raayllum

[raayllum]

Claudia character design breakdown: S1-S7

Because Claudia has one of the most overtly symbolic character designs I've ever seen by the end of S7, and I wanna talk about it with the added context/evolution from previous seasons. Let's go:

Season 1-3

Claudia has two main outfits in arc 1. She has her dress version, which is longer and something she wears only when she's at the castle. She has a shorter version with pants that she wears throughout the majority of the show / seasons for travelling. For example, even once she returns to the castle and is now technically a princess (since her father is king) in mid-season 3, she does not return to her dress version.

Immediately, though, associations are drawn between Claudia's outfit and those of two others mages: Ziard and her father.

Now, there's a few consistencies between all 3 designs. The darker colour palette for one, though Claudia is by far in the most black, the shoulder adornment, long sleeves, the eye being drawn to the centre of the chest by the gold and/or Ziard's chain thing, etc.

However, there are big differences. Ziard's clothes are tattered and torn, whereas Viren and Claudia indicates that they are existing as nobility / a more refined status. Outside of the shoulder feathers, Claudia's colour palette also takes the gold from her father and dressed in entirely black rather than gray. She takes Viren's purple from his inherited staff and his chest gemstone and has it in her hair and nail polish. She also borrows more from Ziard than Viren in regards to having the tiny feather in her book strap and a bag to carry ingredients, which we never see Viren use.

Another important aspect to Claudia is her jewelry, namely her non-matching earrings and snake bracelet. The bracelet has a practical usage, but also encourages her dark magic associations (since snakes are heavily associated with DM from 1x02 onwards). The fact that Claudia is wearing a chain on her wrist is also Loaded, but we'll get more to that later. Claudia has another purple eye earring (purple and black being dark magic's primary colours) + eyes being a continually important symbol throughout the series. Claudia's leaf earring has also always been interesting to me, as it indicates her important connection/view of nature initially as a dark mage (and later with Terry but again, more on that later).

However, when I say "Claudia's character design" and "symbolism," what probably comes automatically to mind for everyone (and for good reason) is her hair, so let's get into it.

The White Streak / Half Moon Hair

In my mind, there are 3 layers to Claudia's initial hair symbolism.

Dark magic

Rayla

The Moon

So let's go in order. While we knew before S2 thanks to the 1x01 intro with Ziard that dark mages could gain white streaks of hair, it was only in 2x09 that we got to better understand how the change worked as a concept. Steadily, then, Claudia's hair whitening represents her relationship to dark magic, her hair and adjacent appearance symbolizing her steadily losing who she once was and becoming someone radically different. This connection between hair and change is even made explicit in S3:

This is, of course, supplemented by her hair becoming much more white in 3 particular scenes: at the end of 3x09 (probably her most dramatic), on the beach in 6x01, and after using the scale of Shiruakh in 7x07 (whereupon she 'dooms' Callum, her mage/narrative counterpart, to 'his fate').

However, her increasing descent into dark magic isn't all her hair symbolizes. After S2, I remember wondering if, given their foils dynamic, Claudia's hair would eventually be entirely white (or close to it) to make her look more like Rayla. There have always been assassin-dark mage parallels in the show, and the two have a lot of parallels and contrasts: love interests to Callum, devoted daughters who want to save their dads who had done dark deeds, lying and interacting with the deer, dynamics with Soren, leaving vs being left, etc etc. Rayla is white haired and more, comparatively and consistently, virtuous (though she's not perfect either), whereas Claudia becomes more white haired and gets worse and worse. It's an interesting reflection of elves being born with magic vs the physical transformation and costs undertaken by humans in order to have magic in any sense. (Rayla's little braid that Claudia uses to track her down also symbolizes love and affection in Moonshadow culture between loved ones, but we'll return more to braids in S4.)

Claudia's hair also mirrors the way the moon operates. As her hair becomes increasingly whiter, it follows along with phases of the moon. Where a full moon in TDP is good news for Moonshadow elves, Claudia's head full of moon-adjacent hair only gets worse the closer to the moon she gets. The dark represents the 'true' pieces of her, the light the erasure of them. Although the light side of the moon reflects truth in S2 in general ("I can't leave Callum in the dark any longer"), the more white Claudia's hair grows, the more she increasingly lies to herself about, well, herself. The whiteness reflects how she increasingly lies to herself and to others for her own benefit/wellbeing over the course of the show (particularly in 7x09, but we'll get there when we get there).

Closing S3 note: it's very on the nose that Claudia gets her sun staff by the end of this season as well, resulting in her regularly lugging around and using a literally corrupted light.

Season 4 to 6: Braid Detour

Claudia wears her hair in a braid for most of season 4 and season 5. This is notably done for her by Terry (4x02) and represents the light and dark literally woven together inside her, warring against each other. This also sets up Claudia being pulled in two directions that will only become more prominent: she can listen to Terry, or she can listen to Aaravos. I say this because while it'd be easy to see the braid as a Positive Symbol of love because Terry gives it to her, and we know that braids — like Rayla's — can be a sign of love and togetherness, I'd also argue braid is likewise complicated symbolically later on in the same episode it begins. After all, when Ibis yanks on the braid, it causes her to accidentally stab herself with the dark magic phial; you can't get any more overt symbolically than that. Not only does Claudia's pursuit of her goals hurt others, they also hurt herself... just as her journey between light (good, but also dark magic white strands) and dark (the old her, but also dark magic's literal darkness) does.

We also see Claudia lose her chain snake bracelet this season (4x03) which seems good. She's literally losing a chain, after all. However, it's through this that Soren identifies she's likely the culprit behind the attack at the Storm Spire and trying to free Aaravos. Additionally, the Puzzle House shows that the snake chain bracelets are a chain/lock, yes, but also a key.

So in losing it, Claudia loses her dark magic chain... but also a key that could, in theory, symbolically free her from it.

Last but not least, Claudia's sun staff gets some updates. This is important largely because she starts adorning the Sun staff with similar ingredients — the feathers, the animal skull — as Ziard, whom she directly parrots as another one of Aaravos' pawns:

You just expect humans to go back to the way things were before we had magic? When humans starved and struggled, helpless and pathetic? (3x01)

Thousands of years ago, humans had nothing. We were starving and wretched and helpless [...] The elves and dragons, they did nothing. They judged us. They pitied us. (4x07)

Ziard, likely, isn't the main pawn that Claudia is set up to parallel series wise (that honour with Ziard seems to be taken by Viren, for semi-obvious reasons) but it is another shift in her appearance and design that symbolizes her becoming more entrenched with Aaravos and continuing to incorporate more and more of his worldview into her own.

And this is, largely, where we leave Claudia character design wise until early S6, which is a turning point in a few ways.

Season 6: A Turning Point?

Claudia's appearance changes in quite a few ways in 6x01-6x03. Her hair becomes whiter, is cut, and following the severing of her leg, Terry makes and gifts her with a heartfelt prosthetic. I've talked a bit about the likely reasoning behind Claudia's amputation here, but will expand further upon the actual design of her prosthetic and its symbolism.

