Call me too woke but I'd love if people talked about James Lafayette other than to show the marquis de La Fayette as anti slavery... That kinda goes against the point of talking about James if it's only to elevate a white man...
I know that we dont have many documents about James Lafayette, but by God I'd like anyone to make him something else than "the slave La Fayette freed bc he was cool and based"... Only kids of Liberty actually pesented him as a courageous man and a friend of La Fayette, not as a token to prove a white man's good will
I know it sounds rlly white savior, but I just want one thing to acknowledge James' role other than him being a slave... And since I'm the woker already, I'd love it if people stopped to call him by his slave name- there's only ONE James Lafayette relating to amrev, there's no need to precise "James Armishead Lafayette"; he chose to have his freeman name as Lafayette and I think it's disrespectful to push his slave name as his identity
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur S2-A: Trying to live a double life- Lunella’s character arc analysis
In Season 2-A, one of the main character arcs of Lunella is her trying to balance his normal and superhero life and her being conflicted about telling her family that she is Moon Girl and the reactions she could get from them.
Along with this, Lunella’s life as superhero is becoming harder as she is having to deal with tougher enemies and it is taking a mental toll on her. She tries to hide things that are affecting her negatively, mentally speaking, and even doesn’t want Mimi to know about.
In this post i’m going to discuss this part of Lunella’s arc on this season and the different problems that trying to keep her identity as supehero from her family brings to her. I’m going to go by episode that explores and develops the conflict in some way.
Let's start:
The conflict is brought up for the first time in ¨Suit Up!¨ by Mimi to Lunella. Mimi asks Lunella if she wants to talk to the rest of the family about her being Moon Girl, Lunella says that she isn’t sure but mentions that then they would have to explain that Mimi was the Original Moon Girl too. Mimi understands that it could take a while before they explain the situation. Instead she decides to take Lunella to a friends’ house from her days as scientist to help her with building a new suit.
The episode on itself doesn’t explore the struggles that come with keeping a super identity secret. However, it explores Lunella’s mental state after the battle she had with Molecular Man. We are beginning to see that she tries to keep all these issues to herself, struggling with opening up about her traumatic experiences. This gives a good idea of why she needs her family support in these situations and not deal with this issues on her own.
The episodes that follow are more about Lunella learning that some people she fights against may have their own reasons of why they end up doing bad things. The conflict about Lunella’s superhero identity is dropped for a while until what would be more or less the later half of season 2 A.
It could be argued that there is some parallel between Marvin standing up to his father about what the type of person he wants to be in ¨Kid Kree¨ and Lunella struggling to tell her family about her being Moon Girl. Both characters have parallels to each other, so, it wouldn’t be out of place to say that this could be intentional from the writers’ part.
¨The Devil You Know¨ brings up this conflict again, exploring the stress that is bringing to Lunella and Devil’s relationship. Lunella explains that she has to keep his superhero and family life separated, accidentally making Devil feel that he isn’t part of Lunella’s family. This leads to the two of them having an argument and being angry with each other, with Lunella leaving for her family road trip.
This episode is mainly from Devil’s perspective and how he feels treated as a sidekick by Lunella at times. I discussed more about this in detail on this post.
On B plot, it explores Lunella feeling bad about dismissing Devil’s feelings and having a fight with him. She tries her best to have fun in her road trip but she can’t help missing Devil and thinking about how much fun he would have if he had come with them.
At the end of the episode, Lunella and Devil have a talk, Lunella apologizes to Devil for making him feel like he isn’t important. She tells Devil that she understands that he wants to be part of Lafayettes family and she promises that she is going to work harder on trying to bring both of her lives together.
The episode ¨Dog Day Mid-afternoon¨ brings up this idea of Lunella living a double life with ¨Franklin¨ hiding that he is an alien from Pops as a parallel to Lunella hiding about being Moon Girl. Franklin gets found by Pops at the start of the episode. Believing that he is a dog, the Lafayette family takes him in and allows him to stay.
Over the course of the episode Lunella sees that Franklin acts strange and finds out clues that he may be an alien. Pops insists that even if Franklin does weird things, it doesn’t mean he is evil. Later in the story Franklin reveals to Pop and Lunella that he is, in fact, an alien that was going undercover to trap a human criminal that was exploiting and controlling dogs using a special whistle.
Lunella (as Moon Girl) teams up with Franklin and Pops to stop the antagonist and get her arrested. Franklin says goodbye to Pops and Lunella, taking off with his ship. Lunella brings up to Pops that he is taking the reveal of Franklin being an alien quite well, to which he answers with saying that ¨when you care about someone, you want to love them for what all they are¨, indicating that he would prefer someone to be honest about who they are than having to keep secrets from him.
Pops’s relationship with Lunella is explored again in ¨Roller Jam!¨. While the episode is more about the friendship and rivalry that Pops has with another character, it leaves a clear point that he is a huge fan of Moon Girl. He admires what Moon Girl does for her community and helps Lunella with fighting against Brian Glory.
