There Is Another

"Obi Wan: That boy is our last hope. Yoda: No. 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, who are now, obviously, gone.

Therefore, very often, at least for the heroic sort, it will eventually turn out that he's not really the Last of His Kind after all, and his fellows have either been secreted away or ascended to a higher plane of existence. Unless this is revealed in the Grand Finale or when the character is Put on a Bus, this revelation will either prove a MacGuffin (as the character will now be driven to actually find and reunite with his fellows), or be conveniently removed by a Reset Button (for example, these other survivors will be killed, or permanently sealed away in another dimension for their own protection, turning out to be a dream, Chuck Cunningham Syndrome or whatnot), as being reunited with his people pretty much cancels out the character type. See Sailor Earth for when a fanfiction writer creates this type of character.

Compare: The Chosen Many, The Last Man Heard a Knock.

Anime & Manga

 * Michel in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch
 * In Bleach, Ishida is supposedly the last living Quincy after the death of his grandfather because his father never became a true Quincy.
 * Actually, he simply said, "I have no interest in being a Quincy. He never said that he wasn't one, just that he didn't care.
 * Although this could be more a case of life choice rather than skills. A Quincy is someone who gets rid of hollows not someone who can use the spirit bow thing.
 * He also implies that he tried to get rid of his Quincy abilities, but he's so intrinsically powerful that he couldn't. From what we've seen of him in action, this is believable.
 * Death Note features an unusual mundane use of this trope.
 * A better application of this trope would be the introduction of Misa, the second Kira.
 * Averted in Dragon Ball if you ignore the non-canon movies. When the author says Goku, Raditz, Nappa and Vegeta are the last Saiyans, they really are, and no new ones pop up to replace the ones who are killed off.
 * While it would hardly be shocking if others had survived in the same way Goku did (if one slipped through the cracks decades ago, why not two, or three, or fifty?), from the time the Saiyan race is introduced the manga has only 4 story arcs. None of them introduce new Saiyans (aside from Half Human Hybrids), and then the series ends, leaving no possibility of the issue ever coming up.
 * Yo! Son Goku and His Friends Return! introduces Vegeta's younger brother, who comes to Earth seeking help against his enemies. If it sounds like a fanfic, he was sent to a distant planet for being unpardonably weak by Saiyan standards and Vegeta is more embarrassed by him than anything else. He's also a pretty nice guy, shorter than Vegeta, and married to a friendly humanoid-but-not-humanlike alien, which weirds Vegeta out. Oh, and the main cast are so ridiculously powerful post-Buu Saga that his enemies are a joke to them.

Comicbooks

 * 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.
 * 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 Always Chaotic Evil white Martians that are very much alive. Go figure. Eventually they're all killed, except for the good aligned Miss Martian.
 * Which has changed again in the new Martian Manhunter retooling. Not only are there other White Martians, but.
 * After another apparent retcon in Brightest Day,
 * Subverted in Y: The Last Man. About ten issues in, it's revealed that . A bare bones effort to ensure a safe landing ensued... but . The only one to survive was their female cosmonaut partner....
 * In the penultimate arc we find another survivor:.
 * Elf Quest does this with the Wolfriders, who believe they are the last of their kind. Imagine their surprise when they find out.
 * 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, 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.
 * 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.
 * Cerebus did this with aardvarks. Cooler than it sounds.

