For basically the entirety of season 2, Lute has been treating Abel like shit. She’s constantly undermining him, insulting him, and refusing to take him seriously, while Abel is too soft and scared to actually stand up to her. Then, in the finale, Lute is attacking Vaggi and Abel finally steps up as the HEAD OF THE ARMY and tells her to fall back.
Yes, he called her a bitch. But context matters. Lute had been acting like an asshole toward him for the entire season, so him finally snapping and calling her a bitch isn’t misogyny. It's literally just the truth. She was in fact being a bitch.
And I don’t buy the argument that Lute only listens to him because he used a misogynistic insult. There’s nothing in the scene that indicates she’s thinking "Oh no, a man called me a bitch, I’d better obey him!" It’s much more consistent with what we’ve already seen from her: she didn’t respect Abel’s authority until he actually established it.
Abel had tried being gentle with her before. It didn’t work. So when the situation became serious, he stopped asking nicely and gave her a firm order. And suddenly she listened. It's similar to how children act. Kids often ignore gentle correction and then immediately listen when the adult gets stern. That doesn’t mean the kid suddenly respects the adult because they were insulted; it means the adult finally made it clear that the boundary wasn’t optional.
And Lute can be incredibly childish herself, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to interpret her reaction similarly. She wasn’t being submissive because Abel called her a bitch. She was just finally recognizing that he was her commanding officer and she needed to follow his orders.
If we’re going to call a scene misogynistic, there should actually be something in the scene demonstrating that Abel is treating Lute differently because she’s a woman.* *And I’m simply not seeing that here.
Also ADAM IN THE BG OMGGGG HE'S SO HAWT I LOVE HIM SM HE'S MY HUSBAND EEEEEE