#luhley

If your first reaction was “who?”, congratulations: You’ve proven my point.

Luhley is an incredibly talented fighter, arms-woman, pilot and plumber who first appears in the Omniverse-episode “Blukic And Driba Go To Area 51″.

Her entire thing in that episode is that she’s mad as hell at Blukic and Driba for sabotaging her mission, stealing her ship and almost letting earth get destroyed by a crazy guy and his killer robot years ago and that she wants to get back the super-weapon needed to stop said killer robot that these two idiots lost when they landed in Area 51.

Did that sound interesting?

Would you like to learn more about her?

Too bad! Because this episode isn’t really about her. It’s about Blukic and Driba wanting to screw her.

She barely gets characterized beyond being crushed on and getting increasingly tired of Blukic and Driba (same girl, same).

And at the end of the episode she thanks them for doing the bare minimum of getting the weapon out of storage while she and Ben fought off the gigantic killer robot.

After that she’s only in two more episodes: “Malgax Attacks” and “The Most Dangerous Game Show”.

Her role in both of these episodes is to be a love interest for male characters. And nothing else. She only even gets to speak in one of those.

Oh, and remember how I mentioned her getting increasingly tired of Blukic and Driba hitting on her in “Blukic And Driba Go To Area 51″?

Apparently the writers didn’t like the thought that some women don’t do relationships, because in “Malgax Attacks” she’s suddenly interested in those two idiots and at the end of the episode she starts to date Driba.

So, to summarize: We have a female character who is incredibly competent and has an interesting backstory, but is rarely focused on, except when the series needs her to be a love interest for a male character.

Am I talking about Luhley or literally any Ben 10 character who is female and not named Gwen?