By Cora Buhlert: On March 22, 1985, the animated movie The Secret of the Sword was released in theatres in the US, introducing She-Ra: Princess of Power to the world. The full movie is available on YouTube here. 

In 1984/1985, Masters of the Universe was at the peak of its popularity and Mattel‘s highest selling toy line, outselling in-house rivals Barbie and Hot Wheels. The Filmation He-Man cartoon, which had debuted in 1983, was watched by millions of kids and quite a few adults every afternoon.

To their infinite surprise, Mattel found that approximately forty percent of all Masters of Universe toys were sold to girls and their families – even though Masters of the Universe was marketed as a boy brand in the highly gendered toy market of the 1980s. Meanwhile, the He-Man cartoon was watched enthusiastically by both boys and girls.

In retrospect, this isn’t overly surprising, because Masters of the Universe featured several strong and complex female characters and particularly the cartoon was demolishing gender stereotypes right, left and center and gave us a female warrior who physically outperformed most of the male characters in Teela, a muscle-bound hero who was not afraid to show his sensitive side and was frequently shown engaging in female coded activities like baking, cooking and reading in Adam/He-Man, and a woman who chose a demanding career as Sorceress of Grayskull over motherhood; plus a loving single father who somehow managed to combine an equally demanding career as Man-at-Arms with parenthood; and – last but not least – a female NASA astronaut turned queen of an alien planet in Queen Marlena well before Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. 

Mattel might have been surprised that little girls were ignoring the gender stereotypes of the toy industry and clamoring for He-Man toys, but they were also quick to seize an opportunity to make even more money. So they decided to introduce more female characters into what had been a very male dominated toy line (by 1985, there were only two female characters in the Masters of the Universe toyline, Teela and Evil-Lyn. A third, the Sorceress, would not be released until 1987) and came up with the idea of creating a female counterpart to He-Man in She-Ra, the most powerful woman in the universe. Eventually, this idea turned into a whole a spin-off toy line as well as a sister show to the He-Man cartoon called She-Ra: Princess of Power. 

Mattel and Filmation collaborated closely on the development of She-Ra, her world, her friends and enemies. The She-Ra series bible was written by Filmation writers J. Michael Straczinski and Larry DiTillio, both of whom would later go on to other great things, including Babylon 5. DiTillio also wrote the screenplay for The Secret of the Sword, together with Bob Forward who had penned some of the most memorable episodes of Filmation‘s He-Man cartoon.

Alas, the powers that were at Mattel still found it hard to let go of gender stereotypes and handed the Princess of Power toy line over to the girls’ group rather than the team that worked on the He-Man line. As a result, the Princess of Power toy line took a lot of cues from Barbie, such as rooted hair that could be styled, interchangeable clothes and a lot of pink, gold and pastel colors. Some characters had their designs changed at the eleventh hour, because a blue and gold and red and black outfit were considered “not feminine enough”. The vintage Princess of Power dolls have a certain beauty of their own, but even though they were in the same scale as the He-Man figures, they never meshed very well. What is more, the Princess of Power toy line only had two villainous characters – Catra and Entrapta – because it was assumed that girls did not like conflict and wouldn’t buy the evil characters. Meanwhile, all the male villains from the cartoon, including She-Ra’s archenemy Hordak, were released in the He-Man toy line, because it was assumed that girls would not want to buy monster characters. These outdated gender assumptions harmed both toy lines back then and continue to harm Masters of the Universe to this day. 

The Princess of Power toy line was revealed at New York Toy Fair in early 1985, but the wider public first became aware of the character when The Secret of the Sword, a 91-minute animated movie, was released in US theatres on March 22, 1985.

When rewatching The Secret of the Sword as an adult, I found that I remembered several scenes, so I must have seen it at some point. However, I never saw the film in the theatre, because it was not released theatrically in West Germany until the fall of 1987, one and a half years after its US premiere, and also had twenty minutes of runtime cut, because it was believed that children could not handle a ninety-minute movie. The Secret of the Sword was also chopped up and rebroadcast as the first five episodes of the She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoon, so that’s likely how I first saw it.

