Okay, so-- we all know She Ra is all about love.
In the end, love, quite literally, saves the world.
But how, and why does it save the world?
I think She Ra’s been trying to tell us something all along.
Its motifs, worldbuilding, and characters all work together to make the best case for
love i think i’ve seen in a long time.
I’ve got a lot to say about this one, so let’s jump right in.
A thematic through line of the show is the conflict of love versus power--
Now, it’s a classic--we’ve seen it before.
We saw it in Avatar, when Aang is told to let go of attachments to access the avatar
state--a force of incredible power--which he needs to save the world.
(Sound familiar?)
In She Ra, this conflict is baked into the emotional crux of the story -- the push/pull
relationship between Catra and adora.
See, Catra and adora were raised by someone we could very plainly label as an abuser.
Shadow weaver projected her own pathologies, on these children from basically day 1.
She’s ingrains in them the belief that a harsh world requires strength -- so naturally,
vulnerability --aka, affection -- impedes this strength.
[“i was unkind cause i wanted you to be strong”]
Shadow Weaver is driven by her desire for power.
She gets pretty far in Mystacor, then leaves her co-sorcerers for Hordak pretty much on
a dime -- when they call her out on releasing an eyeball monster on Micah.
SW’s power is opportunistic.
It’s her bargaining chip that keeps her alive.
She’s always going to the winning side, not because she believes in the cause, but
because that’s where she’ll be safe.
Now in the Horde, she takes on the new exciting responsibility of traumatizing two young girls.
On Adora, she projects her ambitions.
A child with some untapped, innate power would’ve been so appealing to a person like her.
And on Catra, she projects her insecurities--those of scorned sorceress who had to grind and
prove her way to the top.
Her disgust towards Catra probably compounded by the fact that her prodigy 'golden child’
actually adora wanted Catra around [you’re only around because adora wants you]
In S2 Ep6, Light Spinner, her self-identification with Catra is made explicit.
And so these two girls are forced to reenact their abuser’s warped worldview, over, and
over, and over.
Until.
“THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU AND YOUR MESSED UP POWER TRIP”
Now, I may be reaching, but it’s even in her name.
Shadow Weaver.
She weaves shadows, literally the dark reflections of an object or person, that are distorted
beyond what the thing actually is.
[show the shadows in promise what a cool shot] Shadow Weaver warped Catra and Adora’s perception
of love to the point that they’d deny any affection to others’ faces “it’s not
because I like you” -- all while demonstrably having feelings for each other.
As we look at how their arcs play out this love/power conflict, let’s take note of
some recurring themes.
Notice the words that characterize this conflict, and how they evolve over the series.
“Left” “Chose”
“Win” “Want”
“Love”
“Left” Catra focuses on her feelings of abandonment.
Without ever having said the word love, she knows that Adora left whatever connection
they had for something better.
New friends, a sword, and a power that Catra can’t comprehend.
“Chose” Not only is love weakness, there is limited
supply of it in Catra’s mind.
If adora chooses Bow, glimmer, and she ra, she cannot be choosing catra.
That’s what Shadow Weaver did: their whole lives, her favoritism of Adora went hand in
hand with discarding Catra.
The two are synonymous in her mind.
“Win” Notice how frequently Catra uses this word
as she continues to unravel.
The world is harsh, unfair, and one made up of absolutes.
She has lost her whole life, so the solution is to win.
Adora is the cause of her pain, so the solution is to defeat her.
We see here she’s still trapped in SW’s narrative, despite telling herself she’s
proving her wrong.
But freedom, true freedom comes from realizing--narratives were never ours to dismantle in the first
place.
The more we commit to disproving someone’s idea of us, the more we give that idea power.
Catra hasn’t figured that out yet, here.
But give her time.
“Want” “Adora gets everything she wants”
“This was never what you really wanted” “What do you want, Adora?”
“What do you want when this is all over” “Adora doesn’t want me”
Now this….this is the big one.
This word is so important to them both.
Growing up, they were treated by the adults in their lives as resources, rather than actual
people.
There was no room for want, except what they were told to want.
“isn’t this what you've wanted since you were old enough to want anything”
“Do you really want to rule the world?”
Want.
Double Trouble uses this word in an eleventh hour, scathing takedown of Catra at her lowest.
What did she want?
They probably never would have actually asked themselves this question.
Because to want is to allow space for the self.
And the thing about the kind of abuse Adora and Catra endured is just how detached it
is from this self.
They grew up conditioned to an environment of “survival mode.”
The question isn’t what do I want, it’s how do i stay on her good side, so I am not
punished.
So i don’t suffer.