Films

 * The trope name comes from Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, where after Luke Skywalker is rushing off to an obvious trap Vader has set for him, Yoda cryptically dismisses Obi-Wan's suggestion that Luke was the last hope for the Jedi. The "another" is Leia, as implied in the ending to Empire Strikes Back and confirmed in Return of the Jedi.
 * At the beginning of Ice Age 2, Manny the Mammoth is led to believe he's the last of the mammoths. Later, he finds a female mammoth who was living with her possum brothers (...), and at the end.
 * The ending of the first Highlander film explicitly said that Connor MacLeod had won "The Prize" and was the last Immortal. Subsequent films (and the TV series) changed that.
 * The ending of Gojira states that the titular monster cannot be the only member of his species, and that nuclear bomb testings will only bring about more. Cue the sequel....
 * Hancock had the titular character suffer from amnesia only to be reminded once again, by saving her current husband, that he once had a wife who had the same powers he did.
 * In King Ralph, the title character discovers he's not the only distant relative of the royal family still alive.
 * This was the premise for The Tigger Movie, in which Tigger thinks he's received a letter from another Tigger. It turns out that the letter was from . The whole movie is an Aesop about the Power of Friendship.
 * And has anyone else on this list declared "I'm the only one!" so triumphantly?
 * Both protagonists of The Dark Crystal believed themselves to be the last of the gelfling race, then invoked this trope when they met.
 * Dogma: Mary was a virgin when Jesus was born. The last of her and Joseph's descendants, though, is Bethany. She also developed uterine cancer and had a hysterectomy. At the end of the movie, God regrows her womb, with the new Last Scion in it.

Literature

 * In Eragon, we are led to believe that Eragon and Gallbatorix are the only Dragon Riders left in the world, Gallbatorix having slaughtered every Rider and Dragon, with only two eggs left in the world besides them. In Eldest, we find out that Gallbatorix missed one. The elf Oromis and his dragon Glaedr are crippled but alive, and become Eragon and Saphira's teachers.
 * 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 ... three guesses who's likely to hatch it. * cough* * 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 Thrawn. Luke and Mara found his clone floating, asleep or not yet alive, in a 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 gambiting in 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 tremendous pressure to live up to the original.
 * Arthur Dent discovers his entire planet has been rebuilt in So Long And Thanks For All The Fish. Then he discovers a parallel version in Mostly Harmless. Then, once the Guide Mk2 has ensured that, he discovers   in 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.
 * The protagonist of How Like a God thinks he's the only person in the world with Psychic Powers. Wandering a Mental World, he looks out into an ocean, filled with tadpoles that represent the minds of all the people in the world. Then he sees a whale.
 * A prophecy in Percy Jackson and The Olympians refers to a child of one of the Big Three (Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades) under the age of sixteen . Due to the nature of the prophecy, after World War II the Three signed a pact not to have any more children, because those children were too powerful and warped the world. Percy is thought to be the necessary referent, since only he and Thalia had been born since the oath and Thalia pulled a Heroic Sacrifice several years ago.
 * Eventually

Live-Action TV

 * 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 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 Sex Clone "daughter", although the Doctor was reluctant to consider her a "real" Time Lord. She's still alive, he just doesn't know it.
 * In the 11th Doctor's second series,  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 Tau'ri.) The nature of Ra's species was also changed (from The Greys to snake-like symbiotes), among the many retcons in the transition from the movie to the TV franchise.
 * 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. 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:
 * In the series, Kryten's repair nanites go a bit too far, rebuilding the entire crew of the Red Dwarf, including previously Put on a Bus cast member Rimmer (who didn't experience "our" Rimmer's adventures with them and had no qualms about double-crossing them.)
 * In the Red Dwarf novel Last Human, Michael McGruder, the child of Rimmer's one night stand, arrives, having been in stasis a really, really long time.
 * Angel was, for a long time, considered to be the only vampire with a soul, to the point where prophecies referring to the 'vampire with a soul' were assumed naturally to refer to Angel. But then Spike got his soul back.
 * Arguably, a form of this occurred in Charmed with Pru's death, which broke the power of three - until the fourth sister, Paige, turned up.
 * A version of this trope appears in both the old and new versions of Battlestar Galactica:
 * Smallville has Clark's cousin Kara show up. And then.
 * Steve Austin thought he was the first and only Bionic man ... until the second season when he ran into OSI's "failed experiment": Barney Miller, the Seven Million Dollar Man.
 * In The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John Henry delivers the line, implying that
 * Until season 4, Kilgarrah was the last dragon in the BBC's Merlin . But now another dragon, Aithusa, has been hatched.
 * Until season 4, Kilgarrah was the last dragon in the BBC's Merlin . But now another dragon, Aithusa, has been hatched.

Webcomics

 * In Impure Blood, the last Ancient may be the Last of His Kind, but to Roan, it means there is someone else out there with Ancient blood.

