Karen Croft

Karen Croft is a human from the EarthSpark continuity family.

Gaslight. Gatekeep. Girlboss.

As the director of G.H.O.S.T., Executive Agent Karen Croft projects a more level-headed image in comparison to her brother, Jon Schloder, all the while going much farther than he would to when it comes to defending Earth from alien threats. In fact, Croft despises Cybertronians just as much as Mandroid, perhaps even more so considering Mandroid is content with just taking down the Cybertronians on Earth. Croft, on the other hand, has far bigger plans...

Fiction

EarthSpark cartoon

Voice actor: Kari Wahlgren (English), Akeno Watanabe (Japanese), Márcia Alves (Brazilian Portuguese), Charlotte Marin (French), Gemma Martín (Castilian Spanish), Alicia Barragán (Latin-American Spanish)

Believing the only solution to the Transformer problem was the destruction of Cybertron, Croft had the spacebridge secretly brought to G.H.O.S.T. HQ with the intention of using it to invade the other world. Stowed Away, Stowaways Croft was present at the G.H.O.S.T.-Autobot alliance ceremony where she greeted the arriving Optimus Prime and Megatron and informed them of the day's itinerary. When the Seeker pair of Nova Storm and Skywarp attacked the ceremony, Croft aided in getting the civilians to safety. Age of Evolution, Part 1

At the mountainside base where G.H.O.S.T. kept their Decepticon prisoners, Croft performed some sort of experiment on the captured Skullcruncher that left the brutish Decepticon in a weakened state. Finding her brother to be falling short of apprehending Decepticons, Croft ordered Agent Schloder to begin a sweep of the local area to capture any rogue Decepticon, regardless of their current threat level. Following a short-lived Decepticon prisoner uprising, unknowingly caused by the young Terran Hashtag, Croft arrived on scene to survey the damage. Hashtag: Oops

When Schloder began to believe he was on the trail of the refugee Bumblebee, he managed to convince the begrudging Croft to have every available G.H.O.S.T. agent on scene at a race he believed Bumblebee was participating in. When it looked like it was initially just another false alarm, Croft insisted on doing a more thorough Energon scan of the cars present, inadvertently revealing both Bumblebee and the refugee Decepticon Breakdown. A battle soon erupted between Breakdown and Bumblebee against G.H.O.S.T.'s forces. Croft managed to score a hit on Breakdown that incapacitated the Decepticon, but was not enough to prevent him from aiding in Bumblebee's escape. With Breakdown apprehended, Croft tried to detain Dot and Alex Malto so they could be questioned on what she believed was them harboring Bumblebee but was counter-ordered by her brother. Security Protocols She later authorized the clandestine disposal of several crates of contaminated energon in the forest outside Witwicky. Bear Necessities

Later, Croft formally met and formed a partnership with the anti-Cybertronian scientist, Mandroid. Having already solved her "dino problem" from interfering with her underground "Bot Brawl" ring, Croft recruited Mandroid to construct more cognitive inhibitor chips for her to use, keeping the scientific recluse at bay by offering him small doses of Energon he needed as a result of his grafting Cybertronian body parts to himself. When he said he needed test subjects, Croft gladly offered up the Decepticon prisoners of G.H.O.S.T. under her ward for his picking. Home, Part 2

Finding Mandroid in his lab looking very unwell, Croft gave him access to G.H.O.S.T.'s systems. When his meddling caused a surge of energy to the systems in question, Croft complained, but Mandroid believed he had found the answer to all their problems — the Emberstone. Disarmed Following a Decepticon prison break, Croft refused to let anyone pursue Starscream, Nova Storm and Skywarp into an unused tunnel system connected to the HQ. What Dwells Within Croft was eventually able to supply Mandroid with the Emberstone. Prime Time

After arguing with Megatron over the best way to recapture Starscream, Croft discovered that Bumblebee had infiltrated the base and found the spacebridge which she'd been keeping secret from the Autobots. She set her army of Ghoids on the Autobot, only for Schloder to join the fight along with Nightshade, Robby Malto, Twitch and Thrash. During the chaos, the Ghoids were able to capture Schloder and Bumblebee, though the others escaped through the spacebridge. Stowed Away, Stowaways As the Ghoids worked on cleanup, Mandroid presented Croft with a new device giving her the ability to knock out anyone wearing a G.H.O.S.T. badge, revealing that the Maltos were who she needed to be worried about when she tried to use the device on him. Croft went to the Malto farm with a squad of Ghoids, and when the Autobots turned up, she used Mandroid's device on them, only for it to attach itself to her hand and cause glowing pink lines to appear on her skin. The Battle of Witwicky At that point, Mandroid arrived with a new robotic form and two Sharkticon henchmen. Croft met him at the spacebridge, where the scientist explained that the device had infused her with energon and also he had found a way to weaponise the spacebridge against energon-based lifeforms. By way of demonstration, he activated the weapon, which disintegrated Croft. The Last Hope, Part 1

Notes

• With EarthSpark's themes of togetherness, tolerance and understanding, and inter-species cooperation, it's... prrrrobably not a coincidence that one of its big villains is a Karen.

Foreign names

• Japanese: Croft (クロフト Kurofuto)