The Secret of the Sword starts with a bang. The Sorceress of Grayskull is having one hell of a nightmare and sees a monstrous being – Hordak, though the audience doesn’t yet know this – stealing a baby. Hordak laughs and declares that he may have been defeated, but that his pursuers will never see the child again. Then he fires at the Sorceress, who is shielded by a young Man-at-Arms in an early hint that these two are secretly a couple (confirmed many years later), and vanishes through a portal with the baby to parts unknown.

The Sorceress wakes up – alone, by the way – to see a strangely familiar sword that looks a lot like He-Man’s power sword, only with a gem in the hilt, hovering in midair before her. The sword leads her to one of the many mysterious doors inside Castle Grayskull, which opens to reveal a glowing portal. “Could it be, after all this time?” the Sorceress wonders.

The Sorceress telepathically contacts Prince Adam a.k.a. He-Man, who is in the process of baking his “famous spiced bread” (I do want that recipe now) and asks him to come to Castle Grayskull immediately. Once there, the Sorceress hands Adam the sword and tells him go through the portal and find the person it is intended for. Adam even remarks that the sword looks a lot like his own. 

The Sword of Protection, twin to He-Man’s Sword of Power, was first glimpsed hanging on the wall of Castle Grayskull in the He-Man episode “The Origin of the Sorceress”, which also introduced the Evil Horde in the form of a Horde scout ship that lands on Eternia, where its crew occupies a village and bullies the inhabitants. This sort of foreshadowing was rare in 1980s cartoons, especially syndicated ones, where episodes were often shown out of order.

Adam, understandably, has more questions for the Sorceress such as where the portal leads to and who exactly the person he’s looking for is. The Sorceress, however, won’t tell Adam anything except that the sword will guide him to the person he seeks.

Even as a kid, I thought that it doesn’t make any sense that the Sorceress doesn’t tell Adam who he is looking for. As an adult, it still doesn’t make any more sense, but then the Sorceress has a habit of withholding crucial information from others. For example, she won’t tell Teela either that she is her mother. Besides, if the Sorceress told Adam whom he’s supposed to find, it would ruin the reveal later in the movie. Coincidentally, the scene is also cleverly written, because the Sorceress never uses any pronouns when referring to the person Adam seeks, so neither Adam nor the audience knows that the intended recipient of the sword is female.

So Adam and his pet tiger Cringer a.k.a. Battle Cat step through the portal into a brand-new world named Etheria to encounter a whole new cast of characters, both good and evil. Adam’s quest takes him to a village inn, where he chances to observe three Horde Troopers, the foot soldiers of the Evil Horde who are occupying Etheria, harassing the locals. Always a hero at heart, Adam intervenes and promptly finds himself embroiled in a barroom  brawl. Hereby, it’s notable that Adam does not transform into He-Man, but proceeds to deal with the Horde Troopers in his civilian identity. In the He-Man cartoon and the various mini-comics, Adam is often portrayed as something of a buffoon, but it’s also clear that this is an act to keep his civilian identity separate from He-Man and that Adam is a very capable fighter, if necessary, though he rarely shows it. However, on Etheria, Adam is free to show his prowess, because there is no risk of anybody recognizing him as He-Man. 

 Adam gets unexpected help from Bow, crack archer and mainstay of the She-Ra cartoon and toy line. Together, they make short work of the Horde Troopers and then escape together with their animal companions Cringer and Kowl, a rainbow colored flying critter. Bow takes Adam and Cringer into the Whispering Woods, a magical forest, which serves as the hideout of the Great Rebellion against the Horde’s rule. Though the name “Great Rebellion” is pretty much hyperbole, because – as the snarky Kowl points out – it’s actually a very small rebellion.

Here, Adam meets the other members of the rebellion who would become important supporting characters in the She-Ra cartoon. In addition to Bow and Kowl there is Glimmer, Princess of Bright Moon and founder of the Great Rebellion, the scatterbrained witch Madame Razz and her flying and talking broom imaginatively named Broom as well as the Twiggets, humanoid woodland creatures who live in the Whispering Woods.