I'd say overall, though, most of the changes here are pretty straightforward. As discussed, the prosthetic symbolizes Terry's love for her and Claudia's ability to rely on him, hence her throwing away the dark Sun staff she was using as a literal crutch and instead trusting Terry's prosthetic to hold her weight. While that's mostly positive symbolism, there is also continued negative associations with her hair being increasingly white. The same is true for her finally having a Corrupted dark magic face as of 6x01, though it does not reappear for the rest of the season.

The most complex character design change, I'd wager, is Claudia cutting her hair. This is because like the braid, it's set up and then immediately complicated. So we're gonna go layer by layer in order of introduction.

The first is that we've seen Claudia's first intro at this point in 6x02, whereupon she has long hair and no prosthetic.

The fact she gets both of these things and from Terry, no less, gives both her new leg and especially her short hair a more hopeful feeling. After all, cutting hair often means making a change or shedding an old life. She might be losing the ability for Terry to braid her hair (love and affection), but she gave him the knife and asked for him to do so. It's closer to the hair she had when she was a little girl, which can only be a good thing, and she cuts her hair after Viren leaves, mirroring that maybe she can move beyond her dependency on him and dark magic. In the subsequent episode, after all, she refuses to do more dark magic and considers giving it up altogether. Everything, symbolically hair wise, is pointing towards a Better Path.

Except... Claudia hasn't let go of her dependency on Viren. It's just shifted even harder to "I need him to tell me what to do than it was before," our first indication Claudia's current mindsets are still emotionally stagnated and, for lack of a better term, childish. Claudia cuts her hair following her father's departure, but just as quickly decides to go after him all the same. The melancholy of the hair cutting scene is also present, as it's another thing that Claudia grieves—another thing that is severed.

Given that she once used Rayla's hair to track the elf down, it's not surprising that after Claudia's hair is likewise cut, she goes looking for herself: her one deep truth, as Terry puts it (7x04), but also for her father, because — as stated — to Claudia, her and herself are more or less one-in-the-same to her at this point, or they have to be, in order for her to function.

A semi S7 related 'tangent': Cutting Claudia's hair also removes the purple tips from her hair, and she doesn't put them back in for the rest of S6 or S7. While this moves her further away from a dark magic colour palette, which can be good, it also removes her from one of her biggest similarities to Leola in having dyed purple hair. Aaravos in S7 might see her as his daughter, and similar to what Leola would be like as if she'd lived, but it's a skewed view. Leola would likely be horrified at what they've both become, and Claudia no longer having the purple dye parallels now that she's finally being directly compared to another little girl who did is a nice reflection of this fact, I think.

As for the leg... I've talked more about her amputation and prosthetic elsewhere, so I won't go into too much detail here, but: Terry's prosthetic for her, ultimately, is a much less complicated symbol. She uses her dark magic staff as a literal crutch and then tosses it away, trusting Terry and his prosthetic to hold her weight. It's made of natural primal, not dark, magic, and means that a sign of his unconditional love for her is a part of her. The leg is 100% positive... which is why we'll revisit it near the end of season 7.

Secondly, Claudia just got another big design change, even if it's not permanent: she, like her father's nightmares made manifest, has the corrupted dark magic face after killing Sir Sparklepuff. While this doesn't last forever (the corruption fades on its own over the course of the day on the beach) and isn't always present, it does take the previous duality previously associated with just Claudia's 50/50 hair split to her literal being as a person, which is good, given that her hair is already veering into 70/30 territory.

Post haircut, Claudia's appearance doesn't change, but it almost doesn't need to. She returns to Katolis wearing a hairstyle more similar to that she had of a little girl, and returns to the exact same dependency on her father she's always had since childhood. Her search for her one deep truth is still being almost completely externalized, and is ruptured by coming across Viren's corpse. Aaravos picks up the pieces, and Claudia is brought further into his clutches.

Her appearance doesn't change too much in season 7, arguably... but in some ways is also her biggest shift and a clear bookend to what began in S4. So let's talk about it.

Season 7: Dragons Had All The Power

Post-S4, I noted that Claudia taking on more animalistic forms — the snake eyes and tail in her fight with Ibis, the bat wings in a couple of her flying scenes — offered an interesting escalation of her character. Claudia's relationship to animals and to her own body had both been fraught with violence for a long time. She kills a deer and her own innocence, in some ways, in 2x09; she sees animals and magical creatures like dragons as nothing but spell parts, with this readily extending to her own body pretty early on in the show (S3). She doesn't care about the toll dark magic takes on her body provided that her loved ones are okay, and this escalating to using/drinking her own blood (S5) and then everything about 6x01 was therefore utterly unsurprising if deeply devastating.

So, Claudia in season 7 taking all those prior season increments — the animalistic body parts through dark magic consumption, drinking her own blood and loss of her leg, etc — even further by becoming, well, a Dragon for all intents and purposes...

It was more beautiful than I could've ever imagined. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the armour itself, first.

The scale of Shiruakh is an amulet Claudia picked up in 4x03 because she thought it'd look pretty. She wears it more consistently from 6x03 onwards, which was a hint to me at the time that her other design changes weren't entirely positive. Aaravos unlocks it for her after they invert the Moon Nexus, and she leaves to kill Akiyu. Claudia then uses it in her duel against Callum, and we get a few confusing (and interesting) shots with it in quick succession.

Because while it cures/purifies her dark magic corruption face (likely due to Sun magic), summoning the armour itself also turns more of her hair white, leaving it and herself further corrupted, meaning that it is also tethered to dark magic. I also think it's interesting to give Claudia armour at all. It doesn't seemingly protect her on its own in any significant way that an alternative option could have (another staff, for example). Ezran, comparatively, is given the far more aggressive version of a literal sword designed exclusively to kill (not necessarily to defend/protect), meanwhile Claudia gets something shield adjacent.

Some of this goes back to her relationship with dark magic and her body, I think. Dark magic always provided a shield for Claudia to hide behind when confronted with undesirable truths or circumstances. She could use it as a crutch and a shield for her own worldview and goals; it was something she used to protect others and, by extension, herself. The Scale of Shiruakh is that made manifest, acting as a literal dark magic induced shield. The fact that it covers nearly her entire body, even encroaching onto her face, indicates dark magic's growing consumption of her body and her soul the further in she does, and the whiter her hair gets. The final touch, therefore, is that it also offers her a glowing replacement heart. Where Viren's heart turned to dark magic induced fiery cinders in order to protect others at the cost of himself, Claudia's orange Scale of Shiruakh heart exists to protect her at the expense of others (Callum, Akiyu, etc).

Finally, we also get to return to the prosthetic, which the armour transformation also changes. Like Claudia's face, the armour and its colour scheme encroaches onto her prosthetic. It turns the gemstones in it from natural green to a dark magic slanted purpley blue... but it leaves some of the prosthetic untouched, indicating that although Claudia's path is erasing Terry's influence on her, it hasn't been stamped out completely.

