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We must be strong. We must be brave… because the final season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is releasing on Netflix May 15th.
A fan favorite for its complex character relationships, expressive animation, and diversity, She-Ra follows the journey of Adora, an ex-soldier for the evil Horde turned rebel fighter, as she and her best friends Glimmer, the spirited, stubborn princess of Bright Moon, and Bow, an expert archer and Tech Master, fight to free their planet from the grip of a villain set on conquering all. Though closing out a fantastic series like She-Ra is going to be a significant challenge, the final season promises both an emotional thrill ride and, just maybe, answers to many of the questions fans have been asking ever since the first episode…
She-Ra’s Season Four Left off on a cliffhanger…
She-Ra Season Four’s two-part (or should I say double trouble…?) finale left viewers with just as many questions as it did answers. To recap:
After realizing just how poorly her commanding officer (and major crush) Catra had treated her, Horde captain Scorpia finally decides to defect. Travelling to the rebellion headquarters with her robot friend Emily in tow, she attempts to ask the princesses for help in rescuing a mutual friend, Entrapta, who Catra had exiled, a season earlier, to the deadly Beast Island. However, she soon finds that they’re embroiled in a conflict of their own.
Adora, with help from the ever-loyal Bow and wise if somewhat batty Razz, had just discovered that centuries ago Etheria’s magic had been channeled into the planet’s core in order to create a massive superweapon. What’s more, She-Ra’s Sword was constructed as the key to its activation, either wreaking untold havoc…or providing unfathomable power. The Princess Alliance became divided upon whether to use the weapon or to destroy it. While Queen Glimmer was willing to risk it to end the war for good, Adora and Bow believed activating the weapon would be too dangerous.
Scorpia’s information, however, becomes the tipping point in the debate. Realizing that Entrapta was the only one who could disable the ticking time bomb at the planet’s center, Adora and Bow offer to conduct a rescue mission to Beast Island. But Glimmer, feeling frustrated and ignored, refuses. She asks the two why they can’t just listen to her, to which Bow replies that he is — but she’s making the wrong decision. In return, Glimmer orders them to stay in the castle.
Of course, as fans already know from the first season, Bow and Adora aren’t particularly good at following orders…
Escape to beast island
Stealing the First Ones spaceship they’d recovered back in Season Three, the two of them take a very bumpy journey to Beast Island which they find to be inhabited by a mix of ancient mechas and terrifying, mutated monsters. Saved from the jaws of a giant worm, by a mysterious man who they learn is actually Glimmer’s long-lost father, they venture further towards the center of the island in search of Entrapta. The makeshift group is surrounded by a pack of hungry monsters when suddenly a giant mecha appears, scaring them off.
The pilot of the mecha turns out to be Entrapta, who apparently has been surviving just fine on her own at Beast Island. Excited to see her friends, she leads them to the center of the island, where she’s been tapping into the remaining First Ones technology in an attempt to understand the truth behind the planet Etheria. She already knows about the weapon at the planet’s core and tells Bow and Adora that the key to setting it off is for the final princess to bond with her runestone. Of course, the only princess without a connection would be… Scorpia.
Meanwhile, back at Bright Moon, Glimmer realizes her friends have ignored her orders and left to rescue Entrapta. Frustrated, she decides to take matters into her own hands, travelling to the Crystal Castle to negotiate with Light Hope. After battling the Castle’s arachnid security system, she speaks to the mysterious AI, telling her that even if Adora isn’t willing to use the weapon, she is. Light Hope then gives her temporary access to the Castle’s database and instructions on how to activate the First Ones superweapon…the same that Adora and Bow receive from Entrapta: she must connect Scorpia to her runestone.
Scorpia is thrilled to hear from Queen Glimmer that she might be the key to saving the planet…but less so at the thought of connecting to her runestone. Despite the (unexpectedly) warm reception she’s received at Bright Moon, Scorpia’s not sure she’d really fit with the other princesses. Glimmer disagrees, saying she thought the same thing when she first began to assemble the alliance but learned pretty early on that everyone’s different… but that’s how it should be. Emboldened by this, Scorpia agrees to accompany Glimmer to the Fright Zone where they’ll discover the Black Garnet and end the war for good.
The Horde’s headquarters turn out to be somewhat less guarded than they expected, with most of the soldiers exhausted by days of fighting and the two leaders, Hordak and Catra, mysteriously missing. Let in by Lonnie and her fellow soldiers who’ve tired of their poor treatment, Scorpia finds the Black Garnet and manages to forge a connection to it. This brings the final part of the weapon online.
