Spend any amount of time with Lisa Hanawalt’s bewitching, anxiety-laden, and outrageously horny artwork, and you’ll come away with plenty of questions. What are the physics of a subway system where the trains are snakes? What kind of a sicko would imagine a chopped-off penis transforming into a lizard? And how should a horse hold a cellphone, anyway?

But one question, at least — the question of how she came to create these images at all — has a simple answer. “I just always made them,” Hanawalt explained to me during a recent interview. “Ever since I was, like, 7 years old, I made comics about talking animals.” 

Today, Hanawalt’s talking animals populate BoJack Horseman and Tuca & Bertie, two award-winning adult animation series with devoted followings. They sweat and pant and cringe on the pages of her books: My Dirty Dumb Eyes (2013), Hot Dog Taste Test (2016), and Coyote Doggirl (2018). And now, the artist’s fans can glimpse her earliest zines, comics, and rarities in I Want You, a newly released anthology that collects material Hanawalt created during her early 20s. 

On a hot afternoon at the end of August, I opened Zoom and waited for Hanawalt to join our video call. She was running late, her publisher warned me — busy recording with actor Steve Yeun, who plays a patient robin named Speckle on Tuca & Bertie. Despite a packed schedule, our conversation meandered for nearly an hour, long past our allotted window, as Hanawalt opened up about the twists and turns her career has taken.

That Hanawalt is currently producing a second season of Tuca & Bertie, the TV show she created for Netflix about two women BFFs who are also birds, seems miraculous. Last July, Netflix made the outrage-inducing decision to cancel the critically acclaimed series, which earned a near 100 percent “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and went on to win an Annie Award for outstanding writing. As Variety TV critic Caroline Framke pointed out, Tuca & Bertie’s cancellation — just 45 days after its premiere — not only eliminated an undeniably original show but also “one of the vanishingly few animated comedies created by a woman, let alone one anchored by two women of color (Ali Wong and Tiffany Haddish) who also serve as executive producers.” On her long-running podcast Baby Geniuses, Hanawalt admitted to her co-host, the comedian Emily Heller, that she cried for three weeks straight. “We felt really blindsided and betrayed,” she said. “They cancelled it before my promo for it was even done coming out.” 

After the news broke, Tuca & Bertie fans determined to save the show launched a Change.org campaign that amassed more than 30,000 signatures. Though she was unwilling or unable to disclose specifics, Hanawalt confirmed that she heard from “a lot of people” who were interested in resurrecting it. Because Tuca & Bertie is technically owned by its production company, Tornante, Hanawalt had some leverage to pry it away from Netflix. 

Salvation came in May, when Adult Swim picked up the show and announced that a second season was on the way. Along with Yeun, Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong will also reprise their roles as feathered friends whose misadventures explore themes ranging from sexism to sobriety, all part of the uncomfortable work of accepting adulthood. “Adult Swim really hung in there,” Hanawalt told me. “It’s not easy to take a show from one network and put it on another. … It was really just the patience of my exec producers and Adult Swim. They were doggedly pursuing having this show, which is great, that they wanted it so much.” 

“Art doesn’t have to portray the moral high ground”

Hanawalt’s art has always explored the anxieties, humiliations, and vulnerabilities that come with living in a human body. But as her work finds traction with an ever-growing audience, she’s working under the glare of a brighter spotlight. As Tuca & Bertie’s highly public cancellation and rebirth played out in the public eye, Hanawalt faced the private challenge of confronting work she’d created in the earliest days of her career. “Interestingly, I feel more closed-off in some ways,” she says. “I’m really choosing when to open up.” 

Hence the talking animals: More than just an aesthetic quirk, Hanawalt’s animal avatars create distance between the lived reality of her personal life and the autobiographical details that end up on the page or screen. Last year, she posted a series of diary comics depicting herself as a “silly goose” during the annual Inktober challenge that prompts artists to post a new drawing on social media every day in October; at one point, she used the character to open up about her chronic illness. In January, she was mugged at gunpoint while celebrating her now-sister-in-law’s bachelorette party in New Orleans — and responded in part by sharing drawings from the sketchbook she saved while handing over her wallet and phone. 

