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May 19, 2020

Ranking The “She-Ra” Princesses Of Power!

**SPOILERS FOR ALL FIVE SEASONS OF SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER AHEAD!**

Now that Netflix’s hugely successful She-Ra reboot has closed out its five-season run with an incredible finale, I think it’s high time we looked back at the series’ cast of complex, nuanced characters, and so I’ve decided to make a comprehensive list ranking the eight Princesses of Power who make up most of the show’s core cast, and whose alliance against the evil Lord Hordak (and, later, Horde Prime) forms the main thrust of the plot. Even when united by the magical link between their runestones, these Etherian Princesses are also compelling characters individually, and their unique personalities, powers and story arcs are what will be factored into my rankings.

Though it might be considered controversial, I’ve made the choice not to include She-Ra herself on this list, as I felt that the other Princesses are already overshadowed by her enough throughout the series: even though She-Ra is, strictly speaking, a Princess of Power, she’s so far beyond most of the others in terms of power and character development, it felt unfair to put her alongside them.

8: Spinnerella

Voiced by series showrunner Noelle Stevenson, Spinnerella seemed like a one-off cameo when she showed up in the first season of She-Ra, and it’s largely because of her small amount of screen time that she comes in last on my list: even though I think her character design is charming, Stevenson’s voice-work is excellent, and Spinnerella’s ability to control spiraling tornadoes is visually striking, she’s the one Princess who we still really don’t know that much about outside of her marriage to Princess Netossa (which is an event that happened offscreen, presumably before the first season opens, and thus isn’t ever touched upon except through mentions of a wedding anniversary in Season 5). Towards the end of the series, Spinnerella finally got a couple of awesome moments – but those were while she was an unwilling villain, mind-controlled by Horde Prime. With maybe a few more scenes to highlight her personality or explore her background (for instance: where does she come from? What is her Runestone?), I think she would probably have made a much bigger impression.

7: Frosta

I honestly don’t know if I’m in the minority with this opinion, but I was not overly fond of Princess Frosta. She was massively overhyped prior to her introduction towards the end of the first season, with Adora even drawing up military strategies for how to talk to her, and the Alliance determining that, if they could bring her to their side, they could win over all the remaining Princesses due to Frosta’s various connections. I enjoyed the reveal that she was actually a child (and a petulant, bratty one at that), but I felt like everything after that has been more and more wheel-spinning for her character. Even with the power to control ice, and a wickedly cool castle isolated in the mountains, Frosta has never been at the forefront of any stories since her debut: in season 2, she slowly earns Glimmer’s admiration and respect after initially coming off as clingy and obsessive; and in the final season, she and the recently returned Micah have some fun interactions as he prepares himself for his reunion with his own daughter – but for the most part, even more so than Princess Scorpia, Frosta has only ever been “the muscle”, who comes in handy when the teams needs to punch something with a spiky ice-fist.

6: Netossa

Introduced alongside Spinnerella as the air-borne Princess’ wife and constant companion, Netossa seemed, if anything, even more vague and unnecessary – her power to throw magical nets at things was random, and her character had barely any dialogue or interactions with anyone besides Spinnerella. But in the fifth season, Netossa suddenly became the Princess Alliance’s MVP with an unexpected and mind-blowing upgrade: she became the first character to lose someone to Horde Prime’s mind-control tactics, but she never once gave up hope that her wife would come back to her when confronted with her unconditional love, and her quest to win back her “Spinny”, carried out over multiple episodes, was written beautifully. Her fight-scenes with the brainwashed Spinnerella were a delight to watch (though also heartbreaking), and convinced me that magical net tossing is actually a legitimate skill-set and can be used in plenty of creative ways. Her can-do attitude and relentlessly romantic spirit made her relatable in ways she hadn’t been before. Voice actress Krystal Joy Brown deserves much of the credit for transforming Netossa from a peculiar background-character to one of the Princesses I’d most love to know more about.