However, The Secret of the Sword does not just introduce new heroes, but also a whole new faction of villains called the Evil Horde. The Horde is your stereotypical galactic empire hellbent on conquering anything in its path, only that all the main members are basically classic movie monsters with a Masters of the Universe twist. Hordak, the leader (well, deputy leader, since the supreme ruler of the Horde Empire is Hordak’s older brother Horde Prime, who would be introduced in a later episode of the cartoon) is Nosferatu, only that he can also transform his body into a rocket, a tank, a drill, cannon or whatever is needed at the time. The evil sorceress Shadow Weaver is every evil witch from every classic Disney cartoon ever. The cat shifter Catra is Irina from Cat People, The energy sucking reptilian Leech is the Monster from the Black Lagoon. The furry prison warden Grizzlor is the Wolf-Man. Mantenna, the alien with the pop out eyes, is every bug-eyed monster ever and the scorpion woman Scorpia looks as if she stepped right out of a 1950s B-movie or a drag queen show. Their base, the Fright Zone, is a Giger-esque industrial nightmare surrounded by a polluted and monster-infested wasteland, providing a strong contrast to the past-coloured woodlands of Etheria.

Finally, there is Force Captain Adora, Hordak and Shadow Weaver’s adopted daughter. Blonde and beautiful, Adora looks as out of place among the more monstrous members of the Horde as Marilyn Munster did among her family in The Munsters. However, Adora is just as ruthless as the rest of the Horde. When we first meet her, Adora is overseeing the population of an entire village taken prisoner and about to be shipped off to the Horde’s slave mines. 

 When the rebels attack to free the villagers, Adora comes face to face with He-Man (dealing with a squad of classic movie monsters is too much for Adam, so he transforms into He-Man) and they get embroiled in a sword fight. When He-Man drops his own sword and reaches for the Sword of Protection, the jewel in the hilt begins to glow, indicating that Force Captain Adora is the one He-Man had been sent to find. In true ruthless Horde fashion, Adora takes advantage of his momentary confusion to shoot He-Man in the back. 

 When he comes to again, He-Man finds himself chained up in the Horde prison on Beast Island, a fortress constructed from the bones of giant monsters. He is questioned by Adora who insists that the Horde are the rightful and just rulers of Etheria. He-Man replies that the Horde are cruel oppressors and asks Adora to see for herself how the Horde is treating the population. Adora scoffs at this suggestion, but she does go out on a mission to see the true Etheria. To no one’s surprise except her own, she witnesses citizens being abused and enslaved, their houses burnt down and their crops stolen. Considering that this was a cartoon aimed at children, The Secret of the Sword and the She-Ra series in general are quite frank about the horror of life under occupation. Later episodes of the She-Ra cartoon show the Horde destroying villages, burning books that do not teach approved Horde history and attempting to poison the Whispering Woods in an episode that’s eerily reminiscent of the deployment of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. 

In general, there is a remarkable amount of horror lurking just under the surface of this seemingly bright and cheery cartoon designed to sell toys to kids. When Adora confronts Hordak and Shadow Weaver over the atrocities committed by the Horde against the civilian population of Etheria, Shadow Weaver erases Adora’s memories of what she witnessed, brainwashing her into being a loyal Horde soldier again. In later iterations and expansions of the story, we learn that several of Hordak’s underlings experienced a similar fate, had their memories and even their entire personalities altered and erased and were brainwashed into serving the Horde.

After escaping from and thoroughly trashing the Horde prison on Beast Island, He-Man bids farewell to the rebels and decides to go after Adora. He steals a Horde Trooper’s armor (the Horde Troopers were portrayed as robots in later episodes of the She-Ra cartoon, allowing He-Man and She-Ra to smash them with impunity, but they are clearly living beings in armor here) and sneaks into the Fright Zone to confront Adora. But because Adora has been brainwashed by Shadow Weaver, she no longer remembers what she saw outside the Fright Zone. So she shoots He-Man in the back – again – and He-Man finds himself imprisoned by the Horde – again. This really isn’t his day.

