Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2021

This is always my favourite post of the year, a chance for me to delve into my absolute favourite subject: the representation of female characters throughout media and pop-culture.

Every month I dub a fictional character my Woman of the Month, but there are always plenty of spots left over, and so I do a retrospective of the entire years’ worth of interesting female characters that maybe didn’t get the limelight they deserved.

And this is just the stuff I was able to consume this year: at the end of the day I’m just one person, and there is so much material out there. If you have recommendations, or specifically a female character of any kind that you felt got short-shrift in the public discourse, then by all means throw your hat in the ring.

Below are the female characters that didn’t quite make the monthly cut, but who I still found noteworthy in what they brought to the various stories they were a part of. There are less of them this year, partly because I’m exhausted, partly because I didn’t watch or read as much, and partly because a lot of what I did get through has already featured on his blog in the past (for example, I watched the fifth season of Supergirl last month, but Kara Danvers and Nia Nal have already been written about in earlier posts) but hopefully you’ll still find something of interest.

Amalia True from The Nevers

Laura Donnelly is one of those character actors that has been appearing in this-and-that for decades now: she was the tragic Freya in Merlin, and Jamie’s sister in Outlander, and the first of Spector’s victims in The Fall. So when The Nevers promotion began, I was pleased to see that she had finally landed herself a leading role.

It was a pity then that the publicity surrounding the show largely revolved around the misconduct of creator/writer Joss Whedon. I won’t dredge it all up again, only to say it’s a shame (though an entirely self-inflicted one) that what could have been his triumphant return to television, with a project that seemed the culmination of every genre he’d worked on throughout his career (superheroes, sci-fi, modern urban fantasy) was ultimately something he had to slink away from before its premiere.

With a premise that’s essentially “Victorian X-Men” but with women, The Nevers hurtles through its material as though cancellation is hot on its heels. In the wake of an unexplained celestial incident over the streets of London, certain individuals (mostly women, but with a few exceptions) are imbued with preternatural gifts that naturally make the white male establishment a little twitchy. Let’s claw past the staggering irony that Whedon could write something like this while simultaneously treating Ray Fisher and Charisma Carpenter the way he did, and focus on the show’s protagonist: Amalia True.

She’s the woman around whom all the Touched are gathered, seeing in her a leader, protector and quasi-mother figure. She carries around a palpable soul-deep world-weariness that’s tempered by her genuine love for the people under her care, and is by turns ruthless, foul-mouthed, perceptive, deadpan and tender.

A deeply masculine character, from the way she talks to the way she fights (there’s none of the delicacy or femininity of River or Buffy here) she’s a potent combination of roughness and vulnerability – let’s say 98% of the former, which makes it all the more poignant on the rare occasion when the 2% of the latter emerges. As she says at one point, in a moment of complete exhaustion: “you should have chosen someone… taller.”

Yet it’s obvious from her first scene that there’s something more to her. She feels oddly anachronistic at times, using words and phrases that don’t quite fit her environment. Occasionally she touches her face in such a way that suggests something is missing. Sometimes the reactions she has to various plot-points are the exact opposite ones you’d expect.

There is a careful patchwork of clues and inconsistencies sewn up around her, which naturally pays off in the show’s carefully-seeded, genre-bending twist. With the power of hindsight, everything she says and does are perfectly calibrated clues to pinpoint who she really is, where she comes from, what her mission is, and where she’s going next. A riddle wrapped in an enigma, by the final episode her identity is more assured and she’s making the first tentative steps towards trusting others.

Beatrice Cook from The Irregulars

Who doesn’t love a scrappy street kid who lives by her wits and protects her similarly impoverished found family? That Bea is played by a Chinese/Irish actress provides a rarely-glimpsed window into the melting pot that was Victorian London, and having exhausted all possible avenues into the IP that is Sherlock Holmes (as a modern man, as a mouse, as Robert Downey Junior) the show she belongs to purports to take a look at the Baker Street Irregulars, concocted by Arthur Conan Doyle as a collection of street urchins that serve as Sherlock’s eyes and ears across Old London Town.

They’re reimagined here as four homeless teenagers (plus a runaway prince) who are hired by John Watson to assist him in tracking down the missing detective. What follows is a series of supernaturally-based mysteries that might not be remotely faithful to Doyle’s body of work, but have a steampunkish charm of their own.

Bea is the de facto leader of the Irregulars, called the “heart” of the gang by one of her compatriots (the others embody the brain, the soul, the muscle and the skeleton – it makes sense in context). Tough and resourceful, clever and sharp-tongued, she’s essentially the Team Mum, though not one that’s fully equipped for the job, being little more than a child herself. The crux of this character is watching her shoulder burdens that are far beyond her years, without complaint or even self-awareness of what is being asked of her.

She gets a reprieve by the final episode, but alas – it turned out to be the end of the show in its entirety. Having been given the opportunity, actress Thaddea Graham made the most of her role, making Beatrice a true “diamond in the rough” with all the spunk and grit you’d expect from these types of down-and-out characters. Ultimately it’s a shame that her story was cut short... even if we’re lucky to get the closure we did.

