I've been thinking about this for a while Mick seems to have easier and stronger friendships with women on LoT. Sara, Leonard & Mick all found kinship in s1A together. In s2 Amaya pushed past Mick 'dumb muscle/wild animal' masks & they are good friends. He talks sincerely & openly with her or openly hugs her. Zari trusted Mick with info on Helen. Ray loves him & wants closer relationship always. Nate & Jax are friendly. Martin & Rip are assholes to him. part one
2/2 On the Flash, Lisa was one to calm Mick down when he took things too far with Cisco. I just feel like Mick puts up less resistance with relationships with women then men. He has a thing for strong women. He’s attracted to them, he respects a certain type of women, usually strong-willed, take no BS or criminal type, or has something views as worthy. Ray & Nate try hard to break down his walls and connect and only sometimes get let in. What you think Mick’s relationships with men vs women?
I think he definitely does form easier relationships with women, and I think a lot of what you said hits the nail on the head. If we delve a bit into Mick’s background, that also makes sense.
To start, with men, we know he has a very tense relationship with his father, who was abusive. If we think about the fact that he went to juvie and was probably around a lot of other authoritarian men, not to mention violent men his own age and older for most of his life after that… I can see why he doesn’t get close to men easily.
Is Dick even older than Mick is in this scene? Honestly though…
And stemming from that, I think it actually makes sense that he’s let pretty much only Len and Ray, and eventually a bit Nate, close over time. Len because Len was a childhood friend, smaller and younger than him when they met and in need of protection. Though Len grew up into someone formidable and dangerous and cold, he and Mick were always even, and Mick was always capable of taking him (i.e, of kicking his ass) though Len never truly gave him a reason to for most of their lives. There was a unique level of lifelong trust there.
Pictured above: my heart fucking shattering. Every time.
With Ray, it was more… Ray is not like most of the men that Mick has interacted with in his life. Ray is soft and emotive. He’s confident and capable and certainly doesn’t lack strength, but he’s unshy about having feelings and caring deeply and wanting to hug, wanting to befriend, wanting to be kind. His earnestness in all those ways is part of what allows him and Mick to get along in the way that they do. Where Ray eschews toxic masculinity and embraces healthier masculinity (and indeed, many aspects of femininity) is often where they actually mesh.
Pictured above: Mick reconsidering every life choice he’s ever made.
(Eventually, Nate starts to fit into this pattern a bit as well, as we saw in Lot 3x07, though Mick doesn’t let him in emotionally in the same way).
But women. I love the way Mick relates to women.
And we can do the same time of analysis here. It’s clear he loved his mother. The way he looks at her photo in 3x07 is very telling. He doesn’t regret killing his father, but nothing is said about his mother. And when we saw Mick’s younger self in season 1, he’s very clearly shaken by the fact that he burned down his house with his family inside, so we can surmise he has a lot of regret over her death. He also mentions the music she used to listen to in the Legends pilot, so I gather that he still thinks about her now.
Mick’s favorite thing: bar fights to the tune of Captain and Tennille.
I imagine she was a bold woman in a lot of ways, and that the emotional strength and fire in her is part of why he appreciates those qualities so much in other woman.
It is kind of hilarious to stack up Mick’s interactions with women too. I’m sure I’ve talked about it before, but all the times he makes a comment about being into a woman, it’s often after she’s done something aggressive or if she’s particularly powerful and confident in herself.
There’s so many examples. From his “nice” when Lisa busts him and Len out of the prison transport, to seeing Kendra punching Rip in the Legends premiere, to him respecting the daylights out of Sara and loving watching her kick people’s asses in that bar. It even dates all the way back to his interaction with Caitlin in The Flash 1x10, really. The way she rebuffs his whole “the fire reveals what’s inside you” and she’s having none of it? I feel like that intrigued him a bit, the way it made him want to push and see how much mettle she really had.
He’s secretly nice, Caitlin. Honestly. Somewhere… deep, deep inside.
And then we see it time and again in Legends S2 and S3 as well, from commenting on the president being hot, from going from thinking Supergirl is ridiculous to being her new number one fan after seeing her kick some ass, and onward. Him calling Agent Sharpe of the Time Bureau hot is just… the cherry on top of that pie.
Number one fan. Or fanboy?
But the friendships he makes with women are different than all that too. There’s an attraction he has to power and grit, to be sure, but his friendship with Amaya goes so far beyond that, and his friendship with Lisa I imagine did as well.
Hug number one for Amaya. It was a bold sneak-attack.
With Amaya, he was at odds with her because he saw her as a rule-follower and she saw him as a man without a code. And yeah, he might be a little into her after she knocks out half (all?) the people on the Waverider and threatens to kill him with that knife and stows away on board, but their friendship doesn’t really start until she sees beneath the surface with him. The way it clicks for her, that he’s in pain, that he’s struggling, and that he has so much fire and rage burning inside him, whipped up like an inferno he can’t control right then.
When she tells him that she sees him, gets him, and is there for him, a lot changes. He starts to trust her, and in turn she ends up trusting him. It’s not wholly dissimilar from his friendship with Ray, and how Ray and him got closer once Ray displayed insight into who Mick is and what’s going on beneath the surface, proving that he sees him as a unique individual and not just as a ‘dumb violent criminal’ more or less.
Aka another episode where the whole fandom wanted to hug Mick.
And Amaya continues to believe in him and that’s just so important. He considers her a real friend and she’s never betrayed him even though he’s betrayed her (not that that Mick exists anymore, thanks Doomworld) and that’s honestly something special?
So… I can see why he lets women in easier (he has a much better history with them in general) and in his experience and line of work, I can see why bold, powerful women who take no shit are women he respects and admires and indicates an attraction toward. Mick likes mettle, and he likes people who can hold their own.
I think for a friendship though, for a real one, regardless of gender what it really takes is someone proving that they understand him and his depths (Ray in the Russian prison, Amaya in the old west after seeing his semi-suicidal state of being). It also goes a long when when they’re willing to do things his way sometimes (Ray playing getaway driver, Amaya stealing that booze for him in 1920′s Chicago).
Aka the moment Mick fell in love with this smol.
And yes, those friendships definitely look different across gender, Mick is much softer with women, hugging them, less abrupt and angry unless his back is up, but he does express vulnerability with men too sometimes, even if he’s not quite as “touchy-feely” (as I imagine he would put it :)).
Amaya vs. Ray hug score: 2 and 0. Poor Ray.
He does express his care for men too, in the ways he knows how (”no one’s allowed too kill Ray but me”). But on the whole I’d say his relationships with women take less work and those friendships come more naturally to him.
