The Realization That Who You Are Was Only Possible Because Of Everything You Lost - Tumblr Posts

Ohh this is really interesting though.

Because Helena becomes resentful of organized crime because of what it did to her family. She sought revenge and started her vigilante career for the expressed purpose of getting revenge. It wasn't a short-term idea either. She was actively working towards it for years. She took class on the mafia and the structure specifically with the purpose of it fueling her revenge. This wasn't something created by her extended family when she stayed with them or when they were teaching her fighting skills. If she was doing it against her will, she would have stopped after they got taken into custody during the Italian crackdown on organized crime. The key pillar of who she is comes from the early tragedy. It comes from being told she could get blood for blood. It comes from the realization that she could tear it down.

Tragedy fundamentally changes a person, for better or worse.

Could she, in a world where her family wasn't murdered have become resentful of organized crime and worked in other ways to take it down? Sure. Anything is possible. She has shown a great capacity to care, especially in how she becomes a teacher. Maybe she sees what organized crime is doing to children and comes to hate it.

I also think you have to ask at what point Helena Huntress would meet or see a version of herself who didn't loose her family, because early days Huntress would have a different reaction than Helena who's been in the game for a couple years and now is focusing efforts elsewhere as well.

Helena's story is about the cycles of violence. Blood Cries for Blood. That is a cycle of bloodshed and grief. The lose of someone leads to the death of someone else leads to the death of another etc.

A Helena who wouldn't pick up that cycle isn't Huntress, she can't be Huntress because she wouldn't be hunting down the mafia. Helena who picks up the cycle of violence in another way, though. In the continuation of the Bertinelli crime family. Maybe she stands directly in the way of Batman and co. Now.

Helena as Huntress has hero connections outside of Gotham, with the BoP, multiple versions of the Justice League, and various teamups throughout the years. Helena, who has her family, wouldn't have this.

There is a sort of grief in that. Helena, who gets to see her family, lives at the cost of everything she knows. The Question, Black Canary, Oracle, Lady Blackhawk. She doesn't know any of them. Helena, as Huntress, had the chance to become friends with Barbara, but Helena without Huntress wouldn't.

Thinking about Helena... The grief she feels over the loss of her family is powerful and moving to her and the tragedy of them being killed before her eyes molds her idea of justice. At the same time, what her idea of justice becomes is at odds with what her mafia family had done. I wonder what she would think of a version of herself whose family never died.