Additionally, I want to return to Claudia's character design with the armour being so dragonesque. Dragons are a loaded symbol in the series, representing pure connections to arcanums, but also immense power. It's not surprising that Aaravos' statement about Claudia being no ordinary human but the most powerful dark mage in Xadia is when she's enacting power over an archdragon and flying like one too. Dragons are still the power scale she's being measured against, the same power scale she once acknowledged (5x06) but, as noted then, "times are changing". Claudia isn't just measured against the scale any more, but can match and overcome it.

Dragons are also a particularly loaded symbol for Claudia in particular. Slaying a dragon was once her brother's life ambition (2x07) yet his willingness to kill her, a draconic figure, is something she understandably and ironically berates him for (7x09). In a season that begins with an Archdragon being an enemy and burning her home to the ground, the Archdragons save the world from her and Aaravos' wrath and from being likewise burned to the ground. The Archdragons and their sacrifices are heroic, whereas Claudia's sacrifices and draconic nature are a negative and horrific transformation. Claudia once wanted to dissect a dragon and use it for parts, piece by piece, and will likely show a similar willingness when it comes to increasingly viewing her own body as spell parts (self eating, I love you forever, mwah mwah). She has, through dark magic, become the very thing she's hated most of all, ripe with irony and strife. She can say "I'm still me" all she wants, but that's not true — and her character design proves it.

Intro Interlude

The last time we see Claudia, her character design has been altered slightly again. Not only does the framing evoke the intro she's been symbolically entrenched in for seasons now to a literal level — i.e. this was always going to come to pass, and Aaravos likely knew it — it's also reminiscent of past seasons. (There's a slight animation error as her hair would still be more white her, but I'm chalking that up to an understandable little oopsie.)

Her scale and all that it entails — having abandoned her Sun staff and later her father turned her Staff of Ziard — is currently her most prominent magical item, put front and centre. She's also donned a cloak we haven't seen her wear since 3x09 with the illusion plan, but a cloak that 99% of the time when mage characters wear it (dark!Callum in both appearances), it's to indicate they're committed to dark magic. That certainly fits Claudia at the end of the season given that she's renewing her promise to wait for Aaravos' return... and probably (hopefully?) cause plenty of problems in the meantime.

Closing thoughts

If you made it all the way through this, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Claudia's character design choices have become one of my favourites across the course of the series, and getting to dive in further was a real treat. In summary, by the end of S7, Claudia's character design has plenty of interesting implications for the future, but not without some hope. Furthermore, if you're interested in more / alternative thoughts on Claudia's hair and character design, I'd rec checking out this meta by @kradogsrats (I also concur that, most likely, her hair will still be short in Arc 3, and potentially grown out again in a S10 epilogue).

[raayllum]

What you taught those people was dark magic. You didn't save them. You corrupted them. You call it corruption. I call it compromise.

2x08 / 7x07

[raayllum]

4x01 / 5x01

[raayllum]

"having plot relevant sex with my thematically appropriate wife"

so rayllum will just have sandiwichy activity while the world is on shambles

is that not already s6 and s7 offscreen?

that said i AM holding out for an arc 3 sandwiches joke. they'll come through for me i know they will

[raayllum]

In the two years since gaining his arcanum, Callum likes to think he’s gotten the hang of it.

He has his spell-book with plenty of runes and incantations, carefully jotted down by hand next to pictures of the runes; he knows how to elongate his breath and stamina; he’s better at hedging his weight and sticking a landing, winged or not. He knows the way rainy days made his mood pick up, blood thrumming in his veins, the way his body takes deeper breaths when it’s windy, the fact he can never sleep (or really need to) when it storms at night time. 

He’s not nervous when the storm broils over the pirate’s boat. If anything, this’ll help them escape unscathed their belongings intact. He’ll be at the peak of his power in the centre of a storm. What could go wrong?

Callum knows the answer as soon as the rain hits his face, feet skidding over the slippery deck, and a fork of lightning strikes the a wave so close to him some of the resulting spray sloshes over the ship hull. It’s too much, out here, the rain pounding in his temple like the worst headache he’s ever had, the lightning shuddering in his vision, taking too long to fade for him to see properly. 

It’s nothing for a dragon or an archdragon, but for a human - or an elf, unused to the sensation - he feels like he’s going to keel over and retch, too much air in his lungs to be healthy. 

But there are at least twenty pirates, and Soren is off defending Ezran in the corner, Rayla slashing somewhere in the middle, and Nyx is picking off the crew with throwing knives up in the ropes, and well…

Callum hurtles out there, staff in hand, and does his best to block out the noise. 

He clears a path to Ezran first, fulminis sizzling through his veins, and it takes little to no energy to channel the storm to his will. The rain bends. The lightning goes where he wants it to. He doesn’t even need his staff, even as it pulses with heat in his hand. The pirates are swept away into the seas, or too charred with his lightning to get up. The lightning flashes bright in his eyes, too reminiscent of Aaravos’ control to be comfortable, too encompassing for him to see clearly, and—

Something hits him hard in the back and he crashes, spluttering, hands splayed on the desk. He twists over onto his back, rain pouring down, and the captain leers over him, grinning while water runs down from the curve of her hat, her sword levied at his throat. Another wave rises up. The thunder echoes in his ears. It’s too much.

His control falters. His world narrows, and Callum knows this is it. The rain is so cold, leaving him numb like he’s already dead. He wonders if he’ll even have the option to make a sound, as the Tidebound elf draws back her razor sharp sword and—

Then she drops her sword, a dark stain forming over the centre of her pale blue blouse, and the elf keels over sideways, hands scrabbling at her chest. A foot pushes her out of the way so she topples next to him instead of on him, and then Rayla—hair soaked, ragged, beautiful—lowers her own bloody blade and holds out her hand.

Callum manages to find the mind to grasp it. She hoists him to his feet, supporting his weight when he leans on her more than he meant to. He thinks she’s shaking too.

“Are you okay?” she says hoarsely, eyes scanning his face. The storm quiets, his breath anchored to hers. She’s warm, their sides pressed up against each other.

His gaze tears away from her face to the dead pirate captain at their feet, a pool of blood growing as her crew cries out angrily around them as Nyx and Soren step up and into the fray, Rayla’s sword arm braced along his back.

She’d killed for him.

He wants to ask if she’s okay, but knows this isn’t the time—that this might not have even been her first, given her time away, but there’s a glassy look in her eye that tells him it is—even if his heart pounds in his chest. Her bottom lip never trembles even if her hand shakes from where it’s keeping his arm slung over her shoulders.

“Fine,” he says, his head clearing. He pushes himself up a bit more. Some of the pirates are starting to surrender. It’ll be over soon. He takes her sword hand as he straightens up, splattered with a bit of blood, and kisses her knuckles. “Let’s just get out of here.”

[raayllum]

[raayllum]

You think with my sight restored I can reign again and fix what is broken in Xadia? No one can save it. Was it a mistake? To give the egg of the Dragon Prince to that dark mage? It was all we could do to keep it alive. That's right. If Viren had destroyed the egg, it couldn't have been rescued.

