to Wonder Woman when The Centre attacks Themyscira on it's way to America. She is the only survivor, making her the last Amazon.
  • And of course, J'onn Jonnz is the last Martian.
• Parodied in The Simpsons when Marge introduced her Pre-Teen Braves to a real Mohican. Bart asks the obvious question and the man replies that he keeps the myth up because "chicks dig it when you're the last of something".
• Dragon, from Jane and the Dragon, although he hopes he's not.
• "But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers is... I'M THE ONLY ONE!" They even made an entire movie based on the concept of other Tiggers possibly existing. They don't, Roo sent the letter.
• In King of the Hill "Blood and Sauce", Bill's cousin Gilbert informs him that both of them are the only other Dauterive family members left (with half being infertile and other half being dead, imposters, or in the crazy house).^[2]
  • Technically, gay people can still have children (Often through artificial fertilization or whatnot), meaning that Gilbert has the potential to be a father, but only if he wants to be one.
• Tau is the last of the Hiva/Mu people in The Mysterious Cities of Gold.
• Word of God states that Finn from Adventure Time thought he was last human in the land of Ooo. Since then, he met a girl Susan Strong, and we still don't know if she's human or not (Finn might, though).
• Inverted in an episode of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, where wishing away the world's population is the only thing that has ever made Mandy give a genuine smile.
• There exists an Edutainment Show featuring the last dodo Walking the Earth, meeting another Mr. Exposition in each episode, who explains to him some facts about a specific animal species, or a specific environmental issue.
• Denver, the Last Dinosaur: What the title says, he hatched from the last dinosaur egg found by a group of teenagers.
• Godzilla: The Series has Godzilla Jr. as the last surviving member of his species. Unlike his father, Junior is sterile and cannot reproduce.
  • Not to mention is totally badass.
• The Snowman on Courage the Cowardly Dog was the last of his species because the hole in the Ozone Layer caused all the others to melt. This was the main reason for all his actions, as he was terrified of his species dying with him. Courage repairs the Ozone Layer, bringing all his friends back to life.
• Drawn Together: Captain Hero believes he is the only survivor of the destruction of his home planet. It turns out the planet is perfectly fine, its destruction being another of his odd fantasies; he was only sent to Earth by his parents due to his...special qualities.
• Reality Warper Discord from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is described as a "Draconequus", which implies that there was at one time an entire species of Discords. If that's the case, then he appears to be the last one left (thank goodness for that).
• Subverted with Celestabethabelle in Gravity Falls; she claims to be the last unicorn, but she's lying. There are at least two others.

