Who is She?
Allura is the "greatest foe" of the Golden Age Superhero Zatara and the first villain his daughter Zatanna had to fight alongside the Justice League, intimately connected with Zatanna's origin. She is my favorite of the Zatanna villains and so imagine my excitement when she was revealed as the villain of the 2025 most recent Zatanna series, her first appearance since DC Special in the 80s.
Sindella, one of the Homo Magi and mother of Zatanna, found a good princess being fed on by a dark spirit and to save the princess' life banished the spirit to the darkness. This spirit hated more then anything to be trapped and stirred in resentment. When she escaped she sought vengeance but without Sindella there, she instead attempted to take vengeance on Sindella's husband and daughter, taking Zatara from Zatanna and unwittingly starting Zatanna's superhero career in her quest to find him.
Allura is a "Mistress of the Dark Elementals", a spirit being that represents something ephemeral. In particular Allura is connected both with lies/deception and being stuck in the past. While Zatanna's journey has always been one of moving past the tragedies of yesteryear, Allura is motivated by past resentment.
How Strong is She?
As a minimum, Allura was considered Zatara's greatest foe and one even he could not defeat unaided. This would include a whole bunch of Homo Magi Tier threats as well as The Rip, one of the Otherkind like Upside-Down Man who Zatara and Sargon originally defeated. These Otherkind are strong enough that they could somewhat assist Upside-Down Man with a full on scale invasion of the Multiverse from the Dark Multiverse.
Even in the original stories, Allura is definitely above the level of a normal Homo Magi, though the level is unclear. In the original storyline Zatara was unable to beat her himself and it required the original Princess, a good elemental that was her equal opposite to stop her. While she was incorrect, Zatanna thought Allura was the one who infected the city of Homo Magi with a magical diseases, showing she believed she was strong to override all of their magical defenses. Zatanna needed the Justice League's help to save her father from Allura. The newest Zatanna series shows Allura to not have been power cliffed. In the newest run Zatanna got help from the Justice League Dark, with Allura fighting both Wonder Woman and Zatanna individually as of 2025 and them only getting the best of her due to basically type advantage Wonder Woman using her nature as spirit of truth and Zatanna using her magic specialty. Even then Zatanna still only won due to one of her newer villains The Lady White turning against Allura and aiding Zee against her.
She's definitely more powerful then any other Zatanna villain save Xaos, Mammon, and Zor. Compared to them I think she's probably stronger then Xaos who was trying to break down the Earth/Darkling Plane yet Allura can go to any mystic plane she wants with Xaos being more like the Otherkind conceptually. While I think she'd probably defeat Mammon indirectly, whether she could overpower him directly is a bit more questionable. Zor I do think is probably stronger then Allura, even if she still might win via trickery. Compared to other Magic Villains in DC's Roster, Allura is an underrated beast. She doesn't have many appearances and feats, but what she does have suggests she can contend with Wonder Woman's stronger rogues like Circe and Queen of Fables given their relative performances against Wonder Woman and Zatanna.
What are Her Powers?
Allura is Dark Elemental, a spiritual being made of pure negative emotion who parasitically latches onto others and causes a whole bunch of effects. She can steal souls, fill someone's minds with lies, possess people as strong as Zatara and more. She has shown the ability to change her size and appearance at will and is broadly immortal subsisting off peoples' memories and magic.
Allura is also a powerful magic-user who's magic gives her a broad reality-warping. Most famous example is she cursed Zatara so if he contacted Zatanna directly or indirectly Zatanna would die, starting the arc of Zatanna searching for her first and beginning her superhero career. Allura created a dimension where she controlled the rules such as her declaring that Homo Magi magic doesn't work. She was able to make illusory environments so well that she said no person before Zatanna had ever seen through it. She described herself magically spying on Zatanna for weeks keeping her from reaching Sindella and the other Homo Magi before binding Zatanna with "tendrils of nothingness" that drained the heat and life from her and teleporting through dimensions away. In the new series she shows a bunch of new magical abilities including spatial destruction/portal creation and soul stealing. Basically she is a classical magical do anything type reality warper.
The new series also showed her getting a new piece of equipment in the Laevateinn, a magical spear made from a piece of the tongue of Loki representing pure lies. Stabbing someone within it traps them in an illusion of what binds them to the past and splinters their soul into infinite pieces unless they're able to move past the things that hold them back. Also while not a power per se, she's also arguably the craftiest of Zatanna's villainess, one of the few who have ever mentally gotten the best of Zatanna, and completely duping Lady White with a sob story of how Sindella actually was the villain in their fight.
What are Her Weaknesses?
So Allura's classic weakness is that she can't exist in the physical plane without a body that she has to possess and if exorcised from it must find a new body or escape back to a magic plane. She like a lot of other spirits also seems to have a general weakness to being sealed away so long as she doesn't have a host body. Both Zatara and Zatanna have defeated Allura originally by forcing her out into the open and sealing her away, Zatara in the Sword of Paracelsus and Zatanna inside a bottle.
Allura also has a habit of her own things being used against her. In her third appearance even though Allura set the rules for her dimension, Zatanna was able to use those same rules to win, and in the fourth and latest appearence Zatanna was able to get and use the Laevateinn on Allura. While she has lost in all these, it is somewhat notable that in all four cases, she lost to some combination of an exact equal good duplicate of her, her specific weakness, or her own powers used against her without the powerful Homo Magi ever just defeating her in a bout of magic power.
In conclusion, Allura is easily one of Zatanna's strongest foes and on the upper end of Justice League Tier given that she was able to fight Current Wonder Woman and Zatanna separately and even prior to this was a considered a threat on par with the Silver Age Justice League and an entire city of Homo Magi. She'd pretty clearly beat most of Zee's other villains. She beat Brother Night directly, and would be above Nimue Ravensong regardless who was below Brother Night. Lady White would likely lose one v one as it took her and Zatanna working together to defeat Allura with the Laevateinn. The Pre-Crisis Powerful Magic Users like Warlock or Druid, it depends likely on what realm they're in as if they're in Allura's realm she should easily win and if she's in their realm they'd likely win, though on a neutral battleground Allura definitely has more hype in power, has shown more broken abilities, and shown more cleverness.
Compared to Zee's more powerful enemies like Mammon, Xaos, or Zor, I do think Allura might be outgunned in raw power outside of questionable scaling with the Otherkind, that said it's not inconceivable to win as I think she's craftier then them, and the Laevateinn would be a pretty nasty weapon against any of them. She's also shown better abilities then either Mammon or Xaos and Xaos is pretty comparable in nature to one of the Otherkind and was struggling to make a connection from the Darkling plane to Earth while Allura can travel to "any" mystic plane with ease, which gives me the impressive that Allura could beat Xaos.
Against most of the non-magical characters on her tier, Allura would be an extremely broken type threat given the difficulty of fighting her and her ability to bring people to a magic dimension she controls the rules of or possess and siphon the soul from those with a body to possess. She'd also do already against magic users on her tier especially if she can manipulate them like Circe, or they don't have a lot of powers that work on a spirit like Anton Arcane. Enchantress might be an interesting fight for her as Allura probably has the raw power advantage on Enchantress though she probably can't possess Enchantress given she's already possessed. Enchantress has shown a lot more abilities though they are both broadly reality-warpers who can do much so I think it would depend on if Enchantress can outhink Allura.