And then there’s the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, a universally vulnerable experience that’s dredged all of our fears of mortality and illness right up to the surface. “My parents are microbiologists,” Hanawalt explained. “I knew this was coming.” She’s fully prepared to hunker down for the next two years and lead Tuca & Bertie via Zoom from her pink-walled home office, with her dog Annie at her feet. “It’s funny, because I’m so anxious,” Hanawalt says, “but then when something actually happens that’s terrible, I’m usually like, ‘all right, everything’s fine.’ Which is kind of disturbing, but I think I was less upset than a lot of people. I mean, I have my moments, for sure, of freaking out — everything is literally on fire right now, and the election upsets me and gives me a stomachache. But anxiety does kind of prepare you sometimes.” 

With so many stressors colliding, I asked Hanawalt what sustains her as she simultaneously launches a new book and helms a television show. Essentially, she has no choice but to press on. “If I don’t keep moving forward, it all bottlenecks at me,” she said. “That sense of responsibility and that sense of not wanting to disappoint people really keeps me going.”

In many ways, I Want You contains a peek at the foundation of Hanawalt’s current career. Hanawalt’s fans — or “Fanawalts,” as they’re called — will be quick to pick up on the nascent hallmarks of her later work. Fashionable animals model tightly patterned outfits inspired by Japanese magazines. Bodily fluids spill and splash across the pages. In one of her signature illustrated lists — which also appear in her earlier books and even on Tuca & Bertie — Hanawalt depicts herself hunting and murdering all the other Lisa Hanawalts who turn up in her Google search results.

The Sex Bugs who overrun an entire episode of Tuca & Bertie are here, too, performing a silly song Hanawalt made up with her friend and eventual BoJack Horseman collaborator Raphael Bob-Waksberg. “We know that we repulse you with our inside-outside hugs,” they croon to a crowd of dancing stags, horses, sheep, and dogs. “We’re the sex buuugggs!”

If Hanawalt’s work seems built atop a strange dream logic, it’s because many images burst directly from her subconscious. The Sex Bugs first appeared in a dream; other arresting images show fleshy baby birds pouring out of a horse’s eyes and mouth, and a pilot whose hands and feet are writhing heaps of worms. 

“I kind of hate body horror,” Hanawalt admitted, shuddering when I mentioned it. “I really don’t like watching it, and I don’t like reading it.” An avowed emetophobe, she guesses that she hasn’t puked in 20 years; she hates gory scenes in movies. “But then I have it in my show!” she said, citing multiple vomiting scenes in the first season of Tuca & Bertie. (A fellow emetophobe, I told Hanawalt that I found some comfort in the cotton candy that BoJack Horseman barfs up in the pilot episode. “It’s fluffy and not disgusting!” she agreed.) Seizing control of the narrative — going all-in on grossness — feels like a way to exorcise the fear and discomfort. “I’m sort of getting those demons out of me,” Hanawalt said.

Another nightmare involved a trip to an abortion clinic; upon waking, it struck Hanawalt as a vivid manifestation of her fears of pregnancy. Soon after, the experience became a comic titled “She-Moose Goes to the Clinic.” Since 2011, Hanawalt has held onto the unpublished comic, fearing it was too intense to share. “I also worried it would be taking something kind of serious and making it seem too flippant, which I think my work does sometimes,” she told me. But she revisited it while collecting work for I Want You, and ultimately, with reassurance from her agent and publisher, the comic made it in.

Sometimes, this process happens in reverse: The banal horror of reality can filter through Hanawalt’s observations and, for better or worse, land on the page. In 2009, Hanawalt set off on a cross-country trip from California to New York. Later, she recreated what she saw along the way in a spread of animals wearing Americana-themed hats. On a page densely studded with silly jokes, one of the animals sports a Confederate flag — tiny, but jarring enough to send a chill down my spine.

“Oh my god,” Hanawalt said, peering at the page I held up to my webcam. That hat, she explained, was inspired by a Civil War reenactor. “Now that I’m remembering that’s in there, I’m hoping it doesn’t trigger someone or bring up an uncomfortable, painful feeling for them. It’s meant satirically, but that’s not really an excuse if someone feels bad.” (Later that night, Hanawalt proactively disclosed the flag to a virtual crowd during an Instagram Live event held to promote the book, quipping that it’s worn by “a racist bison.”) 

While making I Want You, Hanawalt weeded out other stories that didn’t meet her standards for sensitivity, humor, and interest. “I would like to think I have a more sophisticated understanding of these things,” she says. “God, I would hope so.” Regardless of the feelings it might evoke in readers, the Confederate flag gets at a larger tension that runs throughout all of Hanawalt’s work, from BoJack Horseman’s skewering of Hollywood anti-heroes to Coyote Doggirl’s neon-washed revenge arc in the aftermath of sexual assault. “Art doesn’t have to portray the moral high ground — the characters I make don’t have to be doing the right thing or thinking the right thing,” Hanawalt says. “That’s not interesting to me.” 