5: Perfuma

Perfuma was a slow-burn, as she took a while to find her footing among the other Princesses – after all, when she was first introduced, she was written to be pushy, overly demanding, and grating. As Princess of the forested region of Plumeria, Perfuma’s interests are purely in the gardens, trees and plants she cultivates using the powers of the Heart Blossom Runestone, and she is a peace-loving character, so she didn’t jump into the Alliance straight away: but when she did, and once she stopped pestering everyone about meditation and drum-circles, it turned out there was a lot to love about her – she still suffers from all her old faults, but she’s also done her part to work past them and develop more patience for others: in season 4, a surprisingly transformative moment for her character was when she had to work with the cacti dwelling in the Crimson Waste, much to her dismay. In season 5, she grew very close to reformed Horde soldier Scorpia and used her skills to help the shyer, more sensitive Princess nurture her own talents. Her character design (especially in Season 5, which saw her take on a cool new undercover alias and a new outfit to go along with it), voice work by Genesis Rodriguez (who also played a similar character, Honey Lemon, in Big Hero 6), and unique connection with Etheria’s nature have made her a consistently fun Princess to follow on her travels.

4: Mermista

The Princess of Salineas has always been a mood: her sour attitude on life in general and her angsty, on-and-off relationship with the boisterous pirate captain Sea Hawk make her vastly dissimilar to the more positive Princesses of Power. But over the seasons, we’ve watched her develop and gain a number of character traits we couldn’t have seen coming – after all, who would have ever guessed she was an avid reader of mystery novels, or that her reading habits would ever help the team discover a traitor in their midst? Who would have suspected that she herself took up Sea Hawk’s pyromaniacal tendencies and tried her hand at burning boats? But her biggest opportunity for development was when the Horde, helped by rogue Princess Entrapta, invaded Salineas and took everything from her, including her throne, her Runestone, and her status. After spending a long time sulking in a bathtub (being able to turn into a mermaid is good for some things) and eating ice cream, Mermista got back on her feet and became a stronger fighter than ever – which turned out to be both a blessing and a curse, as she later became brainwashed by Horde Prime and briefly used her powers against the other Princesses. Once you add the magic touch from Vella Lovell’s voice acting, you get a well-rounded and complicated character who may be a bit of a disaster at times, but is still fun, competent and relatable.

3: Scorpia

She-Ra Scorpia — she-raandtheprincessesofpower.fandom.com

Scorpia had to embark on a long and difficult journey of self discovery before she could come into her own, and it’s no wonder – despite being the Princess of the Fright Zone, she had her connection to the magical Black Garnet severed while she was still very young, and the choice to relinquish the Fright Zone into the hands of Lord Hordak was made by her grandfather, thus abandoning Scorpia to a fate she had never asked for, as a soldier and later a Force Captain for the Horde. But Scorpia’s most defining character trait has always been her loyalty – without question, she did whatever the Horde asked her to do, which included turning on her fellow Princesses. It took her a long time before she had the courage to stand up to the Horde, and, in particular, Force Captain Catra, whom she had always considered her best friend. But when she did, and realized that she could still harness the electric powers of the Black Garnet, Scorpia never looked back: she is now defined not by the abuse and trauma she suffered, but by the action she took to make sure it would never happen again – not to herself, and not to anyone else. On top of all that, she’s also a great hugger and an amazing singer (and, of course, all the credit for that goes to voice actress Lauren Ash).

