Kevin Smith’s revival of Masters of the Universe was highly anticipated in 2021. As someone well known for being a nerd and valuing the nostalgia that keeps nerd culture going, most trusted him to provide an up-to-date but reminiscent He-Man.
With Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Smith gives us a fully plotted out show, with amazing animation and clever characters. It’s easy to get sucked into the world of Eternia, eager for the next episode to see where Teela and company land next. While many dedicated fans of the original series were upset at the focus on Teela and Evil-Lyn, mainly for sexist reasons, they overlooked the inherent sexism still present in the show.
The writing team only includes one female, raising a concern at how attuned the staff could have been to their own biases while writing around two key women in Eternia. Teela and Evil-Lyn both get to be hardcore badasses, with their own designs on power and control. So it was disappointing to see that stereotypes still plagued how the characters were portrayed.
Teela is confident and headstrong, setting out on her own adventures and battles- and is depicted with the classic short haircut of a butch feminist. Likewise, Evil-Lyn is power hungry and seeking revenge over Skeletor, so we see her, too, with the tight haircut of a traditional man.
When the time comes for Teela to forgive Adam for wronging her, and to save Eternia by becoming the ultimate motherly figure of peace and love, she gets long flowing hair that calls to mind women from Renaissance paintings. The same is done for Evil-Lyn, where we see her with gorgeous locks of white hair cascading down her back when she is being ‘good’ and doing what is right for Eternia.
Overcorrecting to write empowered women also backfires when we delve into Evil-Lyn’s backstory. In the best-case scenario, her history with Skeletor was always present but never spoke on, the worst-case scenario, Smith and friends retconned Evil-Lyn, corrupting one of the fun aspects of her character in the original series.
Evil-Lyn has previously been presented as a purely evil-driven character, with power and chaos on her mind. Seldom do we get female characters that are evil simply to be evil. But with Revelation, her history with Skeletor is described as highly abusive and one-sided, with her being more of a perpetual victim of circumstance.
While this could very well be the case with Skeletor, it unfortunately serves as a slap in the face to Evil-Lyn and her fans since it strips her of her own agenda and reduces her down to a revenge story. We’ve seen this mistake before in Game of Thrones when the show’s writers only redeemed Sansa after belittling her and victimizing her repeatedly. As GoT fans pointed out then, this is its own level of sexism, as it still makes a woman’s story and successes dependent on a backstory revolving around a man.
Despite best intentions, Kevin Smith and his team of writers neglected to analyze their biases before focusing on empowering the women of Masters of the Universe, inadvertently relying on stereotypes to give Teela and Evil-Lyn backstories and goals counterproductive to their feminist narrative. Both women have stories that are reduced down to ‘because of a man’ as their driving force, taking away the empowerment presented at the surface level.