New
Sometimes, the truth is hard to accept.
That's why she thinks that maybe she's always known somewhere in her mind, but just refused to look directly at it because she would have to deal with it if she did.
She can tell herself all she likes that she's always assumed, and genuinely believed, that there was something more behind it, some shining ideal that she just couldn't quite grasp, that made his bizarre crusade against every Super he could find an unpleasant necessity.
But it isn't nearly as surprising as it should be, the pure gleeful sadism in his eyes as he taunts the object of fifteen years obsessive hatred with the death of wife and children, feeling justified by some imagined slight that she wishes desperately she could believe was enough to prompt such cruelty.
So maybe the revelation that there really isn't anything beyond the surface, isn't all that new after all.