I find it interesting that most of the pictures Sai had of Flay was during their time on the Archangel:
In the pictures where she’s still in her pink dress, you can see that she’s a relatively happy person despite the events that just unfurled on Heliopolis.
I am assuming that these two photos of her in the pink dress were taken on the same day. There was still the happy-go-lucky spoiled girl that we were first introduced to.
If you look closely, you’ll see these pics:
On the right, she seems happy to be around the archangel crew at minimum- despite the tragedy she just endured from losing her father. To me, at least, it gives off the impression that she was still trying to retain some of her pre-trauma self.
Judging by what I can see on the left image, you can kind of see that she’s already staring to distance herself from him. She’s looking down, as if trying to avoid looking directly at the camera. Perhaps she’s still hurting, but is unable to articulate it?
This is easily one of the more haunting photo of her. I think she was too deep in her prolonged grief. Something tells me that after Kira disappeared, she just sunk into a deep depression and just bedrotted most days (whilst presumably isolating herself from the rest of the crew prior to her getting transferred).
It’s crazy how a handful of pictures can subtly showcase her deterioration. Apparently Kira also has a photo of her somewhere, but I can’t find any screencaps of that.
I can’t believe I’m doing this in 2025. It’s been years since I last watched Gundam SEED and Destiny. I thought I had already made my peace with it, but the recent Freedom movie made me revisit the fandom. And honestly, it’s kind of sad to see how much progress has regressed, with all the Flay hate again reduced to “glad she died because she hurt Kira,” “she was useless,” or “all she was good for was banging Kira.” Especially now, with all the fan shrines dedicated to her having disappeared.
I’m not here to defend what she did to Kira, and their relationship was genuinely toxic. But I do want to offer a bit of understanding about her character through a softer lens.
Side note: I haven’t seen the original Mobile Suit Gundam, so everything here is based solely on what I remember from SEED’s narrative.
***Spoilers ahead***
Flay Allster is a complex and tragic character. She was young, misguided, treated unfairly, and never given a proper redemption arc. Yet she was also, arguably, one of the kindest and most empathetic characters in SEED. She was a girl who felt everything too intensely—someone who made mistakes but kept learning, who consistently corrected herself or apologized whenever she realized she had hurt Kira, whether intentionally or not. Even at her lowest moments, her compassion kept slipping through.
I still remember the scene where Kira doesn’t meet his parents in Orb, and Flay goes on a rant about how he shouldn’t pity her when he’s the one suffering. And this was while she was in the middle of manipulating him. (Like, girl, what are you doing? Why are you wavering? If you’re going to manipulate the boy, see it through—don’t empathize with him!)
Even after being isolated for most of the show and enduring so much—losing her father, losing her innocence, losing her friends, being forced to grow up too fast, being kidnapped, and being tossed from ship to ship (Archangel to Vesalius to Dominion) and from person to person (Kira to Sai to dangerous figures like Le Creuset and Azrael)—she was never able to form a genuine, safe bond with anyone. At one point, she was even thrown into space alone in a small lifepod in the middle of a battlefield.
And after all that chaos, fear, and trauma, she learned not to hate Coordinators, and all she wanted was to apologize properly to Kira and their friends.
Flay carried a quiet, understated strength. Yes, she acted with cruel intent toward Kira, but it’s important to note that he already had feelings for her. Kira made his own choices—he retained autonomy over his actions. He was given discharge papers, and even his friends encouraged him to leave. He himself chose to reenter the war and continue fighting. With or without Flay’s influence, he would have stayed and fought because he wanted to protect his friends. At most, Flay reminded Kira of his own failure and applied additional pressure to an already stressed and guilt-ridden Kira to fight harder.
