The Big Problem with She-Ra’s Final Season

She-Ra’s fifth season brings everything to a dramatic close. It’s exciting, fun, and full of great character development as it heads to the series’ final ending. That said, there is one major problem that looms over the ending. No, it’s not the important things left unexplained–like how Adora can still become She-Ra–nor is it its lack of an epilogue episode to explore the final fates of the massive supporting cast. The real issue is Catra and the unintentional moral of her character arc.

The final season of She-Ra, puts a lot of focus on Catra’s redemption. She begins the season a villain–trying to get into the graces of the new Big Bad–only to realize that she’s just as much a prisoner as Glimmer. The two enemies form an unlikely bond and Catra, accepting that her days are limited, decides to do one good thing in her life: save Adora by saving Glimmer–stopping Adora’s ill-conceived rescue attempt before it even gets off the ground. This act of self-sacrifice in turn inspires Adora to rescue Catra and, slowly but surely, Catra becomes accepted as one of the good guys.

The problem is not that Catra teams up with the heroes. Nor is it that she finally repents, mends her ways, and becomes a stalwart ally of She-Ra. The problem is that Catra is forgiven–seemingly by everyone–and faces no consequences for her multitude of evil actions.

Adora and Catra were both raised by the Horde and switched to the side of the angels. However, the key difference is that Adora spent literally one mission as a Horde commander before defecting to the rebels. Moreover, until that point, she fully bought into the propaganda that the horde was good and the princesses evil.

Catra, with her more pessimistic outlook on the world, knew from the start they were the bad guys. However, she decided that the Horde would ultimately win and thus, for her own personal well being, it would be best to side with them.

But Catra’s true Achilles heel isn’t her pragmatism. It’s her insecurity. Alongside the golden child Adora, Catra would always be second best–no matter how hard she tried. So why try at all? To hide her feelings of inferiority, she simply pretended she didn’t care at all, steering hard into her role of being the team’s “too cool for the rules” rebel.

But when Adora left, Catra was suddenly allowed to shine. She gained the respect of her superiors and subordinates alike and was given ever more responsibility–eventually becoming the second in command of the entire Horde. Her professional life was infinitely better without Adora. Unfortunately, it meant the opposite for her personal life.

Adora was Catra’s one true personal connection. When Adora defected, to Catra, it felt like being abandoned by the only person she loved–and who she thought loved her in return. Worse yet, when they met up again, Catra had been seemingly replaced by Bo and Glimmer as the person closest to Adora. 

Like pretending that always being second best didn’t bother her, Catra became obsessed with proving to others (and herself) that her relationship with Adora never mattered–that she wasn’t hurt by the betrayal. In fact, it was the best thing that ever happened to her–despite the ever growing evidence to the contrary.

Her jealousy and insecurity built over the seasons, pushing her to more and more evil extremes until she no longer cared about victory for the Horde or getting praise from her superiors/parental figures. She only cared about hurting Adora as much as Adora hurt her by abandoning her and replacing her. And since Adora had decided that she cared for saving the world and her new friends more than anything else, Catra’s decided to destroy the world itself. With this, she would prove that not only was she better than Adora (erasing that insecurity) but get revenge for Adora’s betrayal as well.

This is the point where Catra passed the moral event horizon–the point where morally, there is no coming back from. Of her own free will, she activated a reality destruction device–committing to genocide on a planetary scale. And while it was stopped at the last moment–at the cost of Glimmer’s mother’s life–Catra fought till the very end to make its effects permanent.

During the war with the Princesses, Catra was directly responsible for the deaths of countless people–and the enslavement of more. Even if, in the final season, she regrets these actions and joins the heroes to defeat an even bigger threat, this doesn’t undo all the evil she did.

But in the end, she receives no punishment whatsoever for her crimes. The most we get is the odd punch to the face and a throwaway sarcastic quip about her being on the side of the angels now. But more than that, she is actually rewarded by getting the thing she actually longed for, deep down, all this time: Adora’s love and the exclusive romantic relationship that goes with it.

While this builds a happy end for our characters, it also inadvertently creates a terrible moral for the series as a whole: No matter what you do, how horrible you are, and how devastating the fallout of your actions, as long as you’re sorry in the end, all will be forgiven. Moreover, you’ll be rewarded with the thing you most wanted all along.

This is basically the thought process of most abusers in relationships–and probably not the message the creators were hoping to impart.

She-Ra Season 5 can be seen on Netflix.

I just wanted to give out a big thanks to Joshua Ott for sponsoring this review with his Patreon donation. (At the $60 a month tier, you are allowed to pick anything up to an including a 13ish episode series to be reviewed–which is released in addition to the one article a week I normally put out here on BiggestinJapan.com.) So thanks again!

Top image Copyright: © 2018 DreamWorks Animation LLC.