The most frequent type of recurring character seems to be the main character or protagonist, someone who sweeps in when the crisis happens, the mysterious event occurs, or just when Something Bad happens, and—always with a great deal of effort—manages to sort everything out by the end, and maybe even grow a little due to some in-story relationship. (Hello subjective throughline!)
But this topic isn’t about that character. I’m thinking specifically of someone who comes into new stories in roles playing off of the main character, perhaps as guardian or contagonist, but more often as impact/obstacle character, whose contribution to the story is to oppose or challenge the main character whenever he’s about to stray off the correct path?
Remember The Karate Kid? Imagine if the series had, rather than three episodes with one character and one with another, each episode with a new student and some new personal problem for each, The students would be the main characters each time, but Mr. Miyagi would be the recurring character.
I’m strangely curious about this arrangement because you can have cases where the story fails because the main character manages to hold out against the machinations and interference of the recurring opposition character, and ends up putting his foot into and breaking everything as a result. Success/Bad happens sometimes.
Has anyone done a series like that, or even seen a series like that? Obviously The Karate Kid doesn’t count for this exercise.