The Unfair Narrative
Narrative Framing, Power, Expendability, and Story Progression:
[Evil/Wrong] Naturals (EA/AF) → (ORB) → Coordinators (PLANTs) → Ultimate Coordinator (Kira) [Good/Right]
The problem with Gundam SEED, and what ultimately failed Flay, is the show’s narrative. The war was never truly balanced to begin with. Although SEED verbally insists on understanding and coexistence, there is a very clear bias favoring Coordinators over Naturals. Coordinators—especially Kira—are framed as victims, sympathetic, yet also cooler and superior at every turn.
The show protects Kira’s perspective at the expense of other characters and realism. Since Kira is the protagonist, the narrative bends to justify his actions. Even when harm is committed, the narrative glosses over it or redirects the blame. This is part of why dissenting viewpoints vanish. A good example is how the impact of Kira killing Nicol was softened in the remastered version.
An obvious example of this narrative bias is that all the key Natural characters positioned to represent the Atlantic Federation—like Mu, Natarle, and Flay—were killed off by the end of the show, leaving no one to properly represent the faction by the time of Destiny. (Murrue and the others abandoned on JOSH-A don’t truly represent the Atlantic Federation or the perspective of Earth’s Naturals.)
Another example is how the show began with most characters portrayed as neutral. Understandably, Kira and his friends were civilians from Orb and studying in a neutral nation. But soldiers like Murrue, Natarle, Mu (especially), Murdoch, and the rest of the Archangel crew were also depicted as superficially neutral, even though they were supposed to represent the Earth Alliance and the anti-Coordinator faction.
Anti-Coordinator sentiment is an Earth problem, not just a Blue Cosmos problem. Coordinators all over the world wouldn’t be fleeing to space if this were an isolated case. Extremist like Blue Cosmos exists because it reflects what much of Earth’s population actually believed. And yet on the ship, Flay is the only one shown with anti-Coordinator sentiment, even though ZAFT had just attacked Heliopolis.
Granted, not everyone in the Earth Alliance may be prejudiced, but the show’s focus on Flay—a 15-year-old girl and the only teenage civilian from the Atlantic Federation, made to carry the hostility of the world—made the portrayal feel unfair. When her father, her only family, was killed by Coordinators, it was only natural that this cemented her fear and hatred.
The show should have included more citizens, pilots, or otherwise cooler, likable characters who resented Coordinators outside of Flay and the villainous members of Blue Cosmos/Logos to balance the scale. Imagine if Mu La Flaga had been clearly anti-Coordinator and still acted as a decent, professional mentor to Kira because their survival demanded it of him— it would have shown that anti-Coordinator prejudice was broader and socially embedded, and relieved some of the narrative pressure placed solely on Flay.
Misplaced, Mistreated, and then Discarded
Kira had three “special ladies” or “princesses” in his life, and each represented a faction in the war: Lacus for the PLANTs, Cagalli for Orb, and Flay for the Earth Alliance/Atlantic Federation.
The show makes it blatantly obvious that Lacus is a major figure within the PLANTs, and Cagalli is visibly shown to be a big deal in ORB, but Flay’s role is less obvious—since her father dies so early in the story, most of what we see of her is her trauma. Yet all three share a clear parallel as symbols of their respective factions. Their fathers were all high-ranking politicians; all three were daddy’s girls, all lost their fathers during the war, and all turned to Kira for comfort when it happened—each in different ways. (I was originally rooting for Kira × Cagalli… but we all know how that ship turned out.)
Kira was able to safely return Lacus to the PLANTs and Cagalli to Orb. The only difference between the girls was that Flay never got “home.” She had lost her safety net—because where was home supposed to be after her father died? Soon after, she was kidnapped. In a way, Kira failing to keep his promise to protect her father could be seen as his first failed mission—and it cost him, setting off lasting consequences for both of them. This was Kira’s harsh wake-up call, the one that made him realize he needed to take his responsibilities more seriously (and stop being distracted by his friendship with Athrun or fighting half-heartedly.)
(Because Kira is the protagonist—and for the same reason he took responsibility for piloting the Strike—the moment he took aboard the civilian shuttle carrying Flay, he assumed an obligation toward the lives of all the passengers, including Flay herself. If Flay had not been on the Archangel, her father would have had no reason to be on the Montgomery.)
