MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVOLUTION
HE-MAN AND SKELETOR’S LONG-RUNNING FEUD CONTINUED IN NETFLIX’S MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE: REVELATION. NOW THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED
BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL! In 2021, Kevin Smith (Clerks creator, professional geek and newly appointed guardian of the secrets of Castle Grayskull) held aloft his magic sword and introduced the world to a He-Man we’d never seen before.
Masters Of The Universe: Revelation was packed full of heroes and villains who’d populated many a toybox back in the ’80s – most of them still wearing those strange, Conan-esque fluffy pants that were the fashion at the time – but the new Netflix series also tapped into emotional depths previously unseen in Eternia.
While Revelation was a direct follow-up to the events of the popular Filmation cartoon – still arguably the most successful toy commercial of all time – Smith’s paymasters at Netflix and toy manufacturer Mattel briefed their showrunner to treat the ongoing feud between He-Man and Skeletor “like Shakespeare”.
With harder-edged, animeinfluenced visuals and a story that unfolded over a long, complex arc, it was targeted squarely at the now 40- something kids who’d grown up watching the adventures of the most powerful man in the universe on TV. And this time, each episode wasn’t wrapped up with a cheesy moral.
LIGHT AND DARK
It felt like a match made in Preternia (the franchise’s answer to Heaven), but not everybody was happy. Indeed, despite Revelation picking up a 93% fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, winning over the more negative corners of the fanbase turned out to be a stretch, even for the most powerful man in the universe.
“[The increased character complexity] is something that we’ve seen the fanbase either react incredibly positively towards or reject,” says Ted Biaselli, a lifelong MOTU fan who now gets to call the shots as director of original series at Netflix. “There are people who just want to go back to the simplicity, and that’s fine. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting your heroes and villains to be the good guy and the bad guy, and not really burden them with the complexities of adulthood.
“Some people just wanted to go back and relive the nostalgia, but that just wasn’t what the approach for this show was. What we wanted to do is give these characters real emotions and foibles, and challenge them.”
For some, the fact that He-Man was absent (presumed dead) for much of the 10-episode run, with the focus shifting instead to Teela, the former captain of Eternia’s Royal Guard, was also seen as an issue. “I know there are people that went after Revelation for putting Teela first or whatever, but we didn’t,” Smith tells SFX. “Teela was as much a part of the story as she’s always been a p