Survival mode is a state of chronic stress, self-neglect, and uncalibrated emotions.
In Catra’s case, “how do i avoid suffering” became something she learned from her abuser:
“i must acquire enough power so that I am safe.”
Here, we can’t access our authentic self--our wants, our needs.
The self that does emerge is a distorted one, on autopilot, keeping us safe the only way
it knows how.
And that’s the kicker, isn’t it?
This person in survival mode is a part of us, but isn’t…
actually who we are.
So want?
Want had no place here.
And as for Adora and Catra’s wants?
well.
We know that.
But it’s only when all else is stripped away, the embodiment of their childhood, gone,
that they’re able to say it.
Which brings us to the final word in this little outline of ours.
“Love.”
[don’t you get it i love you i love you too]
They’re at the failsafe, literally in the heart of the planet.
Adora’s subconscious shows her in detail her love for Catra.
And Catra is finally unafraid to give hers away.
Before the world swallows her and her stupid, reckless girl, then so be it.
She loves.
And here...where there is love.
And it is power.
And they were wrong.
Light Hope.
Shadow Weaver.
Horde Prime.
______________________________
So, in Season 4, Adora loses the ability to turn into She Ra the weapon, the instrument
of war.
She’s unable to become her mechanically, through the sword.
But as the season goes on, we see glimpses of She Ra’s unrestrained power break through.
Despite this, Shadow Weaver cautions Adora that it’s only through suppressing her “confusing”
emotions for Catra that she’ll access this power.
That she needs clarity, and love is an impediment to that.
But in fact--love is clarity.
We never see Adora more focused than when she channels She Ra in season 5--and it’s
motivated by love.
And in those scenes, she is most herself: not She Ra the weapon, but Adora, who cares
enough to fight.
Look at this scene.
[save the cat] By all accounts, this looks hopeless, right?
They’re both physically broken (insert text “or dead thANKS noelle), surrounded, in
the heart of enemy territory, with no backup…..
You could make a pretty good argument that it made no strategic sense!
And yet, it’s the one thing Prime doesn’t account for, and he’s defeated.
And it’s love that saves them both, in the end.
So, why?
Why is love this power?
We could come up with a bunch of poetic reasons, but...fundamentally, i think… it’s how
love helps us express our authentic self.
That authentic self we talked about before, that can get pushed down and corroded by fear.
Because when Adora and Catra accepted love over their fear, that’s what saved the world.
Power and love share the fact that they’re both sources of safety, but of two different
kinds.
Are you safe because you’ve accumulated enough influence to keep those around you
in check?
Or have you developed closeness and connection enough to know you don’t have to?
Newly outfitted with glimmer’s boots, bow’s heart, and catra's crown, the new She Ra isn’t
a weapon, it’s a celebration of connection.
And it’s that same human connection that motivates the decisions that turn the tides,
human connection that reaches through to those who were chipped.
And as Prime is defeated--it’s clear: the conflict was never love or power, it was authentic
connection versus outside manipulation: our genuine selves against the constructs imposed
on us.
And this contrast between natural and artificial has been a steady motif from the start of
the show.
Let me explain.
Since season 1, magic and nature have been associated with each other, and juxtaposed
with things that are mechanical.
Think, even just the landscape of the Etherian woods versus the polluted wasteland-look of
the Horde.
Horde Prime is consistently associated with the artificial; he and his ship are all jagged
edges, creepy sterile white and sickly green.
It’s even clear in the language he uses to talk about other people “every part of
the (highlight word machine) is of value”]
He collects cultural artifacts as trophies of conquest, severed from the people who gave
them meaning.
Then, on Krytis, it’s very deliberately revealed that his one weakness is magic.
Magic is natural, a part of the planet--and then magic is thematically linked to love.
Shadow Weaver describes She Ra as a “being of pure magic;” and then we see She Ra’s
pure form activated by care for others.
So, Prime’s weakness to magic might as well be a weakness to love--something he apparently
tries to overcompensate for with this “Etherians are so predictable with their emotions”
and “i see all” routine.
But neither love nor magic can be quantified, constructed or controlled; like nature, they’re
living things that grow on their own.
So--love saves the world, magic envelops the planet, and the natural supplants the industrial.
Prime’s ship is engulfed by a tree.
It’s even fitting that Perfuma, with her plant-power, makes the most compelling case
for vulnerability to Catra, a product of the machine-like Horde upbringing.
So here, the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental conflicts all mirror each other.
And with the season’s focus on the mind control chips, we’re brought full circle
to the show’s commentary on abuse.
Prime’s chips work well as metaphors for the effects of abuse and trauma.