Videogames

 * Ratchet was discovered to be anything but the Last of His Kind. Lampshaded in A Crack in Time, where he meets Cool Old Lombax.
 * Rexxar and the Mok'Nathal in the Warcraft universe.
 * Also, the uncorrupted furbolgs. Apart from Krolg in Ashenvale, the Timbermaw tribe at the farthest reaches of civilization was portrayed as the last uncorrupted furbolgs in Azeroth. That is, until the expansion added the Stillpine... on the draenei starting island. The island did sport Alliance, however, they had recently shipwrecked there, something which seems to happen often on that island.
 * Red XIII from Final Fantasy VII. You never actually see another member of his race anywhere in the canon, but in the Flash Forward ending, he's shown with a pair of cubs. The compilation reveals he did have a mate, named Deneh, who he lost contact with in one of the prequels, and presumably finds again after the events of the game.
 * According to the documentation in the Halo games, Master Chief is the last surviving SPARTAN II super-soldier, and that the rest of the unit died in the Battle of Reach. The Expanded Universe reveals, however, that about a dozen Spartans survived the fall of Reach, including three who weren't even at Reach at the time, and one who was actually present through the events of the first game (but couldn't help because she was clinically dead and in stasis). These fellow survivors are never mentioned in the rest of the main game series. Although one's existence is referred to in the Anniversary Edition of the first game: when the Chief goes through the stasis control room, one of the readouts shows a Spartan still in stasis, and her name (Linda) barely legible on the screen. It's so subtle that it may be considered an Easter Egg.
 * according to Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood.
 * The same game reveals that, inside the Twilight Cage, there are far more than we were led to believe.
 * Except Word of God has stated that Chronicles isn't canon at all, therefore this trope is subverted, as Knuckles and Emerl are still the last of their kind in the canon game universe.
 * also is considered this in the early Archie Comics.
 * Happens all the time in the Breath of Fire games. In the first, you start in the last village of the Light Dragons, but you're supposedly the last warrior capable of harnessing the ancient clan's power. You're not, In the second, you find the last village of the dragons guarding the Big Bad. In the third, much is made of the fact that you're the last dragon. No, really, you are. Like, the last one. Except for this village over here. And  . But you're the last.
 * In Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, it's initially established that Reyson is  However, throughout the game and its sequel, a couple more turn up... including
 * Actually his father was stated to be alive not to long after Reyson was introduced. But he's so sick that he can't do anything so he never appears in the game itself.
 * In Homeworld, the Kushan discover that there are other exiles from Hiigara in the galaxy.
 * In Homeworld 2, meanwhile, there's an example with spaceships rather than people. After going through a lot of trouble to acquire the last known Progenitor Dreadnought, the key to reaching the mysterious Sajuuk, a final line of dialogue is delivered quietly at the end of the mission: "There is another Dreadnought. ." (This is especially scary since a Dreadnought is much more powerful than anything the player can build at that point in the game, and about 50% stronger than the most powerful ship the player can ever build.)
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.

Western Animation

 * The Gargoyles. In the beginning of the series, it's implied they're the last. Then they find out the eggs from their Rookery were saved, and raised in Avalon. Then they find a bunch of other clans around the world that survived.
 * Though to be fair, given the Manhattan Clan rather limited world view, they weren't exactly exposed to other clans much less those half-way around the world. So as far as they were concerned, when their clan was destroyed, that was it.
 * In The Venture Brothers, Dr. Venture has a dream in which his dead father warns him "There is another Venture!" in a spooky, dramatic voice. When asked why he said it like that, he answered "Don't ask me; it's your dream." It turns out he was right, the "other Venture" being the twin brother that Dr. Venture swallowed in the womb.
 * Futurama has one not-so-straight example: Leela finds someone who seems to be part of the same alien race, but turns out to be . The whole situation was just an excuse for Actor Allusion.
 * Better than that.
 * One episode of the The Wild Thornberrys had a tortoise that was (almost) the Last of His Kind. Sadly Truth in Television, as he was based on a real tortoise called Lonesome George.