3x08 / 7x09

[raayllum]

girl you would flourish under my dark tutelage

[raayllum]

perfectly 100% normal questions i have about self-eating:

how ancient is it, and how effective is it usually? was kpp'ar succeeding in his aims and then abandoned it, or did it never work properly for him to begin with? how long had he been self-eating? is it standard for mages to engage with it after only consuming the flesh of other humanesque magical creatures (elves for ex) to get used to the process with a step of removal, or do they go in head first can't lose cannibalizing themselves? are there certain parts of the body that are more valuable to consume (skin of the throat vs the arm) or added bonus for consuming organs (and possibly using magic to replace them again) you can afford to part with?

[raayllum]

video because not only do i Love beautiful women of which this video has plenty, but also because the lyrics just scream Viren / Harrow relationship dynamic for more reasons than one

You got people lining up To kiss your feet You're the talk of every town They can't keep quiet You're an obsessive revolutionary riot I wish that I could say that I'm not the jealous type But you're Caesar and I'm Brutus Minus that part with the knife And I wish you the best While I'm watching from the side But if I'm speaking honestly I wish I had your life

[raayllum]

gastronomy by Jessica Poli

[raayllum]

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, from  “Women who Run with the Wolves,” published in 1992

[raayllum]

something something "She is not an asset. She is my daughter." vs. "She is no ordinary human. She is the most powerful dark mage in all of Xadia."

[raayllum]

Terry: Soren, your sister is motivated entirely by love for her family. There's only one person who can save her now...

Soren: :o

Terry: ... your mother.

Soren: ... okay. :C

- LATER -

Terry: Soren, maybe you and I can still save Claudia! We have to try!

Soren: I don't think we can. :c

Terry: :O

[raayllum]

Claudia character design breakdown: S1-S7

Because Claudia has one of the most overtly symbolic character designs I've ever seen by the end of S7, and I wanna talk about it with the added context/evolution from previous seasons. Let's go:

Season 1-3

Claudia has two main outfits in arc 1. She has her dress version, which is longer and something she wears only when she's at the castle. She has a shorter version with pants that she wears throughout the majority of the show / seasons for travelling. For example, even once she returns to the castle and is now technically a princess (since her father is king) in mid-season 3, she does not return to her dress version.

Immediately, though, associations are drawn between Claudia's outfit and those of two others mages: Ziard and her father.

Now, there's a few consistencies between all 3 designs. The darker colour palette for one, though Claudia is by far in the most black, the shoulder adornment, long sleeves, the eye being drawn to the centre of the chest by the gold and/or Ziard's chain thing, etc.

However, there are big differences. Ziard's clothes are tattered and torn, whereas Viren and Claudia indicates that they are existing as nobility / a more refined status. Outside of the shoulder feathers, Claudia's colour palette also takes the gold from her father and dressed in entirely black rather than gray. She takes Viren's purple from his inherited staff and his chest gemstone and has it in her hair and nail polish. She also borrows more from Ziard than Viren in regards to having the tiny feather in her book strap and a bag to carry ingredients, which we never see Viren use.

Another important aspect to Claudia is her jewelry, namely her non-matching earrings and snake bracelet. The bracelet has a practical usage, but also encourages her dark magic associations (since snakes are heavily associated with DM from 1x02 onwards). The fact that Claudia is wearing a chain on her wrist is also Loaded, but we'll get more to that later. Claudia has another purple eye earring (purple and black being dark magic's primary colours) + eyes being a continually important symbol throughout the series. Claudia's leaf earring has also always been interesting to me, as it indicates her important connection/view of nature initially as a dark mage (and later with Terry but again, more on that later).

However, when I say "Claudia's character design" and "symbolism," what probably comes automatically to mind for everyone (and for good reason) is her hair, so let's get into it.

The White Streak / Half Moon Hair

In my mind, there are 3 layers to Claudia's initial hair symbolism.

Dark magic

Rayla

The Moon

So let's go in order. While we knew before S2 thanks to the 1x01 intro with Ziard that dark mages could gain white streaks of hair, it was only in 2x09 that we got to better understand how the change worked as a concept. Steadily, then, Claudia's hair whitening represents her relationship to dark magic, her hair and adjacent appearance symbolizing her steadily losing who she once was and becoming someone radically different. This connection between hair and change is even made explicit in S3:

This is, of course, supplemented by her hair becoming much more white in 3 particular scenes: at the end of 3x09 (probably her most dramatic), on the beach in 6x01, and after using the scale of Shiruakh in 7x07 (whereupon she 'dooms' Callum, her mage/narrative counterpart, to 'his fate').

However, her increasing descent into dark magic isn't all her hair symbolizes. After S2, I remember wondering if, given their foils dynamic, Claudia's hair would eventually be entirely white (or close to it) to make her look more like Rayla. There have always been assassin-dark mage parallels in the show, and the two have a lot of parallels and contrasts: love interests to Callum, devoted daughters who want to save their dads who had done dark deeds, lying and interacting with the deer, dynamics with Soren, leaving vs being left, etc etc. Rayla is white haired and more, comparatively and consistently, virtuous (though she's not perfect either), whereas Claudia becomes more white haired and gets worse and worse. It's an interesting reflection of elves being born with magic vs the physical transformation and costs undertaken by humans in order to have magic in any sense. (Rayla's little braid that Claudia uses to track her down also symbolizes love and affection in Moonshadow culture between loved ones, but we'll return more to braids in S4.)

Claudia's hair also mirrors the way the moon operates. As her hair becomes increasingly whiter, it follows along with phases of the moon. Where a full moon in TDP is good news for Moonshadow elves, Claudia's head full of moon-adjacent hair only gets worse the closer to the moon she gets. The dark represents the 'true' pieces of her, the light the erasure of them. Although the light side of the moon reflects truth in S2 in general ("I can't leave Callum in the dark any longer"), the more white Claudia's hair grows, the more she increasingly lies to herself about, well, herself. The whiteness reflects how she increasingly lies to herself and to others for her own benefit/wellbeing over the course of the show (particularly in 7x09, but we'll get there when we get there).

Closing S3 note: it's very on the nose that Claudia gets her sun staff by the end of this season as well, resulting in her regularly lugging around and using a literally corrupted light.

Season 4 to 6: Braid Detour

Claudia wears her hair in a braid for most of season 4 and season 5. This is notably done for her by Terry (4x02) and represents the light and dark literally woven together inside her, warring against each other. This also sets up Claudia being pulled in two directions that will only become more prominent: she can listen to Terry, or she can listen to Aaravos. I say this because while it'd be easy to see the braid as a Positive Symbol of love because Terry gives it to her, and we know that braids — like Rayla's — can be a sign of love and togetherness, I'd also argue braid is likewise complicated symbolically later on in the same episode it begins. After all, when Ibis yanks on the braid, it causes her to accidentally stab herself with the dark magic phial; you can't get any more overt symbolically than that. Not only does Claudia's pursuit of her goals hurt others, they also hurt herself... just as her journey between light (good, but also dark magic white strands) and dark (the old her, but also dark magic's literal darkness) does.

