The problem with making a super genius character is that is only as smart as the writers.
That's the same problem that happened with Thrawn back in Star Wars. With the books where he came from, the dude who wrote him, Timothy Zahn, had a rudimentary understanding of military tactics and strategies in a sci-fi world, so at least there's the illusion of Thrawn being smart. The kind of smart you'd see in a young adult novel. But in the live-action and cartoon shows like Ahsoka and Rebels, those shows are written by a kids' cartoon producer, Dave Filoni, and it shows. Thrawn only passes off the illusion of being smart, while anyone with a decent grasp of tactics and strategies can see all the errors in Thrawn's judgement that are all over the place. The end result is that Thrawn comes off as an overhyped windbag.
The best way I've seen this done is in Three Kingdoms, but that book is partially based on the real-life history of the Three Kingdoms' War in China, so when someone like Cao Cao or Zhuge Liang does something smart, it genuinely is smart, because they're just jotting down what smart guys in real life military conflicts did. So the book comes off as really smart with its tactical characters, because the strategies and tactics were based on the real-life tactics of men who were considered prodigies in such matters, men who actually won wars in real life thanks to their strategies.
Sage is written to be the smartest person on the planet by liberal media people. As such, their idea of the smartest person on the planet is a back-talking woman of color who insults white people all the time. The sad thing is, there's normal, everyday people who are smarter than the people who write Sage's story, so of course, instead of coming off as the smartest person in the world, she just comes off as a cocky, condescending bitch. The problem isn't the character, the problem is that Eric Kripke isn't smarter than Dave Filoni. He's at the same level, if not worse.
If this was written smart, Sage would've told Firecracker ahead of time that Starlight will come to beat the shit out of her-and her orders are to not strike back. That way, the savaging becomes public and Starlight is ruined, just like in the show, and come next episode, Firecracker tells Sage that her strategy worked just as planned, and Sage assuages her that a broken nose is worth it just to see Starlight's popularity dwindle to nothing. Instead of it just being a racial catfight, it would've been part of Sage and Firecracker's plan to have Starlight go full Omni-Man on the latter, just so the latter can claim to be a victim.
Then the next logical step for Sage after ruining Starlight's clout would be to help Homelander tear Butcher's party apart one by one, by figuring out each member's weakness and exploiting it. Once they're out of the picture, Homelander's path to power would be complete. You could've even worked in that gay romance subplot with Frenchie; instead of the guy figuring out that Frenchie killed his family members, Sage would be the one to bring that revelation, which would lead to the guy attacking Frenchie, Frenchie feeling guilty enough to turn himself over to the cops, further crippling Butcher's party.
