A blog for writers writing everything from history to suspense. Wife, blogger, writer.
Mirage : A character study
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When I watched The Incredibles (the first one, for clarification purposes) I looked at Mirage as someone who might not have been fully down with the plan. Is it possible she did the bidding of Syndrome under romantic pressure? Was she used by Syndrome to get to Mr. Incredible and did he create a relationship to do so exclusively?
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While she is definitely guilty of helping Syndrome murder Supers, what I want to know is her motivation. She was down to do all the dirty work of Syndrome, but why? She clearly wasn't in it to murder children based on her reaction to Mrs. Incredible/Elastigirl declaring there were children on the plane. Obviously, she was only signed up to kill the Supers they were targeting. Syndrome shows how unbalanced and sociopathic he truly is, even letting her be potentially snapped in half by a furious Mr. Incredible. You'll note that this is when she snaps back on Syndrome and literally undoes all the work she did to lure Mr. Incredible to the island. This points to her motivation being directly connected to Syndrome himself.
I used to think Syndrome killed her, but given that Syndrome left the island and then got betrayed by his own cape I think that's quite impossible. He was never aware that he was betrayed by Mirage. It is no longer a mystery to me what she did. I honestly think she left the island and ran off somewhere. Comics say she works for the NSA. We'll never know where she went in between because she's too good at espionage. Long story short, I do think that Syndrome could have killed her if the plot had let him return to the island, but the plot of the story never had him return. Capes were truly a bad idea.
Evidence of Romantic Connection
Body language is one of the keys to catching a romance in the air. He takes her by the chin early on. You don't usually do that when you are just friends. Either Syndrome or Mirage wants it to be more and it isn't, or it was a romantic connection and she's seeing through him. She shoves Syndrome away from Mr. Incredible to save him. Again, the betrayal timing happens after she learns he doesn't care about killing children or her life. It may have been developing as time went on. The video below is a theory (one that some agree and disagree on) that may also explain why she'd even work for him. Some people think he had psych-related powers and was working for the US government on the sly, which may be where Mirage came in.
What I've found is that Mirage does have a romance blooming with Syndrome, until he decides to gamble her life like it was worth less than a penny. It is clear that she sees him as misunderstood, rather than unstable. She has convinced herself he has good qualities and cares about her. This delusion ends the minute he tells Mr. Incredible to go ahead and kill her. She also has some moral lines, allegedly, because she has serious qualms with killing children that aren't her targets.
Morals and Ambitions
To be sure, we're not looking at a saint. She is guilty of tracking and having a hand in killing Supers. She sees an opportunity for power in Syndrome that shifts slightly as the movie plot continues. Emotion is there, yes, but how much has she already done? Mirage pays for none of her crimes and ends up recruited by the NSA (possibly to make up for her crimes). Maybe she had a choice between the NSA and prison. We'll never know for sure unless someone actually states what happened in future comics or movies.
An attraction to power is not something that leads down a saintly road. Power is something that gets taken by force and never leaves you on stable ground. It can also blow you in a different direction every time someone you're attached to gets power stripped from them. If the only connection to Syndrome was power, I'd say she undid her hard work against herself, but I don't think that is fully true. Yes, Syndrome had power - a whole island of technology, too -, but he crossed a line by attempting to kill children (which is a principle even some hardened resistance fighters of WWII sometimes maintained). It isn't coming out of left field to say that Syndrome crossed a line by also gambling her life, especially given that there is a romantic element in play. Power was her motive for killing Supers, yet I highly doubt her motive for betraying Syndrome had anything to do with power (unless she did consider he was a bit off-kilter and could be a sinking ship).
Another possibility that remains is whether Syndrome needed her anymore. She bent to his every whim, found Mr. Incredible and several Supers for him, and yet Syndrome was going to let Mr. Incredible crush her. This reflects that he may have led her on until he had what he wanted. Mr. Incredible was the target he was going for, if I understand him correctly, due to a childhood grudge. He had to wade through several Supers to get there. Now that Syndrome has what he wants, what use is Mirage? She could have seen the red flags and the change in Syndrome after Mr. Incredible was on the island. The real Syndrome comes out for her to see and she may have betrayed him, then run off for the sake of self-preservation. The scene where he gambled her life was proof she was now disposable and she was not going to be treated like a pawn.
Conclusions
All this comes down to three connections to Syndrome, which are power, a romantic relationship, and ambition., She had the ambition to be his second in command, the romance to keep her tied to him, and the attraction to power that kept her working for him. He revealed she was a pawn in his game when he gambled her life, resulting in romantic devastation and the realization that she was now disposable. The motive for the crimes may have been her love for Syndrome and his power, but the motive for her undoing her work was the way he gambled her life and crossed lines for petty revenge purposes. No angels here, ladies and gents, but we do have a smart woman who saw the red flags and ran before he could actually dispose of her. I do believe he could have murdered her along with the other Supers they killed, had he lived to the end of the movie. A sociopathic manipulator like him could have absolutely murdered his second in command (since he'd done it so many times already and had no qualms about killing innocent Supers).
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