Instead, she seeks opportunities to tackle difficult, sensitive subject matter, while also attempting to be thoughtful about the wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives her audience might bring to the experience. In the case of the abortion clinic comic, “it’s coming from my perspective — I’m not just doing that for the shock value, I’m not just doing it to be funny,” Hanawalt says. “I’m doing it because it’s something I feel, deep in me.”

“People are like, ‘Oh, you feel that way — that disgusting, shameful way? I also feel that way.’”

Though I Want You is Hanawalt’s fourth solo book, most of the comics were drawn during her 20s. Back then, there was no guarantee that her career as an artist would pan out so spectacularly.

In 2006, Hanawalt graduated from UCLA and immediately went on a road trip to Vermont. “It was a weird time. I mean, I was kind of a mess back then,” she recalled. “I slept on my friend’s couch for a couple months and honestly, that was the right thing to do.” By the time she returned to Los Angeles, she’d received an offer for part-time work at a warehouse run by someone she met on Craigslist. “If you needed a tomboy with a pickup, I would come haul your furniture,” Hanawalt said. Once, a mattress fell off the back of her truck and she had to run across the freeway to retrieve it. “I was not bonded or insured,” she added, laughing.

The job gave her life a stable rhythm. By day, Hanawalt worked at the warehouse; she spent each night working on her comics. “I think I felt an inner pressure on myself, which I always have, to make work,” she said. “I just didn’t know what a career would look like for me. I clearly wasn’t going to become a gallery painter, like I thought I maybe would.” (With that said: In June, Hanawalt had a three-week solo show at Alhambra, California’s Gallery Nucleus.) Instead, throughout high school and college, she’d always made zines and comics. 

As opportunities gradually surfaced, the projects she said yes to began to accumulate into a career. She began illustrating Tip Me Over, Pour Me Out, a webcomic written by Bob-Waksberg. When a friend invited Hanawalt to display printed versions of the webcomic at a small comics convention in the back of Meltdown Comics on Sunset Boulevard, she agreed — and on a whim, printed a few mini-comics she had made on her own. The person who would later become her first publisher happened to be there. “He picked up my comics and said, ‘I don’t like these ones you do with your friend, I like the ones you do by yourself. You should do more of those,’” Hanawalt said. “And so I did.” 

That chance connection became Hanawalt’s entry into the comics world. Soon, she was tabling at larger comic cons, often alongside cartoonists she’d long admired. “I was delighted,” Hanawalt said. 

She was also aware that she was entering a male-dominated space. Though she was a fan of cartoonists including Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, and Tony Millionaire, she recalls high school encounters with the work of Phoebe Gloeckner and Renée French as life-changing. “These are women writing about being a woman in a way that’s really gross and visceral and honest. It really inspired me to do the same in my own work,” Hanawalt said. “I feel that way even now, like when I watch I May Destroy You on HBO. I’m like, ‘Fuck yeah, [Michaela Coel is] being so bold. She’s not holding back anything. What am I afraid of?’”

After seven years in Los Angeles, she quit her job to focus on making comics and decided to relocate to Brooklyn. There, she hoped to join a growing community of women who drew comics, as well as to solidify her previously bicoastal relationship with her boyfriend. She ended up becoming roommates with cartoonist Sarah Glidden, with whom she eventually shared Pizza Island, a Greenpoint-based studio that also included cartoonists Julia Wertz, Meredith Gran, Domitille Collardey, and Kate Beaton.

In 2010, Hanawalt was the first woman to win the prestigious Ignatz Award for Outstanding Comic for I Want You — the comic her new anthology is built around — after being nominated by a panel of five white men. Afterward, she became aware that a few male artists were upset by the win. “It was just a different time,” Hanawalt says, “and so weird, because it wasn’t that long ago.” (As for the boyfriend, comedian Adam Conover: 11 years, two dogs, one cross-country move back to Los Angeles, and a Norwegian Fjord horse later, they’re still together. During our interview, which fell during lunchtime, he came into Hanawalt’s office and wordlessly handed her a salad.)

Though Hanawalt’s new anthology might seem like a victory lap for a creator whose strange, surreal work is beloved in print and onscreen, the reprints continue to stir up ambivalent feelings. “It brings back weird memories when you look into older work,” Hanawalt told me. “And then it’s also just painful to look at, because you’re just like, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that this way.’” In the introduction to I Want You, Hanawalt describes the odd sensation of revisiting old work more bluntly: “It feels like taking a shit and not flushing it.” 