It could be assumed that seeing her grandfather being supportive of Moon Girl is another thing that influences Lunella to convince herself to reveal to her family that she is a superhero. It helps by knowing there is another person in her family that probably wouldn’t get angry at her for keeping this a secret from them.
It is worth of discussing that Season 1 has been building towards this arc as well.
In the episode ¨Skip Ad-olescence¨ James almost seems to find about Lunella being Moon Girl with Lunella using the time jumps.
In ¨Like Mother, Like Moon Girl¨ Adria tells to Lunella that Moon Girl reminds her a lot of her, pointing out the similarities between them. She says that she admires Moon Girl but adds that ¨her mother must be crazy letting fight all those supervillains¨, giving some perspective of how she would react to Lunella being Moon Girl reveal.
Lunella mostly keeps her identity a secret out of fear of how her family would react to it, she fears that they would freak out or get angry at her for having lying to them for so long. She is scared that they wouldn’t allow her to be Moon Girl anymore. She tries working with it but this fear always stops her from doing so.
Another reason that likely motivates Lunella to keep her identity a secret from her family is that one of her biggest fears is not being able to protect someone she loves or losing someone.
This was explored in the episode ¨Coney Island, Baby!¨ when the Beyonder is testing Lunella’s fears. He is able to figure out that this is Lunella’s greatest fear based on thinking she almost lost Mimi when she was a little girl.
Lunella likely keeps her identity a secret as a way to protect her family, from the way she sees it. She doesn’t want them to get worried nor get hurt because of her fights against supervillains and criminals. She may believe she would put them on risk if she reveals her secret to them and they could get hurt because of that.
She has also the habit of thinking that she has to take the burden all herself. She thinks that she to tackle these issues mostly on her own, that it would make it worse if her parents/family knew about it. She often has the habit of struggling to ask for help or telling others what is happening to her.
This idea of keeping things hidden seems to work for a while until the events of Season 1 finale involving Mordak, then being stuck on a wild planet for days and having a brutal fight against Molecular Man. All this leaves an impact on her, making her question how much she can deal with this on her own since it is being too much for her.
¨Family Matters¨ is when Lunella keeping a double identity secret really catches up to her. Her family is beginning to pick up how she gets really late and is absent from family activities. At the start of the episode Adria asks Lunella where she has been and she tries getting away from the conversation. Adria says that she is just worried about her and would like to spend time with her more often. She gaves Lunella a teddy bear she made for her.
Some minutes later Mimi goes down to Lunella’s secret hideout and finds Lunella making a mess, trying to change her schedule. Mimi brings up that it would be a good idea for her to tell the rest of the family the truth as she is seeing that having to keep all this hidden is leaving Lunella exhausted. Lunella says that she would think about it and leaves to do supehero stuff.
She, Devil and Casey (who sent a drone) find out that the alarm came from supehero Turbo fighting the villain Silvermane. Turbo is someone that Lunella is a huge fan of, getting distracted in the battle by telling Turbo how much she admires her. Silvermane runs away in the middle of the fight.
Turbo explains that Silvermane has been trying to steal her special suit that is powered by unique technology. She explains to Lunella that she is in New York for personal business and Lunella offers (more like begs) if she can help her with fighting Silvermane, to which Turbo accepts.
Lunella comes up with a tracker that can help them with looking for Silvermane. As the team along with Turbo try finding the villain, Lunella gets multiple calls from her family asking her to hang out. Lunella turns down or skips most of these activities, making the family worried that she isn’t spending any time with them.
The team takes a break after not being able to find Silver. Turbo tells to Lunella where she got her special suit and the two have a moment talking about their struggles of being superheroes and their mistakes when they were starting. Turbo says that she usually doesn’t get to talk to other people about these things and is happy to see someone else who gets it.
Lunella later comes up with a new plan to get Silvermane to come to them by using Turbo’s suit as bait. She gets interrumpted by Adria, who asks her if she wants to join family game night since they found free time in her schedule for her to play. Lunella plays with them for while, knowing that she has been missing spending time with them recently.
While they are having a fun time, Lunella gets an alert about Silvermane. She tries getting out from the game only for Adria and the rest to ask her why she is constanly skipping and barely around. Adria gets specially suspicious and demands to Lunella to explain what is going on. In a moment of stress, Lunella accidenatlly yells at her family and realizes what she said, running away to met with Turbo.
The team and Turbo manage to trick and capture Silvermane. To celebrate, Turbo takes them to spot on top of a building she knows. From the roof Lunella notices that Turbo is looking at someone through a window: It is a woman with a birthday cake.
Turbo explains to Lunella that the woman is her mother and that she comes to her like this every year during the day of her birthday. Her relationship with her mother went rock bottom after the constant lying with Turbo having to keep up her super hero identity a secret from her. She talks about she hasn’t seen her ever since then and that there are some things she can’t change about what happened between them.
