She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Rewatch 1.10, "The Beacon"

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Mothers and daughters figure prominently as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power approaches the end of its first season.

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1.10, "The Beacon"

Written by Noelle Stevenson, Katherine Nofli, Sonja Warfield, and Josie Campbell
Directed by Lianne Hughes

Synopsis

It's not a good place they're in.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary

Having fled from the Fright Zone without Entrapta, Adora berates herself for failure. The Princess Alliance falters, with Perfuma and Mermista leaving the rest and hardening their own dominions. Adora, Bow, and Glimmer return to Bright Moon in defeat and despair, though Angella is overjoyed to have her daughter returned to her.

Angella asks after events, pressing the three for details; they manage to excuse themselves, hiding Glimmer's condition. Bow and Adora press her to reveal her difficulties to Angella, but Glimmer refuses.

In the Fright Zone, Hordak rebukes Shadow Weaver harshly while an unseen observer looks on.

Glimmer's efforts to restore herself do not go as well as expected; her condition has deteriorated somewhat, and Angella is confused at Glimmer's avoidance of her.

How unexpected a surprise.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

Catra exults in Shadow Weaver's shame and notes oddities in the Fright Zone. She exposes Entrapta, who has been scurrying through the Fright Zone's ducts.

Glimmer again puzzles over her condition, and Adora continues to fret about her failures. She purposes to heal Glimmer as She-Ra; Bow voices concerns, but is ignored.

Entrapta is captured but escapes restraint with ease. Catra tries to interrogate her, finding her all too willing to talk and working to manipulate her emotionally. It seems to have some effect; Entrapta comes to believe she has been abandoned. Catra begins to bring her into the Horde, seeing the potential in her.

Efforts to heal Glimmer go badly, as might be expected. Efforts to bring Entrapta into Horde service go far better, with Catra commending Entrapta's ingenuity. Entrapta notes that there is a source of technology she would like to have, and Catra makes to retrieve it.

Angella commands Glimmer to dinner. Adora purposes to find more about her powers and train in them, returning to a beacon she found earlier. In her absence, Bow and Glimmer confer in advance of the commanded dinner, Bow taking responsibility for the events leading to Glimmer's capture. Glimmer apologizes, in turn, and the two comfort one another in advance of the dinner--at which, Glimmer's condition emerges, as do both of their lingering traumas and anxieties. Angella urges Glimmer to fight for the Alliance.

That's a young woman on a mission, right there.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

At length, Adora and Catra arrive at the beacon, the latter trailing the former ominously.

Discussion

The revelation that Entrapta is not dead is hardly surprising; it is, in fact, something of a trope that any seeming death that does not show the body is no death at all. Cartoons, including the earlier She-Ra series, have tended to operate under constraints that prevent character death (largely for toy-marketing, in the case of She-Ra and similar series). But that is also not uncommon in medieval literature; the King Arthur I repeatedly reference is an easy example. After all, Malory tells us that "somme men say in many partyes of Englond that kyng Arthur is not deed / But had by the wylle of our lord Ihesu in to another place / and men say that he shal come ageyn," that he is "Rex quondam Rex que futurus," once and future king, bound to return. He also tells us that Mordred had been thought to die adrift with the other children of Logres, but survived. Even if it is something of a cliché, then, it is one with no small pedigree (as noted in the previous entry in the series, admittedly).

Also corresponding to medieval, particularly chivalric, antecedents is the dinner between Angella and Glimmer. There may be a tendency to dismiss it as childish histrionics or some other coded misogynistic thing; I've only taken a shallow dip into commentaries on the series, but even so shallow a dip left me feeling coated by such filth. (NB: Even if the expressions are "childish," Glimmer is an adolescent.) Such dismissals, proceeding from the toxic position that only the stoic (code "masculine") is or can be strong, are, as most such, blind to historical literary antecedent. How many tearful outpourings of emotion pervade such works as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Malory? Even in what Kaeuper calls "chivalry's great summa," a work recognized in its own time and long after as a guide for (noble, masculine) conduct, there are great, sudden expressions of emotion, confessional in nature; what Glimmer and Angella share is not so different than what Arthur and Gawain share, or many others.

Those who will use the medieval to prop up follies of toxic masculinity, among many others, need to remember that there is much more in the stories they told to show themselves what they could be than later readers want to accord them--such things as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is more apt to get right than they.