. This series has shown us, at different points,
people being controlled and manipulated for the benefit of others, whether through chips,
the sword, or their emotions.
And each time, the manipulator was threatened by love.
-- Light Hope even erasing her own memory of warmth for Mara in the name of the mission.
Prime’s chips are artificial, but so is abusive conditioning, in the way both lead
us away from who we are in favor of imposing on us someone else’s identity, or reality.
The sword was an attempt by others to co-opt Adora’s power; Season 5 she ra is what happens
when she found her own.
We don’t access our full potential by denying parts of ourselves.
Adora shatters the sword, and finds herself, her love, and her greatest power, all at once.
Surrounded by her rebellion family, and motivated by her love for them, she only glitches out
of She Ra when she sees Shadow Weaver-- the one who, an episode ago, told her to reject love.
Prime and Shadow Weaver treat those beneath them as extensions of themselves, rather than
people with feelings and aspirations.
They used different behavioral or technical methods, but the effect is the same.
A person’s agency and identity suppressed for their benefit.
But we are not the expectations of us; however outside forces might try, we belong to ourselves.
Consider, in this context, this quote, from Bow to Scorpia:
“prime may have made you do a lot of things but he can’t turn you into something you're not”
Those who try to control others reject connection in doing so -- and without connection, they are simply.
Weaker.
Entrapta pretty much sums it up.
“You don’t understand what makes us strong, and that’s why you won’t win!”
Love, the bonds we have with one another give us something worth fighting for, and that’s
just the stronger why.
And the finale emphasizes this with the sheer number of “i love yous” between characters.
And of course:
Without having been child soldiers, we all might have wounds that feel inevitable to
us, like we can’t tell where our pain ends and we begin.
Pain does not explain itself to us, it just comes.
And often, the worst part is not only sitting in our own darkness, but feeling like we’re
doomed to be the only ones to see it.
Pain doesn’t explain itself to us, but love doesn’t either.
We could break love into all its component “whys”, and it still wouldn’t add up
to the warmth of a hug, the comfort of a hand to hold.
Life isn’t always gentle.
That’s just part of the deal, and not up to us.
But to be kind in spite of it is our choice.
And as a battle fought for love breathes new life into the ground, we see that kindness
inform the world around it for the better.
And maybe, it doesn’t always happen.
But if there’s a place for fiction, it’s for hope.
The universe might be indifferent, but we don’t have to be.
CONCLUSION Does this mean love has to save us?
Or that it’s the end all to our journeys?
I don’t think it’s that simple.
And certainly, thinking another person's love will “save” us might just be another narrative
that doesn’t do either of us much good But we’re not monsters for wanting to be
cared for.
And i don’t think it’s naive to believe love can help us heal.
And this absolutely includes love towards ourselves; after all, a big part of Adora
saving herself was believing that she deserved a future.
*Iroh voice* Perfection and power are overrated. I think you are very wise to choose happiness, and love.
Where she wasn’t a soldier, a martyr, a weapon.
Just Adora.
Late to Scorpia’s first ball.
Whatever you call them -- narratives, expectations -- these things that tell us who we are, really
are just about control.
And control is just another word for predictability.
“Adora will make me proud, catra won’t ever amount to anything.
“Will.”
“Won’t”
But the world is nothing but unpredictable.
Adora leaves!
Micah survived!
Catra saves glimmer!
SW sacrifices herself!
Bow has parents!
Catra has a cute sneeze!
People can leave you.
They can hurt you.
Even if they don’t mean to.
So what.
So. What.
Control is hard to come by, and I don’t think it’s the point.
A forest isn’t beautiful because we commanded it to grow.
A song doesn’t make us feel something because we know how it ends.
Genuine connection is not a grasp for control, but a desire to share.
And it’s those things we share that make life sweetest.
Sharing music.
A meal.
Laughing until our stomach hurts.
Sleepovers.
[clip of catradora dont hurt me]
And in the space between people sharing love, we create something new.
Cause I think there’s one more word.
Home.
‘Im going to take you home’ 'We're going home'
"I... I want to go home."
Home looks different to all of us.
A different skyline, different smells, different laughter.
So i think it’s defined best just by the way it makes us feel.
Safe.
And comfortably ourselves.
Cause that’s where it really all started.
Adora left, and Catra thought she’d never see home again.
But they finally found each other again, and suddenly home wasn’t a place to go back
to.
I think home is, through love, life made greater than the sum of its parts.
Where, despite doubts we might have about ourselves, or what we’ve seen the world
to be, together, even for moments, we can have peace.
And maybe that’s magic