We also see Claudia lose her chain snake bracelet this season (4x03) which seems good. She's literally losing a chain, after all. However, it's through this that Soren identifies she's likely the culprit behind the attack at the Storm Spire and trying to free Aaravos. Additionally, the Puzzle House shows that the snake chain bracelets are a chain/lock, yes, but also a key.

So in losing it, Claudia loses her dark magic chain... but also a key that could, in theory, symbolically free her from it.

Last but not least, Claudia's sun staff gets some updates. This is important largely because she starts adorning the Sun staff with similar ingredients — the feathers, the animal skull — as Ziard, whom she directly parrots as another one of Aaravos' pawns:

You just expect humans to go back to the way things were before we had magic? When humans starved and struggled, helpless and pathetic? (3x01)

Thousands of years ago, humans had nothing. We were starving and wretched and helpless [...] The elves and dragons, they did nothing. They judged us. They pitied us. (4x07)

Ziard, likely, isn't the main pawn that Claudia is set up to parallel series wise (that honour with Ziard seems to be taken by Viren, for semi-obvious reasons) but it is another shift in her appearance and design that symbolizes her becoming more entrenched with Aaravos and continuing to incorporate more and more of his worldview into her own.

And this is, largely, where we leave Claudia character design wise until early S6, which is a turning point in a few ways.

Season 6: A Turning Point?

Claudia's appearance changes in quite a few ways in 6x01-6x03. Her hair becomes whiter, is cut, and following the severing of her leg, Terry makes and gifts her with a heartfelt prosthetic. I've talked a bit about the likely reasoning behind Claudia's amputation here, but will expand further upon the actual design of her prosthetic and its symbolism.

I'd say overall, though, most of the changes here are pretty straightforward. As discussed, the prosthetic symbolizes Terry's love for her and Claudia's ability to rely on him, hence her throwing away the dark Sun staff she was using as a literal crutch and instead trusting Terry's prosthetic to hold her weight. While that's mostly positive symbolism, there is also continued negative associations with her hair being increasingly white. The same is true for her finally having a Corrupted dark magic face as of 6x01, though it does not reappear for the rest of the season.

The most complex character design change, I'd wager, is Claudia cutting her hair. This is because like the braid, it's set up and then immediately complicated. So we're gonna go layer by layer in order of introduction.

The first is that we've seen Claudia's first intro at this point in 6x02, whereupon she has long hair and no prosthetic.

The fact she gets both of these things and from Terry, no less, gives both her new leg and especially her short hair a more hopeful feeling. After all, cutting hair often means making a change or shedding an old life. She might be losing the ability for Terry to braid her hair (love and affection), but she gave him the knife and asked for him to do so. It's closer to the hair she had when she was a little girl, which can only be a good thing, and she cuts her hair after Viren leaves, mirroring that maybe she can move beyond her dependency on him and dark magic. In the subsequent episode, after all, she refuses to do more dark magic and considers giving it up altogether. Everything, symbolically hair wise, is pointing towards a Better Path.

Except... Claudia hasn't let go of her dependency on Viren. It's just shifted even harder to "I need him to tell me what to do than it was before," our first indication Claudia's current mindsets are still emotionally stagnated and, for lack of a better term, childish. Claudia cuts her hair following her father's departure, but just as quickly decides to go after him all the same. The melancholy of the hair cutting scene is also present, as it's another thing that Claudia grieves—another thing that is severed.

Given that she once used Rayla's hair to track the elf down, it's not surprising that after Claudia's hair is likewise cut, she goes looking for herself: her one deep truth, as Terry puts it (7x04), but also for her father, because — as stated — to Claudia, her and herself are more or less one-in-the-same to her at this point, or they have to be, in order for her to function.

A semi S7 related 'tangent': Cutting Claudia's hair also removes the purple tips from her hair, and she doesn't put them back in for the rest of S6 or S7. While this moves her further away from a dark magic colour palette, which can be good, it also removes her from one of her biggest similarities to Leola in having dyed purple hair. Aaravos in S7 might see her as his daughter, and similar to what Leola would be like as if she'd lived, but it's a skewed view. Leola would likely be horrified at what they've both become, and Claudia no longer having the purple dye parallels now that she's finally being directly compared to another little girl who did is a nice reflection of this fact, I think.

As for the leg... I've talked more about her amputation and prosthetic elsewhere, so I won't go into too much detail here, but: Terry's prosthetic for her, ultimately, is a much less complicated symbol. She uses her dark magic staff as a literal crutch and then tosses it away, trusting Terry and his prosthetic to hold her weight. It's made of natural primal, not dark, magic, and means that a sign of his unconditional love for her is a part of her. The leg is 100% positive... which is why we'll revisit it near the end of season 7.

Secondly, Claudia just got another big design change, even if it's not permanent: she, like her father's nightmares made manifest, has the corrupted dark magic face after killing Sir Sparklepuff. While this doesn't last forever (the corruption fades on its own over the course of the day on the beach) and isn't always present, it does take the previous duality previously associated with just Claudia's 50/50 hair split to her literal being as a person, which is good, given that her hair is already veering into 70/30 territory.

Post haircut, Claudia's appearance doesn't change, but it almost doesn't need to. She returns to Katolis wearing a hairstyle more similar to that she had of a little girl, and returns to the exact same dependency on her father she's always had since childhood. Her search for her one deep truth is still being almost completely externalized, and is ruptured by coming across Viren's corpse. Aaravos picks up the pieces, and Claudia is brought further into his clutches.

Her appearance doesn't change too much in season 7, arguably... but in some ways is also her biggest shift and a clear bookend to what began in S4. So let's talk about it.

Season 7: Dragons Had All The Power

Post-S4, I noted that Claudia taking on more animalistic forms — the snake eyes and tail in her fight with Ibis, the bat wings in a couple of her flying scenes — offered an interesting escalation of her character. Claudia's relationship to animals and to her own body had both been fraught with violence for a long time. She kills a deer and her own innocence, in some ways, in 2x09; she sees animals and magical creatures like dragons as nothing but spell parts, with this readily extending to her own body pretty early on in the show (S3). She doesn't care about the toll dark magic takes on her body provided that her loved ones are okay, and this escalating to using/drinking her own blood (S5) and then everything about 6x01 was therefore utterly unsurprising if deeply devastating.

So, Claudia in season 7 taking all those prior season increments — the animalistic body parts through dark magic consumption, drinking her own blood and loss of her leg, etc — even further by becoming, well, a Dragon for all intents and purposes...

It was more beautiful than I could've ever imagined. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the armour itself, first.

The scale of Shiruakh is an amulet Claudia picked up in 4x03 because she thought it'd look pretty. She wears it more consistently from 6x03 onwards, which was a hint to me at the time that her other design changes weren't entirely positive. Aaravos unlocks it for her after they invert the Moon Nexus, and she leaves to kill Akiyu. Claudia then uses it in her duel against Callum, and we get a few confusing (and interesting) shots with it in quick succession.

