#cate dunlap analysis

[initforthethrill]

what would Cate major in? outside of the godU stuff, like a regular college.

oh i love this question :)

i’ve thought about it a lot, and i genuinely think cate could go a few different directions depending on the universe she lands in. she’s canonically intelligent, strategic, and emotionally perceptive, so she has range.

first of all: art. she’s clearly a lover of art (thank you maddie for that), and i can absolutely see her as a traditional artist—painting, charcoal, pastels. something tactile and expressive. i think art would be where she processes her inner world.

but academically? i could 100% see her in:

law (especially criminal law)

public relations

management (especially talent)

we know she was going to manage luke, so talent management feels very on brand. she’s good at reading people, spinning narratives, controlling optics, and navigating power structures. pr or management would suit her perfectly.

criminal law is another big one for me. if she hadn’t pivoted into hero management for luke, i could absolutely see her as someone who wanted to understand the legal system instead. she has that sense of justice and is morally-complex.

she’s versatile. but she’d definitely excel in almost anything that lets her influence people and control the narrative!

[initforthethrill]

thoughts on autistic!cate?

autistic!cate is one of those headcanons that starts to click the more you look at her.

like…first of all, i genuinely don’t know how a girl with her upbringing wouldn’t develop some form of neurodivergence or mental illness. prolonged isolation, emotional neglect, conditional affection, being praised only when you’re “useful” or “exceptional”—that alone will hardwire your brain differently.

but beyond the trauma angle, there are so many little things that read as autistic to me:

the repetition and fixations (hello, the multiple identical queen maeve posters in her childhood room…plural…the same one…that’s not accidental behavior to me)

the way she sometimes misses or misreads social cues, especially when emotional stakes are high

how she can come off blunt, overly honest, or strangely flat in moments where others expect a different reaction

her tendency to cling hard to a single authority figure and internalize their rules as absolute

the black-and-white thinking that slowly unravels into guilt and self-loathing when she realizes she’s hurt people

and yeah, some of that could absolutely be maddie’s adhd bleeding through (which i also love), but adhd and autism overlap a lot, and honestly? i think cate reads as someone who learned how to perform normalcy just well enough to survive, not someone who ever truly felt comfortable inside it.

i also like autistic!cate because it adds another layer to why she’s so intense about connection. when she bonds, she bonds. when she loses trust, it’s catastrophic. when she realizes she’s been manipulated, it doesn’t just hurt—it shatters her entire internal framework for how the world works.

so yeah. autistic!cate makes sense. feels right. fits the text and the subtext. and frankly, it just makes her even more devastating and tender to think about, especially for someone who's also neurodivergent!

[initforthethrill]

jaime, i have a question about hetcomp cate: do you think cate is aware that she might be hetcomp, or hasn’t realized it yet? or maybe it’s something she has in mind but hasn’t dared to explore/is afraid of?

tell me ur thoughts... 🙂‍↕️

this is a great question!

if someone asked cate outright about her sexuality, she’d probably identify as bisexual—she’s definitely aware of her queerness and doesn’t shy away from it entirely (the club scene with marie being a clear example). when she’s intoxicated, her guard slips and she lets herself be freer with that side of herself, because the pressure to perform or uphold an image of “perfection” isn’t weighing as heavily in those moments.

i also think marie is unique in that cate doesn’t feel the need to wear that mask around her. marie understands her struggles in a way that no one else really can, so cate automatically allows herself to be more genuine in that relationship.

and if we look back at her childhood, it’s easy to deduce that she probably never had a real relationship before luke. and while she definitely had access to the internet, almost everything she would’ve seen reinforced heterosexuality as the “normal” or “right” path. pair that with cate’s deep fear of rejection—her belief that all love is conditional—and of course she’d cling to what she thought was expected of her. at the same time, none of her relationships ever felt entirely real. either they were manipulated into being (thanks to shetty’s influence and cate’s need to please out of fear) or they were altered by her own powers, rewriting memories until nothing felt authentic.

so no, i don’t think she’s consciously aware she’s operating within comphet. to her, she’s just following the safest route: don’t rock the boat, don’t give anyone another reason to withhold love. and at the core of it, cate doesn’t always feel deserving of love so that lack of self-worth complicates her ability to imagine (let alone pursue) love outside the path already laid in front of her which is—by default—heterosexuality.

[initforthethrill]

what’s ur opinion on the finale? I see (unfortunately) a lot of mixed reviews, so i wanted to ask the big dawg (i feel like that’s an appropriate nickname for u)

kinda also wanna snatch an emote cause i am NOT a poster on this app so uhh.. can i be this one? -👓 ty love ur aura

hello darling!!! happy to assign you the 👓 emoji. very chic, very observant, very “i’m watching all of you” energy. welcome (officially) to cate cult nation hehehe<3 also “big dawg” took me out but i’ll accept it with honor, thank you 🫡

okay, finale thoughts in one place, because i’ve definitely talked around this a lot but here’s the core of it:

my biggest issue with the finale is the absolute lack of anything meaningful for cate. sure, they gave her a so-called “redemption,” but i honestly hate that framing to begin with. cate never needed to be redeemed. she was always redeemable, always acting from a place of manipulation, fear, and deeply misplaced trust—not malice. the idea that she had to be put through an entire season of ritualized suffering so the general audience could finally be like “okay…i guess we’re allowed to like her now” quite literally makes me insane.

it genuinely felt like the show was saying: “look how much she suffers! see? you can forgive her now!” like wow!!! thank you!!! for nuking one of the most complex characters you’ve ever written just to shepherd viewers toward an incredibly predictable endgame!!!

and what makes it worse is that none of that suffering paid off narratively. she spent the entire season being punished, tortured, and humiliated to “earn” empathy...then marie forgives her and heals her—which should have been HUGE—and what do we get? a five-second clip of cate pushing a guy to open a door. that’s it. no exploration of a power upgrade, no follow-up on the fact that we literally saw her project her consciousness into another person earlier in the season, no acknowledgement that she could be capable of rivaling godolkin telepathically. nothing.

it feels very much like the writers realized that having the most powerful telepath in universe (at that point) on the board breaks the entire plot. because godolkin vs cate would end the show in like…episode two? and instead of getting creative—making godolkin immune to other telepaths, limiting projection, introducing psychic recoil, ANYTHING—they chose to kneecap cate’s abilities and call it character growth.

and that’s what frustrates me the most: there were so many interesting routes for her arc. instead, they picked the safest, most boring one. torture her, strip her agency, dull her powers, pat themselves on the back for “redeeming” her, move on.

for a character who is—in my opinion—the most important character in the show aside from marie, that’s such a waste.

it honestly felt like such a slap in the face to cate stans. as if we don't deal with enough already just for liking her and understanding nuance.

and don’t even get me started on amazon refusing more than 8 episodes, or the fact that half of those episodes are 35–45 minutes long. if you’re going to put a character through that much trauma, at least give the arc time to breathe. if you’re not going to give us more episodes, at least give us full hours. so many arcs (especially cate’s) feel truncated because of that constraint.

anyway. i’m still deeply attached to her and still think she’s one of the most fascinating characters in the entire franchise despite what they tried to do to effectively ruin her character this season. i’m begging season 5 of the boys to give us one single cate crumb. at the very least, please free her from touch-dependent powers...

thanks for asking the big dawg :)