There’s no shortage of “what if” episodes.
[show the wish, birthday, .exe] Marvel has a whole series based on the concept.
“Why must the world be as it is, despite us/the characters not liking it very much?”
What if stories are an exercise in separating out the evitable from the inevitable.
Basically, an attempt to answer the question:
How much of the story is the result of circumstance, how much is what these people are?
She ra’s penultimate episode of season 3 does wonders with the established trope.
Like the best uses of it, it doesn't just use it to create drama, but to illuminate
things in the present.
Remember is an exercise in pinpointing, for the characters and for us, what went wrong?
What went so sideways in the first two episodes that led to the catradora schism that would
propel so much of the conflict to come?
Perfectly situated in the near-middle of the series, remember is the fulcrum on which two
sides of the show exist.
After remember, catra and adora cross a threshold that wont fully be mended until season 5.
What if episodes separate the evitable from the inevitable; Remember shows us that if
anything is inevitable, it was catra and adora imploding.
First, some basics.
I love double meanings, and Remember has a few of them.
The title "Remember" refers to Adora trying to remember what's wrong, Catra remembering against her will,
Catra trying to get Adora to "remember" how things used to be,
and finally, Catra remembering their broken promise, which sends her over the edge.
Remember is the center of a little trilogy with Promise and Corridors.
Three turning points, three takes on the interpretation of memory.
Each episode in this trilogy takes a look back at THE promise.
In promise, that memory is intentionally manipulated, and facilitates Catra's misinterpretation.
In Remember, she leans into that interpretation and solidifies it.
And then in corridors, she looks at the past neutrally, for what it was.
So each episode is a turning point.
Remember is ep 1 turned on its head, and Razz even tells us this:
“You need to go back to the beginning,” The sword is the NAME of the first episode, the literal starting point for all of this.
And this specific disaster is also a result of the PHYSICAL sword.
We open with NORMAL, the first episode that never was.
Now, it’s never explained “whose” illusion this is.
We could speculate based on proximity to the sword, or who pulled the lever.
But from the actual contents of this AU, there are pieces that come from both catra and adora,
as well as other characters [scorpia].
Big hints to Catra’s influence on the world include scorpia + personal space, shadow weaver’s
kindness, and her being second in command rather than force captain.
In this world, Catra is still her priority. and I think this is a fascinating distinction; the dissonance of Catra's own feelings.
She at once doesnt want to be Adora’s sidekick, but misses her protection.
This is not the universe that adora wants--but it’s the universe that shadow weaver, and
most significantly, catra thinks Adora wants.
In wondering whose reality this is, I had a thought. What if it is, MOSTLY Catra's reality, not just because of her proximity to the lever or because she pulled it,
But because her despair and her will for things to change was so strong.
Let me explain. This isn't the first time we've seen something like this in fiction.
Where someone's internal need was so intense, it manifested externally.
The portal is constructed by science, but it's harnessing First Ones Tech, and using the sword, which is itself a channel for magic.
It can channel adora’s magic enough to manifest her superstrength/magic hair/gogogaget transformations,
it could just as well give form to catra’s most desperate feelings.
ADDITIONALLY, we know from season 5, seems to have a predisposition for magic, specifically empathetic magic, as seen with her connection with melog.
In particular, since ‘once upon a time in the waste,’ catra’s been in an extremely emotionally activated state. In the moment, her feelings are so loud she literally does not hear scorpia.
Soon after, she runs into shadow weaver apparently best friends with the princesses
We’ve also seen that the sword responds to a person’s innermost feelings. Adora’s self doubt prevents the sword from activating, and her renewed confidence brings it back
Yes, the sword is not catra’s, but the sword is currently hooked up to a machine--merging science with magic.
And magic is deeply tied to emotion, and catra’s emotions are screaming alarm bells at this point.
Catra, who shows the earliest signs of awareness that things arent what they seem, may believe that adora left in the first place in the pursuit of more glory,
that she'd outgrown force captain and the horde and even her.
Without wasting any time we get adora needing to “fix” and catra brushing it off.
"There was something I needed to fix..."
"Of COURSE you dream about work, there's nothing to fix, Adora, everything's perfect."
Obviously this isn’t a compulsion, there actually is something pretty dire to fix.
But the dynamic is the same.
In episode 1, Catra is aware of the horde’s wrongdoings, and Shadow Weaver’s manipulation, but urges Adora to stay with her anyway, because at least they’ll be together.
And in Remember, it's the same thing.
Catra is (or becomes) aware of the wrongness of the world, but urges Adora to stay with her anyway.
So Remember is really an inversion of the first episode; that episode posed as a question.
So as an example, let's go through some of the scenes and see how they change between The Sword and Remember.
"DO NOT BE FLIPPANT WITH ME, CADET"
"Sorry, Shadow Weaver."
"Look at you, you're a mess. Go get yourself cleaned up."
This is a gesture specific enough it seems like it’s from catra’s conscious or subconscious,
as she remembers a similar, betraying touch from Light Spinner.
There's this subtle but significant difference in the way Catra reacts to Adora being taken away for her private conversation with SW.
In the original scene, she looks down kind of bitterly.
But in the new scene, she *smiles proudly*.
If we're going with the theory that Catra's subconscious is responsible for this,
Catra may be addressing her own jealousy, testing out the theory that maybe if she'd been more supportive of Adora's Horde success,
then Adora wouldn't have left.
While there's evidence for the Portal responding mostly to Catra, we could say it's responding to Adora too.
Specifically, there's this instance:
"Lord Hordak has been watching you. He thinks you are a fine candidate for Force Captain."