2: Glimmer

Glimmer has had the most screen time and development out of all the characters on this list, thanks to her unforeseen transition from princess to queen of Bright Moon, after her mother Angella’s death in season 3. That transition, though undeniably sad, was necessary to turn Glimmer from the reckless, impulsive character she had been up until that point into a more rational, strategical and calculating leader – though it wasn’t easy for her, as she proved when she fell victim to Shadow Weaver’s manipulations soon afterwards and chose to unleash the powers of the Heart of Etheria, even overriding The Beacon and invading the Fright Zone with Scorpia. Thankfully, in season 5, Glimmer had a chance to find her footing before she could be pulled any further down the dark path she had been walking – with the help of her friends and family, she was able to fix the damage she had caused. But even though she came back to the light with her morality intact, she did retain much of the knowledge she had learned from Shadow Weaver, including a talent for dark magic – a much-needed upgrade, since Glimmer had always been unique in that she had to recharge her own powers, derived from the Moonstone, in between battles. Ultimately, I’m putting Glimmer in second place because, while I love her character and Karen Fukuhara’s voice work, I still don’t think anyone compares to my favorite Princess of Power…

1: Entrapta

I didn’t expect to like Entrapta at all: her debut episode in the series, early in the first season, felt like filler while I was watching it for the first time, and I had difficulty believing this geeky, purple-haired Princess, living in the mountains with an army of murderous robots and a squad of bakers specializing in miniature pastries, could be of any use to the Rebellion, or an interesting character in her own right. And for a few more episodes, I thought I was justified in thinking that – until the fateful moment when Entrapta made the choice to stay with the Horde because….they had cooler tech. By firmly moving her from one side of the conflict to the other in a way that was shocking but still felt completely logical (because Entrapta had already been established as someone who cared more about tech than anything else), the showrunners turned her into the series’ most fascinating character. Since then, Entrapta has battled her moral compass, she’s slowly learned how to develop friendships, she’s maybe even fallen in love with Hordak of all people – and through it all, she’s always been unabashedly herself. Even in season 5, she has to physically stop herself from joining Horde Prime because he has spaceships! Am I the only one who thinks that’s super cool? As voiced by Christine Woods, the nerdy, complicated Entrapta is far and away my favorite Princess of Power.

So there you have it: all eight of She-Ra‘s Princesses, ranked. What do you think of my list? Which rankings do you agree with? Who is your favorite Princess? Share your own thoughts and opinions in the comments below!

May 17, 2020May 17, 2020

“She-Ra” Season 5 Review! No Spoilers!

Would it be too much of a hot take to say that everything Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame did, the fifth and final season of She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power did just as well – if not better in several instances? I’ll let you decide.

Now, to be fair, She-Ra has the advantage of being a Netflix series, with up to thirteen-episode seasons, so it’s probably not entirely right to compare it to any movie, even ones that are three hours long. However, considering that She-Ra‘s final season, whether intentionally or coincidentally, lifts a great deal of material straight from the closing chapters of the Infinity Saga, it seems fair enough to compare the two storylines, and how they are executed, and how the Netflix/Dreamworks cartoon sometimes gets it right where the Marvel Studios blockbusters falter.

But first, a little background. I was not a She-Ra fan until Friday morning, when I decided it was high time I watched the entire series as quickly as possible, in order to catch up with the final season which had just dropped on Netflix. I had tried once before, several months ago, but I never even got past the opening credits. I forced myself through on this occasion, however – and before the first episode was over, I was already very thankful for that decision, because….wow. But don’t even get me started on the four previous seasons. This is strictly a Season 5 review.

Though I do think a little bit of Season 4 finale recap is in order – if you haven’t caught up, be warned: SPOILERS for that season up ahead! In the aftermath of Queen Glimmer (Karen Fukuhara) recklessly deciding to use the Heart of Etheria – a magical superweapon which lies embedded deep within the core of the planet – a great many things have changed in the status quo: first of all, Etheria itself has been carried through a portal out of its empty pocket-dimension and back into the larger universe; Adora (Aimee Carrero) has lost her connection with the ancient warrior She-Ra, and the Sword of She-Ra is broken and useless; and Hordak (Keston John), once the greatest enemy of the Princesses of Power, has been revealed to be nothing more than the puppet and defective clone of a far greater evil – Horde Prime (also Keston John), an alien overlord who has now launched a massive invasion of Etheria, and has simultaneously captured Glimmer, Hordak, and Hordak’s former second-in-command, Catra (AJ Michalka).

