(Ed. remark: This story contains spoilers for Netflix Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider games.)
The new series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft directly addresses the events of the Survivor trilogy games, which introduced and then killed Lara’s mentor and adoptive father, Conrad Roth. In the Games, Conrad’s death lingered as Lara hardened into a ruthless relic protector. But with the animated series, showrunner Tasha Huo wanted to dig even deeper into the psychological struggle of loss, to understand how guilt would shape Lara as she evolved into the version of the character from the 1990s games. To do that, Huo created a new character: Interpol agent Camilla Roth.
In Grave robber In episode 4, “Big Lies, Small Secrets,” Lara needs top secret information to pursue supernatural terrorist Charles Devereux and the organized crime operation known as the Light. Securing it requires some breaking and entering, and so Lara returns to Camilla’s life and apartment window. The stakes are high: Camilla isn’t just any Fed, she’s Conrad’s daughter and Lara’s childhood best friend. Their baggage all comes out in a half-hour of crypt-hunting, fever dreams, confessions, and what may be the steamiest scene in all of Tomb Raider (literally, thanks to a hot bath).
Huo also dramatically reframes Conrad Roth’s legacy. Early in the season, Lara still can’t shake Roth’s death, even as she tiptoes around traps and outswims a giant alligator. His death was her failure, she thinks, and his adventurous spirit is hers to carry on – with as little help as possible, if only to protect her friends. In a sense, Lara physically carries the burden of his death, in the form of the jade pendant she has worn since 2013. Grave robber. Huo, knowing where Lara would go in the future, had to build an escape route from that burden for her hero.
“I wanted Lara, who idolizes Roth when we meet her, even at the Games, and who idolizes her father at the Games, to come to a place where she realized that the vision she had of both men was complicated and imperfect . and to stop looking up to them as the model of who she should be and realize that she must choose her own path,” says Huo. “So I knew this had to be a key element in her growth, so it made sense to then pair her with someone who knew Roth in a different way.”
Enter: Camilla, who Lara believed hated her guts. Until their search for the Light brought them together, Lara assumed Camilla “left her and never looked back” because of her connection to Conrad. Lara accompanied the adventurer on his journeys through the wilderness, while Camilla stayed behind. When Lara came home, Camilla wanted nothing to do with her – or so Lara thought. What really happened comes to light in the episode.
Huo unravels the history of their relationship in a series of small moments that feel completely unexpected in an action-packed Tomb Raider series: awkward reintroductions (“What are you, a professional hiker?”), mumbled declarations (“You never even said goodbye… “), and a flicker of an old secret handshake that came back to the memory of two women who had moved in opposite directions. What brings them back to the same page is Conrad Roth, and the realization that he wasn’t a great father to Camilla, even though he was everything to Lara.
“There are scenes that were actually cut from the time, where Camilla tells more stories about what Roth was like growing up as a little girl and how he wasn’t the perfect father,” Huo says. “Yes, she loved him for who he was, but he wasn’t a great father. He was always in the world leaving it behind, and that’s not someone you should look up to.”
The end of Grave robber Season 1 sees Camilla as Team Lara – something the adventurer needed more than ever right now – but in episode 4, there are certain sparks that might lead a candid viewer to think there’s more between the two women. When Camilla realizes that the intruder in her apartment is not an enemy, she drops her gun and invites the sweat-soaked Lara to wash up. The mid-bath dialogue scene challenges the film’s legacy Myth of ‘Lara Croft nude code’ as the two take each other in and talk about work, all with the ratatat of a rom-com. Between Camilla confusing Lara with “Are you dating someone?” to the occasional caress that culminates in a fist pump, the restored relationship has Korrasami vibes. Or maybe it’s just the kind of deep friendship that completely catches the hyper-reserved Lara off guard.
Huo doesn’t want to put a label on Lara or the relationship, but says she’s curious to see how fans react. “I’m happy when someone ships someone,” she says. “It’s all nice to see. Everyone’s art is fantastic. Are Great!”
For the writer, throwing Camilla Roth’s curveball into Lara Croft’s “unified timeline” was really about giving the character a chance to expand and evolve into her legacy form. A female confidante was just one opportunity available for the franchise. And Camilla was in a position to break Lara’s misconceptions about her life.
“Roth sacrificed himself to save my life,” Lara confesses at the end of the episode.
“No, he died because that’s the life he chose,” Camilla snaps back. And as she begs Lara not to do it all alone, she reminds her: “The people we love are the treasures you will never find in a tomb.”
“For me, it’s all part of helping Lara figure it out who I am in season 1,” Huo says of the tear-filled episode and Camilla’s bigger role in the saga. “And how to be different from the men she was previously in the shadows with.”
