Season 5 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power might be the best final arc of an animated series I’ve seen since Avatar: The Last Airbender. Not only is the queer representation fantastic, but it also declares that reconciliation and redemption are the end results of love. Christianity, at its core, declares this same thing. So while She-Ra certainly is not an intentional Christian allegory by any stretch of the imagination, its values align with those of a decolonized Christianity and I think it has something to say to the excessively loud, colonized one.
I’m going to focus on season 5 because it’s the freshest in my memory, so major spoilers ahead!
Horde Prime: the Christianity Baptized in Colonialism
She-Ra is steeped in colonial/invasion narratives. We learn of some of this with the First Ones subplots, but the main force is the Horde, and Horde Prime specifically. Season 5 shows us that Horde Prime positions himself as a god, and the language his clones use to speak about him with exaltation? I’ve heard similar rhetoric my entire life.
“He is all-knowing and all-seeing. His cause is pure and just. He ends suffering with his peace.”
If you heard some of this language out of context, you would think it describes God. And it does. But in the context of She-Ra, it describes this evil, invading force that seeks for every world to be like it or not to exist at all. The “peace” of the Horde is brought about by assimilation or destruction.
Christianity baptized in colonialism does this, too. Pick your “favorite” example–English settlers with the Native Americans in the United States, Spanish colonizers in the Caribbean and South America–colonial empires, like the Horde, spun rhetoric about the rebellious and evil natives that needed to be controlled and saved from their devils by God.
Horde Prime’s peace is complete oneness with him at the expense of diversity in thought, action, and being. Aside from his green, glowing eyes, he is white–devoid of color. He perpetuates his immortality by inhabiting the “purest” of his clones. His empire is exclusively male and exclusively himself. When clones show any signs of deviance, they are “purified” in a ritual in which they’re submerged in a tub of liquid and reemerge even more subdued. This perverted baptism robs the clones and the chipped (the converts) of the ability to feel anything but Horde Prime’s peace.
The eerie choral background music accompanying most of the scenes on Horde Prime’s ship add to these dark religious undertones. I don’t know Noelle Stevenson’s personal beliefs (and I also am not familiar with the original She-Ra or He-Man series), and unless you’re religiously attuned, you might not pick up on these colonial Christian vibes they’re laying down with Horde Prime. But this is the dominating force driving She-Ra’s story.
What threatens this self-serving, religiously coded regime that derives all power and authority from a single, knowable source? Untamable, unquantifiable magic. This magic is intertwined with a love that casts out fear and has little regard for one-side-versus-the-other boundaries as long as you’re open to letting love change you.
The Love Rebellion
The New Testament mentions several types of love, including eros (erotic love), philos (sibling love), and agape (unconditional love of God). In the princess rebellion, we see all of these types of love blossom. Even though the characters struggle with it, their community does form closer and closer around this unconditional love.
It begins with Glimmer and Bow accepting Adora into the rebellion, despite Adora being a Horde soldier. They give her a chance to grow and she does. Granted, she’s perhaps the easiest case. But from that point on, the love around which the rebellion ultimately centers its movement continuously tests them. Is there space for all of the princesses in Etheria with their own interests and needs? Yes. Is there space for annoying, shanty-singing pirates? Yes. Is there space for a scorpion princess with terrifying strength, intimidating looks, and the purest desire to do her best? Yes. Is there even space for an abusive mother who nobody trusts but whose intentions are still to defy this invading force? Yes.
Accepting Scorpia and Shadow Weaver into their community is perhaps the most challenging for most of the members. In Scorpia’s case, it really begins to upend the notion that everyone in the Horde is inherently evil. And Scorpia, for once in her life, feels like she belongs among a group, which only causes her to outpour even more love and loyalty. She gets to be who she is in her entirety. Accepting Shadow Weaver, on the other hand, is an example of being in community but still holding tension. She’s the member of your church that you welcome into the fold, because the gospel calls us to do that, but you must also set clear boundaries around her. For the most part, the rest of the community keeps Shadow Weaver away from Adora and Catra. She still causes pain when she’s allowed to get close to them, which we see in season 5 when the group travels through Mystacor. Yet being in this rebellion community has changed even Shadow Weaver, and in her last moments, she’s able to give Catra and Adora a message that allows them to heal.
Without accepting first Scorpia and then Shadow Weaver, accepting Catra, Wrong Hordak, and even a revived Hordak would’ve been impossible for the rebellion. But once they’ve begun wielding the power of making space and working through the tension, who they can let in and how deeply their love can reach into Horde Prime’s regime is practically limitless.
Catra and Communion in Space
Being a Christian means I’m a sucker for redemption/reconciliation arcs and Catra gets an amazing one in just a single season. One moment I find particularly beautiful in light of my thoughts around radical love and community is that dinner scene where Entrapta, Wrong Hordak, Bow, Glimmer, and Adora are sitting in a circle eating steamed buns Glimmer whipped up from ancient protein packets stored on the ship (Darla, as Entrapta would have us call her). If you zoom out, this is a pretty unlikely group you’d find sharing a meal together: a defected clone from Prime’s regime, the queen and strategic leader of the rebellion against that regime, a techy archer who might’ve been a nobody if not for his friendship with the queen, a geeky princess who’s betrayed her friends in the past and will join any side For Science™, and a girl raised by the Horde who inherited Etheria’s greatest hero.
Throughout the entire show, Adora holds onto her willingness to create space for Catra long after everyone else in the rebellion deems her a lost cause. But now that Catra is rescued on this ship, others are willing to make space for her, too. She emerges from her room and sits outside of the circle.
Until Bow and Glimmer slide over, waving her toward them.
And Glimmer hands her a bun.
And Catra is enveloped into this community where she doesn’t need to be powerful or useful to be worth anything.
That is why communion is such a powerful sacrament for Christians and why this reads to me as a communion scene. We come to the table broken and imperfect, but there is yet space for us.
She-Ra and Decolonizing Divinity
Horde Prime conceptualizes himself as a god deserving of total domination because of his advanced power and tech. She-Ra, with her highly powerful magic, could easily do the same. But she doesn’t. Yes, people are still awed by her power and they adore her–Swift Wind practically prays to her while Adora’s out in space–but She-Ra exists among her community without dominating it. This, in essence, is what Jesus does in the gospels. His miraculous powers do bring about healing and liberation for all the people he and the disciples visit in their travels, but Jesus does not dominate them. This is what Christianity forgot when it was baptized into colonialism.
Compared to Horde Prime’s uniform regime, She-Ra’s community flourishes in its diversity. It is strong because it confronts tension instead of avoiding it, calls its members to be vulnerable, and resists forces that aim to destroy connections with one another, figuratively and literally. This looks much more like the Christian communities I find myself in lately, ones that do the work of decolonizing thoughts and practices, and extending the communion table even to people who we believe are irredeemable. The future of the church must look more like She-Ra’s community and less like Horde Prime’s regime if it is to do the work that God calls us to do.
Lately, I’ve been listening to a great podcast called “You Are A Storyteller.” The hosts often discuss this idea that stories are powerful, but that they’re either medicine or poison. She-Ra is medicine, without a doubt.