Though Masters of the Universe: Revelation is receiving rave critical notices and most viewers seem to be loving it, a subset of He-Man fans aren’t enjoying the new Netflix animated show quite as much, to put it mildly. The continuation of the original 1980s cartoon has been review-bombed on Rotten Tomatoes from those angry that He-Man himself isn’t a bigger part of the series’ first five episodes, which debuted last Friday.
Spoilers incoming… Episode 1 ends with the shocking twist of Prince Adam’s death. His friends, led by Teela, manage to recover him from Preternia – Eternian heaven – in episode 5, but he’s then fatally wounded by Skeletor, who swipes Adam’s sword and takes the Power of Grayskull for himself. The dual deaths of the iconic hero drove some fans into a fury, but showrunner Kevin Smith now has some strong words for those folks: “Grow the f-ck up”.
Smith spoke to Variety about the backlash to his show, with the filmmaker giving a typically expletive-filled comment. Read what he had to say here:
“I see people online go, ‘Hey man, they’re getting rid of He-Man!’” Smith said. “Like, you really f-cking think Mattel Television, who hired me and paid me money, wants to do a f-cking ‘Masters of the Universe’ show without He-Man? Grow the f-ck up, man. Like, that blew my mind, bunch of people being like, ‘Oh, I smell it. This is a bait and switch.’”
In other words, there’s no way Mattel would allow him to get rid of He-Man even if he wanted to, so Smith is essentially confirming here that Adam’s second demise will be just as temporary as his first and we can expect him to be resurrected once again in Part 2. In fact, though he skirted around this spoiler to Variety, he pretty much outright said it in a recent tweet, in which he teased some “brutal” battles between He-Man and the superpowered Skeletor, who he’s labelling “SkeleGod”, in the next batch of episodes.
This might do something to appease angry fans, though many are just as peeved over the fact that Teela is the main character of the show. But clearly that’s something that’s not going to change moving forward, and the increased importance of the woman of Eternia has been applauded by the vast majority.
Smith’s confirmed Part 2 is already almost complete, so expect Masters of the Universe: Revelation to return to Netflix pretty soon.