But things are about to get even worse for He-Man, because Hordak subjects He-Man to his latest invention – a weapon powered by extracting the lifeforce of Horde prisoners. Continuing the overall horror theme, there is a lot of vampiric imagery associated with the Horde. Two Horde members, Leech and Mosquitor, have the ability to suck out the lifeforce of their opponents. Mosquitor never appeared in the cartoon, but Leech demonstrates his abilities on Bow and Glimmer in The Secret of the Sword. In the Masters of the Universe comics published by DC between 2012 and 2016, the Fright Zone itself even sucks the lifeforce out of the planet, which explains the polluted wasteland surrounding the Horde’s fortress. It’s a not very subtle metaphor for colonialism and imperialism.

It appears that He-Man is doomed, steadily growing weaker in Hordak’s extraction chamber. However, her contact with He-Man as well as the Sword of Protection have caused cracks in Adora’s conditioning that even Shadow Weaver could not completely erase. And so Adora is suffering from unquiet dreams, which drive her to visit the much weakened He-Man in the extraction chamber, where both the captured Sword of Power and the Sword of Protection are kept as well. The Sword of Protection is glowing, so Adora picks it up and the Sorceress appears before her and tells Adora that she was always destined to be a champion of good, that the Horde brainwashed her and stole her from her parents as baby. The Sorceress also reveals that Adora had a twin brother, He-Man, and that he needs her help right now.

Viewed through the eyes of an adult, Adora accepts that Sorceress’ words a little too easily, especially since she has no real reason to believe a woman speaking to her from sword. However, any lingering skepticism quickly evaporates when Adora holds aloft the Sword of Protection, speaks the magic words and transforms into She-Ra for the very first time. The moment is made even more powerful by the fact that by this point we never saw Adam transforming into He-Man for the first time, though later cartoons did show Adam’s first transformation.

Once He-Man and She-Ra have disabled Hordak’s weapon of mass destruction and escaped the Fright Zone on Adora’s horse Spirit who has been transformed into the flying unicorn Swift Wind, the Sorceress finally comes clean to both of them. King Randor and Queen Marlena of Eternia had twins, Adam and Adora, both destined for great things. When the twins were only babies, the Horde invaded. Hordak learned of the twins’ destiny and decided to kidnap the babies and raise them both as Horde members. So Hordak snuck into the royal palace with the help of his acolyte Skeletor.

But things didn’t go according to plan. Hordak managed to grab baby Adora, but Queen Marlena dispatched Skeletor with a judo throw before he could steal Adam. Marlena raised the alarm, Man-at-Arms and the Royal Guard burst into the nurseryand Hordak escaped through the window with Baby Adora, leaving Skeletor behind. To save his own neck, Skeletor revealed the location of Hordak’s base. The Sorceress and Man-at-Arms went after Hordak, but couldn’t prevent him from escaping with Adora through a portal to parts unknown as seen in the flashback at the beginning of the movie.

The whole thing is a retcon, of course, but a skilfully handled one. There’s even an explanation for why no one ever mentioned Adora before, namely that Adam was deliberately kept in the dark about the fact that he once had a sister to spare him the pain of losing her. 

But the revelation of the Sorceress not only changes the status quo of the royal family of Eternia, but also gives us some backstory for Skeletor, who had very little up to this point. Some people feel that the introduction of Hordak as Skeletor’s former teacher and master diminished the Lord of Destruction, but I believe it gives Skeletor’s character more complexity and also explains why Hordak and Skeletor really, really don’t like each other – namely because each believes that the other betrayed him – with good reason.

Indeed, we get to see the first of many insult-laden confrontations between master and student shortly thereafter, when Hordak pursues Adam and Adora through the dimensional portal back to Eternia and teams up with Skeletor to recapture Adora. Not that Skeletor has any intention of keeping his end of the bargain.

The reunion between Adora and her family on the one side and Hordak and Skeletor on the other are some of my favourite scenes in this movie, especially because we don’t really see Adora interacting with any members of her extended family except for Adam in the regular She-Ra cartoon. The moment where the royal family is finally reunited is very sweet with hugs all around and tears on the faces of both men and women. Besides, King Randor finally tells Adam that he is proud of him, something Adam almost never gets to hear from his father.

Of course, the domestic bliss doesn’t last long before Hordak and Skeletor spoil the reunion to kidnap Adora once again. He-Man, Teela and Man-at-Arms set off to rescue her, but Adora has already managed to free herself, transform into She-Ra and thoroughly trash Snake Mountain in the process. “A female He-Man,” Skeletor laments, “This is the worst day of my life.”