Della Street from Perry Mason

I did not go into the Perry Mason remake expecting much from the female characters, but that was something I could handle – after all, it’s a hardboiled Depression-era detective show with a heavy Noir aesthetic. Women in these sorts of things are either Girl Fridays or Femme Fatales.

So imagine my surprise when a good percentage of the supporting cast was made up of interesting, sympathetic, complex female characters. Among them was Della Street, who I understand to be a staple component of the original Perry Mason novels and 1960s television series, reimagined here as the frighteningly component secretary (and closeted lesbian) of lawyer E.B. Jonathan. As she furiously points out at one stage: “That may be your name [on the doors], but those ‘associates’? That’s me!”

In the wake of tragedy and in the midst of a high-profile murder trial, she becomes the true power behind the throne, knowing everyone and everything, putting all the pieces into place as carefully as any chess-master. (Here’s another quote: “The motions I prepared for you that you signed, unread, those are filed. The precedent that you couldn’t find for Emily? Here it is. I’ll mark it with this dry-cleaning receipt for your court suits which are hanging in your closet.”)

All this may sound reductive – after all, she’s given barely any credit for her work and is constantly undervalued by her peers. But to dismiss her role is not only to ignore the context in which she’s living (1930s Los Angeles) but also her own personal drive: a true sense of righteousness and solidarity with the female defendant.

Not to mention the numerous scenes she’s afforded that explore her private life, whether it’s her relationship with a young hand model, or her own aspirations to study in the field of law. By the final episode, she’s ready to take on law school – so stay tuned for season two.

Teela from Masters of the Universe: Revelations

When I was a child watching He-Man reruns, I have a vague recollection of feeling frustrated with Teela’s character. She was caught in the holding pattern foisted upon any quasi-love interest to a superhero with a secret identity: Locked Out of the Loop. No matter how obvious it was, no matter how long the show ran on for, Teela was never allowed to learn that her friend Prince Adam was actually He-Man.

This might have been tolerable if she was not also being kept in the dark about the identity of her birth mother: the Sorceress of Greyskull. As a young girl watching for the sake of the show’s only significant female character, the endless prolongation of these two secrets was excruciating. Why couldn’t they just tell the story?

And so it’s to Kevin Smith’s credit that within the first episode of his updated continuation of the eighties cartoons, both cats come out of the bag. At about the twenty-minute mark, the nature of the battle against Skeletor forces He-Man to expose his true identity, and Teela is shocked to discover that the revered champion of Eternia was the young and diffident Prince Adam this whole time. And just to rub salt in the wound, the moment she realizes the truth is the same moment that Adam dies in front of her eyes.

From this point on, Teela essentially becomes the protagonist of the story: abandoning her position, leaving her home, renouncing the friends and family that lied to her, and eking out a living in a world that no longer has a protector, helping people where she can.

It’s a sound creative choice for one obvious reason: the withholding of Adam’s secret identity back in the eighties accidentally made Teela the show’s most interesting character. In a cartoon designed to do little more than sell plastic toys to children, Kevin Smith pinpointed the one element of the original setup that could bear dramatic fruit, and the fallout of Teela learning that the people she trusted most in her life were lying to her is a premise rich in potential.

And an ingenious complication is the fact that Teela finds out the truth at the moment of Adam’s death, leaving her to grapple with complex feelings of anger and betrayal in the midst of mourning for him. And that’s not even getting to the emotional journey she must take on learning that her mother is the powerful, mysterious Sorceress of Greyskull, another important reality about her life that was concealed from her.

It’s a surprisingly deep look at a character whose arc is born out of a decades-old premise that the original show never had any intention of ever exploring. In stark contrast, Teela is here taken to a very dark mental place, then given the chance to slowly but surely find her way out of it again, working through the complexity of her grief and inadequacy issues until she’s ready to come into her inheritance: not only take over her father’s position as Man-at-Arms, but also her mother’s, as the new Sorceress of Greyskull. Plus, she gets a kickass undercut hairstyle.

After nearly forty years, Teela finally gets her due.

Marianne "Mare" Sheehan from Mare of Easttown

I was a little hesitant to include Mare on this list, even though there’s a lot to recommend her. I always appreciate a hardboiled middle-aged detective lady, and she slots nicely into that ever-increasing “difficult women who solve crimes” category. It’s well documented that Kate Winslet prevented the promotional team from air-brushing the lines around her eyes or CGI-ing away her belly fat, and there’s always some fun to be had in watching one of the Hollywood elites slumming it.

The character was very clearly inspired by Happy Valley’s Catherine Cawood, another law enforcer of comparable age who is also trying to raise a grandson with behavioural issues after the suicide of her child, though the crucial difference between the two women is that Catherine has unbreakable integrity. At a time when the term “copaganda” is being parsed through all of our police-based procedurals, the worst Catherine can be accused of is losing her cool with an asshole on the street after the death of a colleague – other than this, she insists that her co-workers treat people with respect, professionalism and compassion.

