I can see that. I am just saying it’s part of the point of the ending. She wasn’t in control of herself, the power broke her. And I guess in fairness to her she does stop herself rather than being stopped so I give her a pass.
One of the criticisms I have of Revelation is the handling of lethality. To put it simply, it was clumsy. It's not bad to ramp up the stakes and narrative tension by introducing death. After all, Revelation is able to set itself apart from the Filmation incarnation of MotU by introducing lethal consequences of combat. However, whenever death was implemented in the story, it was mainly for making blunt and shocking emotional impact. It didn't really impact the story in a meaningful way. This poor handling leads to the problem of Evil-Lyn in Revelation with respect to her happy ending. She committed grievous acts of death and destruction but didn't face consequences. Narratively, it's a fail because the majority of the audience will question the fairness of the absence of justice for the character. When we see Skeletor's fate, it's narratively satisfying because we see what "should" happen to a bad person. We don't get that with Evil-Lyn. So while I don't object to Evil-Lyn's ending, I can easily see validity in the criticisms that she essentially gets away with villainous acts. If the writing was more efficient for part 2, we could have seen a far better redemption arc for Evil-Lyn. To go off on a tangent momentarily, it's a bit too "real" but Evil-Lyn doesn't need a happy ending, she needs serious therapy because the Revelation iteration of the character has major issues. In fact, part 2 went sideways for me with things like: Spoiler Adam having a "my parents are divorcing and it's all my fault" moment. Things like that didn't serve the story. It felt like the writers were self indulgent with a bit of self insertion or projection into the script.
But is Lyn really a bad person? Or just a misguided victim of circumstance. Adam’s great but let’s be fair here, he’s got everything. Son of the king, gets the power of Grayskull dumped in his lamp for doing nothing. At least in the context of Revelation life hasn’t done Lyn any favors. Personally I think the show makes you ask more questions and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What’s Justice for Lyn? You’re right it’s probably therapy. Regarding how death was handled I really didn’t take it seriously at all because of the power levels involved. I couldn’t believe they just didn’t snap Preternia and Fisto / Clamp-Champ back into existence. There were some shitty pointless deaths. I am not sure how I feel about any of it since I don’t really buy the deaths. I think the biggest issue with Revelation is it’s an unsatisfying ending. I feel like things were just getting going.
Oh, I'm talking about structure of story writing more than whether or not she's truly a bad person. The writing in Revelation paints a picture of a confused person who ultimately chooses to kill on a large scale and attempts to end the world. Things like her past before joining Skeletor and her abusive relationship with him, are meant to give context to her psychology and poor decisions but it gets muddled by her doing things like rejoining Skeletor upon his return and her poor treatment of Beast Man despite his kindness to her. I don't have a problem with Evil-Lyn not facing justice because I paid close attention while watching part 2 and understand what the writers intended with her, however, casual audiences will be more impacted by the overt actions of the character and understandably have a "She did terrible things. Enough said." judgment of her. I hope if Revelation gets a follow-up, we get the return of Clamp Champ and Fisto! As well as others. Perhaps a sub plot could be Teela repairing some of the damage done by Evil-Lyn. For sure, Revelation's conclusion was somewhat underwhelming to me because it seemed like the momentum in part 2 didn't really crest until too late and it dissipated too quickly.
Speaking of Beast Man, I was disappointed in how he was handled in part 2. I was hoping for a more triumphant ascension for the character breaking out of his oft relegated role of a lackey.
To be honest, I half expected an appearance by King Grayskull during the final battle, having come back through the tower the way Adam did before Preternia was completely annihilated. So I do absolutely hope we get some clarification on Preternia's status after Teela became the new Sorceress in a possible follow up, because that was the first animated appearance of a lot of these guys and they deserved more.
Spoiler I hope Preternia is addressed if Revelation continues. Its demise felt cheaply done. I felt that Evil-Lyn's ability to annihilate the Afterlife was silly.
I agree my biggest disappointment in Part 2. The Beastman / Lyn dynamic was so good in the first half what the heck happened in second half? That was weird writing.
Not only was it good, it seemed like it was building up to something vastly different than what we saw in season 2. It had no pay-off. The dynamic between them was one of the more compelling character bits from part 1 for me.
I just hope it’s something that gets revisited. Really Beastman should be pissed off right? He gave up his humanity to defend her and gets yeeted off a cliff and she gets a sick new look and forgets about him. It was pretty fucked up honestly. I mean stop ruminating on your wand and go look for your friend, WTF.
I felt that the majority of this part was extremely clunky and at times tedious and was virtually shouting for someone else to take a pass at the story idea and rework it. It also felt like all the episodes after the first and before the last was designed with a cliffhanger ending in mind first and then figured out how they'd pad the episode and make poor plays at characterization. Some ideas were just terrible, such as bringing the concept to the table that the Power gives them total control over life and death including mastery of Heaven and Hell by lore friendly names. I still maintain that Kevin Smith got hired when he had an idea for a fantasy series and then had someone else "MOTU" it up and serve as his Sherpa to the lore when he was offered this when Netflix was looking for someone. Most of the fight choreography still feels superfluous to the actual plot rather than enhancing it or just done for the studio to show off rather than utilizing it. There's all that song and dance in the first episode with the teleport, to Skelegods plague, all to lead up to Adam calling the power without the sword, that all could've been streamlined hard. The dialogue and the extremely clunky handling of emotional depth really kept pulling me out the episodes. As much as I generally love Mark Hamill, his Skeletor is easily the worst ever. I'd really rather have any other VA doing it, he really didn't bring anything to the role, which is a major shame; not helping matters was that this Skeletor had such tunnel vision and limited motivation that he felt even more limited then Skeletor of the original cartoon (You know, the Skeletor who made coats for cold children and even saved Christmas!). Though the same can be said for most of the cast. It wasn't all bad, Evil-Lyn really got to shine and Lena Headey used it, with her God-Lyn being a true highlight of the entire series (and I will freely admit, I'd buy that Action Figure), though to be honest, I really thought that the ending would be that Teela would open Lyn's eyes to the good things, actual love and family to show her what she'd been missing out on. To be fair, I'm also not that impressed with taking their own notes as to origin stories when so many have other origins that work well, such as Evil-Lyns backstory from the 200X series, but I can understand that they didn't necessarily want to adapt it, but it also invited a lot of not very favorable comparisons too. Honestly, I found the ending to be anti-climatic, I'm interested in seeing more of He-man and the Masters of the Universe continuing then this series.
Spoiler I feel like it has to be addressed. Everything in Revelation indicated there was a balance that was necessary in all things (but especially related to the power sword, the creation myth, and the universe as a whole) with Grayskull being the center of it all. So subternia shouldn't be able to exist without a preternia to balance it.
Ok, so it wasn't just me. ON a side note, I just finished the 200x series. Man, this was great. All I would have wanted in a reboot. Though it was kinda weird hearing Dinobot, Waspinator and Primal talking all over the 2nd season. Was this, just not a fan favorite? I really wished this finished.
This series, the cancellation of Thundercats (2011) and the temporary cancellation of Young Justice was the universe trying to tell us that we can’t have nice things.
Finally got around to finishing the second set of five episodes. Definitely enjoyed them a lot more than the first five. I would be up to seeing what they would do with Hordak should they end up doing another season.
The fandom generally loved this. Poor toy sales due to excessive amounts of He-Man and Skeletor variants clogging shelves combined with the time slot being kicked around constantly lead to it's eventual cancellation. It's honestly probably the best reboot of MOTU we've seen.
One things to praise, they showed you can have modern MOTU media with a talking Cringer and make it work!