Though Skeletor will not have to deal with both He-Man and She-Ra for long, because She-Ra elects to return to Etheria in the end to free the planet from the Horde’s oppression.

The Secret of the Sword is not a perfect film, but has its share of flaws. Because the script was designed to work both as a ninety-minute movie and five separate half-hour cartoon episodes, the structure is somewhat choppy and episodic, particularly when He-Man and She-Ra go on an almost episode-long side quest to rescue Queen Angella of Bright Moon from her captor Hunga the Harpy. Moreover, the rebels are very quick to accept Adora – who was after all a Horde Force Captain – as one of their own.

However, the story also handles the foreshadowing and planting of clues well, until the truth about Adora is finally revealed. And yes, Adam and Adora are again very quick to accept that they are siblings and never question the Sorceress’ word, but then neither does the viewer. From the moment that Adora hold up the Sword of Protection onwards, we accept that she is She-Ra.

The Secret of the Sword would change Masters of the Universe forever and introduce elements that continue reverberate through the franchise to this day. The relationship between He-Man and She-Ra on the one hand and Skeletor and Hordak on the other would be explored in many future versions of the story.

One of the greatest strengths of Masters of the Universe has always been that even though the situations are outlandish, the characters have always been relatable. Adam’s wish for his father to see him for who he is and be proud of him, Teela’s desire to always be the best to prove herself worthy of love and acceptance, Cringer being always afraid and yet wanting to be brave, Orko who can do everything in theory and always messes up in practice – these are issues that the young viewers can relate to. She-Ra introduces another story that is both relatable and empowering for young viewers, namely that of a child who grows up in an abusive home with parents who gaslight her and who manages overcome her abusive upbringing to become something greater. Justine Danzer, who created some of the earliest designs of She-Ra for Mattel, is an abuse survivor herself and has said that She-Ra was always intended to be someone who overcomes an abusive background.

Because She-Ra’s story is so powerful, it has been retold several times. The best known is probably the 2018 Netflix series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. The 2018 cartoon took several liberties in reinterpreting the characters and their world – most of which do have their roots in throwaway moments in the Filmation cartoon – but  stuck to the basic story of Adora, a Horde soldier since childhood, overcoming her conditioning to join the rebellion, find true friends and true love and become the heroine she was always meant to be. 

The biggest change is – no, not Adora’s sexual orientation – but the absence of He-Man. Because due to the problematic gender policies of Mattel in the 1980s, He-Man and She-Ra are considered two separate properties. Mattel fully owns the rights to He-Man, but the She-Ra rights were partially owned by co-creators Filmation. Now, several mergers and takeovers later, they are with Universal/Dreamworks. The result is that it is exceedingly difficult for He-Man and She-Ra to appear in each other’s stories and indeed the Eternian twins of power have not been seen together on screen since the 1980s. Masters of the Universe: Revolution, which aired on Netflix last January, did strongly hint at the introduction of She-Ra in its post-credits teaser, but so far no third series has been announced.

And so the only places where He-Man and She-Ra have appeared together are the  various toy lines as well as the mini-comics and the 2012 – 2016 DC Comics run. The DC Comics also feature my favorite reinterpretation of She-Ra’s story. For while the Filmation cartoon depicted Adora as sticking out like a sore thumb among the various monstrous Horde members, in the comics Adora – now renamed Despara – fully believes herself to be the daughter of Hordak and Shadow Weaver and wears a mask of her “father’s” face. When first introduced, Despara is an out and out villainess. She commits war crimes, stabs Teela and slits the throat of her own brother (he gets better). Her road to redemption is a lot more rocky than Adora’s ever was in the cartoon, but the unwavering faith and love of her brother Adam and of Teela eventually turn her life around, making the moment when she finally transforms into She-Ra that much sweeter.

 Both the She-Ra cartoon and toyline were not the huge success that He-Man was, probably because both debuted into a much more crowded market than her twin brother had three years before. But She-Ra remains an icon of female and also queer empowerment to this day. And it all started forty years ago with The Secret of the Sword, when Adora first uttered the immortal line “For the Honour of Grayskull.”