The same can’t be said for Mare, and though there’s certainly room in the world for an ornery detective who bends a few rules in the line of duty, the show features a truly awful sequence in which Mare plants drugs in the car of her daughter-in-law with the intent to secure custody of her grandson. Did the writers stop to consider how unforgivable this was? From a writer’s perspective, pretty much everything else Mare does can be chalked down to “solid character work”, but this was her actively trying to destroy a recovering addict’s life, and is punished by only a few weeks suspension (during which she solves a cold case and is lauded as a hero).

I’m capable of enjoying the entertainment value of a show while recognizing dubious creative decisions – but to go back to my comparison, this is something that Catherine Cawood would never, ever do. And it’s a damn shame, as in every other respect Mare is a fantastic character. Living under the scrutiny of her entire town after landing the winning shot in a high school basketball game (something that’s still celebrated decades later) it’s a fascinating portrait of a woman who was put on a pedestal and judged for it ever since.

In the eyes of her family and community, pretty much everything that goes wrong for them is her fault: her son’s suicide, the prolonged case of a friend’s missing child, the death of her colleague – it’s borderline comical at times, but Mare grits her teeth and continues to do her job as a reluctant big fish in a small pond. The vaping, the hoagies, the Pennsylvanian accent, the terrible hairstyle – Mare was such a vivid character in so many ways, from her take-no-shit attitude to her helpless laughter after her aging mother’s extramarital affair is exposed. Winslet took home the Emmy for a reason.

Kara Danvers from DC Superhero Girls

The latest iteration of DC Superhero Girls with Lauren Faust in the driver’s seat is – even at a glance – miles better than the original. The animation is more striking, the character designs more interesting, and the stories more fun, intelligent and tightly written, even at a run-time of under ten minutes each.

Technically any of the titular superhero girls could have filled a spot on this list, as all of them are distinct in design and personality, with their own specific types of storylines (Batgirl’s theme is espionage, Diana’s are based on Greek myths, Zatanna’s are magical, and so on). But of all of them, Kara Danvers a.k.a. Supergirl, stands out.

Most versions of Kara invariably paint her as the Girl Next Door: sweet, unassuming, naïve and optimistic; all farmyards and pep rallies. Heck, even her superhero outfit brings to mind a smalltown cheerleader. It’s a look especially designed as a contrast to her incredible power.

But this Kara is someone very different: a shit-talking bruiser with a love of heavy metal, pro-wrestling and picking fights. It’s a pretty straightforward interpretation of The Lad-ette, though it’s all the more unique here because we have never seen these attributes or character type affixed to Supergirl before. Finally, a Supergirl with visible muscles.

Perhaps my favourite detail is that she and her cousin do not like each other in this universe, and it’s frankly hilarious. When Kara is believed to have been killed in action, she gets a text from Clark asking: “U dead?” In a later episode, being held captive and weakened by kryptonite doesn’t prevent her from laughing at Superman, currently in the exact same predicament as she is.

Rebecca Welton from Ted Lasso

In any other comedy-series, Rebecca Welton – middle aged, glamourous, powerful and recently divorced, not to mention the manager of a football team, that most male-dominated of all professions – would be the villain of the piece. And at first glance, she is: she’s trying to sabotage her ex-husband’s beloved team’s chances at victory by bringing in an untried Midwestern yokel as their new coach.

Basically, she’s committing the heinous crime of putting her own justified grievance before the professional lives of other people, and if you detect a note of sarcasm in that sentence, you’re right – I can sympathize with a woman whose first instinct is to burn everything to the ground after learning that years of squishing down her own feelings to prioritize someone else was all for nothing. I mean, I’m not saying that her scheme is right, but I definitely get it.

In true comedic fashion, the plot backfires: Ted Lasso turns out to not only be a complete Pollyanna who is wholly undeserving of the ridicule and failure that Rebecca has set up for him, but is actively pretty good at whipping the team into shape. And after Rebecca befriends Keeley, the young girlfriend of a player that she’s using to further complicate matters for Ted, she begins to have a crisis of conscience. It turns out that hurting other people to get back at her ex doesn’t feel as good as she’d hoped.

But instead of a comeuppance, there is contrition and confession. Rebecca fesses up and apologizes to the injured parties. And Ted accepts this, not only having witnessed first-hand the emotional manipulation of Rebecca’s odious ex-husband, but who is in the midst of going through divorce proceedings himself.

What’s set up to be a grand case of karmic payback resolves itself quietly and neatly. Rebecca did a bad thing, but she doesn’t deserve punishment or judgment – just understanding. Having watched the series, my mum asked me in conversation: “what do you think of her? Is she a good person?” and I replied: “Yes, but she’s trying to be a bad person. And that’s why her plans aren’t working, because she’s a good person.”

That’s the crux of Rebecca’s character, and the true surprise of the show: that it is interested in exploring her as a hurting and complicated woman, rather than just the villain. As a result, she ends up being the show’s best character, with an arc that’s all about regaining her self-respect and recognizing all the new friends, opportunities and experiences that surround her.

Also: shout-out to Hannah Waddingham who has had her breakthrough role in her late forties, and prior to this show is perhaps best known as the “shame, shame!” chanting nun who rang the bell during Cersei’s walk of shame on Game of Thrones. I never would have recognized her.

