Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2024

This post comes a little later than usual, as I feel like I’ve been running behind on practically everything for an entire year. Still, I always get there eventually, and so here is my retrospective on the female characters of 2024: not the twelve I selected as Woman of the Month, but the ones I discovered, enjoyed or was impressed with over the course of the entire year, who didn’t get the chance to be spotlighted. 

Looking back, we actually had a pretty good stretch of female characters throughout pop culture in 2024. The problem is, I didn’t watch any of shows or films in which they appeared. Tired of committing to new projects only for them to get cancelled almost immediately, I stared watching (or rewatching) media that I knew wouldn’t disappoint me.

As such, a lot of the women featured below are from stories that aired or were published some time ago. Two inclusions have admittedly more to do with how the characters are presented in their given narratives rather than the characters themselves, as I’ve noticed some interesting changes in how women are being portrayed across fiction recently, brought on by authors becoming more self-aware about certain gender-specific clichés and tropes (though this isn’t always a good thing).

In any case, you get to read my half-formed thoughts on the subject. I’ve tried to keep my stream-of-consciousness blathering under control, but no promises.

Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2017

When it came to my viewing material in 2017, it was a year for feminist icons. I finished Xena Warrior Princess, revisited Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and got started on The X-Files, finally meeting Agent Dana Scully in the process. I was introduced to the likes of Laura Cereta, Ada Lovelace and Katherine Johnson. I watched The Handmaid's Tale and Still Star-Crossed and Big Little Lies.

This year we saw women as Jedi, women as Star Fleet captains, a woman as the Doctor. We got Michael Burnham and Jessica Jones and Rosaline Capulet and Eleven. It was the year of Rose Tico, Phillipa Georgiou (however briefly) and the announcement of a live-action Mulan. A couple of days ago the trailer for an all-woman Ocean's Eight was dropped. We got Amazons and Valkyries and the Dora Milaje. It's like the universe has decided if we can't have a woman for President, we're damn well gonna get women as EVERYTHING ELSE.

Korra and Asami returned from their honeymoon holiday in deep canonical love. I discovered the wonderfully damaged-but-not-broken Dutch on Killjoys. Max not only survived the conclusion of Black Sails, but prospered. Orphan Black stuck the landing and gave its clones a beautiful send-off, filled with happiness and love and each other.

And of course, there's no ignoring the fact that TIME Person of the Year were the Silence Breakers who spoke up about the rampant sexual harassment culture in Hollywood and beyond.

That many of the above are women of colour is a vindication of my prediction at the end of 2016: that storytelling in all its forms would step up to the plate, that now more than ever artists from all over the world would recognise the true need for representation. It's far from perfect, and we can certainly keep doing better, but my inner optimist believes it's a solid step forward.

There were a few hiccups along the way. Two beautiful doctors, Veil from Into the Badlands and Claudine from Versailles fell to the Stuffed in the Fridge trope, killed off pointlessly to agonise and motivate their male counterparts. Kara Danvers on Supergirl found herself orbiting a black hole of a love interest. There were some complicated developments in The Last Jedi (don't worry, I'll get to that in good time). I'm still on the fence about Eleanor Guthrie's fate on Black Sails, but they did so well by almost all the other women on the show that I'm liable to give them a pass.

When you look at the bigger picture, I honestly believe things got better – and will keep getting better. So beyond my twelve women of each month, here are some of the other ladies that made an impression...