She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a Netflix animated show about a girl who finds a magic sword and saves the world. And much like Steven Universe before it, there are resonant depths beneath its vivid surface charms.
There are castles and mermaids and flying unicorns. There are spaceships and ancient alien artifacts. There's snappy dialogue from characters with wonderfully, ridiculously literal names like "Perfuma," "Entrapta," and "Castaspella" (inherited from the original 1980s cartoon with lower ambitions). But like all the best stories, it also manages to be about so much more. Among other things, it explores the complicated bonds of friendship and family; the difference between love and manipulation; the long shadow of childhood trauma and abuse; the need to question your sense of purpose and the systems that made you believe in it (and, just when you think you've figured it out, the need to question it again); and the long, hard work that it really takes to atone for past wrongs and earn redemption. It's also a gratifyingly female- and queer-centered story that matter-of-factly populates its world with characters of all body types, genders, and orientations, in ways both incidental and central to the plot. Spoiler: love wins—but not without a long struggle that brings the world to the knife's edge of darkness and despair.
The show won't be everyone's cup of tea, but I've found it absolutely cathartic quarantine viewing, especially in the final season that pays off all the emotional arcs of the previous four. If there are people in the world telling these kinds of stories that offer both hope and honesty, and audiences of all ages holding onto these narratives as talismans of courage, then maybe all isn't lost. Not yet.
The show's theme song, performed by Aaliyah Rose, is a heroic power-pop anthem that serves as a rallying cry for battle: "We're warriors, unstoppable!" I love it, but what I want to feature is the more somber version that was recently released with the show's soundtrack. Sung by AJ Michalka (who was also part of the duet "Here Comes a Thought," which I previously wrote about), the new arrangement casts the lyrics in a grimmer light—the battle cry as a slog through hard and uncertain times. Lines like "We feel the evil coming / and shadows all around" are filled with more foreboding than bravado; "We're gonna win in the end" is less a confident promise and more an exhausted mantra to keep body and soul together. But the heart of the song remains: a commitment to allyship and to putting every last ounce of ourselves into the fight, no matter the outcome. It's something I've needed to hear these days, and maybe you do too.
We must be strong
And we must be brave
We gotta find every bit of strength that we have
And never let it go
(The final spoken line, "Hey, Adora," is a little treat for the show's fans: it's the catchphrase of the central frenemy/antagonist, Catra, also voiced by Michalka.) BONUS: Here's the abbreviated song as presented in She-Ra's opening credits. Cleverly—and more frequently in the later seasons—some of the visual sequences, character tableaus, and even facial expressions change as the plot thickens and relationships evolve. For comparison (if you don't mind spoilers), see here, here, here, here, and here. And finally, here's the opening sequence of the original 80s show. -----
Listen to the Spotify playlist here.
Watch the YouTube playlist here.