Turbo acts as a parallel to what Lunella’s relationship with her family could turn into if she keeps up constanly lying to them. For Turbo, hiding her super person for too long meant her accidentally ruining her relationship with her own mother permantely. Lunella sees that she is falling in a similar pattern away, with lately not spending time with her own family and breaking into ugly arguments with them.
This is what finally pushes Lunella to come out with the truth about her being Moon Girl to the rest of the Lafayettes, as she would prefer taking the risk than ruining her relationship with them just like it happened with Turbo and her own mother. The episode ends with Lunella saying to her family that she has something to tell them.
In the next episode, ¨The Molecular Level¨, when Adria, James and Pops listen to Lunella reveal that she is Moon Girl at first they think it is a joke until Devil appears, leaving them shocked. Devil gives them some gifts, saying that he is happy to meet them.
Pops takes the reveal quite well, expressing that he is proud of Lunella and asking her if he could be her sidekick some time. James panicks but still seems to take it well in spite of the shock. However, Adria shows to be mixed about the situation, as she is happy that her daughter is a superhero yet she feels bad that she didn’t know that all this time Lunella was fighting crime.
Lunella gives them a detailed explanation of how she has been trying to balance her schedule and how she has a lot of good equipment to protect herself and others. She wants to convince her parents that there shouldn’t be any serious problem. James and Adria still feel very shocked about everything but Lunella assures them that nobody else knows about her being Moon Girl aside from Devil, Casey and Marvin.
However, Molecular Man suddently breaks into the Lafayette’s deparment, destroying a good part of the house. He managed to track Lunella down and he wants to get revenge on her since he wasn’t able to find the Beyonder nowhere. He attacks them, chasing them down around the house and breaking everything in his path. Lunella tries to fight Molecular Man, only to be pulled back by the adults, trying to keep her safe.
In the middle of the struggle, Adria, James and Pops learn about how Lunella went through an interdimensional portal and ended stranded on a planet. They later learn that Mimi used to be the Original Moon Girl too, leaving Pops specially angry at Mimi for not telling him about that.
The battle gets more intense, with Lunella ending up trapped inside her own room and her family on the other side of it, being attacked by Molecular Man. Fortunately, Devil is to get Lunella her superhero suit using the drone that Casey controlled the previous episode. She puts it on and order the rest of the Lafayettes to escape, as she is going to fight Molecular Man.
After Lunella defeats Molecular Man, she realizes that he went through a lot and understands how painful it must have been for him getting his own planet destroyed. Molecular Man admits that he took his revenge too far and apologizes for his actions. Lunella gaves him part of her suit, which has self repairing abilities. Molecular gets healed and decides to use his powers to rebuild, first repairing the damage he causes in the house and then leaving to rebuild his own planet.
Once Molecular Man leaves, Pops, Mimi and James congratulate Lunella for winning and James comments that they already consider Devil part of the family. On the other hand, Adria doesn’t look so happy, she tells Lunella that she is proud of her and she growing into a mature person… but she says that she ¨is never doing this again¨, forbidding her for being Moon Girl. The episode ends with the frame of the Lafayette photo breaking, mainly where Lunella and Adria are, symbolizing how their relationship has become ¨broken¨ after the ending of The Molecular Level.
I would argue that Adria’s reaction is understandable. She was shocked when Lunella revealed her super identity at the start of episode but she seemed to be going along with it. It was after seeing the chaos that Molecular Man brought to the house and attacking them that she decided to not allow Lunella to be Moon Girl any further, worrying for her safety. As her mother, it is reasonable from her perspective since she is looking after Lunella.
Season 2 B would explore the consequences of these decisions and how Lunella finds a way to persuade Adria to let her do superhero stuff again.
In all, one big part of Lunella’s arc in this season is her choosing to tell or not tell her family about her being Moon Girl. She sees if the risks in doing so are worth it, afraid that they won’t talk to her for being lying to them for so long. Eventually she sees that trying to do this double life and having to be always lying about her superhero persona is bringing too much trouble in her life and her relationships with her family. It is when she sees what happened to superhero Turbo that finally pushes her to tell the Lafayettes the truth about it.
I’m looking forward to seeing how Season 2 B explores these changes in dynamics and how the Lafayettes are going to see Lunella knowing that she is Moon Girl. I’m also interested in watching the relationships that Devil is going to have with Pops, James and Adria too. It is certainly something that is going to bring a lot of changes to the status quo of the show from now on.
I am almost done with my thesis.. unfortunately the teacher told me I can't write too much because it's a thesis,not a book. I adore the Culper Ring and its intrigues so I could write about it for pages and pages.
Furthermore, since I am almost done with my writing I would love some books recommendation.
I am looking for novels/biographies on the American revolution, both British and American sides.
If Hamilton, Lafayette, Tallmadge, the Culper Ring, and co are there it's even better, but honestly I am just looking for books that are set during the Revolution.
