Spoilers for the first episode ahead.
"Masters of the Universe: Revelations" is billed as a continuation of the '80s "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" cartoon, aimed at nostalgic adults. With it, creator Kevin Smith has done what a lot of us have dreamed of doing with some of our beloved childhood media. The original "He-man" was notoriously badly written, full of lazy contrivances and silly cliches that followed familiar Saturday morning cartoon templates. Smith and his team confront this head-on, making the beloved characters break out of their child-friendly status quo and reckon with the weird character dynamics and odd choices that were inherent in the original "He-man" formula. And though the execution isn't always great, it's a fun idea that brings something new to a franchise that was only ever intended to sell action figures.
The ten-episode series starts by immediately killing off both the villain, Skeletor (Mark Hamill) and the hero, Prince Adam (Chris Wood), and revealing the truth that Adam is He-man's secret identity to all of his stunned family and friends. Among them is the warrior woman Teela (Sarah Michelle Gellar), who becomes our POV character. After reacting negatively to being kept in the dark about He-man, she's banished and goes off on her own to try and pick up the pieces in the wake of the final battle. However, when the need arises, she joins up again with He-man's surviving companions - including her father Man-at-Arms (Liam Cunningham), the Sorceress (Susan Eisenberg), Cringer the Battle Cat (Stephen Root), and Orko the Imp (Griffin Newman), to save the day and the universe.
The original He-man fans are sure to get a kick out of this series, because it's full of cameos and callbacks and references, but this is definitely not the original "He-man." Powerhouse Animation provides some fabulous visuals that are consistent design-wise with the first series, but the show isn't interested in telling the same old formulaic stories where He-man always wins. Eventually, we do get to see him in his full action hero glory, because nobody ever really dies in this universe, but it takes a lot of work and a lot of false-starts before we get there. Smith and company are more concerned with helping these characters grow up and interrogate their own shoddy construction. Inevitably, this results in some tonal weirdness because the characters just weren't designed to be this deep.
Still, it must have been so satisfying for the writers to be able to ask questions, like, doesn't Prince Adam keeping up this secret identity show a fundamental lack of trust in his friends? And, doesn't Adam's family dynamic with his parents King Randor (Diederich Bader) and Queen Marlena (Alicia Silverstone) seem to be wildly dysfunction? And, when is the sorceress Evil-Lyn (Lena Headey) going to realize that Skeletor ain't treating her right, and she doesn't have to put up with his nonsense? While I don't think you need to have much familiarity with the old '80s cartoon to enjoy this new show - and I certainly didn't have much - it helps to have some knowledge of the old character relationships, and the tropes of kids' media from that era.
Occasionally, I think the writers get way too wrapped up in the show's lore, and the snarky dialogue is more out of date than it thinks it is, but mostly all these transformations and subversions work. And they work because you can tell the creators love this franchise and these characters, and are eager to give them new stories. The inherent corniness of the fantasy premise, and having characters with names like Evil-Lyn and Man-at-Arms is carefully preserved, but I like that we're meant to come at them from a more adult perspective. Orko, for instance, goes from comic relief to a more poignant figure, and Prince Adam is actually much more interesting and heroic when he isn't being He-man.
My biggest quibble with the show is with its casting, which features an awful lot of celebrities who aren't a good fit for their characters. They make the show feel like more of a vanity project than it should. I mean, the series is super indulgent anyway, but it's executed well enough that this mostly doesn't matter. I'd be up for more of this series in the future, especially if the creators can maybe tackle the Dolph Lundgren movie next.
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