Mirabel Madrigal from Encanto

Mirabel Madrigal (prettiest name ever?) is our latest Disney heroine, and a natural successor to the likes of Elsa, Merida and Raya in that the conflict she faces is more internal than external – in fact, Encanto may well be the first animated Disney film to have no villain to speak of.

Instead, Mirabel is born to a family of gifted individuals, each with the ability to perform miraculous feats: make flowers grow, heal injuries with foodstuffs, or to talk to the animals. These gifts are bestowed on them by the family’s magical casita during a ceremony in which they’re granted private bedrooms filled with unique wonders, each one reached through golden, personalized doors.

Yet for reasons unknown (and which never get explained) Mirabel was denied her share of the miracle. The portrayal of a girl on the outskirts of her own family is genuinely heartrending: her feelings of longing and exclusion, her attempt to stifle the desire all young people have to be special, and how she tries to hide her disappointment and self-doubt behind a veneer of relentless cheer.

Despite every reason in the world to be resentful and bitter, she remains kind and loyal to her family members, and her subsequent delving into the mystery of why the magic is starting to fade not only brings insight into her family (a gift is not always a gift) but her own inner strengths.

Plus her design is gorgeous: the short curly hair, the details on her blouse and skirt, the glasses (a first for Disney heroines): she’s bursting with life and character, from her boisterous body language to the tiniest micro-expressions on her face. Even when the story ends up a little half-baked, it’s through the sheer force of Mirabel’s personality that the emotional payoff is as good as it is.

Natasha Romanoff from MCU’s Iron Man 2, The Avengers, The Winter Soldier, Age of Ultron, Civil War, Infinity War, Endgame and Black Widow

Confession time: I caved and watched Black Widow this year, as I wanted to see Natasha’s story through to its end (and between the character’s death in Endgame and Scarlett Johannsen burning her bridges with Disney, I’m extremely sure this is the definitive end). Played with impressive physical prowess, a wry sense of humour, obvious intelligence and surprising amounts of chill, Scarlett Johannsen brought a lot to Natasha, a.k.a. Black Widow, even as hairstylists consistently failed to give her a decent haircut, and the writing was... well, uneven to say the least.

As the team Smurfette she had to do a lot of narrative heavy lifting, being required to represent all the facets of womanhood, to walk a tightrope between relatability and wish fulfilment, to provide the requisite eye-candy for the male gaze – to essentially be everything for everybody.

Justifiably described as the female protagonist of the entire MCU franchise (it appears that this role will be filled by Captain Marvel, though to date Natasha has appeared in more films than any other female character) she first appeared in 2010’s Iron Man 2, in which she was introduced as an undercover agent for SHIELD, had some patented girl-power moments (flipping Happy in the boxing ring) and whose big action set-piece was taking out a handful of men in a nondescript corridor, culminating in her spraying mace while she expressionlessly strode past. It was not a hugely auspicious start.

Things improved exponentially when she reappeared in The Avengers, although the credit due to writer/director Joss Whedon is certainly a double-edged sword. Her introductory sequence is a masterclass of subverted expectations: seemingly powerless at the hands of male interrogators, it’s soon revealed that Natasha is fully in control of the situation the entire time – a trademark tactic she uses frequently throughout both this and future films: letting her enemies underestimate her, making them believe they’re getting under her skin, and all the while using her observational/manipulative skills to gather information.

After the film’s release, a fair portion of the positive buzz was devoted to Natasha, though she’d have to wait the better part of a decade before getting her solo movie.

The Winter Soldier is perhaps Natasha’s best film (even counting her own) which is also notable for her shift from Iron Man’s trilogy to Captain America’s. Sure we’d had the big crossover team-up in The Avengers, but this was another indication of how the franchise would continue to expand: a character’s development could move across films that weren’t necessarily about them, finally solidifying the “big budget television show” vibe that is deeply entrenched in the franchise at this point.

Here her character is solidly built upon from The Avengers: she uses her quick thinking, weapons training and espionage skill-set, but she’s also a human being in the way she decidedly wasn’t in Iron Man 2. She builds platonic friendships with her teammates, she comes to terms with aspects of her past, and her role in the climax is far more attuned to her history, personality and development than what The Avengers required of her (which was “put the shiny thing in the other shiny thing”).

Then things got rough in Age of Ultron. Look, as someone who honestly has no strong feelings whatsoever regarding any of the ships of the MCU (which is surprising come to think of it; you’d think that in twenty-seven films something would appeal to me, but nope) her sudden romantic interest in Bruce Banner: a man twice her age, with whom she has little chemistry, who seems as bewildered by her flirting as the audience is, and who she was visibly terrified of in her last interaction with, is indeed baffling. Whatever Whedon was going for here, it did not work.

This is followed by what is perhaps the most notorious scene in all of Natasha’s arc, in which she refers to herself as a monster in relation to the sterilization procedure she underwent as a recruit of the Red Room. This has been discussed to death already, but whatever interpretation of her words you chose to subscribe to (in context she’s discussing the entirety of her assassin-training) it doesn’t compensate for the clumsiness of the phrasing or the fact that maybe Whedon wasn’t particularly qualified to delve into the subject of women's infertility.