Season 5 picks up after a small time jump. Horde Prime’s invasion is well underway now, and Adora, the archer Bow (Marcus Scribner), and all the remaining Princesses of Power are leading a futile rebellion against him. But on Horde Prime’s flagship, Glimmer and Catra are forced to establish a delicate trust bond with Prime and with each other as they plot a way to escape from imprisonment. Prime is essentially Thanos, and with less clever writing he might just have been that: his agenda (to destroy worlds across the universe in order to achieve cosmic balance and bring about a lasting peace) is much like the Mad Titan’s plan to end world hunger by wiping out half of every planet’s population; even more specifically, he too is the long-awaited mastermind behind the plans of an earlier antagonist in the franchise, who arrives on a gargantuan starship from the depths of space, whose army of mindless bodyguards start almost all their speeches with the word “Rejoice”, and who also has a tendency to meaningfully snap his fingers. Like Thanos, he has arrived on Etheria with the intention of claiming a superweapon that just so happens to come in the form of a magical link between a set of multi-colored crystals.

But unlike Thanos, Horde Prime has time to elaborate on his plans, and the characters have time to get to know him, to witness firsthand his strengths, and to begin to understand his weaknesses while they wander his ship. His special abilities, cloning and mind-control, aren’t anything we haven’t seen before, but they do also differentiate him from Thanos. And in one of my favorite scenes from early in the series, we get a chilling look at the devastation Horde Prime has wrought when he serves Glimmer and Catra a dinner consisting of various rare delicacies from worlds he destroyed in the past. Being the last person in the universe to know an entire planet’s recipes may not seem too dramatic, but it instantly makes the fight to save Etheria more personal, and conveys the horrors of Horde Prime’s conquests far better than any war-torn planet or battlefield.

And that’s the thing: whenever She-Ra strays dangerously close to imitating the Marvel films, it immediately veers away again with the help of some clever, quirky twist that makes it feel fresh and invigorating. The final season may have all the same scope, scale and – occasionally – story-beats as Endgame, but it puts its own unique spin on that story. There is only one instance I can think of where this isn’t the case, when several of our heroes (I won’t say which) are left stranded in space on their way to Etheria, but the fuel they need for their own ship is actually crystals in the exact shape of Captain Marvel’s eight-pointed star – Captain Marvel being the one who rescued Tony Stark from being stranded in space after his ship ran out of fuel – so they touch down on a desolate planet only to run into a motley crew of space pirates led by a woman called Starla (Melissa Fumero) and a bald purple cyborg woman with trust issues, in an interaction that plays out almost identically to a similar meeting between Tony Stark and Star Lord’s motley crew of space pirates – which also includes a bald purple cyborg woman with trust issues – in Avengers: Infinity War.

But there’s a not-so-secret weapon at the heart of She-Ra, and that’s the series’ core cast of characters and the relationships between them, which are constantly evolving in new, unpredictable directions. Avengers: Infinity War‘s greatest problem, in my opinion, is how it sacrificed character for plot: it’s a problem that unfortunately carries over into parts of Endgame – but She-Ra doesn’t have that problem: every major character has room to grow, and all their development happens onscreen, so it doesn’t need to be exposited to the audience. The cast is also small enough already that everyone can get a meaningful role: whereas in Endgame, it sometimes felt like certain characters had only survived the Infinity War snap so they could provide comedic relief.

The story’s focus is still on Adora and Catra, as the couple navigates their fragile relationship with some difficulty. But for the first time, it’s not Adora putting in all the effort: Catra, for her part, is finally trying to stop pushing people away from her every time they show her any affection – though, much like Marvel’s Loki, she still plans on exploiting the current chaos for her own advantage, even if it means hurting others. Their relationship goes through some very surprising ups-and-downs this season. Separately, they’ve both changed as well – Adora is busy over-exerting herself as she tries to match the strength and stamina she possessed when she could turn into She-Ra, while Catra is a quieter, less aggressive shadow of her former self.

