Let me share an angsty headcanon with you
Special post today, a meta by @caycelikessuperheroes!
At the beginning of this season we see Kara obviously still mourning the loss of Mon-el, the whole episode in fact is a reiteration of the idea that Kara just *won’t get over him*, that Kara Danvers is weak, useless, broken by grief, and the only thing left to do is is to be Supergirl, the girl of steel, someone who will survive the loss of a loved one because she’s more-than-human.
But the thing is, Kara’s never had the chance to experience what it feels to really be Mon-el’s girlfriend without haste, drama, or the outside pressure!
She was initially attracted to him because he was a fellow alien, a boy with powers, someone other than Kal-el with whom to share memories of Krypton and other worlds far away.
She took him under her wing and trained him, tried to teach him how to be a hero, how to blend in with humans, how to try to have a normal life on Earth.
She was badgered into a relationship with him at his insistence, and at the hand of everybody around Kara slowly taking a step back and leaving her alone, with no other options but to give in.
And in the end she was betrayed by the revelation he was in fact the prince of Daxam, once his parents showed up to bring him back.
Before she had a chance to live out her boring happy relationship with him, he was poisoned and gone, banished to the phantom zone, Kara on Earth was left to wonder and daydream.
In the very first scene we see her roaming green fields of wheat, some Kryptonian version of the Elysian Fields, Mon-el is there and they’re happy. We find out right away that this is a fantasy, this is what Kara’s been obsessing about since he’s been gone.
It’s clear at this point that Kara is mourning an idealised version of him: the Mon-el we see in that vision is no longer him but “the love that could’ve been” (if only he hadn’t been selfish, utterly uninterested in using his powers for good, if only he hadn’t lied about being the prince of Daxam, if only he hadn’t been poisoned in an effort to rid the world of the Daxamite invaders, etc)
In the meantime Cat is gone too. She came back from a year of hanging out in internet-connected yurts only to put all of her shares of CatCo in a blind trust fund and go follow Olivia in Washington.
In a moment where Kara’s life is in shambles, where she needs to seek refuge in normality and routine to overcome her grief, Cat leaves her once again.
We see Kara smile when she sees her on tv, but we also see Kara quit her job at CatCo on a whim: she doesn’t seem to care about being a reporter anymore, and why should she, now that the person who used to read all of her articles isn’t even the owner of CatCo anymore?
In one of my favourite scenes of the episode Alex challenges her decision to leave her job,
Alex: Since when do you quit?
Kara: CatCo isn’t the point for me anymore.
Alex: You spent years working your way up to be a reporter.
Kara: And it was a waste of time.
Alex: I would love to see you tell Cat Grant that.
Kara: Cat moved on. Why can’t I?
This tells us two things:
1. Kara’s bitter as hell about Cat leaving CatCo, this is no longer a leave of absence, this is giving up the project of her lifetime: in Kara’s eyes, Cat has “moved on”.
2. If Cat’s no longer the boss to impress, a mentor to look up to, then there is literally nothing keeping Kara tied to CatCo as a business, and perhaps even journalism as a profession.
“Kara Danvers sucks” she yells at Alex, and indeed Kara Danvers’s life does suck, her boyfriend is gone and when she needed her the most Cat has left her alone.
Kara’s bitterness and brooding tells us that she’s lost, looking for an anchor. Cat used to be her anchor, last season that anchor was the boy from Daxam, and with him gone, Kara’s only option is to retreat into what she knows best: Supergirl.
Which brings us to my main point: Kara’s grief is not about Mon-el, to an extent it isn’t even about Cat specifically. Kara’s grief is first and foremost about Krypton, about the life she was supposed to have, about getting stuck on the way to Earth and not being able to help Kal-el grow up, about the universe always incessantly throwing a spanner in the works.
It’s about loss, abandonment, it’s about the life that could’ve been, all the chances that she was denied. It’s the kind of frustration that even the strongest hero on earth can’t do anything about.
stormborns
2087
pixelskylines
romaincrisis
tangentwithtanner
areudirty