By this point the online discourse surrounding Natasha was becoming untenable. Whedon’s fall from grace had begun, fandom was tearing itself apart over shipping, and we were clearly overdue for a Black Widow movie.

Civil War was such an overcrowded movie that it was difficult for anyone to really shine (perhaps her most memorable scene was beating up Bucky by wrapping her legs around his face) but it’s in the aftermath of this film that her own finally takes place.

Chronologically speaking, Black Widow’s solo film is slotted neatly between Civil War and Infinity War (the colour of her hair provides an expository time-frame) exploring Natasha’s backstory with a hitherto unmentioned “family” comprised of a father, mother and little sister. Of course, this family is actually a team of undercover sleeper cell agents, living the life of normal American suburbanites while they steal SHIELD intel and pass it on to their handlers. The four of them are separated on their return to the mother country, and Natasha begins her training in the Red Room.

As a movie it’s... fine. By this point, a decade after the character’s debut, the Marvel formula ensures there’s very little in the plot itself that will surprise viewers. If anything, it’s more of a vehicle for Florence Pugh’s Yelena, who steals every scene she’s in and is clearly being set up to inherit the Black Widow mantle (the requisite stinger provides a bridge between this film and her reappearance in Hawkeye).

It is essentially a swansong to a character that had already been killed off in the two-part Infinity War/Endgame films, and (as with Star Wars: Solo) I’m always a little bewildered at making prequels to characters that are already dead. It’s deeply unfortunate that our final impression of Natasha is the somewhat underwhelming plunge she takes off an alien cliff-face for the sake of Jeremy Renner – especially on the heels of Gamora’s similar sacrifice.

So what is Black Widow’s legacy? She helped save the multiverse, but it happened in such a strange and unsatisfying way (which was given no narrative space in the wake of Tony’s death) that it’s difficult to parse through exactly what anyone was going for with this. What with similarly disappointing endings metered out to Daenerys Targaryen and Rey Somebody Nobody Palpatine Skywalker in 2019, Natasha’s fate felt like a symptom of a much larger problem: another depressing reminder that when it comes to fictional heroines, it doesn’t matter how beloved, iconic, interesting or important they are – it’s only a matter of time before male writers fail them.

And I say that as someone who had no real emotional investment in her, but who recognizes that she came to mean a lot to plenty of viewers across the years. As I said above, she’s included on this list in recognition of her role as the flagship female character in the MCU for the last ten years, and the fact that this year marked the definitive end to her story. It’s the last time any of us will have cause to write about her.

Honorary Mentions:

Mary Sidney from A Discovery of Witches

A Discovery of Witches isn’t a great show, but it’s a diverting show, and it introduced me to at least one historical woman that I had no idea existed prior to watching: Mary Herbert née Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Born in 1561, Wikipedia tells me that by the time she was thirty-nine, she was listed alongside Edmund Spenser and William Shakespeare as one of the most notable writers of her day (in fact, there’s even speculation that she wrote some of the latter’s sonnets).

Her play Antonius is widely seen as the source of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, she translated Petrarch's Triumph of Death, wrote a poetry anthology called Triumphs and hosted writing circles at her home at Wilton House. As far as connections go, her uncle was Robert Dudley, her mother was a close confidant of Queen Elizabeth, and she herself was an aunt to Lady Mary Wroth.

Portrayed in the show by Amanda Hale, Mary is depicted as having an interest in chemistry and medicine (true to life) and proves herself an ally to protagonist Diana Bishop by providing her with the clothes she’ll need in order to pass at court. Kindly and intelligent, her small role is nonetheless memorable for having been based on a real person, one I suspect that few casual viewers knew about (I sure didn’t) – though it’s a shame they didn’t have time to include her enjoyment of pistol shooting.

Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind

At the start of last year I read Molly Haskell’s Frankly My Dear, which explored the relationship between Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind and the subsequent film adaptation of 1939. From there I naturally had to re-read the book for the first time in at least a decade, and just managed to sneak in a viewing of the movie on the first week of this year, all of which meant that Katie Scarlett O’Hara qualified for a place on this post.

Or at least an honorary mention – I try to reserve these entries for strictly heroic characters, and Scarlett is perhaps the most famous anti-heroine of all time: greedy, vain, dishonest, cynical, scheming, ignorant, vapid – at the beginning of the story she’s little more than a determined flirt, but over the course of the book this hardens into ruthlessness, with a determination to survive and prosper that ignores the needs of others: for instance, a cruel foreman is put in charge of labourers at her mill, and she cares little about their mistreatment. (That’s not even getting into the fact that she’s a plantation-born Southern Belle who literally owns hundreds of slaves).

So why is she such an enduring force? Like a lot of female characters in period dramas, she buckles under the constraints of the society she lives in, coming across as more of a relatable modern woman than her peers (who are largely characterized as fussy, clucky, disapproving hens). Yet the most powerful weapon in Scarlett’s arsenal is her femininity: she flirts, flatters, flutters her eyelashes, and conceals her own intelligence to get what she wants – something contemporary readers may find less than appealing.

