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Season Three of House of Cards premieres at 12 a.m. PT/3 a.m. ET on Friday, February 27th on Netflix. For our complete coverage of the series, click here. The following article openly discusses sensitive plot points from the show’s first two seasons. SPOILERS AHEAD.

Everyone woman wants to be the heroine. We want to be the special woman who comes out on top. We want to be smart, sophisticated, and in control. We want to be liked, loved, and not in the least bit despised. We don’t want to come across as annoying and we don’t want to be pitied. Most of all, we don’t want to make dumb mistakes. In essence, we want to be Claire Underwood, and we most certainly don’t want to be House of Cards‘ Zoe Barnes.

In many ways, Zoe Barnes was the worst part of season one of House of Cards. She was a poorly-defined character whose only goal was fame. She and Frank carried on a creepy extramarital affair that was not only defined by sexual blackmail, but also an uneasy Elektra complex. Zoe was also supposed to represent the media’s depths of corruption and its current state of flux. She’s a scrappy young blogger who decides to flirt her way into getting government scoop. When working as a traditional print journalist doesn’t satisfy her, she moves on to an impossibly hip new internet start up. The moment she finds any sort of moral backbone, she is murdered. House of Cards is a show where morality only exists to be literally smashed to bits by an oncoming train.

Many fans celebrated Zoe’s shocking death in the second season premiere. After all, she had been woefully naive, incredibly arrogant, and rather…annoying. Kate Mara, the actress who played Zoe, did a brilliant job of giving the character a rare mix of tenacity and naivety. If Zoe is likable at all, it’s probably because Kate Mara is. But as she’s written, Zoe is hard to like. She’s selfish and moves through the complex web of House of Cards like a bulldozer. She rarely stops to consider the bigger picture and it takes her far too long to cotton to the fact that she’s merely a pawn. In short, she’s not a heroine you can get behind. Joel Kim Booster, who has been recapping the first two seasons of House of Cards for Decider, once ever mused in a review, “Were any of you rooting for Zoe at this point? If so please explain yourselves.”

When I look back at the first season, I have to admit that I kind of was rooting for Zoe Barnes. More importantly, I miss having a character like Zoe on the show. Zoe was one of the few characters on the show who felt like a normal person swept up in Frank Underwood’s Machiavellian schemes and now that she’s gone, it’s hard to find a character to empathize with. Everyone seems either too in control, too in charge, or too bullied, and too weak. Much like Corey Stoll‘s Peter Russo, Zoe was a character who was always set up to be the victim, but she proceeded as though she was going to be the victor. That was her tragic arc, and it’s a potent one because it’s recognizable.

As much as I love watching Robin Wright devour scenery as Claire Underwood, I’ve never actually met a woman as ferociously powerful as she is. However, I do know quite a few people who are a lot like Zoe Barnes. To be fair, that’s probably because I’m a young woman who works in media. My peers are bound to be more like a woefully ambitious young writer than the glamorous wife of a U.S. Congressman, but I can think of people in other professions who made crazy choices in the hopes that it would get them ahead. I know of people fed up with their circumstances. I know victims who thought they were heroines.

Yes, Zoe Barnes is kind of annoying. However, Zoe Barnes was one of the show’s few everywomen. She was an outsider who bit off more than she could chew. Because of that, she stands in for a huge swath of the audience. When terrible things happen in life, we often tragically think we’re more in control than we actually are. We want to be Underwoods. We want to be ten steps ahead of everyone else. We want to be the manipulators and not the manipulated. But that’s not who most of us are; most of us are Zoes. Maybe that’s what really reflects our ingrained irritation with her: we don’t want to believe it’s true. [Watch House of Cards]

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[Photo: Netflix]