I find it kind of crazy how Ninjago accidentally gave every main character a badass mom because somebody in the writers room didn't think women were important to mention until season 7-14 and by that time they needed a backstory character who was a powerful ancient warrior and they'd used up all their dad characters.
Like, Lilly was most certainly not meant to have been. They made one joke where she existed in s1 and then forgot that she was supposedly alive in Cole's true potential episode because they were too focused on the father-son storyline. Then, they sudddenly told us elemental powers are inherited and clearly they couldn't come from Lou, so wouldn't you know it, it's time to do something with the dead mom.
They told us that Jay was adopted and decided to immediately give us his father's name and zero material on his mom, and in doing so, they almost certainly by accident promised to give us Superpowered Female Elemental Master of Lightning and Badass Mom Libber in order to explain how he came to have his powers.
They established Kai and Nya as orphans, briefly brought up Ray as a character like four or five times before his actual appearance in s7, and then they decided to actually give Nya a place on the team and they were like "well, I guess we gotta do something with their mom at some point" and made BOTH Maya and Ray to be masters.
I just find it amazing how all mothers in Ninjago are canonically war heroes with superpowers, because don't you try to tell me that shit would've happened in Seasons 1 and 2 when they still sidelined Nya in every important battle. They mentioned Ray a bit in the pilots and later seasons and I bet they had early plans for him and Kai, but I can't imagine them doing something like Seabound back then, when they couldn't even handle making Nya a ninja. Heck, Pixal didn't even have a body. You think we would've gotten badass ancient warrior mom elemental master of earth Lilly in 2011?
