SHE IS SHE-RA!
An ’80s icon returns in She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power
The Princess of Power returns to TV after three decades away.
If hearing a cry of “For the honour of Grayskull” immediately inspires you to take on a power stance, you probably grew up in the ’80s feasting on a steady diet of She-Ra: Princess Of Power and He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe. In the three decades since those original Filmation series, we’ve seen numerous reincarnations of She-Ra’s twin brother He-Man, but nothing new from the Princess of Power herself. But this is remedied with Netflix’s new series She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power.
The woman responsible for introducing She-Ra to a new generation is Noelle Stevenson, the Eisner Award-winning co-creator of Lumberjanes. She’s reimagined the Princess of Power’s fight against Big Bad Hordak and the Evil Horde of Etheria.
The showrunner tells Red Alert that it’s a vital time to bring the heroine back into the spotlight. “With everything that’s going on in the world, we need to both address it and escape from it,” Stevenson says. “We’re setting up a fantasy world where you’re free from the constraints of this world, but you have different problems as a result of that. She-Ra shows girls everywhere how to be brave, how to choose to do the hard thing and how to fail and get back up again. Those are the lessons I want people to take away from the show. I want to make them more active in their lives, and communities, and all of that is really important to the core of the show.”
rebel girl
It’s also a traditional 2D animated series, which is delightfully unexpected in a CG-dominated landscape. Stevenson says the show’s look is an intentional throwback, drawing on ’70s and ’80s sci-fi artists Moebius and Roger Dean, as well as contemporary anime. “I come from a comics background, so I bring a lot of that to the show,” Stevenson says. “We just wanted to capture the fun and campiness of the idealised futuristic version of the ’80s with the shoulder pads, the big hair, and even the glitter in Glimmer’s hair.”
In this series, Adora of Planet Etheria is a 16-year-old orphan warrior training in Hordak’s army to battle against the princess rebellion. When she stumbles upon a sword that reveals her true destiny as the warrior who will help conquer the Horde army, Adora must turn against the life she knows to bring peace and hope to Etheria. She soon finds help in fellow rebels Glimmer, Bow and Mermista as they battle Adora’s former best friend, Catra, and the evil overlord, Hordak.
One hero you won’t see is He-Man, who Stevenson says will not be a player in this story as he was in the ’80s series. “He’s got his own universe going on,” she explains. “Adora thinks she’s an orphan so as soon as she finds out she might have a family, that plays out over the span of the show. So, she deals with part of his lore in slightly removed ways.” TB/AM
She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power starts streaming on Netflix on 16 November.