But beneath all of this is a core of steel: in many ways she’s the most intelligent of all the other characters, recognizing the ultimate folly of the war, and completely unmoved by the stirrings of patriotism that galvanize her community. Yet in other areas she's profoundly ignorant: when someone describes another character as a "Borgia" she unknowingly embarrasses herself by wondering out loud if he's referring to a neighbour she's never heard of before. 

There’s value in her pragmatism and lack of blind nationalism, but she’s also comprised of no small amount of self-delusion either. Completely unable to fathom the emotional motivation of other people (or herself for that matter) she spends the greater part of a decade pining after Ashley Wilkes, a man she doesn’t know or understand but simply fantasizes about, and despises his wife Melanie, despite her being the best (and only) friend she’s got.

Here’s an even greater paradox to try and wrap your head around: she’s much kinder and more generous to the household slaves – Pork, Dulcie, Mammy – than to her sisters, her husbands, or even her children, as noted by Pork himself. It’s a difficult outlook for a modern reader to comprehend.

In short, she’s an extraordinarily complex character, and without her, I suspect Gone with the Wind would have long since been consigned to the dustbin of outdated texts espousing nonsensical (and racist) ideologies. But Scarlett remains as vivid and fascinating as ever, and Vivien Leigh is perhaps the only actress that could have captured the multitudes that make up Scarlett: the gleam in her eye, the arch of her brow, the coquettishness and the cruelty, all that pain and desperation that drives her to inevitable personal tragedy.

None of us would want to be friends with a real-life Scarlett (she wouldn’t want that either – she hated other women) and it’s impossible to even like her most of the time (the other Atlanta women do have a point about her shamelessness) but dammit – we love reading about her, and despite everything, we admire her. When she scrabbles in the earth for food and vows to claw her way back up to affluence, you believe her:

“As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."

The heroines from Avatar, Covington Cross, Team America: World Police and The Wolf Man

What do these four women have in common? Try to guess before scrolling down to the answer.

It’s that each of them share in the completion of an extremely rare accomplishment, something that most films still blanche away from depicting: they’re female deuteragonists who take out the Big Bad on their own.

Neytiri skewers Colonel Quaritch with her bow and arrow, Lisa kicks Kim Jong II off a balcony, Gwen shoots the Wolf Man with a silver bullet, and Eleanor uses a crossbow to shoot the family nemesis while he’s in the act of trying to stab her father in the back. The shocking thing is that in some cases (namely Avatar) I had actually forgotten that they are given the on-screen honour of achieving these kills.

It doesn’t take much of an effort to realize this is still an extremely uncommon occurrence. I recall an interview with an actress (I think it was Selma Hayek) a while back, in which she divulged that a lot of Hollywood scripts initially have female characters in more active and integral roles, only for them to get cut back by prima-donna actors who want the spotlight to themselves.

As such, a lot of climactic showdowns are mano-a-mano fistfights between the men, while the woman is left to cause a distraction, or fight a secondary character (usually another woman) or just sit there looking scared. But these ladies are given the honour of actually taking down the bad guy:

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When it came to 2021, two of the three the biggest entertainment juggernauts were either over (Game of Thrones) or on hiatus (Star Wars), leaving the MCU to return in force from its year-long furlough and once again dominate the attention of pop-culture fans everywhere with a plethora of new films and streaming television shows. As it happens, I’ve been taking a Sabbatical from all things Marvel – which feels great by the way – but keeping my eye on how the franchise is unfolding and audiences’ reactions to it all.

On the film front things kicked off with the long-awaited Black Widow movie (standard Marvel formula, and about ten years too late), followed by Shang Chi and the Ten Rings (apparently it had the best female character ensemble since Black Panther), The Eternals (they took a big swing that didn’t quite hit its mark) and Spiderman: No Way Home (currently breaking all Covid-19 era release records).

But things really got started with Wandavision, which gave the studio a chance to flesh out one of their most underused supporting characters. With a complex past and a score of tragedies behind her, a Wanda-centric limited series was perhaps the most “well duh” decision of the Disney+ Marvel line-up.

Though I didn’t watch it, I was interested in the commentary that surrounded it, and it would appear that (despite the entire premise being predicated on the portrayal of a woman’s grief) the writers were terrified of making Wanda too unlikeable, despite the horrific harm she was inflicting on innocent people (and not just in this show – the franchise has never once brought up the fact that she sicced a deranged Hulk on Johannesburg in Age of Ultron). Which is disappointing, but expected.

The show also gave us Monica Rambeau (Marie Rambeau’s daughter, due to reappear in the next Captain Marvel movie) an introduction to Agatha Harkness (also getting her own spin-off) and the return of Darcy Lewis (not seen in over ten years!)

Female characters were also fairly prolific in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which saw the return of Sharon Carter (not seen since she was ghosted by Captain America in Civil War – harsh dude), Ayo and the Dora Milaje (okay, I HAD to watch their fight scenes on YouTube) and Erin Kellyman as antagonist Karli, the ostensible “villain” who commits the horrific crime of providing food and medicine to people displaced by the Blip.

