Season 1 ep1-5
Created by Kevin Smith
Starring Chris Wood, Sarrah Michelle Gellar, Lena Headey
When Skeletor’s (Mark Hamill) latest plan to capture Castle Grayskull leads to disastrous consequences, it falls to a loose alliance of good and evil Eternians to deal with the aftermath. Despite her disillusionment with Prince Adam’s (Chris Wood) secretive nature, and her own foster father’s (Liam Cunningham) complicity in this, Teela (Sarah Michelle Gellar ) teams up with Evil-Lyn (Lena Headey), Orko (Griffin Newman), Andra (Tiffany Smith), and Roboto (Justin Long) to attempt to save Eternia’s magic.
A spiritual successor to the ’80s Filmation series, Masters of the Universe: Revelation seeks to do something more than just that. Like its fellow Netflix stablemate Transformers: War for Cybertron trilogy, it collocates much of the extended lore from various sources into a cohesive whole, and frankly (so far), has achieved better results (but more on that another time). Revelations draws on the history of MOTU lore, from the initial mini-comics, through the 80s cartoon series and film, into the 2000s reboot, to create its Masterverse. The relationship between Adam and He-Man, is less of a Clark Kent disguise, but closer to a Billy/Shazam hyper-masculine power fantasy, somewhat more in line with Toonami’s 2004 take on the character. A number of the lines from the ‘87 film pop up in the initial battle sequence, as well as the wry call back to the flying discs in a later episode. There’s even a great use of one of the initial Castle Grayskull play features in the first episode, that is both shocking and dramatically clever. There’s obviously a lot of knowledge, care, and love for this franchise displayed here.
However it’s also taken a rather bold approach, at least for the first part of the season, and here we’re going to be straying into spoiler territory, but the howling on the internet has probably already alerted most of you to this. Effectively Revelations removes the two main players from the picture (probably temporarily), allowing other characters to come out of the shadows cast by these two titanic archetypes of the battle between good and evil. Despite He-Man appearing in almost every episode, Teela and Evil-Lyn become more of the show’s focus, and it even allows other characters such as Orko, Man-at-Arms, Tri-Klops, and Roboto to shine. It’s a more nuanced approach as alliances and priorities change, but in line with initial characterisation set up in previous series.
Moreover it allows these characters to develop personality rather than be eclipsed by the two chief protagonists in a twenty minute toy commercial/morality play. Teela gets to be something more than just a damsel in distress, with a perchant for ending up in bondage that would make Golden Age Wonder Woman blush. Cringer gets to be more than a one note joke, based on a word pun. Evil-Lyn gets to… well… own the goddamn series thanks to Lena Headey’s voice talent perfectly encapsulating the character’s frustration with all of Eternia. They even made me care for Orko!!! And I despise Orko. Here he’s given a fragility and bravery that makes him extraordinary.
That’s not to say Kevin Smith and his writing team got everything right. They overplay a few points, making things seem overly melodramatic, and underplay other plot points, seemingly to actively contradict something stated not five minutes before, but this is the exception rather than the rule. On the whole, Masters of the Universe; Revelation is a more mature update of the original ’80s franchise, that doesn’t stray too far away from its source material. It feels more like growth than reinvention, but one that is not afraid of making a few changes along the way. How it’ll end up? Well that’s hard to say, but I’ll eagerly tune into the second part of the season to find out.