Fighting Destiny
As the princesses are filled with a sudden surge of power, Glimmer rushes off to find the Horde’s missing leaders, knowing that the two are probably locked in combat over the information on Entrapta’s exile she had sent with Double Trouble just hours earlier. She arrives just in time to see Catra victorious — but despairing, having driven away all her former friends. It’s then Glimmer reveals that all the Horde’s troops are gone, having been defeated in an attempt to finish off a seemingly defenseless Bright Moon. Noticing the absence of Bow and Adora, Catra mentions that she’s not the only one who’s alone in her victory.
As she hears this, Glimmer is overcome by the power of the superweapon, and, begins to realize she was wrong for not listening to Bow and Adora. Hoping to fix her mistake before its too late, she pulls herself to her feet and returns to the Black Garnet chamber…this time to destroy it. Meanwhile, Bow and Adora have piloted the ship back to the Crystal Castle in one last attempt to stop the weapon from activating. With just moments remaining before the total destruction of everything in Etheria, Light Hope confirms that it is She-Ra’s “destiny” to fire the superweapon. Adora feels the Sword pulling her to do exactly that as she is filled with magical energy at the core of Etheria. However, she refuses to let herself be made into a weapon. As she slams her sword into the ground, Light Hope fights against her programming to give one last word of encouragement…
”Do it.”
The sword breaks under the force of the blow, seemingly destroying She-Ra… and the superweapon with it. However, that isn’t the end of the Alliance’s troubles. Just as they’ve triumphed over the forces of the Horde and subdued the superweapon, the sky fills with ships. Catra, Glimmer, and Hordak are pulled into their leader where they discover the fleet belongs to none other but Horde Prime, the looming face in the opening sequence and true leader of the Horde. Intrigued by the prospect of a planetary weapon, Horde Prime decides not to kill either Glimmer or Catra, though he does send Hordak for “reprogramming.”
Instead, what he has in store is much worse — he’ll conquer Etheria himself and take control of the superweapon. With She-Ra gone and the planet in disarray, after all… who could stop him? That’s a question for Season Five of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
Etheria still holds Mysteries to unravel
Of course, what will happen to the Alliance the only question fans are hoping will be answered by Season Five. She-Ra has been known since its first few episodes for tense, complex relationships and compelling mysteries, only a few of which have since been resolved.
1. Who Are the First Ones?
In the final episodes of Season Four, it became clear that Mara, the She-Ra of a thousand years ago, had not broken under the pressure of her role. She had, in fact, sent the planet Etheria into the pocket dimension of Despondos not out of fear but in order to save it from becoming a superweapon. Still, the identity of the people who sent her—the First Ones—is unknown. Judging from the power of the ruins still scattered throughout Etheria, they must have developed a deep understanding of both magic and technology.
But why would they use this to create a superweapon? What war were they fighting? And then, there’s the question of Adora–the next She-Ra. According to the First Ones AI, Light Hope, she was a First Ones child brought to Etheria through a portal from the larger universe. If this is true, then does that mean the First Ones are still alive and waiting to return to the planet they transformed into a weapon? And will Adora ever see them again?
According to She-Ra’s Season Five trailer, released on April 30th, there may be a very good chance of it. Twenty-three seconds into the video, Adora confronts a glowing image of She-Ra standing next to a portal that resembles the one she was once brought through.
2. What happened to She-Ra?
In the last few minutes of the Season Four finale, Adora tells Bow that She-Ra “is gone”, destroyed the very same moment she broke the Sword of Protection. But is that really the case? Four episodes prior, Madame Razz tells Mara as she heals a glade decimated by her struggle with a tusk-toothed creature, that:
“She-Ra is not a sword. She-Ra is you. Etheria chose you.”
If that was true for Mara, could it be true for Adora as well? Perhaps, she won’t need the Sword to fight off Horde Prime… just the friends by her side and the planet beneath her. What’s more, at the end of the Season Five trailer, Adora is shown reaching her hand out toward a faint shimmer of glowing golden light. Could this be her activating her powers without the Sword? With a reforged version? Or is it something else entirely? Only time will tell.
3. Who’s going to make it through the finale… and who isn’t?
Just because She-Ra is appropriate for kids doesn’t mean it shies away from serious topics. At the end of Season 3, Queen Angella sacrificed herself to disable a portal threatening to consume reality. The princesses, her daughter especially, were then left to fight on their own, still grieving as they fended off frequent attacks on their kingdoms.