Flay was mentally fragile, but she was not useless. The Atlantic Federation clearly wanted to extract her from JOSH-A—she was one of only three people considered important enough to save. While Mu and Natarle were valuable on the frontline, Flay had a role on the backline—they had a use for her because she was who she was. Flay wasn’t just some random soldier. The Federation even briefly mentioned that her speech and decision to volunteer were moving and inspiring; from their standpoint, it was nationalism, hinting at her capacity to influence and suggesting there was more going on behind the scenes—though most viewers miss this, due to the narrative framing that scene negatively as part of “Kira’s manipulation.”
(Even so, her actions ultimately helped save Kira and the others, since the shuttle they were boarding would have been shot down. Then, by sinking her claws into Kira, she was benefiting her faction through him. The method may be questionable, but the outcome is the same. Kira gains comfort while sharpening his battle prowess in the process.)
And let’s be honest, it’s hard to feel compassion because Flay had been terribly outspoken and not very poised at this point. The girl wears her heart on her sleeve. Plus, the Earth Alliance were basic villains—morally compromised, and they didn’t have any cool mobile suit pilots. (We’re encouraged not to sympathize with the Earth forces.)
Flay Allster was misplaced. She was perceptive, charismatic, and emotionally intelligent—so much so that she could even call out Lacus’ ‘naive ditzy’ persona. Her soft skills weren’t very useful in a mecha warzone, but they would have made her invaluable as an advocate or propagandist. Instead, these abilities were largely channeled into manipulating Kira and his friends.
(One of the original drafts were to have Flay pilot the Strike Rouge for propaganda purposes, hence it was pink, but we all know what ultimately happened to that machine.)
Flay eventually came out of the Vesalius significantly more subdued and clear-headed. We could only speculate what had happened—she had probably ended up empathizing with Le Creuset and Yzak.
(My take is that Le Creuset reminded Flay of her father—not just because he sounded like him, but especially because he spoke of the same ideals, repeatedly expressing that he wanted nothing more than to bring an end to the meaningless war.)
And she was never given a proper redemption arc and was ultimately tragically killed, seemingly all to give Kira a reason to awaken Newtype powers and to push the Kira × Lacus narrative. (A naked ghost is hardly a proper redemption. It serves more to further Kira’s arc than to provide her with one of her own.) Had she survived, she wouldn’t necessarily have ended up with Kira and could have become a wonderful politician, spokesperson, or peace advocate. Her unique position could have made her a bridge between Naturals and Coordinators.
(A potential problem, I suppose, is that giving her a redemption arc would likely have taken the spotlight away from the main pairings.)
I still recall the scene where Le Creuset held out the key that could end the war if it reached the Earth forces. The focus was split between the Disk and Flay, suggesting that the “key” could have been either of them. Le Creuset speaks of “this final gamble” and asks Flay to assist him. When Flay boarded the Dominion (finally returned to the Federation), Azrael recognized the Allster name but—like Patrick Zala—chose extermination.
Flay was someone who loved deeply—cared too much, felt too much, and gave too much. Yet time after time, she was left shattered by those who couldn’t or wouldn’t hold space for her, or who only sought to use her.
All in all, Flay was sacrificed—essentially fridged repeatedly—and became the embodiment of Kira’s moral and emotional shortcomings. In many ways, Kira was her ruin. Every time she placed even a little faith or trust in him, he failed her.
He failed her three times: first, by failing to protect her father; second, by failing to take emotional accountability in their relationship and breakup; and third, by failing to protect her in space. She bore and paid the price for his failures and his growth, while he gave nothing in return. Kira never truly suffers a loss of comparable weight, nor was he made to hold himself accountable or repay that debt in any meaningful way beyond crying and feeling guilty. And yet, she was still capable of forgiving him.
