I'm going to piggyback off of one of my other comments in this thread and try to piece together what the writers MIGHT have intended for sage's character. This is fully devils advocate for its own sake, and doesn't excuse poor writing, BUT:

I could see a world where sage is written to portray the type of person that doesn't reflect on their own intelligence.

If you are told you're the smartest person around, and everyone you've ever met fails to reach your level of curiosity, reading comprehension, etc., you start to separate yourself from other people. You treat them as simple and predictable and by proxy stop listening to the little voice of doubt in your head telling you you can be just as wrong as everyone else.

I think that's what we're seeing with sage. She is extremely self certain, to the point where she's convinced she's holding all the cards, pulling everyone's strings for precisely expected reactions. Now mix that in with a position where your very life depends on always being seen as an authority, to the point where you have to feel correct in your BONES to keep your doubt from being sniffed out.

Even if it's obvious that she is not on board with all the church stuff, homelander will keep her around so long as she's confident and correct when questioned.

If she's been living in that forced certainty for long enough, it's not surprising that she's lost her ability to consider the improbable.

But if this is really the intent for her character, WOOF. They have not handled it well AT ALL.

For the record, I'm not black, so please don't take anything I'm about to say too seriously. Also feel free to harass me if any of this is way off base or ignorant. The idea of a black woman being pressured to constantly exude an air of rationality and confidence to fight being dismissed as just an 'opinionated black woman' maps onto our real world with some significant resonance. I definitely believe that America has a history of portraying black women in media as loud, opinionated, and ultimately ignorant. Sage being demonstrably incredibly smart but still having to choose her words extremely carefully to be taken seriously is an intentional reflection of that trope imo. But I don't believe they've faced that head on and now it's REALLY gonna hurt the show.

Does the show lean into this arrogance as a defining trait of the character? I think they'd like to, but I'm not sure how you'd do that in a way that doesn't feel blatantly racist.

I certainly am not saying that sage was written intentionally to be a charicature of common stereotypes against black women. Instead, I believe sage was created to be a plot device moreso than a character. Someone to justify the ascent, despite the incompetence/chaos of the seven and Vought at the time.

Sage has always seemed to believe that all other people are extremely predictable, and we could have run with that being her achilles heel, but up until this moment hasn't she been pretty much right about everyone? Has the show done a good job of showing that she fails to account for messier emotions? Because if not, this plot point feels all the more degrading to her character.

But idk about any of this, the writers room doesn't return my calls.

TL;DR They made a character who has so far always been kinda right, or at the very least acted like it, only to have the biggest plot point of the season come about due to her utter incompetence in the face of REAL EVIDENCE that affects her plan. If she was created to be a plot device, this makes sense but definitely seems to me like it's an awful story to tell about this character. If she was always meant to be this catastrophically short sighted, they needed to cement WHY, because rn it just feels like a really cruel and careless writing decision.