An antagonist either remains evil or becomes redeemed, right? If "yes" is your answer, take a look at #Netflix's She-ra and the Princesses of Power, and how Catra wasn't redeemed, but resolved.
Image: DreamWorks Animation
WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Netflix's She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.
Commitments. We’ve all been there.
Grabbing our food and drink of choice, cozy blanket, and remote, we sit down, get comfortable, and prepare for an amazing story we’ve heard so many good things about.
We laugh, cry, relate, get frustrated, and are relieved as our minds tumble through the long cave that is three or more seasons––only to reach the end and have our souls crushed. And not in the good or enlightening way.
Rushed characters are personally the bane of my existence.
They make the endless hours sitting in front of Netflix or Amazon or Hulu fruitless. Your love and devotion––wasted. All because the writers of a show had one season left and weren’t clever enough to come up with the ending a character needed.
So they rushed it.
After the fifth and final season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, viewer backlash against Catra, a central morally gray antagonist turned protagonist, revealed a strong opinion that her redemption arc was rushed.
Before we dissect this any further, here’s a bit of context for those unfamiliar with the show.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is a Netflix reboot and re-imagining of the 80’s show, She-Ra: Princesses of Power. Netflix takes the plot and characters of the original show and transforms them to showcase the values of our present day: representing diverse body types, ethnicities, and LGBTQ+ characters––one of which is Catra.
Catra is childhood friends with the story’s main protagonist, Adora––that is, up until they go their separate ways.
Throughout season 1, viewers learn Catra and Adora are a part of what is called The Horde: an alien force stationed on planet Etheria. The Horde is controlled by one of the show’s antagonists, Hordak, and he has a mission: claim Etheria in the name of his brother from whom he is a biological/mechanical clone of, Horde Prime.
To secure troops for his army, Hordak takes children of conquered Etherian lands young enough to be brainwashed and integrated into The Horde––Catra and Adora among them.
Adora succeeded Catra in every way possible, and thus gained the favor of both Hordak as well as their caretaker (at the time), Shadow Weaver. Catra, from the moment The Horde began training them, was put in a very difficult situation: while she didn’t know it at the time, she loved Adora more than anyone or anything else, but the world beat down on her because the one she loved outshone her.
They are star crossed lovers. Outside forces certainly hinder their chances at love (Adora being the legendary She-Ra and Catra remaining as a force captain in The Horde) but more than that, their inner turmoil of how they’ve hurt each other and how they feel about themselves gets in the way, too––until season 5.
I would like to preface what I’m about to discuss.
Image: DreamWorks Animation
I do not believe Catra’s arc should be labeled as a redemption, but as a resolution.
Viewers get upset when a character with potential to be redeemed is not redeemed or when the writers attempt to redeem them but do it in a chiche or rushed manner. Redemption must be done with mindfulness of the character’s identity at large. And I fully agree with that, which is why I don’t believe Noelle Stevenson, the writer of the show, was trying to redeem Catra, but resolve her.
Redemption is characterized by Google Dictionary as “the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil.” Stevenson did not save Catra from her sins and errors.
Everything that follows suit after season 5 (which we unfortunately won’t get a chance to see since the fifth season was the last one) would most likely be Catra’s redemption: traveling around Etheria and helping Adora and the Best Friend Squad rebuild and reform. And, along the way, talk through all of the difficult, personal, and hurtful issues left that need closure.
Now, Google Dictionary defines resolution as “a firm decision to do or not to do something.”
Throughout the episodes of season 5, there were many instances where Catra firmly decided not to do something: she did not choose to side with Horde Prime, she did not choose to argue with Adora anymore, she did not choose to let the anger get the better of her and, when it came down to the final moments, Catra made the firm decision to forever stand by the one she loves: Adora.
The way I see it based on what I witnessed in season 5, Catra knows that she is not yet redeemed.
There are more people than Adora’s immediate friend circle who she caused harm to. She, at one point, was a force captain of The Horde after all, and led dozens of soldiers to attack the towns of Etheria. As I said before, her redemption will occur off screen after the events of the last season.
