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that-ari-blogger · 3 months

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A Look In The Mirror

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power exists in cycles and spirals, that's part of why I call it an tragedy trying desperately to happen. A ton of the tension is driven by the question of whether or not the characters will break out of the cycle. In other words, the story is about agency vs fate (a bit like Romeo and Juliet, I wonder what else the two have in common).

There are many ways to get across this theme, perhaps with carefully laid parallels and nuanced storytelling, both of which She-Ra does. But Signals takes a different, far less subtle approach. The episode tells the audience overtly what the series as a whole is about, and what exactly can subvert it.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, God Of War: 2018, God Of War: Ragnarök)

Signals opens after Entrapta's loyalties become general knowledge, and I would like to start with Bow's story in this episode, because it is a microcosm of how the story works as a whole. A vacancy is opened in a hierarchy and the new appointee tries to do things the way that their predecessor did. People become caricatures of those they see as powerful in their designated area and have to learn that being themself is just as useful, if not more so.

Bow, for example, seems convinced that failure is to be avoided or hidden. He has to be perfect, and able to fix anything. But, as Entrapta herself explains:

"There’s no reason to get huffy because an experiment fails. Failure is a vital part of scientific endeavor."

For all of her eccentricities, Entrapta is one of the wisest characters in the series, with only Razz outdoing her in that regard. (Swiftwind comes close). To that end, this is rather decent life advice, sometimes the best way to learn is to get something wrong and experience the consequences for that, instead of being either protected from consequence, or being punished for trying.

Hold on to this thought.

In essence, Bow is a relatively simple character by nature, he is necessary to balance out the entirety of the rest of the cast. But the word "relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, because Bow is nuanced, specifically in his relationship with obstacles.

Bow begins with a very simple worldview, but Entrapta single handedly complicates this time and time again. With her death, her allegiance, and her legacy. Bow realises that his worldview needs nuance when his top down perspective gets someone "killed", then he realises that his idea of binary morality is skewed when Entrapta defects, and here he learns about failure and tactics by trying to live up to her image.

Bow remains simple, in contrast with the theme park character development of Catra, Adora, and Glimmer, but he does learn and adapt.

So, Bow sets the baseline, to break from the cycle, you need to change. You need to stop trying to be someone else, and instead focus on being the best you that you can possibly be.

God Of War: 2018 and its sequel use the analogy of fate to describe this principle. Thor becomes an absent father because of his own father's abuse, which then leads to Magni and Modi being schmucks as the cycle continures. Odin explicitly gets to see what his future holds and ends up inadvertently causing it to come true in his attempts to subvert his fate.

Fatbrett on YouTube has a video titled Odin - A Deconstruction of Villainy that delves into the character as a whole, but I would like to zero in on Odin's core flaw and the message of the game as a whole. To change your fate is to change your nature. Odin is incapable of change, so the prophecy comes true.

But Kratos and Atreus do change, but their journey is towards learning to not avoid being themselves. Kratos' journey in God of War: 2018 is directly caused by not telling his son about his past, and Atreus spends the entirety of God of War: Ragnarök trying to be either his father, or Odin. The message of the story is this:

"Don't be sorry, be better"

Learn from your mistakes.

Adora takes this in an interesting direction, because it's genuinely difficult to see her as having much meaningful character development in series one at all, and I actually think this is a good thing. Because on a surface level, Adora goes from bad guy to good guy and escapes from an abusive relationship. But does she? The only thing that happens to the parental relationship is a pallet swap.

All Adora does in season one is change her surroundings, but the key part of that is her foundation. Adora spends season one surrounding herself with people who will enable that character development to flourish and not be broken down... and Light Hope. In season two, Adora starts making strides towards actual agency, and that is all because of the setup she has been doing.

I have gone into Depth as to how Light Hope is a bad influence in other posts, but this episode hammers home just how easily Adora internalises things. She keeps Shadow Weaver's tales of the Weeping, Headless, and Undead Princesses in her mind, for example, absorbed uncritically.

But Adora also keeps the obsessive blaming. She sees a problem and immediately attributes the cause of it to the Horde, a holdover from her time there, where she had the same attitude towards Princesses. In this instance, she's wrong, and the problem is more nuanced, and her assumptions get the better of her.

Speaking of assumptions, the first ones make an appearance in this episode, kind of. The messages that they leave behind give a glimpse into their lives that we haven't come close to getting before.

"I’ve been thinking of them as these big epic figures. But they’re regular people, sending messages to their loved ones."

The theme of cycles and living up to legacies continues with the worldbuilding of this story. Modern Etheria tends to visualise the First Ones as great and powerful and perfect, but they were just as human as the rest of the characters. Once again, those trying to mimic their predecessors exactly come up short.

Over on the Horde side, Catra is going through a similar situation, she is trying to become Shadow Weaver, but coming up short because there was more the story than she realised. Shadow Weaver had to do paperwork, for example.

There's also the fact that she is still in the abusive environment. She still regularly visits Shadow Weaver, so the psychological bullying still happens, but she's also around Hordak, now. I said that Adora has just pallet swapped her situation, and I think Catra has done the same.

When Hordak takes the atmosphere out of the room, it is awful, and it's the moment in which Catra should realise that it doesn't matter how high up in the chain of command she goes, she will still be suffering. She should realise that she needs to get out of there for her own safety and sanity.

But she doesn't realise that. Instead, she applies what she has learned in her upbringing. She is convinced that all she has to do is succeed, and she will get that attention and fairness. Conditional acceptance is what she is used to, so she doesn't see anything out of the ordinary here.

"Failure is when something ceases to serve a purpose. When that happens, it becomes worthless to me."

This is Hordak's worldview, and I hate to argue with a villain, but I think he's wrong there. If success is usefulness, and everything will eventually stop being useful to you, then you have a pretty sad life. If you judge everything by utility and don't care for relationships or things that just look and feel nice, then you are alone.

But on a broader, purely utilitarian perspective, this idea is bunk by that standard too. Failure as worthlessness is an objectively false idea, because mistakes are things to learn from. If something doesn't work, try again differently.

In other words:

"Failure is a vital part of scientific endeavor."

Entrapta is back, and this episode actually gives a glimpse into how to subvert the cycles, specifically through Entrapta and Hordak.

Firstly, Hordak has evidently been trying the experiment over and over again without learning anything. So Entrapta, by nature of her ability to adapt, makes the experiment work. It's a tiny metaphor for what I've been saying so far.

But Entrapta breaks through Hordak's barriers because of her sense of freedom. The best way to break free of a downward spiral is to start moving in a different direction, and Entrapta does that easily. The reason she so easily switches sides is because she isn't tied down by anything (not even morality). She can't even be imprisoned because she is impossible to contain. Entrapta is a free spirit, and I think that that is what the series is about, personal agency.

Catra and Adora are repeating the same story over and over again because they think they have no choice, that's what the tragedy of the series is, the two main characters are on a road to destruction and can't change direction. But the story isn't a tragedy, it avoids being one at the last possible moment when the characters finally realise that they have agency, and that thematic is foreshadowed right here, in Signals.

Final Thoughts

In my plan for this post, I wanted to bring up the Darksouls series, of all things, but I think I will save that idea for a later episode.

In any case, this episode manages to discuss some overarching philosophy, as well as explicitly state that this has happened before, this is a story about repetition, learn from your mistakes.

Also, the cinematography in this episode is really cool. It flies under the radar a lot, but the camera placement and movement really heighten the tension and vibe of this episode.

Next week, I will be talking about Roll With It, an episode that is near and dear to my heart for completely unbiased reasons. Definitely unbiased. Not bias there at all. So, stick around if that interests you.

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