"Really? Lord Hordak said that about me?"
"But I'll be able to bring my team along, right?"
"Your team is not ready. They'll only slow you down."
VERSUS REMEMBER: "I will admit, I did not think Catra and the others were ready to be deployed."
"but under your command they performed admirably."
"you are becoming every bit the leader I always knew you to be."
"thank you, Shadow Weaver. I couldn't have done it without them."
This moment could work as either a Catra or Adora modification.
We know Catra wanted to prove herself, so maybe this is how she rewrote it.
But this was a private conversation, not one Catra herself was privy to--so maybe it’s Adora’s subconscious giving catra the ability to “prove herself” she knew she wanted in ep 1.
"They've been training hard for this too. And Catra, all she wants is to get out there and prove herself"
"Then she should've worked harder to prove herself TO ME"
Then, of course, we get the recreation of the scene at their spot.
"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't even think you wanted to be a force captain."
"I don't. Here, take your stupid badge."
Catra's disappointed about being left out of the Thaymor invasion, and Adora retorts by telling her she is "kind of disrespectful."
SO much to unpack here.
Neither is being completely honest with themselves
"Come on Catra, this is what I've been working for my entire life"
Adora doesn't GENUINELY care about being Force Captain, but it's something that's been expected of her.
Catra doesnt ACTUALLY care about status but we know she's deeply insecure about being second best.
"UGHHHHHH whatever, it's not like I even care. I just want to get out of this dump before I die of boredom."
At first, catra plays off her reaction to Adora’s promotion like she doesn’t care, but we know she does.
Her disappointment is at being left out, not at adora’s outranking. Adora’s response is laced with Shadow Weaver’s own words: she says she’s been waiting her whole life for it.
in remember, it’s as though she’s trying to fix what she sees as a mistake: adora clearly cared about this so maybe if she’s enthusiastic about horde leadership to her, it’ll go better.
"Of course I'm right, everything's perfect. Soon the two of us will be ruling Etheria together, just like we always planned."
But it doesn't.
"Is that what you really want? to rule the world?"
"I mean... yeah, obviously. Isn't that what you want too?"
Now it's Adora who's not sure what she wants.
Just like in the first scene, catra’s true feelings are transparent, even when she tries to hide them.
"I don't know."
"Don't flake out on me now! This is what we always wanted. Everything will be perfect as long as we stay together."
Catra’s checking in on adora’s feelings--that’s different. She’s carefully trying to follow her lead to say the lines that will ensure this perfect world stays the way it is.
The skiff stealing scene is nail-in-the-coffin imagery, recreating the show's inciting incident in a way that shows how completely disconnected they've become.
This is where everything changed in episode 1 because it brought Adora to the sword.
There they were vying for power but they were mostly driving it together.
Here, Adora's taking charge.
In ep 1, the sword sort of chose her, and she decided what to do with it. Now, without the sword, adora still commits to her cause.
And at this point, adora and catra do not understand each other. Not in the ways that would fix this.
In a world without the sword, catra believes adora will stay. Look, there’s plenty of power here! Plenty of status here!
But Adora still doesn't read catra’s hopes. She’s worried--as she should be--on the impending disaster.
"Help me fix this! Please!"
Catra doesn't read this as “fixing everything,” including their relationship -- she reads it as returning to the world where she left, Adora reaffirming the decision to abandon her.
So she goes from obstinate to rageful.
This is them at their farthest apart. The tragedy of it all, that this is happening because of their love and their misunderstanding of each other.
One of the key themes of this episode, and their entire arc is interpretation of events, perspective.
How something happened, and how we REMEMBER it happening are two different things.
And very often, the intensity of our feelings has to do with how we THINK they happened,
or how we interpret the *meaning* behind someone's actions.
This is that kind of instance where we don't *really* hear what a person meant, but we assign, and decide what they meant.
And there can be no agreement here.
Catra and Adora are each deciding what the other means, and they’re not really expressing what they’re feeling, fearing, or wanting.
Catra can’t understand why Adora can ask her to come with her, but not stay; Adora can’t understand why Catra can ask her to stay but not come with her.
And it’s in the difference between “why can’t you stay” and “i will never go with you” that is the key of their misunderstanding, that they still haven’t resolved.
We see the Promise recontextualized, to see the same memory from different vantage points.
For adora, asking catra to come with her is looking out for her. For catra, adora is still treating her as an afterthought and not staying.
It’s not as simple as just “being together,” for Catra. She clearly sees a distinction between staying with me and going with you.
One maintains things as they are, on her terms. The other is big scary change, following Adora’s terms.
"Oh, because I need to FOLLOW YOU EVERYWHERE YOU GO?"
We get this great bit of Adora even acknowledging her little piece in the conflict, admitting that maybe she *did* leave her behind.
The sharpness of Catra's turn here makes it so clear *why* Corridors worked the way it did.
The interpretation of a memory is enough to launch her INTO her spiral, the same is enough to dig her out.
Between “staying together’ and leaving together is their misunderstanding.
So to Adora, Catra looks impulsive, obstinate. To Catra, Adora appears callous, unempathetic.
The entire episode is this great subversion of wish fulfillment. What if they’d stayed together?
But it's almost like the fabric of the universe can't contain it, like it's being forced to keep things in a way that they shouldn't be, yet.
Of course, there are external destabilizing factors, but that’s all part of it.
You can't have peace without doing the work to get there.
This is an easy fix, one Catra wants, but that's not the path to repairing things.
If things are going to change, it’ll require changing perceptions and interpretations of events
If they're going to be brought back together, it has to be through choices in this universe, not rewriting another one.