——Below be SPOILERS for She-ra and the Princesses of Power————
If you haven’t done so, check out She-ra and the Hero’s Journey, Pt. 1, which breaks down Catra’s destructive behavior and painful fight for redemption and self-acceptance.
Nearly every episode in the series features a step in the hero’s journey for Adora, followed by mirrored step in a mostly wrong direction for Catra. Like a greek tragedy, Catra’s personality flaws prove fatal. Her big turning point occurs through ‘Corridors’, ‘Save the Cat’, and ‘Taking Control’. She sacrifices herself (atonement), gets chipped (death) and then finally accepts Adora’s help, twice (resurrection). Her resurrection actually takes two parts – in ‘Save the Cat,’ her resurrection occurs when she finally allows herself to accept help, but in ‘Taking Control’ she has go through the whole process again, finding rebirth when she realizes it’s only her actions that are blocking her from having any kind of contact with Adora.
Once Catra is firmly on the side of Good and beginning her healing process, Adora then has to tackle her own greek tragedy. Her fatal flaw is her hero complex, shown in a more straightforward way in ‘Heart 2’. She decides to deliver the failsafe as Adora, believing that if she cannot summon She-ra, she has to sacrifice herself (atonement). Horde Prime captures her in the heart, binding her in his evil-prison-matrix (death). Embracing her true desires for a personal, intimate relationship with Catra allows her to call She-ra, and safely deliver the failsafe (resurrection).
Here’s a table of mirroring actions that follow along with the path of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey:
| Adora | Catra | |
| the ordinary world | Adora is hard-working, people-pleasing, full-of-potential senior cadet in the Horde, and supports her close friend Catra, despite Catra’s lack of motivation. | Catra is a senior horde cadet whose lack of discipline and toxic attitude makes it difficult for her to impress her teachers or make friends. |
| Call to adventure | Heads out to the woods, finds the sword | Catra is tasked with bringing back Adora from the woods |
| refusing the call | discovers She-ra cannot be called at will without desire | Catra threatens to leave the horde; Catra brags about knowing She-ra’s secrets, but refuses to admit that she knows it’s Adora |
| Meeting the mentor | discovers Madame Razz in the woods, who helps her commit to She-ra and the rebellion. | Catra is berated by Shadow Weaver for faiilng to bring back Adora in the invasion of Thamor. |
| crossing the first threshold | Adora pledes herself to the rebellion | Catra is promoted to force captain |
| trials, allies, enemies | Princess alliance is formed, broken by the events of the princess prom and the rescue of Glimmer and Bow | Superpal trio of Catra, Scorpia and Entrapta formed with the events of the princess prom and Entrapta’s recruitment. |
| seeing the shadow self | Adora and Catra confront the dissolution of their relationship in the crystal castle: Adora once again attempts to make amends with Catra, but is forced to see that she cannot make Catra change her toxic behavior. | Adora and Catra confront the dissolution of their relationship in the crystal castle: Catra concludes that she doesn’t want Adora to come back to the horde, as she believes that Adora broke her childhood promise to take care of each other and kept her from succeeding on her own. |
| finding the oracle | Adora meets Lighthope, and begins her training. She has more interactions with Angella, as she takes a leadership role in rebellion. | Catra captures Shadow Weaver, reversing the pecking order in the horde. Catra is now directly managed by Hordek, who motivates by fear of death. Catra visits Shadow Weaver regularly for advice. |
| the ordeal/Abyss – the second threshold | TL/DR: a series of events deepens the wedge between Adora and Catra until they manage to destroy and isolate each other. – Adora successfully defends Brightmoon, building her self-confidence and solidifying the alliance against the horde. – the portal is opened and closed, teaching Adora to hold Catra responsible for her actions. – the Heart of Etheria is turned on, nearly destroying all magic, ending with She-ra deleting Lighthope and breaking the sword | TL/DR: a series of events deepens the wedge between Adora and Catra until they manage to destroy and isolate each other. – Catra attacks Bright Moon, in an effort to destroy Adora’s friends and show Adora the horror of failure. – Shadow Weaver escapes after manipulating Catra. – Catra’s rage and grief pushes her to open the portal that she knows will destroy reality. – Catra atomizes every allegiance she has, suffering an emotional breakdown, fights and disables Hordek, and gets a harsh reality check that kills her will to fight. – captured by Horde Prime, she is removed from everything familiar to her. |
| Refusal to return | Adora can no longer call She-ra, insists on putting herself on the front lines. | Catra attempts to manipute Horde Prime, as she did with Hordek. |
| rescue from without | Adora discovers that she can access She-ra on her own when she rescues Catra from Horde Prime | Catra, after getting brainwashed, is rescued from horde prime by She-ra |
| death of dreams | Adora decides she must sacrifice herself to deliver the failsafe if she cannot become She-ra. She concludes that she must focus on saving the world to succeed, going out on her own. | Catra fears that Adora will sacrifice herself to deliver the failsafe, concludes Adora does not want her and Catra’s true feelings will only hinder any chance she has at success |
| Third threshold – a sacrifce | Mara tells Adora that she is worthy of love, but Adora still continues her quest to deliver the failsafe | Catra convinces Shadow Weaver to take her to Adora, pushing aside her fear of honesty and self-awareness to protect her as long as she can. |
| Climax and Catharsis | On discovering that Catra has always loved her, and telling her she returns her feelings, Adora is able to call She-ra. | Catra refuses to leave Adora, and admits her true feelings |
| resurrection | She-ra’s back! She delivers the failsafe, shutting down the heart, and returning topside to fight the horde. | Catra seals their relationship into unambiguous canon with a kiss. Catra’s relationship with Adora is fully restored, with more honesty and health than ever before. |
| Master of worlds | She-ra destroys Horde Prime, and accepts Hordek’s surrender | Catra finds forgiveness and acceptance from others and herself. |
| Freedom to live | Adora proposes the mission to restore magic to the galaxy | Catra is able to openly express her love for Adora, and is accepted into the BFS. |
As I went through this, I realized there are multiple ways to apply the hero’s journey to the story. The first season, which for American TV shows usually has to stand on its own, has Adora marching through a simplified journey. In ‘The Battle of Bright Moon”, Adora goes through some of the last steps of the journey without Catra, getting herself and the remaining members of alliance captured (death), the prodigal members return to the support Bright Moon (rescue), She-ra is able to fight and lead again (resurrection), and the alliance combines their magic to beat off the horde (master of worlds and Freedom to Live).