On August 19, Hanawalt logged onto her publisher’s Instagram Live for a casual, pandemic-friendly virtual launch event. As viewers trickled in, Hanawalt flipped her phone’s camera to take in the book’s cover, which she designed herself. A play on the 2018 trend of botanical book covers, I Want You’s cover features a wide-eyed, bubblegum-pink moose peeking out from an intricate tangle of leaves and flowers. The effect is half skittish wild animal energy, half “Homer backs into the bushes” GIF. But now, with the book officially printed and on store shelves, Hanawalt questioned whether the pink looked too unsettling. “Does it look like this moose has been skinned?” Hanawalt asked her Instagram Live crowd. Personally, I can’t help but think that a skinned She-Moose is a perfect symbol for the collection — jarring, revealing, and raw.

As surprising and unsettling as Hanawalt’s work can be, its underlying honesty is what continues to strike a chord with readers and viewers. “People are like, ‘Oh, you feel that way — that disgusting, shameful way? I also feel that way,’” Hanawalt said. “I’ve always been very candid in my work.” As for the mind-bending sequences, snakes and birds and Sex Bugs: “That’s kind of just the dressing on top.”

Though Hanawalt’s drawing style — and her ability to weave longer narratives — have evolved over the past decade, her work has always retained this thematic continuity. Even better, many of the old comics in I Want You, despite the feelings that revisiting them elicits, still make her laugh. “I’m still the same person who liked this stuff 10 years ago,” she says. “In a lot of ways, I haven’t changed very much at all.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled the name of artist Dan Clowes and listed the wrong location for Gallery Nucleus. Vox regrets these errors.

Game of Thrones’ most recent season found repellant villain Ramsay Bolton bloodied and strapped to a chair. He’d come within a breath of securing his grasp on the North in the season’s epic battle. Instead, thanks to a strategic decision made by Sansa Stark, who had briefly been his unwilling wife, he found himself unexpectedly defeated.

Sansa chose his punishment — feeding him to his own ravenous hounds. She watched as the dogs attacked the man who brutally raped and tortured her during their brief marriage. As she turned away, the faintest of smiles played across her lips.

The moment marked a profound transformation in Sansa’s character, but it also represents a larger shift that unfolded over the course of 2016.

On television and in movie theaters this year, teenage girls moved assuredly into roles normally reserved for their male counterparts.

And more often than not, those roles involved some degree of violence — whether that meant stabbing, unleashing supernatural powers against someone in self-defense, or, yes, feeding their enemies to literal dogs.

2016 cast teen girls in a moral middle ground. Just look at Game of Thrones.

Throughout 2016, the roles of fictional teen girls seemed to expand, existing in a moral gray area between “innocent naif” and “bad girl” that allowed for increased complexity.

This is not to say that nuanced teen girls have never existed onscreen before: Buffy the Vampire Slayer famously crafted teenage girl characters who were dynamic, confounding, and flawed, while Six Feet Under’s creative, conflicted Claire was a pivotal part of that series’ family dynamic. But in 2016, well-rounded teen girls, written as capable agents of their own futures, suddenly seemed to crop up across every genre.

Sansa’s quiet joy at Ramsay’s death completed her transformation on Game of Thrones from superficial child into serious, determined, and strategic leader, ready to take her place at the head of the Stark family. The season saw her challenge her half-brother Jon’s de facto leadership, and the fact that Sansa was able to force Ramsay to experience the horror he inflicted upon others made her arc especially satisfying.

Still, appreciating the newfound range afforded to Sansa’s character does not require endorsing her cruelty or secrecy. As we watch Sansa grow increasingly independent, it’s impossible not to imagine the ways her decision to conceal from Jon her choice to ask Littlefinger for his assistance in the battle against Ramsay could drive a wedge between the siblings.

It would be easy to write off these stories as not tackling the problems of the “real world,” whatever that means. But despite its fantasy trappings, Game of Thrones does reflect aspects of our world. The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 40 percent of women who are murdered are killed by a partner, and that 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced sexual or physical violence.

Despite some gains in awareness over the past year, the majority of crimes against women still go unreported and unpunished. In light of these statistics, Sansa — and 2016’s larger flurry of strong female characters — makes perfect sense as an expression of protest against the status quo.  

The transformation wasn’t isolated to Sansa. Season six of Game of Thrones saw women across every plot line seizing control of their fates. Indeed, Arya Stark provides an even stronger example than her sister of the nuance Game of Thrones achieved in season six.