Real Life

• Far, far too many endangered species. There's a term for the last members of a species - they're called endlings.
  • The last Passenger Pigeon, Martha, died in 1914 a very honored, but alone, bird.
  • Most noteably, Lonesome George, the very last Pinta Island Tortoise.
  • The last Tasmanian Tiger, Benjamin, died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Only a few months prior, the species had recieved protection.
    • In a tragic twist, Benjamin died of exposure to the elements because there was a strike at the zoo and he was locked outside with no shelter during a heat wave because nobody remembered to open the door to his pen so he could get out of the sun.
  • Hyophorbe amaricaulis, the Loneliest Palm. This is a species of palm tree with only one known member in the world, in a garden in Mauritius.
  • Spix's Macaw was eventually reduced to just one animal in the wild (over 80 currently survive in captivity).
  • Then of course, that's not counting any extinct species, all of whom have had a last of it's kind at some point.
  • The Rabb's fringe-limbed tree frog, as of 2012, has been reduced to a single known specimen.
• The Lonely Whale. Possibly.
• Ishi was the last member of the Native American Yana tribe. From 1911 to 1916, his status gave him a lot of attention from anthropologists in California.
• The last survivor of the Bo, an indeginous tribe of the Andoman-Nicobar Islands died on Feb 16th, 2010.
• Truganini, the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aborigine, died in 1876.
  • Last known full-blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal. Add to this the fact that in aboriginal culture, anyone with Aboriginal blood is considered a Tasmanian Aboriginal, so there is still hope for the cullture.
• After the Khmer Rouge devastated Cambodia, there was one living person who knew anything of how to perform the three thousand year old traditional dances. She happens to be an old lady trying to teach people everything she can remember in the hopes that when she goes, not all the knowledge will vanish with her. It's likely most of it has already been lost.
• Pseudo-example: There is a lone gibbon living on a small island on the Khao Lak reservoir in Thailand. If you paddle around the island in the early morning you can see him swinging and calling to other gibbons. He was trapped on the island during the formation of the reservoir and can't swim. He can hear the gibbon calls from the lake edges but he can't find them. There is controversy locally whether to tranquilise and release him on the mainland or leave him to his own devices.
• Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Us) are the last of the Homo genus.
  • The last of an entire lineage of bipedal apes who once lived in abundance across the old world. The past ten or so thousand years is the first time in the history of hominins that there has been one species. And in a few years we may be the last of the Great Apes.
  • Though, there are attempts to either shift the entire Homo genus to the Pan genus (where Bonobos and Chimpanzees reside), or shift the Pan genus into the Homo genus. This causes problems in taxonomy, due to how things are arranged.
  • Many similar cases with other species, like the Tuatara (last reptile that isn't a squamate, a turtle or a crocodillian)
• The Frisco is the last of the Nighthawk chain of restaurants (and, yes, they all had separate names). Had a pretty big outpouring of support to help it survive its 2009 relocation.
• Flying Scotsman. The last of Sir Herbert Nigel Gresley's famous A1 (later A3) express passenger steam engines. All others of the class were scrapped by 1968. Flying Scotsman was only rescued through private patronage. One fictional example exists, though: Gordon the Big Engine.
  • Green Arrow, too, as the last of Gresley's V2 mixed-traffic engines.
• The last Jew of Afghanistan. Yes, it's a country with over thirty million people, and only one single Jew left.
• Shanawdithit was the last surviving member of the Beothuk, a tribe of Native Americans from Newfoundland. She died in 1829.
• During the Cultural Revolution many practitioners of ancient Chinese arts were targeted with numerous skills lost forever. One of the survivors is Yang Fuxi, who is currently the last traditional bow maker in China. He has taken three students so hopefully his skills won't disappear as well.
• Squanto was a Patuxet Native American who was captured by Englishmen and sold into slavery in Europe. He was freed by Spanish priests and returned home, only to find that the rest of the Patuxet had died from European-borne disease.
• In Professional Wrestling you have Kevin Von Erich. He became the last of the Von Erich brothers in the early 90s, after five of the six Von Erich brothers died young.
• Jean Kennedy Smith is the last of the nine children of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald-Kennedy. Although she has many of her own children and she is an aunt to a whole bunch.
• The last known living weapons master of the Indian martial art of Shastar Vidya is attempting to pass on his knowledge.
• From around 1982 to his retirement after the 1986 season, NFL kicker Mark Mosley was both the last of the "straight ahead" kickers and the last NFL player to sport the "single-bar" face mask on his helmet.
• From 2002 to its demolition in 2005, Busch Stadium in St. Louis was the last of the great "Cookie Cutter" stadiums - five near-identical mufti-purpose stadiums built in the late 60's. The other stadiums were (in order of demolition: Atlanta Fulton County, Three Rivers (Pittsburgh), Riverfront (Cincinatti) and Veterans' (Philadelphia).
• From the mid-1990s until the 2010 revival of Let's Make a Deal, The Price Is Right was the last of the network daytime game shows.
• General Hospital is the only surviving Soap on ABC, Days of Our Lives is the only one left on NBC. At some point, either one of those two, The Young And The Restless or The Bold and the Beautiful will be the only surviving American Soap Opera ever. Considering Soap Operas are Older Than Television (Guiding Light began as a radio show) whichever one who gets that dubious title is going in the record books.
• Toonzai is the last Saturday morning kids block on US network TV which broadcasts entertainment instead of only existing to meet E/I requirements.
• At the time of his retirement in 1986, NFL Hall of Fame receiver Charlie Joiner was the last active player who played in the American Football League (AFL), having been a rookie with Houston in the AFL's final season (1969).

1. ↑ or the fact that Tom is reborn as the First Man within a story at the film's climax.
2. ↑ Which doesn't bode well for the family bloodline because Gilbert is gay and Bill just can't keep a stable relationship let alone get one started.