Catra’s reluctant interactions with the imprisoned Queen Glimmer are also surprisingly fun to watch, as Glimmer too has to make an effort to trust her former enemy, the woman responsible for her own mother’s death. Glimmer has had a rough time these past couple of seasons, losing people she loves and watching as her close circle of friends gives up on her when she needs them most – something which is partly her own fault, as her stubbornness manifests itself in increasingly dangerous decisions. Much like Catra, she is descending into a dark place, and it’s both thrilling and scary to join her on that journey.

Back on Etheria, Bow has also made some changes to his own lifestyle – though not quite enough to make him give up crop-tops, which he still wears proudly even in circumstances where one would think it impossible: such as the crushing void of space. His arc in this season is more understated than others, but it gives him a number of deeply satisfying revelations about his purpose in life, and also briefly reunites him with his two dads, who are still just as charming and witty as ever.

My personal favorite character in the series, the geeky tech-genius Entrapta (Christine Woods), is given plenty of material to work with (quite literally) this season. Lost and lonely without her lab partner Hordak to turn to, she once again has a hard time reminding herself that she can’t just join the bad guys because they have cooler technology.

The other Princesses each get more time to shine, especially now that She-Ra herself isn’t around to steal the spotlight from them in action sequences. Shy, sensitive Scorpia (Lauren Ash), having just recently regained her Princess status after living her entire life severed from the powers of her Runestone, is the most compelling to watch – but then, she’s always been compelling. To no one’s surprise, she gravitates most toward Princess Perfuma (Genesis Rodriguez), who is battling her own insecurities and finds a kindred spirit in Scorpia’s gentle personality. The two more brusque Princesses, Frosta (Merit Leighton) and Mermista (Vella Lovell) have smaller roles this season: though the latter does get some very interesting development later in the season, and, as always, has adorable banter with the boisterous pirate captain, Sea Hawk (Jordan Fisher). A pleasant surprise is the upgrade of guest stars Spinnerella (Noelle Stevenson) and Netossa (Krystal Joy Brown) to recurring characters: they’ve come a long way from the time when Bow couldn’t even remember what their powers were.

Several villains find themselves joining with the Rebellion against Horde Prime’s power – the Horde itself has dissolved, while Hordak is trapped between his loyalty to his maker, and fidelity to his friend Entrapta (is there something more to their peculiar relationship? You’ll just have to watch and find out). Shadow Weaver (Lorraine Toussaint), meanwhile, still maintains that she is loyal to Queen Glimmer, even though her meddling with dark magic, which resumes early in the season as the Rebellion runs out of other options, makes her vulnerable to the temptation of evil.

The dark magic itself is still fairly vague, but it is used in a greater capacity than ever before, and there are several fights which utilize it very well – especially those which also involve Glimmer’s father Micah (Daniel Dae Kim), who has had a little time to regain his strength since his decades-long sojourn on Beast Island. All in all, the action has been upgraded significantly this season: in particular, the fight scene which closes out Episode 5 is appropriately epic, and another fight soon after has one character literally leaping across an asteroid belt and blowing up starships with their bare hands. That’s all thanks to the incredible animation, of course.

A She-Ra review wouldn’t be complete without a shout-out to the series’ commitment to diversity – an area in which it wipes the floor with Endgame. While that film mustered up one nameless gay background character, She-Ra ends queerbaiting critiques once and for all with definitive, powerful LGBTQ+ representation.

For me, She-Ra beats out Endgame because of how undeniably right the payoff for every story thread and character arc is in the end. While Endgame leaves room for argument and debate over several characters’ fates, She-Ra ties everything up neatly, in a way that is brave but satisfying – at least for me. There’s no room for the sort of unending, roundabout discourse that plagues other fandoms. This feels like a conclusive, fitting ending for characters I only just met yesterday and for whom I would already sacrifice everything.

Series Rating: 10/10