Though reliably tomboyish and relentlessly capable, Arya spent season six locked in internal conflict. For much of the season, she endured a series of somewhat pointless tasks while attempting to join the ranks of the Faceless Men, a cryptic group of assassins capable of changing their identities. Throughout, she struggled with deciding whether to pursue the supernatural power promised to her or prioritize her own identity as an individual and a Stark.

After getting beaten down over and over again by the menacing Waif who oversees her training, Arya bumps up against the limits of her own internal sense of justice when asked to assassinate Lady Crane, an actress whose moving portrayal of Queen Cersei in a play about Ned Stark’s execution prompts Arya to feel some unexpected empathy for one of her nemeses. Having disobeyed the Waif, she retrieves her sword (a key symbol of her identity), goes on the lam, and ultimately kills the Waif.

After a season of attempting to obliterate her identity, Arya declares, “A girl is Arya Stark of Winterfell, and I am going home.”

Arya’s development is more subtle than Sansa’s; she’s spent dozens of episodes muttering the names of the people whose lives she seeks in retribution. She’s even crossed a few names off that list — violently and memorably. But season six’s narrative tension hinged on whether she would be able to turn away from that drive for revenge or let it consume her.

As Arya comes of age, her capacity for ruthlessness and retribution is softening. Though still tough and pugnacious, she’s managed to gain some perspective, allowing her to evolve into a more ambivalent antihero, a character type normally reserved for men — and rarely used for teenage girls. When faced with the opportunity to exist only as a vehicle for violence, Arya opts for a more complicated middle ground.

In a world where no one else will advocate for them, intent on viewing them as collateral damage in a fight among men, Sansa and Arya commit acts of violence that translate as political agency.

Teen girls are underestimated. On Stranger Things, that can be useful.

Surprise over Teen Vogue’s astute political reporting serves as proof that teen girls’ intellectual appetites are routinely underestimated. While Game of Thrones gave us women who resort to violence to change their political situations, another hit show of 2016 — Netflix’s Stranger Things — suggests that teenage girls may be more inherently powerful on an intellectual, moral, and strategic level than anyone realizes.

To be sure, Stranger Things drew some well-deserved criticism for privileging the stories of its boys over its girls. Consider, for instance, how the show treated Will, whose disappearance set the entire plot in motion, versus how it handled the disappearance and death of poor Barb, whose own mother didn’t even notice she was gone.

Yet despite its focus on the boys, Stranger Things’ breakout character is Eleven, a minimally talkative girl with an instantly iconic look, who has been the subject of troubling government experiments. While pregnant, Eleven’s mother participated in MKUltra, the CIA’s best-known mind control project, and Eleven grew up in a secluded laboratory, shuttled among experiments, hooked up to electrodes, and forced to develop telekinetic abilities. With no frame of reference for a normal life, Eleven must simply endure.   

Despite her mistreatment, Eleven emerges as Stranger Things’ most powerful character. Through a series of flashbacks, we gain a sense of Eleven’s internal moral compass. She resists killing a cat, instead practicing her telekinetic abilities on soda cans, even when her disobedience results in punishment. But when her friends are threatened or she identifies an enemy who has harmed her, there’s little Eleven isn’t willing to do, whether that means humiliating a bully by compelling him to wet his pants or killing government agents by crushing their skulls.

Though Will’s disappearance kicks off the show’s plot, it’s actually Eleven who sets off a chain of events by unwittingly tearing a hole between worlds, allowing the Demogorgon, the show’s monster, to slip through. (The Demogorgon is ultimately a distraction from the show’s true evil: unscrupulous men in the government.) Eleven’s unsettling capacity for violence gives her a level of power and control over the world that the male characters lack, one that allows her to finally strike back against the scientists who imprisoned her.

Similarly, semi-popular high school student Nancy Wheeler’s amateur investigation of her friend Barb’s disappearance takes her straight to the Demogorgon. As she joins forces with a friend to lay a deadly trap for the monster and theorizes as to what might drive the beast, she, too, takes on agency that surpasses the best efforts of local police.   

Part of Eleven and Nancy’s power lies in the way they are consistently underestimated. Despite its obsession with reproducing 1980s classics in high fidelity, Stranger Things subverted a key trope by complicating Nancy’s romantic arc.

The series seems to prepare for tension between Nancy’s boyfriend, Steve, and Will’s brother, Jonathan, who is at her side while she stalks the Demogorgon — but ultimately establishes Nancy as a central character in her own right, deflating the love triangle through a flash forward in which we learn that she has chosen to stay with Steve but both continue to maintain strong friendships with Jonathan. The resolution is as much about Nancy trusting her initial judgment as it is about Steve’s capacity for growth as a character.

