Miranda Wright

Miranda Wright is the main love interest in Finding Miranda (2016), and she also appears in several other titles in the Elsaverse as a side character. Miranda works in a big company and has an unnatural ability to immediately find the best solution to the problems she faces. She is in a relationship with Lucas and has a serious health condition, as she is unable to sleep since she woke up from a coma some time ago.

Personal
Miranda is a brilliant and voluptuous woman who was bullied at high school due to her flat and skinny physical appearance. Back then, she only had two real friends: Chloe Reyes and Paul, who was Chloe's boyfriend but for whom Miranda always felt some attraction, due to his kind character. She used to hang around at Chloe's mansion so often that even Chloe's father, Morland Reyes, seemed to develop some kind of affection for her. In one of those visits, still before turning 18, Chloe and Miranda shared their first-ever sexual experience, as Miranda suggested they could do it together after learning that Chloe was going to be forced by her father to have sex with a stranger in her 18th birthday. Unlike Chloe, Miranda was a late bloomer, and she finally got big curves when she was already in college.

Not many details about her life in those college years are disclosed. But a couple of years before the events portrayed in FM, when she had already started her own business, a dramatic incident turned her whole life upside down: she was put in a coma after an accident caused by her friend Chloe while doing some dirty job for his father. Although Chloe claims that she didn't know her friend would be injured, and even despite her visiting Miranda daily for more than a year until she woke up, Miranda just broke their friendship off: for her, it was obvious that Morland must have known she would be a collateral victim, and she was unable to imagine a situation in which Morland didn't tell Chloe about it. Only many months later, when she learns that Chloe has been fighting Morland all this time from within his ranks, Miranda finally accepts Chloe's apologies and friends are reunited again.

Until that moment, the fact that the coma left Miranda with many mental and physical side effects didn't help to ease those hard feelings. According to her, she woke up from the coma being a different person than she went in, and, among other things, Miranda has been totally unable to sleep a single second by her own means since then. She tried all kinds of methods, from pharmacological cocktails to physical exhaustion and meditation, to no avail. Mentally, the sleep deprivation is driving her literally crazy; physically, the headaches are almost continuous, and, until she started a relationship with Lucas, she was so desperate that she even confesses that sometimes she wouldn't mind just dying. After learning that her brain seemed to rest at least a bit when she first tried artistic painting, she occupies her idle time with all kinds of activities: besides painting, she has learned mechanics, makes her clothes, constantly changes her hairstyle and makeup, trains a lot with Xara, and looks for problems to solve, occasionally helping Xara with hers too, as she's unnaturally good at that.

None of this is known by her current co-workers. At work, she shows a confident and eccentric attitude that basically scares everybody away, as she intends. Sometimes, though, her looks lead other people who don't know her to misjudge and belittle her, as happens in the meeting scene depicted in Finding Miranda, when she is not taken seriously until she proves that the company's new code is actually faulty. Being the smartest and most attractive man in the company, only Lucas is allowed to see her true self when she finally pushes him to ask her out on a date. During that first week of their relationship, both of them learn about each other's issues and try to be the person they need to get through them together. Meanwhile, they help Xara out by forming a team to protect Jessica Springfield and her new boyfriend, Marc, preventing them from being hurt by Chloe. Miranda eventually kidnaps her former friend and seems even willing to kill her, but Lucas' presence, support, and understanding lead her to let Chloe go.

The bombing at the Mayoral rally finally convinces Miranda to join Xara's group to defeat Morland; up to that moment, she was only cooperating with Xara as a freelance, while opposing Morland on her own way: basically, by fleecing his casino of its funds. After they eventually accomplish their goal, thanks in part to Miranda's plans, Chloe gives her a powerful sedative Crow was preparing; thanks to it, Miranda can sleep, at last, protected by Elsa. But, sometime later, in Elsa's Nightmares, she confesses that her body seems to be building resistance against the sedative, so she is experiencing some sleep deprivation issues again. Miranda estimates that she has about a year or so before going completely insane, and Elsa decides to help her; in Elsaverse: Transitions it's hinted that both of them are currently in Switzerland, trying to find a definitive solution to Miranda's problem. Albeit not always physically, Lucas is still by her side.

Powers
Miranda has an unnatural ability to see the solution to the problems she faces. This allows her to put herself in the shoes of other people and guess what their next moves would be, or why they acted the way they acted, just by questioning herself about it like a problem to solve. That's why Xara turns to her every time she needs to get the whole picture of Morland's plans: her mole, Chloe, doesn't seem to get any more info than what she strictly needs for her missions, but that limited info is all that Miranda needs to guess Morland's most probable line of reasoning.

The fact that Miranda tends to right guess Morland's steps may be seen as a foreshadowing power too; however, their powers are quite different. Miranda works with info inputs and reacts to them devising the best possible solution with the elements she is aware of, but new events or circumstances can make that solution no longer fitting, as she can't anticipate those new conditions, nor even the problems themselves. For instance, Miranda thinks that the best plan to stop Chloe at El Cuerpo nightclub is to use Lucas as a distraction to buy Jessica and Marc some time, but when they get there Vince decides to intervene and they eventually sedate and kidnap Chloe instead, while Lucas escorts the couple: she just couldn't anticipate that Lucas would tell Vince about their mission and the bouncer would decide to act by himself. Morland, on the other hand, just knows in advance what will happen depending on his choices, which allows him to choose the alternative that will certainly lead him to the best possible outcome; the only element that could change that expected outcome is Chloe's intervention.

Miranda's sleep deprivation seems to be causing a weakening effect on her power. After kidnapping Chloe in FM, Lucas asks her what's the solution to this new problem, and she admits that she just doesn't know, which is the first clear sign that something is off in her mind. Then, while trying to defeat Morland, she comes up with another couple of plans, but she seems to struggle finding the best solution, as she ends up admitting that some other's idea is better than her initial suggestion. Even Jessica takes the initiative in the final battle, singing a lullaby when Miranda was totally out of ideas, even though that course of action should have been obvious to her.

Miscellaneous

 * In the casino scene in Finding Miranda, Miranda cashes her winnings in an account open for "Project Phoenix", an organization that helps the people Morland hurts. No more info about this organization is provided in further titles.
 * While trying one of those failed solutions to wear herself out and get to sleep, a raven saved Miranda from being attacked by a bear in the woods, by landing on the middle of the path she was walking before she'd get to where the bear's cubs were standing. That's why she got a big tattoo of a raven on her back, as ravens are protectors.


 * When Miranda finally prepared the sedative Chloe brought to her, she was afraid to use it, fearing that she would be put back again in a coma. But Elsa's inner self was there to protect her, in her Raven form. Ravens' symbolism as protectors is a somehow recurrent topic in Tlaero's work.


 * Miranda's occupation remains a mystery, as it's never explicitly stated what her actual job in the company is. The fact that neither Lucas nor Ismael seem surprised by her coding skills could mean she's a programmer too, even though she actually detects the security breach thanks to her power.


 * The real nature of the accident that put her in a coma is also unknown.


 * Miranda is friends with Detective Nathaniel Blake and his daughter, Brenda, although it's only stated that he got to know her "in his job".


 * Miranda's character is inspired by a dear person to Tlaero, who is in nearly continuous pain, thus making Miranda her favourite character in the saga.


 * Miranda's last name, Wright, was never mentioned until the short story FM: Hope (2022). In order to pick a fitting family name for her, Tora Productions asked their patrons to submit their personal suggestions; then, a couple of weeks later, Tlaero announced that she would pick one from these three options: Hopper, Mara, and Wright.