George Allster
About George Allster and Flay continuing his (her father’s) work. In the show, we never really learn what George Allster’s stance in the war was, since he’s killed so early. (Later game material mentions he was affiliated with Blue Cosmos, but the show itself never hints or clarifies this.)
Flay’s anti-Coordinator sentiment doesn’t automatically make George a Blue Cosmos supporter. As mentioned, racism was a widespread problem on Earth. Flay could have picked up that sentiment from many sources. It’s possible her father held similar views, but who doesn’t have a bit of prejudice? Narratively, George being a Blue Cosmos member doesn’t really make sense.
As Vice Foreign Minister, George Allster was primarily responsible for managing foreign affairs (a diplomatic role, responsible for negotiating and mediating). Siegel Clyne and Uzumi Nara Attha were clear advocates for peace, and if we continue the parallel between Lacus, Cagalli, and Flay, it makes sense to consider that George Allster was likely pro-peace as well. Tragically, all three spokespeople were lost to the ravages of war. (Then came genocide.)
Nothing in the show explicitly reveals George Allster’s position, but he comes across primarily as a doting father, personally wanting to escort his daughter home— and that’s information we can trust about him.
George Allster and Flay were both Atlantic Federation citizens. If George had been strongly anti-Coordinator, wouldn’t it have made more sense to send Flay to a school in Earth territory? Why, then, was she enrolled in a school in Heliopolis—an Orb territory, and exposed to a mixed-race student body? Why go to such lengths if his goal was to shield her from Coordinators?
And why was Flay engaged to Sai, an Orb citizen? Naturals had no trouble with falling birthrate issues like the PLANTs did. If anti-Coordinator prejudice were the driving factor, it would have made more sense for her to be paired with another “like-minded” prejudiced Natural or family. And Sai clearly isn’t “that”—he is genuinely an upstanding guy, a model citizen of Orb.
From the start, Sai had been acting as something of a guardian to Flay, gently moderating her behavior and reactions, and guiding her toward more “Orb-like” values, which ended after George Allster’s death.
(Crucially, by the time he refused to take her back, his decision was less about their love triangle drama and more about the symbolic rejection of what she had become — and of the side she now fully represents. Miriallia, a peer, another Orb citizen, then rejects Flay on similar grounds, despite Flay responding from a place of genuine understanding of her grief.)
Flay even mentions to Kira that she has a house in Orb, reinforcing that her life was integrated across faction lines.
All of this points to George Allster’s wish for Flay to marry and eventually settle quietly in Orb, because he believed in peace and coexistence, and trusted Orb’s firm neutrality to keep them out of the war.
The politics of the Atlantic Federation and the Earth Alliance were far more complex than those of Orb or the PLANTs. It was a larger-scale conflict with deep historical roots. George Allster was likely aware of the corruption and extremism within Blue Cosmos, and he knew the Atlantic Federation was bracing for a long war (EA vs. PLANTs, and later Atlantic vs. Eurasia), yet—like Siegel and Uzumi—he was powerless to truly stop it.
ZAFT killed an Earth high-ranking peace-oriented politician; Kira failed to protect him. Radicalized, Flay volunteers, fueling and strengthening war propaganda. (The Blue Cosmos affiliation later twists this, portraying him as a villain to justify his death.)
I’ve never seen anyone bring this up, but Murrue did alright in the Strike. She held out well, considering the circumstances. In the first place, she isn’t a pilot. Furthermore, the Strike is minimally equipped and its OS is incomplete. Finally, she’s suffering from a gunshot wound.
Even so, you can see that her movements rapidly improve. I think that’s fairly impressive. If she were not wounded, I do think there is a non-zero possibility that she could win.
On that note, Kira didn’t need to intervene when he did; the Strike’s phase shift armour should have deflected even the next thrust. I would have preferred that Murrue’s wound catch up to her before we must have our shounen protagonist take over from the strong female character, you know?
At any rate, I’d love to see an AU in which she alone reached the Strike safely and became its pilot under Natarle’s command. That would be a very different history, which I find interesting to think about.
