#its like zari 1.0 was the character i related to most for a /reason/

[zettaiunmeis]

as much as i love this relationship between z 2.0 and ava, i kind of wish legends had developed the friendships between zari 1.0 and some of the time bureau ladies a bit more last season. bc like, maybe its just me, but i always kind of wanted zari to be that one person that sara and ava find themselves lowkey relying on, talking to when they can’t talk to each other. like, yes, i loved the friendships that zari 1.0 developed w sara and amaya and charlie but??? think of the potential she had with nora or ava or mona.

more below the cut because this got heated and long

(i know they sort of did that last one in 4x11, but it didnt feel like a very consistent thing, like. the charlie/mona relationship from that episode was far better fleshed out than zari 1.0 and mona’s and as much as i like that relationship, i feel that in a ep that focused specifically on z1.0 and mona, those two should be the ones who develop a strong foundation for a relationship, and that should have been really, pulled out through the season.)

and i guess that was my biggest problem w the nate/z1 storyline last season? while, yes, i liked their development, i felt like it took a lot of time away from z1’s relationships with other members of the team. 

i’d have really liked to see ava and z1 interacting and her sort of being both ava and sara’s go-to person when they needed something/someone to take charge or smth bc i can definitely see ava really respecting zari’s no-nonsense approach to the task at hand, and her ability to sympathise with others well.

and nora and zari was an interaction ive been hoping for since the very beginning of s4 bc that was how they seemed to set up the storyline: for zari to be ray’s voice of caution when it came to nora. like, i do love darhkatom, and i loved ray’s sort of “ill believe in your ability to be a good person even if you’re not sure you can be” attitude, i still feel like it should have been tempered by at least some other character’s caution about nora. and zari was the person that they clearly set up for that role. without that, frankly, the darhkatom plot seemed lowkey flat to me, because there was no one to be like, “i know i was always unsure about her, but i also thought she was trying to be better” after nora was accused of killing hank, and that made it kind of. idk like the darhkatom plot (and really all of ray’s storylines in s4) really kind of disconnected with the rest of the season.

and on a lighter note, nora and zari were the only two zoomers of the ensemble, and i really wanted to interact for the pure reason of future shenanigans. like, nora or zari saying shit like, “damn life was fucking schway when they still had sugar in candy” and the other just nodding like that makes perfect sense while the rest of the crew is like, “what is a schway??? what happened to sugar in candy??” and like. their shared future-present sort of gives them the ability to say like, “hey remember that one thing that happened?” and sort of process trauma that they might have both gone through because of the anti-meta laws and stuff.

and i guess mona and zari’s thing is what really kind of pissed me off bc. zari never really had a surrogate younger sibling friend on the waverider. (you can make the argument for wally or jax but jax already had his own established place in the ship and it really felt more like he was the older brother indulging his younger sister by letting her distract him with video games, and wally and zari were only developed for one ep before it was go time to throw the legends into season finale development.) 

with mona, their relationship was established, early on, as mona being the hopeful/cheerful one, and with zari being the cynic, much in the same vein as zari and ray. however, the key difference between zari and ray and mona and zari is the difference in character development between mona and ray, as of when they are developing their respective relationships with zari. ray is an already established character in phone home, and so, zari’s character arc uses him as a sort of,,, like those cages that they make for vines to grow onto. mona, on the other hand, uses the more turbulent character of zari to try and have them both grow together, in seance and sensibility. this more parallels the arc of sara and zari’s relationship, where zari acts as a sort of a younger sibling to sara. the whole development of mona and zari lends itself to a mona being the slightly annoying sunshine younger sibling and zari being the cynical if-you-hurt-her-you-die older sibling, and then,,, it just doesn’t deliver. instead, you get occasional annoying shipper mona, and irritated zari, and tbh thats just highkey disappointing.

and you can say that it isnt all about zari or that im being dramatic or that they just had a lot of storylines and not a lot of time but,,, frankly, id say youre wrong and making excuses. because the way the season ended, with zari being the one to give herself up, makes it fucking imperative that they try to get that goddamn emotion across to the viewers. and while they got plenty of emotion, it was solely because of the fact that people related to zari. instead, if they had spent zari 1.0′s last season developing all those relationships, instead of just nate and a little bit of charlie and john, they would have brought such a heavy emotional impact because holy shit she impacted every single one of these people, and not one of them even remember her.

im not saying that they shouldn’t have written steelhacker, or anything like that. hell, im glad they developed zari and nates relationship past the point they got it to in 3x11. but at the same time, if they truly wanted the most emotional impact out of the s4 finale, they should have had her be the fucking center of the team, not just nate’s girlfriend and charlie, john, ray, and sara’s friend.