She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Rewatch 5.5, "Save the Cat"

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She-Ra comes back in full force at last.

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5.5, "Save the Cat"

Written by Noelle Stevenson, Josie Campbell, Katherine Nolfi, Laura Sreebny, and M. Willis
Directed by Roy Burdine and Jen Bennett

Synopsis

This does not seem a good idea.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

Adora, Glimmer, Bow, and Entrapta proceed towards Horde Prime's flagship, intending to rescue Catra. They are pulled into the ship, with Adora surrendering to the clones and being taken to Horde Prime. The others infiltrate the ship, searching for Catra and for a means to assail Prime.

As Adora confronts Prime in his throne room, Glimmer navigates the ship with difficulty. Bow and Entrapta encounter opposition. Prime reveals himself as a body-hopper, and one who has faced and defeated Adora's kind previously. Entrapta believes she recognizes Hordak among the clones and tries to retrieve him; the clone attacks, Bow defends, and the clone finds himself bereft of connection to the Horde. Bow and Entrapta suborn him, labeling him "Wrong Hordak."

Back at the scene of the crime.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

Glimmer returns to the cell where she had been held, finding Catra absent and her group's communications jammed as Horde Prime boasts to Adora. He returns Catra to Adora, having turned her to his own purposes.

Bow, Entrapta, and Wrong Hordak arrive at a sensitive location as Adora understands what has been done to Catra; she is controlled via an implant on the back of her neck. Prime unleashes his forces on Adora's party and leaves Catra to assail Adora. Multiple melees ensue; Glimmer's and Bow's are more successful than Adora's, and they are able to damage Prime's command and control structures.

Reminiscent of the Pieta, this.
Image taken from the episode, used for commentary.

The damage loosens Prime's control of Catra, but only just, and she and Adora end up injured. When Prime confronts Adora again, she manifests the full power of She-Ra, seeming more like Mara than her previous self as she effects escape from the Horde, joining the others in the progress of their own exit. And Hordak, after, begins to reassert himself.

Discussion

The Arthurian pastiche in which the series operates already admits of much of the messianic. The present episode does much to reinforce that aspect of the Arthurian, with much being made of rescuing prisoners from bondage (about which Malory and other Arthurian writers make much) and of the sword-wielding hero(ine) returning in the hour of need. In that, then, it adds to already-existing medievalism in the series rather than adding new medievalisms to it--and this despite the imprecations of some commentary that asserts medievalism and those who study it are somehow unreal.

The present episode also accentuates the homosocial, even homoerotic, motions that appear in much Arthurian work. When I had students, and when I had them in classes that allowed for me to bring in Arthurian literature, they were often surprised by the amount of kissing going on between men in the works, as well as the open emoting that occurs throughout. Part of that is different social conditioning and expectation, of course; many prevailing ideas of masculinity call for a partial and inauthentic stoicism, and knights are "supposed" to be exemplars of masculinity. It's the kind of thing that Shiloh Carroll speaks to in her excellent write-up of Game of Thrones, and it may be the kind of thing to which the current series and its present episode respond. Certainly, there is enough tenderness among Adora's group--despite the fighting that has happened among them--to be marked, a juxtaposition that also echoes the Arthurian of which the series appears to make so much use.