#adria lafayette

One of the main conflicts from MGADD Season 2B is Adria disapproving of Lunella being Moon Girl that comes from the episode ¨The Molecular Level¨.

After seeing Lunella face such a dangerous enemy like Molecular Man, Adria forbids Lunella from being a superhero for a while. She makes Lunella get rid and save all the stuff that has to do with Moon Girl, like her gadgets and inventions, believing it is for her own safety. In meantime Devil is left on his own to deal with the new crime wave that comes from Moon Girl not longer stopping the villains and allowing them to get away. Devil struggles a lot of his own, having a really hard time stopping all the villains by himself.

Adria’s reasoning behind not allowing Lunella to be Moon Girl is reasonable since she is trying to protect Lunella from danger, she worries about her safety as other parents would do in this type of situation. Through the episode it is observable through her expressions, body language and some dialogue that she doesn’t exactly like doing any of this to her daughter but she is doing what she thinks is best for her, even if it causes a rift in her relationship with Lunella.

The problem comes from how this leaves the LES unprotected from criminals and supervillains that Moon Girl would usually take care of. Because of this mess, a group of villains ends up taking the opportunity to team up and do a wave of crimes in the city, not being anyone aside from Devil to stop them.

Adria also becomes overprotective, if not overwhelming, since she is seen invading Lunella’s private space constantly just for the sake of keeping an eye on Lunella and making sure that she isn’t planning on doing anything she doesn’t know about. She wants to check that Lunella isn’t trying to sneak out nor coming up with some new invention for her superhero stuff.

As a personal opinion, I’m not fond of Adria doing this. It’s done in a comedic exaggerated manner but it still feels like she is overstepping certain lines for what would be understandable actions from her perspective. She even becomes a school assistant to keep an eye on Lunella, following her everywhere around school, making her uncomfortable and again not respecting her privacy.

Lunella finds a loophole to her problem by building a Moon Girl bot that she can control with a remote from her own home. This means she doesn’t have to get out of the house and she can fight crime at the same time. This idea seems to work for a moment until Adria invites Lunella to hang out because she feels like they have been distant lately. One thing takes to the other and Adria finds out about the Moon Girl bot after accidentally taking one of its arms off in front of the public.

After this Lunella and Adria have a conversation about the situation and, instead of getting too angry, Adria explains that she is so worried about Lunella being hurt as Moon Girl that she struggles sleeping and eating. She tells Lunella that she is deeply stressed about this whole thing and just wants her to be safe. Lunella understands this and promises Adria that she won’t go behind her back like that again.

Another point is that in part Lunella feels forced to hide or not be a part of who she is. As she told her parents in ¨The Molecular Level¨ Moon Girl is part of her identity. It is something she wants to be. So when Adria tells her that she can’t be Moon Girl, she feels like she has to suppress a part of herself.

This aspect is brought up by Grandpa Pops at seeing that the villains are taking over the city and had trapped Casey, Devil and the mayor of the city as their prisoners and Lunella crying about not knowing what to do. Pops says to Lunella that sometimes you have to do things or be a part of who you are even if it makes others uncomfortable. As much as it hurts Adria, Lunella gets reminded she has to do the right thing and stand up for it.

Lunella tries going to the lab but she is stopped by Adria who happens to show up in the room at that moment. Lunella tells her that she ¨hears and understands¨ but ¨she has to do the right¨ and reminds Adria that she learned that from watching her. Adria breaks down at seeing how Lunella takes so much from her and moves out of the way, allowing Lunella to look for her Moon Girl stuff.

Lunella returns home after defeating the villains and Adria approaches her, checking on her for any injuries. As she tries talking to her about the fight she had, Adria changes topic and acts distant- she is very uncomfortable talking about Moon Girl stuff and would rather avoid it, still struggling to accept Lunella being a superhero.

The two episodes that follow (Ride Along and Lava Actually) show Lunella and Adria having a strained complicated relationship with Lunella feeling like she has to walk on eggshells everytime something about Moon Girl is brought up because this makes her mother upset. ¨Ride Along¨ explores Lunella feeling stressed out about her relationship with Adria and fears that her dad will too if she can’t have an ¨Moon Girl moment¨ with him- this episode ends up being more about Lunella and James but her interactions with Adria had an overall impact on her action during it.

The episode ¨Full Moon¨ explores this conflict deeper. Lunella gets her first period and, as a way to celebrate it, Adria asks Lunella if she wants to go on a ¨mother-daughter day¨ to which Lunella accepts happily. She talks about how it has been months ever since they hung out like this to Casey and Devil and how she would like this day to be ¨Moon Girl free¨ as long as she is hanging out with her mom.

Both Lunella and Adria have a great time spending time together. They go to different places and they take lots of photos together. Lunella is happy that they are doing this again since she missed doing things with her mom like this. However, this time suddenly starts to get interrupted by some mutant roots that keep attacking Devil and they keep regenerating each time Lunella cuts them. This makes her have to juggle between being with Adria and being Moon Girl while she tries to avoid Adria finding out about it because she doesn’t want their special day to be ruined.

This leads Adria to realize that having to hide this from her is really affecting Lunella and she talks to her about how she is growing up and she should try to accept these changes better. Adria tells Lunella that she should accept Moon Girl, since she is part of who she is, and she loves Lunella for all that she is. The episode ends with their relationship being repaired, as now Adria realizes she was wrong for trying to suppress something that was part of Lunella’s identity and it is better for her to be allowed to be who she is.

In the episodes that follow Lunella is seen more willing to share stuff from her Moon Girl side to Adria and Adria is shown to be supportive in return. Their relationship is back to being open and not strained, like it used to be pre superhero identity reveal, except now it is different because of that.

One good example of this development is during ¨Party Girl¨ that Lunella goes to Adria for a piece of advice regarding Moon Girl. Adria offers her some words about what she could do about her situation and is glad that Lunella is sharing these things with her.

In ¨Guess Who is Coming to Dinner¨ has Lunella introducing Beyonder to Adria when she had to hide him from him in previous instances he would show up. Adria is confused and shocked at first by the Beyonder but quickly warms up to him and even considers part of the family near the end of the episode, asking for a toast in his name.

Last point, Adria is seen supporting Lunella in her decision to go on a mission for SHIELD in the series finale. She is with the rest of the family when Lunella is saying goodbye to everyone in LES as Moon Girl, showing that she has come a long way from where she started at the start of this part of the season.