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**SEASON 2 SPOILER ALERT**

If you’ve been following Dear White People from the start, you know one thing for a fact: Colandrea “Coco” Conners is nobody to f*ck with. Armstrong-Parker’s most complex resident is the definition of a woman who knows what she wants and will stop at nothing to get it.

But in the second season of the beloved Netflix series, we start to see even more of what makes Coco tick.

“She’s taking control of her life in all aspects, making power plays for positions that she believes she is more than qualified for,” Antoinette Robertson, the actress who plays Coco, tells CASSIUS. “She goes after the position of president of CORE wholeheartedly. Secondly, she’s no longer allowing a man’s desires for her to determine whether or not she feels empowered. She’s very much so coming into her own and feeling and doing whatever she wants to do.”

Aside from taking on her rightful role as president of CORE, Coco is faced with another life-changing decision about adding another title to her already very full roster: first-time mom. When she finds out she’s pregnant after having unprotected sex with Troy, Coco struggles with trying to decide whether or not she’s going to keep the baby or get an abortion.

She’s telling her all the things she wished someone would tell her that she never got from her mother.

“I think it’s important that we learn her mother was a young mother and she didn’t necessarily live with her so they don’t have that relationship,” she said. “When they enter into the world where she’s having conversations with Penelope, this beautiful sliding door moment, she’s telling her all the things she wished someone would tell her that she never got from her mother.”

“If her mother going through with having her as opposed to having an abortion, if Coco doesn’t realize her actual potential, then it would’ve been for naught,” she said.

Robertson said that Coco’s decision to ultimately terminate the pregnancy wasn’t one she came to lightly, which is why the audience bears witness to an alternate timeline with her potential daughter, Penelope, and the idea of peacefully co-parenting with Troy.

It was more important for her to choose herself and the future she saw fit.

I think when you weigh the pros and cons of both of those worlds, it was more important for her to choose herself and the future she saw fit,” Robertson explains. “Instead of having a baby with a man-child, going back to Chicago to my mother’s house and show her that her having Coco and not realizing her full potential wasn’t worth it because she was just going to repeat the cycle.”

Robertson said that she’s glad that ultimately Coco chose the best decision for her. Honestly, we can’t blame her either.