And so, because of Catra’s arc being a resolution and not a redemption, I deduce that the development of her character was not rushed.
That being said, I fully understand how others see it in a different, dissatisfying light.
I think the very first moment people became sceptical as to how Stevenson would wrap up Catra was in the first two episodes of season 5.
However, I’d like for those of you who were sceptical from the beginning of those first two episodes to revisit their thoughts.
The last we see of Catra in season 4, she is abducted, along with Adora’s princess pal Glimmer and Hordak, and taken to Horde Prime’s ship––the final boss of the show.
If you'll recall, before Horde Prime, Catra was at the mercy of his younger brother, Hordak.
Image: DreamWorks Animation
Hordak is a complicated villain.
His reasoning for taking over Etheria is to impress his brother, which, compared to the reasoning of Horde Prime I’ll explain in a minute, is a very human logic. Many of us have gone through life trying to impress the ones we look up to or love. Students sometimes pursue careers not because they enjoy the subject, but because they want to make their parents proud of them.
So long as Catra was useful to him in pursuing that goal (and the same went for all other Horde troops), Hordak let her be. However, unlike Horde Prime, Hordak assigned Shadow Weaver to look after Catra, Adora, and the rest of the abducted children in their group, and if that’s the case, we can assume he has other maternal or paternal figures within The Horde to look after other groups of children.
He recognises that children need care, guidance, and friends (along with the brainwashing in this case) if they are to grow up strong and capable––even if he employed all those things out of logic.
Like manipulating any other individual with emotions, it was not hard for Catra to evade, trick, and lie to Hordak.
Other than the fact that Catra has needed to rely on herself ever since Adora abandoned The Horde, so long as Catra put on the mask that she was going along with Hordak’s plan, Hordak let her do what she wanted. To him, if he got to give Etheria to his brother in the end, it mattered not what his subordinates did to help him get there.
And then, she meets Horde Prime.
Image: DreamWorks Animation
Where Hordak was a hot-tempered, frustrated and sad villain, Horde Prime is cold, unyielding in his pursuit, and views all who both help him and seek to hinder him as beneath himself.
He has one very simple goal: to bring peace to the universe by way of universal genocide.
Without the emotional complexities of Etherians or the ones his younger brother Hordak came to possess from living on Etheria for so long, Catra is powerless.
She is stranded on a ship far from without a single tactic in her toolkit.
She tries her psychological manipulation that worked on Hordak, but she learns very quickly that because Horde Prime has no emotion to manipulate, she’ll be dead rather than successful if she sticks around.
Catra can’t win if she stays with Horde Prime.
And so, she breaks Glimmer out of jail to join with Adora once more on episode three of season five.
"But come on, after four long seasons of Catra hurting others rather than helping them?" You may point out, and again, I fully understand where you're coming from.
But I return to my previous deduction of her arc being a resolution and not a redemption.
The first nail in the coffin for Catra was when she realized that she could end up dead if she ceased being useful to Horde Prime. The second was when Adora, Glimmer, and Bow came to rescue her and she was stuck in outer space with the one girl she both loved and hurt more than anyone else. The third consists of Catra’s slow but steady acceptance into the rebellion against Horde Prime, and the fourth was her reuniting with Adora after she left out of fear of Adora having to sacrifice herself to save Etheria.
And what a gorgeous reunion it was.
Image: DreamWorks Animation
I may be a bit selfish because I just want my poor cat girl to be happy and loved, but logically, I stand by Catra’s character being resolved, not redeemed, and after all the harm she did, I think a resolution is appropriate.
Stevenson knew this much, and thus allowed the audience to imagine how Catra could be redeemed after the final battle was won.
I hope from this point forward, my readers benefit from having this new, third option of resolution to think about when facing an antagonist turned protagonist.
Did the writers redeem them? Or did they resolve them? And how can doing the later aid in preventing a character’s development from being rushed?
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