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#<- note this is in ref to huntress (1989)
senorscotty · 1 year
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thinking about identity is so interesting with helena because yes there is that natural push and pull between helena and the huntress that many anti-heroes/vigilantes face when they put the mask on, but helena also has this quandary about who she even is in the absence of her father and his legacy. she initially creates the identity of the huntress as a version of herself that isn’t entombed in fear and grief, invents someone that goes towards the cry for help instead of needing it. there’s something about helena coming back for her younger self through the mask, hearing the cry for help no one else did, as the entity of huntress.
but i think in issue 6, when she lets one of the men who were complicit in her family’s death fall to his death, helena doesn’t have her mask on. it’s not huntress who is present in those moments where she confronts the people who killed her family, but helena herself. ESPECIALLY those moments when she sees the family photos her father locked away in his safe. she’s reconnected to her grief and role as the bertinelli daughter but she can’t retreat into her mask. she has to claw back some strength when she’s at risk of losing her agency and becoming a pawn all over again.
and then when she does get to avenge her family, she gets to start being herself not just her family’s goddaughter and her father’s daughter. but she doesn’t know who that even IS! it’s insane because she wants to create a division between helena and the bertinelli legacy, and in the process leans on the huntress more and more -> struggles to find out if it's her (with a shifting sense of self) or the huntress (resolute as helena idealizes her to be) in control. like somehow within her origin - it’s the mask that is constant in her life but not its creator.
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