Klara, from The Isle of Armor expansion of Sword & Shield, is an icon. Not because she’s a good Gym Leader, or because she’s cool, or smart, or interesting. The exact opposite actually. Like many of us, Klara is a loser with a bad attitude. Yet somehow, against all odds, she gets to lead a Gym. I’m proud of her, I’m inspired by her, and I don't think she gets enough credit for what she managed to do by doing almost nothing.
To be precise, Klara is a Gym Leader in the minor division, which is a Galar-exclusive league that’s only vaguely referenced throughout the game. Apparently, there are 18 Gyms in Galar, eIght Major League Gyms - the ones we saw in the game - and ten Minor League Gyms. During the Galarian Star Tournament, Klara reveals that she’s the new minor division Poison Gym Leader. We never see the Poison Gym and it’s unclear which city it’s located in. For all we know Klara is making it up. I kind of hope she is. I’d be even more proud of her.
So how did Klara fail all the way up to (minor) Gym Leader? If you’re not caught up with the lore, Klara was an aspiring pop singer who was only able to sell eight copies of her debut album, so she immediately quit trying. After that failure, she decided being a Gym Leader was her best chance to become famous. I don’t blame her, she must have turned on the TV and seen literal children doing it and assumed it must not be that hard. Klara spent two days training and decided it wasn’t worth the effort so she gave up on that too, but later she saw a late-night promo for the Master Dojo and decided to apply. She thought that Dojo Master Mustard seemed nice and wouldn’t give a pretty girl a hard time, so she could skate by without having to put much effort in. I love her.
Klara is a huge bitch to you when you meet her at the Isle of Armor. She meets you at the station under the false assumption that you’re the Dojo’s new student, but when you tell her you don’t know what she’s talking about, she assumes you’re gaslighting her and goes on the offensive. She challenges you to a battle, and when she loses, Klara runs ahead to the Dojo and tells them the new student decided not to come. When you get to the Dojo Klara acts all sweet in front of Honey, but as soon as she goes inside Klara tells you that if anyone finds out what happened at the train station she will “melt you”.
There’s two more battles with Klara at the Dojo. After you find all her missing clothes for her in the first trial, you run into Klara again in the Warm-Up Tunnel when you find the Max Mushrooms. Klara screams that she found the mushrooms first and tries to fight you for them. Finally, you battle Klara a third time as the last challenge in Mustard’s test. Before the battle begins, Klara cheats by covering the battlefield in Toxic Spikes. She loses anyway, because that’s all Klara does.
And yet, despite all this failure and embarrassment, Klara somehow becomes a Gym Leader in the end. It proves you don’t have to be good and/or related to another Gym Leader to climb to the top. Black & White’s Cheren showed that even the easy Gym Leaders have to prove themselves before they can lead a gym, but not Klara. She never accomplishes anything, she’s not likable, and she’s way too lazy to have social engineered the opportunity. She just gets to have it, and I think that’s rad.