Because while it cures/purifies her dark magic corruption face (likely due to Sun magic), summoning the armour itself also turns more of her hair white, leaving it and herself further corrupted, meaning that it is also tethered to dark magic. I also think it's interesting to give Claudia armour at all. It doesn't seemingly protect her on its own in any significant way that an alternative option could have (another staff, for example). Ezran, comparatively, is given the far more aggressive version of a literal sword designed exclusively to kill (not necessarily to defend/protect), meanwhile Claudia gets something shield adjacent.

Some of this goes back to her relationship with dark magic and her body, I think. Dark magic always provided a shield for Claudia to hide behind when confronted with undesirable truths or circumstances. She could use it as a crutch and a shield for her own worldview and goals; it was something she used to protect others and, by extension, herself. The Scale of Shiruakh is that made manifest, acting as a literal dark magic induced shield. The fact that it covers nearly her entire body, even encroaching onto her face, indicates dark magic's growing consumption of her body and her soul the further in she does, and the whiter her hair gets. The final touch, therefore, is that it also offers her a glowing replacement heart. Where Viren's heart turned to dark magic induced fiery cinders in order to protect others at the cost of himself, Claudia's orange Scale of Shiruakh heart exists to protect her at the expense of others (Callum, Akiyu, etc).

Finally, we also get to return to the prosthetic, which the armour transformation also changes. Like Claudia's face, the armour and its colour scheme encroaches onto her prosthetic. It turns the gemstones in it from natural green to a dark magic slanted purpley blue... but it leaves some of the prosthetic untouched, indicating that although Claudia's path is erasing Terry's influence on her, it hasn't been stamped out completely.

Additionally, I want to return to Claudia's character design with the armour being so dragonesque. Dragons are a loaded symbol in the series, representing pure connections to arcanums, but also immense power. It's not surprising that Aaravos' statement about Claudia being no ordinary human but the most powerful dark mage in Xadia is when she's enacting power over an archdragon and flying like one too. Dragons are still the power scale she's being measured against, the same power scale she once acknowledged (5x06) but, as noted then, "times are changing". Claudia isn't just measured against the scale any more, but can match and overcome it.

Dragons are also a particularly loaded symbol for Claudia in particular. Slaying a dragon was once her brother's life ambition (2x07) yet his willingness to kill her, a draconic figure, is something she understandably and ironically berates him for (7x09). In a season that begins with an Archdragon being an enemy and burning her home to the ground, the Archdragons save the world from her and Aaravos' wrath and from being likewise burned to the ground. The Archdragons and their sacrifices are heroic, whereas Claudia's sacrifices and draconic nature are a negative and horrific transformation. Claudia once wanted to dissect a dragon and use it for parts, piece by piece, and will likely show a similar willingness when it comes to increasingly viewing her own body as spell parts (self eating, I love you forever, mwah mwah). She has, through dark magic, become the very thing she's hated most of all, ripe with irony and strife. She can say "I'm still me" all she wants, but that's not true — and her character design proves it.

Intro Interlude

The last time we see Claudia, her character design has been altered slightly again. Not only does the framing evoke the intro she's been symbolically entrenched in for seasons now to a literal level — i.e. this was always going to come to pass, and Aaravos likely knew it — it's also reminiscent of past seasons. (There's a slight animation error as her hair would still be more white her, but I'm chalking that up to an understandable little oopsie.)

Her scale and all that it entails — having abandoned her Sun staff and later her father turned her Staff of Ziard — is currently her most prominent magical item, put front and centre. She's also donned a cloak we haven't seen her wear since 3x09 with the illusion plan, but a cloak that 99% of the time when mage characters wear it (dark!Callum in both appearances), it's to indicate they're committed to dark magic. That certainly fits Claudia at the end of the season given that she's renewing her promise to wait for Aaravos' return... and probably (hopefully?) cause plenty of problems in the meantime.

Closing thoughts

If you made it all the way through this, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Claudia's character design choices have become one of my favourites across the course of the series, and getting to dive in further was a real treat. In summary, by the end of S7, Claudia's character design has plenty of interesting implications for the future, but not without some hope. Furthermore, if you're interested in more / alternative thoughts on Claudia's hair and character design, I'd rec checking out this meta by @kradogsrats (I also concur that, most likely, her hair will still be short in Arc 3, and potentially grown out again in a S10 epilogue).

[raayllum]

It's Cute, So What?: Literally 3,500 Words About Claudia's Hair

So @​raayllum did a poll a while back for predictions on whether Claudia's hair will be long or short in Arc 3, and I had an immediate visceral opinion on the answer. (Spoiler: short, with caveats.)

Claudia's hair is the signature feature of her character design—a design that, other than her hair, essentially doesn't change for six entire seasons. That's not inherently unusual, but those six seasons include a two-year timeskip where every single other main-cast character gets a full head-to-toe redesign.

Well, every single main-cast character except Aaravos. Hmmmm.

The point is, of all the design considerations in this show, Claudia's hair is one of the ones I can most confidently say is never arbitrary. Claudia's hair length in Arc 3 is not a simple "seven years of hair growth" consideration—her hair is the entire past and future of her character arc.

A Horrible Lightness

Let's get the obvious out of the way, first: Claudia's hair is the semi-literal ticking clock for her character. It's the countdown to an implied point of no return for her—a point at which she can no longer be saved. The show is very explicit about this.

In Arc 1, we see it go from a single, inoffensive streak to encompassing fully half her hair, corresponding with her use of increasingly powerful and disturbing magic.

At the time of s3's release, we didn't know that two years had passed, so we all kind of assumed whatever spell resurrected Viren turned all that hair white at once. That may be the case, or it may have happened incrementally. Either way, it's literally making its way around her head like a clock (though it's technically going counter-clockwise), with the implication that whatever happens when it gets all the way around will be... bad.

Viren even sees the implied end-state of that progression during his dream in s5e3:

This comes after he has seen Claudia start out "following in his footsteps," then go beyond the point where he has stopped, wading out into a vast sea where (after she ignores his pleas for her to return) she is swallowed by a massive wave, sinking down into darkness as he dives after her. At the end of s5, part of this vision becomes a reality. The rest remains a threat, the implied worst possible outcome.

(Though the point of Viren's dream is that it is never too late to change your direction, so there's a bit of tension between that message and the implication that Claudia is has limited time until she cannot be saved. But there's also a bit of tension between that aspect of Viren's dream and all of s6, so.)

I'm going to talk about s6 separately, since there's probably more going on hair-wise in that season than all the others, combined. In short, for s6 and s7 she goes from the look I affectionately call "quarter 'til doomsday" to her Arc 2 end state, with only a few remaining thin sections of black:

Way back in s3e7, when Claudia and Soren diverge, he tells her, "Claudia, you're changing too. But it's not too late." As he says this line, she reaches up to tuck her hair behind her ear, unconsciously touching that first white streak. In s7e9, after hearing that Soren thinks she's beyond saving (and going to the edge of proving it by killing him) she tells him, "I'm still nice. I'm still me." She again reaches up to brush the hair out of her face, unconsciously touching one of the few remaining slivers of black.