Whatever else it achieved, this was definitely the show that solidified the fact that left-coded villains make such good points that at some stage they’re forced to randomly blow up buildings to prevent the audience from sympathizing with them too much, and the “correct” solution to international crises touted as just politely asking the people in charge to make better choices. Mmkay, good luck with that. The writers are aware that less than two years ago the leader of the free world was a narcissistic buffoon who would have looked at a refugee crisis and done little more than fart at it, right?

As for Loki, I know even less about that, though I do know it involved a “variant” identity of his called Sylvie (and boy am I glad I avoided any fandom histrionics when a romantic attachment between them is formed) and a brief cameo from Sif, who I deeply missed in Thor: Ragnarok and Endgame. I’m looking forward to seeing her properly in Love and Thunder, the only upcoming Marvel movie I’d pay to see at the theatre.

If nothing else, all of these aforementioned women were ill-served by the movies that featured them, so it was nice to hear of their return in some capacity.

Finally Hawkeye... and all I can do is repeat that incredulous tweet about how on earth Jeremy Renner managed to snag the likes of Haliee Steinfeld, Vera Farmiga and Florence Pugh for his show. But apparently Alaqua Cox’s Echo (deaf and indigenous) is also getting her own spin-off, and it’s only a matter of time before the tag-team of Kate Bishop and Yelena Belova is reformed.

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As for the rest of the ever-prolific superhero genre, Margo Robbie’s Harley Quinn and Daniela Melchior’s Ratcatcher II were the best part of The Suicide Squad, while Wonder Woman and the Amazons were (incredibly) served better in the Zack Synder cut of Justice League than either were in 2020’s Wonder Woman: 1984. I still get chills when I think of: “We have no fear!”

CW’s Black Lightning and Supergirl came to an end (it wasn’t until after making Jennifer Pierce November’s Woman of the Month that I found out China Ann McClain left the show for its fourth and final season) and I hope to catch up on both of them soon, while Javicia Leslie as Ryan Wilder took over the cowl of Batwoman after Ruby Rose’s departure and allegations of serious misconduct on the set.

On a similar note, it’s a shame that we’re not getting the proposed female-led Wonder Girl and Green Arrow and the Canaries, though Stargirl is still going strong and the first trailers for Naomi have recently dropped. And apparently Superman and Lois was true to its title and featured the latter character as co-protagonist just as much as it did the former.

Jodi Whittaker’s tenure as the Doctor is also wrapping up (as of this post, two more specials remain before her regeneration and the passing of the torch back to Russell T. Davies) while Sonequa Martin-Green’s Michael Burnham kicked off season four of Star Trek Discovery as a fully-fledged captain (I will get to it this month, so help me...) We also got a strong finish to Lost in Space, which was packed full of great female characters: Maureen, Judy, Penny, Doctor Smith...

Oh, and we can all look forward to a Zatanna movie (I loved her in DC Superhero Girls and Justice League Dark) though the fact that it’s going to be written by Emerald Fennell gives me pause.

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On the Disney front, we got two pretty good female-centric animated films: first Raya and the Last Dragon, whose titular character is the first Disney Princess who actually isn’t a princess in any way whatsoever (in fact, I’m still not entirely sure if she’s going to be added to the line-up) while Encanto is a colourful, heartfelt look at what it’s like to be the black sheep of the family.

Both of them had their weaknesses: the former is yet another story about a teenage girl who learns that she owes the people who hurt her endless second chances, and the latter doesn’t bother to answer some fairly fundamental questions as to how its central premise actually works, but I had no complaints about protagonists Raya or Mirabel, who are each vibrant, complex, likeable and unique heroines among the Disney canon.

I knew going into Netflix’s Shadow and Bone adaptation that we were going to get a plethora of fantastic female characters, though they really outdid themselves on the casting front: Jessie Mei Li as Alina, Amita Suman as Inej, Danielle Galligan as Nina, Daisy Head as Genya and Sujaya Dasgupta as Zoya – all of them were pitch-perfect in their roles, and the best part is that their stories are only just getting started. As a book-reader, there is so much great material on its way, and I hope showrunner Eric Heisserer does them justice.

(The show also vibed really well with The Nevers and The Irregulars, especially in its portrayal of female characters, as discussed in more detail above).

Lana Condor wrapped up the To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy, and now deserves no end to the offers she clearly hasn’t been receiving since its conclusion, Netflix’s Gunpowder Milkshake was a lot of fun, though not particularly mind-blowing (its thesis statement is essentially: women can be horrifically violent too!) and the Fear Street trilogy was unexpectedly fantastic, with a pair of determined ride-or-die star-crossed girlfriends as its emotional centre.

Period dramas such as Medici and Dickinson (the latter of which aired their second and third seasons this year) had their fair share of strong female characters, while the sub-genre of “difficult women” continued with the likes of The Undoing, Mare of Easttown and The Queen’s Gambit (a subgenre that is still dominated – for obvious reasons – by white women, but I’m going to make a concentrated effort on expanding my horizons in this area).