Similarly, Eleven’s escape is a shock to the government scientists. When Eleven and the lead scientist whom she once called “Papa” are reunited in the final episode, he seems genuinely confused when, deprogrammed and recognizing him as a “bad man,” she flinches away from his embrace.

The Witch reveals how teenage girls can explore the nature of evil

Television was not the only medium to contain incredibly powerful teenage girls. They were all over the movies, too, most vividly in Robert Eggers’s The Witch.

Set in 1630s New England, the understated horror movie follows the story of a family cast out of its colonial settlement and forced to eke out a living on the edge of the woods. The film’s creeping horror lies in psychological drama, as existing cracks in the family’s relationships begin to grow with alarming speed, due to the harsh loneliness of life on the frontier and the mysterious disappearance of an infant son.

Thomasin, the family’s teenage daughter, swiftly becomes the scapegoat for the unnatural incidents that plague the family. Her grieving mother blames her for failing to watch and protect her infant brother, while her father and younger brother, Caleb, stay silent as Thomasin is accused of other crimes, such as the disappearance of a silver cup.

It’s also no coincidence that the family’s suspicion of Thomasin coincides with her budding sexual maturity. More than once, Caleb eyes his sister’s breasts when he thinks she won’t notice. The constant surveillance has a profound effect on Thomasin, and increasingly she and her family are set in opposition to one another.

Small incidents and false accusations snowball until the family becomes hysterical, ultimately accusing Thomasin of witchcraft. Eventually, the accusations and stares escalate into assault, and Thomasin is dragged by her throat into the family’s barn, where her father imprisons her for a night.

After that point, there is no limit to the violent horror Thomasin finds herself capable of committing. The Witch’s brilliant irony lies in the fact that the family’s grief drives the members to destroy themselves. In the film’s universe, the witch and the devil are real, but they merely act as catalysts for the worst human impulses.

Ultimately, the family’s accusations become a self-fulfilling prophecy; with her entire family dead or missing, Thomasin sheds the Puritan clothing that had obscured her natural body and signs the devil’s book, casting her lot with the coven of witches living in the woods. The last scene of the movie finds her levitating, laughing soundlessly, finally free.

Though some read the film as a story that validates paranoia over women’s sexuality, I prefer a different reading. With Thomasin cast out of society due to her father’s stubborn religious beliefs and driven to a tragic final confrontation with her family, her options are essentially to perish in the wilderness or join the coven.

Although Thomasin’s journey contains stunning tragedy and a bitter betrayal of her faith, she ultimately chooses to grasp the power and opportunity promised to her by the devil. Like the supernatural abilities Arya gains during her time seeking the Many-Faced God or those forced upon Eleven by the government, Thomasin’s sudden ability to levitate with the other witches suggests a more expansive shift in her capabilities. The movie closes before we have any opportunity to see any hint of whether this plays out well for her, but the story’s lean parable format doesn’t require a longer view.

Beyond Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, and The Witch, characters across all genres have shown an unexpected capacity for ambivalence this year. From BoJack Horseman’s 14-year-old “dubstep wunderkind” Sextina Aquafina, who sings an irreverent song about abortion packed with violent imagery, to Pretty Little Liars, which opened its 2016 season with its quartet of (formerly) teen girls killing a friend’s abusive husband and then covering up the manslaughter, young women managed to snare interesting, conflicted roles on screen.

By equipping women with the power and capacity to take action, characters like Sansa, Eleven, and Thomasin join a broad range of teenage girls from a wide variety of stories in a morally gray light where violent, regrettable actions undertaken by women are the natural consequence of systems that would oppress them. It didn’t seem coincidental that these characters existed and busted stereotypes in a year when the US came within a breath of electing its first woman president.

We all enter 2017 with no guarantees for what the year will bring for women. The president-elect’s Cabinet may prove to be “one of the most hostile in recent memory to issues affecting women.” And this trend of morally ambiguous, capable teen girls may prove to be nothing but a fleeting moment.

Still, no matter what happens, these stories will continue to exist, impressing the image of women as capable, even potentially dangerous, agents onto the larger cultural imagination. Teen girls were given more space for complexity in 2016, and although women are far from receiving equal treatment off- or onscreen, characters like Arya, Eleven, and Thomasin exemplify a fighting spirit that promises to fend off oppression at every turn.