Despite everything, there are a few seconds left on the clock.

Okay, I have fulfilled my obligation to talk about that. Now let's talk about the rest of it. What else are we told about Claudia by her hair, besides that she's doomed by the narrative?

Looking a Bit Wilted

Like any goth girl, Claudia's look is cultivated. She had her ears pierced. She paints her nails regularly. She dyed part of her hair purple. None of those are things that just happen, she had to go out of her way to do them. Her appearance is important to her, at minimum as a means of self-expression.

The appearance she has cultivated for Arc 1, which she is still clinging to as it degrades in Arc 2, is also heavily influenced by and connected to her mother. I mean, look: what does she do when she wants to feel attractive and mature?

Claudia's mental image of Lissa is probably a good bit less overtly sexy than Viren's, but still: her idea of beauty remains, as Soren puts it, "some kind of a... braid-bag flower-dealy."

I could sit down and go through all the ways Lissa's appearance influences even Claudia's day-to-day look, but for this post I'll keep it to one other example: we don't know enough about Claudia's dyed hair to do more than speculate, but it's a feature she has as early as Puzzle House, i.e. shortly after Lissa left. Meaning that if she dyed it earlier than that, it was probably with Lissa's help or oversight, and is one of the only remaining pieces of their relationship. Alternately, if she dyed it after, it's consistent with the pattern of behavior she exhibits in Puzzle House as a reaction to her family breaking apart—specifically acting out in ways that both seek attention and make her feel like she has control over something in her life. Either way, she still has the style ten years later, meaning she has specifically dyed it that way repeatedly, or else she hasn't cut her hair since her mother left. It's something from that time of her life that she has deliberately held on to... and that gets slowly erased by the creeping corruption.

What I actually want to cover here is a little bit more abstract: the way Claudia's perception of her own appearance is influenced by Viren's perception of Lissa's perception of his appearance. Convoluted, but what I'm saying is basically that Claudia, at a specific point, links dark magic, her mother, and her own appearance in a very similar way to how Viren does.

In the short story Lost Child, Claudia is confronted by the effects dark magic is beginning to have on her appearance (aside from her hair). Obviously they're not anywhere near as severe as on Viren (yet), but she still performs either the same or a similar spell to the one Viren uses to refresh/hide his corruption:

A moment later, she blinked into the pond; her reflection beamed up at her. Her eyes brighter, her face fuller, more color in her cheeks. Small changes, but still— There I am, she thought.

In the Book One novelization, when Viren performs the spell (equivalent scene to the opening of s1e5):

Every time he enacted this ritual, Viren was reminded of the first time he had performed it. He remembered his relief when it worked, restoring his appearance. [...] And even more clearly, he remembered the bitter hole left in his soul when Lissa told him his restored appearance changed nothing.

Earlier in Lost Child, Claudia also thinks about Lissa:

Lissa had left her years ago, but the space she had owned in Claudia’s heart remained. It was a dark place now, hard and hateful, its edges raw as a wound that had forgotten to heal. [...] But her shadow still painted the walls of that space; her presence still lingered, just like her violet perfume.

When Claudia performs the spell, she smells violets.

Both she and Viren link the deterioration and restoration of their features through dark magic with bitter memories of Lissa. Both, to different degrees, link that deterioration with judgement and shame. For Viren, it's a foundational part of the breakup of his marriage and family. For Claudia, it's a bit more complicated—in Lost Child, she connects the effects on her appearance with weakness, or with being (as she puts it) "a mess." After performing the spell and seeing her refreshed appearance, she thinks: I’m not a mess. I’m a dark mage.

Put a pin in that for a minute, we'll come back to it.

A Thread Caught and Clung To

Lost Child is set immediately after the end of s4—Viren has fainted only "minutes" before, and Claudia's weeks-long vigil over him is about to begin. Claudia's appearance has a major change at the start of s4—the expansion of the white in her hair—and s6 will eventually kick in with a whole bunch of changes, but for most of s4 and s5, she maintains a very specific and static look.

The centerpiece feature of this look? The braid.

The braid is in and of itself a visually striking piece of design, further emphasizing Claudia's limbo state, but also expanding on it: what might look like a neat separation of dark and light is not. Nothing in this series, least of all Claudia herself, exists in perfect dichotomy: good and evil, right and wrong, doomed and saved. There is, instead, duality: all of those things are twisted up and intertwined. In many ways, they cannot be separated at all.

I want to talk about something else regarding the braid, though:

Terry puts it in her hair.

Now, Claudia definitely knows how to braid her own hair. There's no reason to think this is the first time her hair has ever been braided, or even the first time Terry has braided it for her. But it's the first time for the audience. For the first couple episodes of s4, we've been getting used to the new status quo, and Terry is a bit of an enigma. Who is this guy? How is he involved with Claudia? Why should we care about him at all? Then, in s4e3, Terry kills Ibis to save her, which raises the stakes of his character and their relationship quite a bit. Before that, he braids her hair.

And that braid stays—there are only two further points in s4-s5 when Claudia's hair is loose. (Her actual hair, at least. The version of her in Viren's dream has her hair loose, which is making its own point.) One is in s4e4, where she loses the braid from s4e3 overnight and her hair is loose for hatching Sir Sparklepuff. (Maybe she doesn't sleep in it, and Terry rebraids it every morning.) The other is in s5e9, where she loses it somewhere during her descent into the Sea of the Castout. It's literally there when she submerges, and then not there when we next see her. Or when Terry next sees her.

I'm not going to sit here and spin out a full interpretation of why it's these two exact points where the braid is gone (hint: it's when Claudia is most linked with Aaravos and least with Terry). The point is, for the rest of s4 and s5, as we see Claudia leaning more and more on Terry, The Braid(tm) is there.

You’ll Copy Me, but You Won’t Listen to Me

Before I go into the s6 haircut scene, we need to circle back to check in with something else important-ish: Claudia's other dark magic corruption, i.e. the deterioration of her (and Viren's) appearance that was focused on in Lost Child.

Along with the progressing white in Claudia's hair, up until s6 there was a looming question of whether (and when) she would begin to exhibit the other physical effects of dark magic corruption that we were introduced to with Viren in Arc 1, because that has always represented its own point of no return. We even see the first depiction of it in Viren's dream of Claudia being too late to be saved—along with her fully-white hair.

In s6e1, she finally crosses that threshold, turning to face Viren and revealing that his nightmares have become reality:

Remember those associations of judgement and shame Claudia and Viren share regarding the dark magic deterioration of their appearances? When Viren approaches, Claudia doesn't look at him. She doesn't turn when she hears his voice, even when he addresses her directly. Even though she believes everything she has done to be necessary sacrifices demanded by love, she still looks down at her bloodied hands and steels herself before turning to face her father. Viren has taught her, by his example, that however righteous the choice was, the effects are shameful and something to be hidden.