October saw me delve into some female-led “witchy” fiction, reminding me that women who live on the outskirts of conformist society make genuinely great characters: the likes of Thomasina (The Witch), Gillian and Sally Owens (Practical Magic), Gillian Holroyd (Bell Book and Candle), Gretel (Gretel and Hansel), and the Halliwell sisters (Charmed) are iconic female characters that grapple – for better or worse – with the concept of women who have power. Even the outright villainous witchy characters: The Grand High Witch from The Witches and Nancy Downs from The Craft, are completely unforgettable powerhouses.

And my ongoing project to work through all available adaptations of Robin Hood (which I’ll continue into 2022) has brought back a newfound appreciation for the iconic Maid Marian, surely one of the most universally beloved heroines of all time. There’s definitely going to be a Woman of the Month entry in her honour at some point...

Speaking of iconic female characters, going through all of Craig Daniel’s James Bond films gave me the opportunity to examine the development of the Bond Girl and her place in this particular era. Though it had its share of pitfalls, it also gave us the likes of Vesper Lynd, Camille Montes, Lucia Sciarra, Madeline Swann, Nomi, Paloma, and (of course) Moneypenny.

As mentioned in my reviews of the various films, here were Bond Girls who had a lasting impact on James, who didn’t sleep with or fall in love with him, who crossed over from one film to another (the first time this has ever happened, believe it or not!), who managed to escape the fridge when you’d otherwise expect them to die, and who – in one case – was over fifty years old.  

Judi Dench’s M is treated as an important and complex character, existing almost as a mother-figure to James, and so – in what feels like a direct parallel of her characterization – the final film gives him a daughter named Mathilde, for whom he essentially sacrifices himself.

The treatment of women in this particular Bond’s life led me to a rather startling realization: that any child born of this Bond just had to be a girl. It’s difficult to articulate why exactly, but think about it: there’s no way they could have written James and Madeline’s child as a boy. The legacy of Craig’s Bond were the women in his life – the ones he loved, the ones he saved, the ones he respected – and Mathilde was the perfect way of capping off that theme.

The final month of 2021 also gave us the return of Trinity (and Neo) after an eighteen-year absence in The Matrix Resurrections, which opened up the ongoing debate about her role as a feminist icon and the complications of what’s known as Trinity Syndrome. I still haven’t fully made up my mind on what to think, so here’s some food for thought.

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Booking tickets to see live performances was a gamble this year, and unfortunately I missed out on seeing The Firebird (cancelled in the midst of New Zealand’s second Covid lockdown), but I wasn’t totally denied my annual ballet experience: back in June my work college and I successfully made it to Giselle, which is truly one of my favourite ballets.

And this one had a wonderful twist: a framing device that depicted an elderly Albrecht mourning at Giselle’s grave – and the very last scene had Myrtle and the other wylies slowly advance upon him. So they got him in the end, mwhahaha!

I also managed to see The Secret Garden musical (albeit an abridged version) and took my friend’s eldest daughter to Moana Junior at the Court Theatre, both of which were charming in their own distinct ways.

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As for reading material, I was annoyed at myself for eventually caving to the allure of library books when my New Year’s Resolution was to only read my own books for the duration of 2021, but at least I discovered some good stuff along the way.

It turns out that graphic novels are a great place to find interesting female characters: Matt Phelan’s Depression-era Snow White, Neil Gaiman’s inverted take on Snow White and the Evil Queen in Snow, Glass, Apples, Emmy and Bernice in Cullen Bunn’s Harrow County, and Maika Halfwolf in Marjorie Liu’s Monstress. For younger readers there’s Thom Pico’s Aster, Luke Pearson’s Hilda, Tony Cliff’s Delilah Dirk, Noelle Stevenson’s She Ra, Alexis Siegel’s Oona (5 Worlds), Mike Maihack’s Cleopatra (Cleopatra in Space), Faith Erin Hick’s separate takes on Katara, Toph and Suki (from Avatar: The Last Airbender) and of course, Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä (of the Valley of the Wind). What a bounty!

There were also plenty of girl detectives to enjoy: new books starring Robin Stevens’s Wells and Wong and Nancy Springer’s Enola Holmes (after I thought each series had finished), the final book for Katherine Woodfine’s Sophie and Lil, and a new Aggie Morton mystery from Marthe Jocelyn. I caught up on some Diana Wynne Jones, truly the world’s most unappreciated treasure, as well as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and the ever-contentious Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.

But when I finally made a dent in the never-ending TBR pile that’s steadily taking over my hallway, I managed some fantastic women-centric fantasy books: Catherynne Valente’s In the Night Garden (I will get to the sequel this year, so help me), Francesca Lia Block’s Dangerous Angels series, the first three books of Mary Hoffman’s Stravaganza series, the first two books of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse trilogy, Patricia McKillip’s The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (finally!), Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, Elizabeth Knox’s Dreamhunter duology, and Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island (dang, she’s good).

All of them have my strongest recommendation, especially for fellow-fans of fantasy, magic realism or fairy tales.