As demonstrated in the differences between the opening paragraph and the table, Adora and Catra’s return process is not exactly in lock step. Initially, The drivers of the actions set the journey out of step. At the start, it’s Adora’s discovery of She-ra that kicks off the story, while Catra’s departure journey is one of reaction. While Adora actively cycles through mini-journeys to solidify her friendship with Bow and Glimmer, Catra is watching from afar and following orders. Catra threatens to leave the horde, as much as it sounds like angry bluffing (refusal of the call). Shadow Weaver forces to go to Thaymor to try to rescue Adora (supernatural aid). She reappears late in ‘The Sword pt. 2’ when She-ra has clearly been pushed over a lot of initial crossover thresholds as she realizes the Horde is evil. Catra’s crossover comes when she refuses Adora’s offer to join her. In this moment, her fear of abandonment and the unknown causes the first major rift between the two friends (crossing the first threshold). For both of them, they cycle through the departure steps again, this time with mentors (Razz and Shadow Weaver) and higher stakes: Adora attacks of the horde base and Catra gets sent to the principal’s office (Belly of the Whale). This concludes in the nail-in-the-coffin departure threshold: Adora is squarely pledged to the side of Good, and Catra is cackling with “I’ll show them” laughter on the side of Bad.
Contrast this to the end, where Adora is so attached to her destiny that she chooses to be a good soldier, following Shadow Weaver’s orders and accepting her death as inevitable. Catra is now the one to drive change, as she steps in to fight the final monster (sacrifice), resists Adora’s urge to leave her, and saves Adora with a confession of her true feelings (transformation).
To make a good story, Adora’s final steps have to come at the very end, but to demonstrate the difficulty of finding mental health and restoring relationships, Catra has to go through the process in smaller and smaller cycles with diminishing stakes to her personal safety. While the final conflict is against a villain destroying the galaxy, Catra is completely focused on her selfless effort to keep her friend alive, putting the conflict between her own feelings and her fear of vulnerability. While there is an overarching conflict between life and death, in the final moments, Catra chooses this personal fight over, for example, going directly after Horde Prime or trying to escape.
The events between the finale of season one and the end of season four are lumped into the Abyss. The 26 episodes of Abyss is a product of our current television programming standards. While the show runner initially and successfully mapped out 52 episodes, American television always has to format the shows in seasonal arcs, with the constant threat of getting cancelled before they can produce a satisfactory ending. One critical benefit of streaming platforms is the ability to lesson the threat of cancellation for their original offerings. They’re not dependent on advertisers, thrown off by competing shows in the time-slots, and are basically able to set their own schedule, as their income is subscription-based rather cost-per-view. Still, there’s always a chance that a show could get dropped before the show runners had planned, or that it’s so popular that the show runners are forced to extend the story to its breaking point (see ABC’s television program ‘Lost‘).
So She-ra’s first season wraps up Adora’s hero’s journey at least to overcome the first big battle and form an alliance that wins with a victory rainbow(Freedom to Live). Younger viewers might be completely satisfied with this ending: our hero wins, she saves her friends, the enemy is pushed back. When the season first aired, older viewers, especially those who enjoyed the fabulous dance scene of ‘Princess Prom’, probably assumed that the arc would continue as many children’s programming as in the past: villain supplies monster, hero defeats monster, repeat until final boss.
The big trend today is redemption, as our cultural values shift towards trying to see beyond ‘good and bad’. With the initial season of She-ra, Catra and the horde are so thoroughly coded as evil that it’s difficult to imagine reconciliation for them. The solution is to end the season with the simplified journey for Adora that younger viewers can easily latch on to, while giving the main villain such a strong, relatable and at times extremely enjoyable personality that older viewers find themselves latching on to her much more subtle storyline.
The characters are finally able to leave the abyss and enter the magic flight at the end of season 4: Adora’s sword is broken, Catra’s standing over Hordek is trashed, and at one point she symbolically removes her helmet in one of the most brutal scenes. She reports in to Hordek with a voice and face of utter restraint, and upon switching off the video call, loses complete control of her emotions. While she’s able to put her helmet on again in the episode, this scene represents her leaving a lot of her immediate emotional drivers behind – the tears overwhelm, flow out, and she becomes devoid of feelings, losing most of her ability to fight back or effectively stick up for herself. Her state of inaction (realm of the wild woman) continues until she’s thrown into the two-person support group on horde prime’s ship, finally getting her to see that her personal safety is actually connected to the safety of others in her life, and that her actions can have positive effects if she just accepts help and guidance.
Chicago Home Chef Journal 