What makes this moment so gut-wrenchingly horrible is that Claudia is very much looking to her father for validation. She has, after all, done exactly what he did—in a desperate moment, she saved the life of someone she loves, at great cost to herself. In her understanding, this is the highest form of familial love. When he looks at her, she expects him to see how much she loves him. She wants him to be proud of her, even in a bittersweet way. They now share something deeper than they did before—the "aching pain mixed with love" that goes with "however dangerous, however vile."

Instead, Viren is appalled. He doesn't show pride, or gratitude, or acknowledge it as an experience they now share. He doesn't even understand. He asks her why. He tells her it hurts him to see her like this. In Claudia's mind, she has failed in a way worse than she could ever imagine—her father is alive, but she has somehow driven him away.

For both scenes, Claudia's hair is not tucked behind her ears the way it usually is when she's wearing it loose. It hangs in her face to partially or fully obscure it. She has shown her now-devastated appearance to the person she thought would most understand and accept it, and she has been vehemently and traumatically rejected.

In the terms of Lost Child, she is now well and truly a mess, and she's a mess because she's a dark mage.

Anyway, back to this topic later.

Like a Helpless Thing

After what is either the single most crucial missing scene in the entire series, or else just hours/days of wandering around until she got tired and hungry on top of all of the other trauma, we get to s6e3 and the haircut scene.

Throughout the scenes of Terry caring for Claudia, she remains almost non-responsive. He helps her into the water, presumably undresses her, re-positions her limbs and body to bathe them. Even going into the hair scene, she sits curled up and staring off into space, just like she was when he bathed her. The first time we see her react at all to what he's doing is when she winces in pain. She silently directs Terry to cut off her hair, rather than continue trying to fix it.

As I emphasized earlier, aside from the tick-tock of white in her hair, Claudia's appearance has barely changed from Arc 1. There's a reason she doesn't change during the timeskip: her entire goal for those two years and beyond has been to return to an Arc 1 ideal status quo. She wants to go back to before things changed, or restore them enough that the change is negligible. The core of what's happening here is that beyond a certain point, attempting to restore what she had before—her long hair—causes her pain. Things cannot go back to how she wanted. She has been irrevocably changed. Viren has been irrevocably changed. To finally admit that—to stop hurting herself by pulling at the tangles, to instead cut them out and start fresh—still feels like failure.

Not to mention: Claudia has had long hair for the majority of her life. Lissa also had long hair. Even absent wider culture bullshit about long hair and femininity, she's deviating from both her own established self-image and from her internal model for beauty. It's not a penance haircut in the way that cutting off long hair can represent total humiliation for women, but it's also not necessarily a change she would make under any other circumstances. She doesn't know if she'll ever be happy, or even feel like herself, again. That feels like death.

But after all of that—cleaned up, dressed, probably fed and maybe even rested—Claudia assesses the haircut and finds... it's pretty cute, actually?

She has been changed, and she likes the result. Maybe she can't go back... but she can be okay with where she is, now.

This (well, the next scene, in s6e4... but this is what puts her there) is the closest we see her come to quitting dark magic, something it would have been inconceivable for her to even consider only days earlier.

Powerful and Potent

So what goes wrong? Well... Aaravos, obviously.

Aaravos validates Claudia in ways and to an extent she has never experienced before, not even from Viren. Everyone who has left her—her mother, her brother, her father, Terry, and even Callum and Ezran—have done so on some level because of dark magic. (Terry because of her behavior, but I don't think she's really able to separate the two at that point.) Meanwhile, the being who gave dark magic to humans calls her the most powerful dark mage in the world. She's literally god's favorite child, now. She doesn't need anyone else.

In the second half of s7, when Claudia's corruption reappears at the Moon Nexus, she doesn't feel like she needs to hide it from Aaravos, or from anyone. Viren was ashamed of it—Viren, in her mind, rejected her for it—but Aaravos fully embraces her as a dark mage. Even more than that, they embrace (and enable) each other's ugliest parts:

Figuratively and literally. Well, figurative and literal ugliness. The embracing is, as of yet, figurative only. (Maybe they'll hug it out in Arc 3.) After that, Claudia no longer cares about anyone else's judgement. Not even Callum's—the person she has previously been most outwardly sensitive to judging her.

Claudia's short haircut appears to be closely linked with the possibility of her giving up dark magic, particularly by being part of the same sequence where Terry presents the prosthetic he made for her and (as noted by @​raayllum) she drops the crutch of her dark magic staff to stand on it and embrace him. Seeing her instead go deeper than ever before in s7 feels like she's backsliding and I can see how some people may have found that unsatisfying. However, I think some of the haircut's nuance is getting lost, in that: it's not representative of a choice or change Claudia has actually made for her future. She doesn't backslide or relapse, because there's nothing to slide or lapse from.

What Claudia's short hair represents, going into s7 and beyond, is that it's possible to return to someone you left, and not be rejected. It's possible to welcome back someone who left you, not by restoring the past, but by entering a new future. Terry can cut her hair with the same love and care he once braided it with. That haircut can also be pretty cute, actually. Accepting change, or even choosing to change, is not inherently weakness, or failure, or death of the self.

This is going to be absolutely crucial for Claudia to understand as her arc swings toward completion. Basically, when it comes to giving up dark magic, Viren had to learn that change is possible—that the choices he made before don't prevent him from making different ones, now. Claudia has to understand that change is survivable—that dark magic is not (as it appears at the end of s7) all she has left.

Claudia at the end of s7 is a collection of competing signals. "I'm still me," she says, when (in comparison with Arc 1) she's completely unrecognizable—even inverted. The first streak of white came from healing Soren, and the last few remain when she flies away from him.

Know Your Roots and Know Yourself

So what does all this mean for Arc 3 Claudia?

Here's what I think it means: Claudia will still have short hair in Arc 3. The short hair is too important. Like the last slivers of black in her hair are linked thematically with Soren's efforts to reach her, the short hair is a mark of both Terry's love for her—a mark he left on her—and the openness to change she once felt. If anything, I would not be at all surprised if she actually loses that last bit of black sometime during Arc 3. The whole point is that the ticking clock has always been a lie—it's never too late to change.

Anyway, even if she has long hair, it will very specifically be in dialogue with her short hair. Long hair would mean that she has either stopped taking care of her appearance at all (entirely possible, given her late-season attitude regarding her corruption), or she is deliberately rejecting/erasing what the short hair represents. It's a lot harder to have a dramatic breakup grow-your-hair-out than a dramatic breakup haircut, but not impossible. Growing out her hair to deliberately erase Terry would raise some questions about her prosthetic, but Claudia is nothing if not contradictory in her compartmentalization. (Personally, if she was going to shed one or the other, I would expect her to get rid of the prosthetic.) Either way, if she starts Arc 3 with long hair, I would lay money on her cutting it by the end.

Whatever happens, it will not be arbitrary. It will be a meaningful continuation of the way Claudia's hair has followed her character arc so far, and it may very well tell us something about where she's going. And who knows? Maybe it will be cute, too.

[raayllum]