I see people for the most part take this scene, coupled with Ninaâs failure to kill, as Bride being wrong, that Nina wasnât a monster and that she never belonged on the creature commandos.
And I do agree Nina didnât deserve to be on the commandos (though, I think thatâs true for all of them), but she did belong with the commandos.
Ninaâs narrative and relation with dehumanization lies in the attempt to be normal. She is considered subhuman the moment she is born disabled, but her fatherâs determination for her to have both a proper quality of life and a normal life results in her mutation.
Then, when the time comes, she wanted the same thing he wanted for her. She wanted to go to school, play sports, make friends, have crushes because she could, because her looking different and having to breathe underwater didnât prevent her from doing that.
But it sure made everyone decide that it should.
After enduring it as long as she could, internalizing that her father deciding to always love her meant her being alive was a burden to him, she gives up. She abandoned the goal of the ideal ânormal lifeâ and decided the only way for her to live in peace would be to isolate herself. Her existence was unnatural, so how could she coexist with anyone else?
And that guilt by existence is why she was locked away in Belle Reve, and eventually put onto Task Force M. A group where everyoneâs existence was as unnatural as hers. Where they couldnât care less if she was walking around in a fish bowl, because who on earth were any of them to judge?
And because she was around them, for the first time in her life someone called her their friend.
Then she gets to know all of them, their rough edges soften in her eyes. They arenât so scary, or standoff-ish, or cruel for the sake of it. For all their differences, theyâre like her.
These people actually see her as a person. It doesnât matter if sheâs a freak, a weirdo, or a monster because gets to be one with them. These are the people sheâs always needed in her life.
Unfortunately, what let her finally met them was also what killed her.