News He-Man anime series from Kevin Smith coming to Netflix

I really enjoyed the hell outta Part 2 like I did Part 1. It's the MOTU story I've always wanted after the reveal that Teela was the Sorceress's daughter and successor.

 

Gotta admit, the final few episodes were pretty impressive. An epic story with strong character work and effective dialogue.

Although it seems a bit convenient that Teela can just decide the traditional Sorceress rules don't apply to her. I expected them to go there, but it could've used a bit more justification.

Also, in the original show, wasn't Evil-Lyn's white hair the result of magic prematurely aging her, rather than something she was born with?

It's interesting that the costume design for Sorceress Evil-Lyn uses the same "starscape within the cape" effect as Teela/Sorceress from the other Netflix He-Man series. Is that a nod from this show to that, or are they both referencing something earlier from MotU lore? Evil-Lyn's pointy circular headdress reminded me of something too, but I can't remember what.

I think it was just an Empire Strikes Back in-joke since Mark Hamill was playing Skeletor. Although I guess he could've recognized it as Horde technology.

 

Kevin Smith has definitely used ESB for in-jokes before. He's a big ol' nerd that way.......

 

Lyn's arc throughout the entire series is a highlight. I was glad to see her redeemed and break the cycle of abuse. And she made for a great antagonist in the last half, where you can see why she would do the things she did or wanted to do. Very well-written.

 

I do feel it went to kind of a bizarre place, though -- "She just killed everyone in Heaven!" Huh? How does that even work? And was it going too far? I mean, if you think about it, there can be no greater atrocity than destroying the entire population of the afterlife (at least the good part of it), since it's even more permanent than death, and since the population of the afterlife presumably outnumbers those still living. So the show just casually had Evil-Lyn commit the single greatest act of mass murder -- meta-murder? murder squared? -- in Eternian history, and then just shrugged it off and let her be redeemed. That seems excessive. The destruction of Preternia barely had any impact on the story anyway, aside from evoking that really corny line from Marlena, so it would've been better to leave it out.

 

Beast Man wanted Eve to harness a saddle to his back and ride him.

That's not what he got.

 

It doesn't seem to be something that's ever explained. She disguises herself as a blonde woman in "Evil-Lyn's Plot" and her hair is revealed to be white, when she takes the helmet off in "The Witch and the Warrior".

Her 2002 counterpart also has white hair during the flashback scenes when she first meets Keldor, in the episode, "The Price of Deceit"

 

She didn't break the cycle of abuse.

She was manipulated into breaking the cycle of abuse by the goodies, so that maybe Lynn and Skeletor kill each other in a power grab. Divide and conquer. It wasn't her choice, there was no epiphany or dare I say "revelation".

More so, she became the abuser.

Which is the pattern.

Most bullies where themselves bullied as children.

 

Yeah, that's where I thought the explanation came from. I just rewatched it on YouTube, and when Evil-Lyn takes her headdress off, Teela says "I guess you've had to rely on your magic for everything." I think she was only talking about Evil-Lyn lacking survival skills in the desert, but I guess, because of the timing, I mistook it for a comment about her magic draining her youth, or maybe saying that she used her magic to stay young, or something. I guess my imagination filled in one blank too many.

 

Finished Part 2 yesterday, and loved it as much as the first part. It took a franchise I didn't really care about (the original He-Man and She-Ra were both early 80s and I was born in 1990, so it was before my time) and made me enjoy it immensely. I'd love to see more of this version, but regardless I'm glad this show got to exist. It was a fun fantasy action/adventure show with great characters, and I enjoyed it the whole way through. I'd say I enjoyed it more overall then I enjoyed Netflix's She-Ra, which I liked a good deal but dragged a bit and had some story elements I wasn't a huge fan of. He-Man, to me, had more heart even with its shorter runtime, and aiming for an older demographic then She-Ra also helped it a lot.

 

Masters of the Universe: Revelation Just Walked Back Its Big Romance

I sensed this was going to be turned into an issue at some point.

 

From what I gather, the whole show was already in the can when Part 1 aired, so the idea that they walked anything back in response to anything the fans have said since just isn't feasible. Animation generally takes a lot of time, so most shows literally can't respond to audience feedback fast enough for it to matter. To give an example; when the first season of The Clone Wars was airing, they were already deep into writing the third season, notoriously the season where Ahsoka started to really mature. So claims that fan backlash against her Scrappy-Doo characterisation in season one brought about that change is nonsense; they designed her arc that way on purpose.

So in this instance; if fans read anything more into the Teela/Andra relationship than the writers intended, it's not on the writers that they didn't follow through on that.

 

And even if it were possible, why would they have to? Out of fear of a very noisy homophobic minority? It was just going to be free publicity.

 

I think it's also worth pointing out that nothing in the show really precluded a "more than platonic" relationship between Teela and Andra either. So they could be an item, it just wasn't relevant enough to the story they were telling to get into it, and if they'd just done some token gesture in that direction, they'd be accused of queerbaiting. Catch-22. Best to leave it ambiguous until there's an actual story to tell there, one way or the other.

Indeed, there was already more than enough going on in general (and with Teela in particular) that the show didn't need to cram a romance arc in there too.

Speaking of romance on this show (he says trying to erase the mental image of Skeletor & Evil-Lyn being a thing, or Skeletor having a sex drive at all); I always thought that Teela was Duncan's adopted daughter, not his biological daughter, and that it was some other solder under his command that had a thing with the Sorceress. Am I misremembering something, confusing the show with the comics, or just plain wrong?

 

Ok I'm confused. Why did Duncan make his daughter believe he was her adoptive father? So as not to have to lie to her if she asked him about her mother? Did he just prefer to tell a lie instead of another?

Between this and the fact that Adam had never considered it necessary to tell Teela the truth about his secret identity, I must say that the original series was highly criticizable from a moral point of view ..

 

I have only watched two episodes of the second half but yeah, I thought Duncan, instead of Fisto, as Teela's actual father felt like a clumsy retcon?

I have enjoyed it so far and would be happy to see more set in this universe. That said, I think that if the series had been a fraction longer, with a 3 episode intro involving Skeletor's endgame instead of one, and a few more flashbacks exploring the characters' previous relationships in the new, more adult framework, it would have got a double thumbs up.

I thought the opening battle was awesome and even a prequel with more of that would certainly hit the spot.

 

Let this be our final battle! Nice nod to the movie.

Never thought I'd dig MOTU again. Loved the cartoon and toy line as a kid and had the less-than-stellar movie memorised (one of the earliest signs of my obsessive nature). Although, say what you want about the movie, Frank Langella was frickin' amazing as Skeletor.

Anyway - loved it. Lena Headey rocked it.

 

Watched the third episode and enjoyed the twists but I have to assume that Evil Lynn lied completely about how she first met Skeletor. That was literally nothing like his origin or hers from the cartoon. It is possible that the Faceless One altered her memories. Let's go with that.