Yet, Horde Prime poses just as great a threat as the ill-placed portal. What’s more, in the trailer, the ultra-competitive, happily-married princess Netossa is shown with a single tear running down her cheek as she looks at something…or someone offscreen. Could that be her wife, Spinnerella, who’s shown a few scenes earlier fighting Horde soldiers? If so…it’s doubtful she’d be the only one who doesn’t make it. But then who else?
4. Finally, the burning question: Catra.
By the end of She-Ra’s Season Four, it’s undeniable the alliance’s most…complicated antagonist was in a very, very bad place. Frustrated by her the portal’s failure and her inability to “win” against She-Ra, not to mention a final betrayal by her abusive maternal figure Shadow Weaver, Catra spiraled further into isolation and fear. She pushed the Horde’s soldiers harder than ever before, in the process driving away her former squadron and the perpetually loyal Scorpia. By doing so, though the Horde seemed on the verge of victory, she was left totally alone.
The final straw came when Double Trouble, at the request of Glimmer, told Hordak that Catra had secretly exiled Entrapta to Beast Island in order to prevent her from warning him about complications in the portal. Infuriated, Hordak attacked Catra, and though she defeated him, she found the taste of victory to be not quite so sweet as she expected. Double Trouble then gave her a sorely-needed wake up call, asking if it was really true that others were always leaving her behind…or if she was the one pushing them away.
What they said finally seemed to get through to Catra…
The quiet, reflective woman Glimmer found when she arrived for what she thought would be the final battle was totally different than the cocky villainness she had fought episodes earlier. More evidence of a possible change can be found later in the episode when Catra intervenes on the Queen’s behalf in order to save her from Horde Prime’s execution. Though this could be simply for her own benefit, it’s still a far cry from the Catra from a season prior who was willing to sacrifice the entire universe to get her victory. Moments from She-Ra’s Season Five trailer seem to suggest a similar possibility.
First, Catra is shown visiting Glimmer’s prison cell in Horde Prime’s spaceship with an unusually somber look on her face. Then, a few moments later, her hand is shown inches away from Adora’s in a scene that mimics the end of the eighth last episode in the first season, “Princess Prom.” Which, of course, concerns the second unresolved part of Catra’s character arc: the powerful romantic tension between her and Adora. Ever since the first season, Catra’s primary motivation in fighting the Princess Alliance has been, besides proving herself to the Horde, to get revenge for what she sees as a former friend (or potentially more) leaving her behind.
She obsesses over Adora’s every move, halting her own plans simply in order to get a few moments with her now enemy. She shows up at the aforementioned Princess Prom with a sharp-looking suit and a plus-one, only to spend most of the evening dancing (or fighting—but same difference, right?) with Adora. She even opens a portal to distort reality into a world where Adora never left the Horde. And Adora, for the most part, is just as preoccupied with Catra. She easily becomes distracted by her former friend’s taunts, oftentimes allowing the Horde to complete their objectives in the process. No matter what Catra does, she refuses to acknowledge her enemy’s darker side. And until the end of She-Ra’s Season Three, she does seem to see herself as partially responsible for Catra’s actions.
While their relationship isn’t, by any means, healthy, its sheer intensity is undeniable. Scorpia describes it best in Season Two’s “White-Out”: “But you two, even when you’re trying to kill each other, you can tell there’s a real bond.” This has led fans to wonder whether Catra and Adora could ever get past their shared emotional baggage and finally be together. Joining hands as they seem just about to do in the Season Five trailer certainly would be a start.
Of course, the problem with this prediction is the same that has plagued the show from its beginning: every time the two seem close to making some kind of progress, Catra pulls away. If she truly has changed her priorities since Season Four’s finale, then perhaps she’ll reconsider her actions. But, given how self-destructively she’s acted in the past, it really is impossible to know for sure until the end credits.
A Final Trip To Etheria
Picking up from a pivotal moment at the end of Season Four, She-Ra’s finale will, without a doubt, send its fans on one last wild emotional rollercoaster ride. Who are the First Ones? Is She-Ra really destroyed? Will Catra and Adora actually get together? No one knows.
But given the number of questions still unanswered and relationships still unresolved, one thing is for sure. She-Ra’s Season Five has the potential to be an excellent ending to an already-excellent series.