Kara Danvers vs. Kara Zor-El and the importance of Lena Luthor
I don’t know if anyone has written anything about this yet, but I have a theory about why Lena was the only person Kara was soft with on episode 3x01.
It’s nothing mind-blowing, to be honest, and I’d just like to say that while I totally believe Kara needs time to heal, she should not be snapping at those who love her.
Everyone else in Kara’s life besides Lena knows she is Supergirl; when they look at her, they see the hero they’ve put on a pedestal, and they expect more, they expect better of her – even though they’d probably never admit to doing so.
The Super-friends need her to be Kara Danvers AND Supergirl, regardless of how hard being Supergirl actually is on her.
I believe deep down, Kara is saying “Kara Danvers” was a mistake not because it was (and is) what allows her to have real connections in life (after all, it wasn’t Kara Danvers who Mon-El fell in love with, it was Kara Zor-El; between the two of them, there was never the pretense of secret identities), I believe she’s saying that, because when she is Kara Danvers, it allows her to see she isn’t enough anymore: the world needs Supergirl, and her friends and family need her to be both.
And while it’s always Kara Zor-El who always has to sacrifice part of herself, who has to make tough decisions, it’s Kara Danvers who feels the weight of those choices; it’s Kara Danvers who feels the burden of being Supergirl (and it would explain this line since, once again, it wasn’t Kara Danvers who dated Mon-El, but Kara Zor-El).
So why would Kara renounce “being human” to be the very thing that weighs her down? The way I see it, and what the show constantly tells us, is that Kara and those around her truly believe Kara Danvers and Kara Zor-El are two separate entities, so if Kara stops being a Danvers (if she stops being human), she won’t have to feel the pain that being Supergirl brings her.
But ultimately Kara knows she can’t let that happen, because then we’d get Red!K Kara – and this episode is the closest thing we’ve seen of Kara behaving like Red!K without being infected by it.
And here lies the importance of Lena Luthor (and the importance of Kara keeping her secret identity from her).
I was going to ramble on, but Katie McGrath herself can explain my thoughts on this:
“It’s a relationship of equals. As far as Lena is concerned, Kara is Kara. Kara is not Supergirl. For Lena, she has a friend on the same level as her, who is fantastic at their job, is intelligent, smart, capable and strong. What’s lovely is it’s two normal women figuring out life together as friends. I think that’s what is important to Lena, that she has somebody where she doesn’t have to be the head of the company. She doesn’t have to be somebody’s daughter. She can just be herself. And, Kara can be that. She doesn’t have to be Supergirl or a reporter. She can just be the flawed human being that we are.”
When Kara is with Lena, she is reminded of the good aspects of being human; she is able to relax, take a step back and tell herself that it’s okay to feel, it’s okay to doubt oneself, it’s okay to make mistakes, because she sees all those things reflected back to her on Lena.
When Kara is with Lena, she’s allowed to simply be. And for someone who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders, I can’t imagine how important that must be.
And I think that’s why Kara couldn’t bring herself to snap at Lena, because somewhere in the back of her mind she knows fracturing or potentially ending her friendship with Lena would ultimately shatter her last real connection to Kara Danvers (and her humanity).
Kara can’t break Lena’s heart, because she would be breaking her own.
