Can be from any kind of media.
For me it’s Margot from The Magicians (which is interesting because in the books she is anything but) and Jesse Faden from Control.
Buffy. I was the right age (or maybe a bit too young) when it aired and it was the first female-led show that I fell in love with.
Princess Cimorene from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles
Very good chocolate cake recipe from that series. Very chocolatey.
Susannah Dean and Naomi Nagata
Zoe, Inara, Kaylee, and River. Mic drop.
Ellen Ripley. Under pressure she steps up and does what needs doing. Whether that means operating a loader, comforting a child or making monsters extinct.
Leela from Futurama
Roberta “Bobbie” Draper from The Expanse was the first to jump into my head.
Xena Warrior Princess
Ripley
Ellen Ripley from the Alien series.
Linda Hamilton - Terminator
I had to say something different, because I would have said Ripley first.
+1 for each of those, and i’ll add clarice starling, uhura, michael burnham, Evelyn Quan Wang (everything everywhere all at once), helen lyle (candyman)
Mirko!
Margot is also amazing, but she’s not independent IMO. She’s very emotionally hooked. Not in a bad way, mind you. She’s like a shounen protagonist who screams for 5 episodes because her friend was threatened and somehow a nation collapses as a result.
I mean, no one is really independent, but women in fiction tend to be very dependent on men as (almost) their primary personality trait.
I loved Margot because she was as independent as anyone in real life can be. She did her own thing, helped her friends, let her friends help her, fucked up, owned it and fixed it (most of the time, anyway).
All the characters were very realistic (well, if you ignore the magic).
I mean emotionally independent. Margot had some serious needs. Functionally she’s totally independent. Probably all of them except Fen were.
Hyacinth Bucket (ITS BOUQUET)
Metroid/Samus Aran
She’s almost always on her own dealing with a horde of alien enemies but does it well.
Though, she does have a bad habit of losing her suit’s features and abilities on nearly every mission she’s on lol
Major Matoko Kusanagi from the Ghost in the Shell series.
