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The Full Story · Told by the Makers

The Full Story of She-Ra: Princess of Power

The most powerful woman in the universe was almost named Hera, until a copyright search killed it. When the show finally reached air, the studio's consultants tried to forbid its heroine from swinging her sword at anyone, on the grounds that it was not ladylike. And the writers, working from a Star Wars obsession, deliberately built her world as the mirror image of her brother's: where He-Man defended a kingdom in charge, She-Ra led a rebellion against an empire that had already won.

She-Ra: Princess of Power was a 1985 Filmation cartoon, a spin-off of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe built to reach the girls the first show missed. It launched in the theatrical feature He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword on March 22, 1985, then premiered as a daily series on September 9, 1985, running 93 episodes across two seasons in first-run syndication. Writers Larry DiTillio and J. Michael Straczynski, both uncredited, designed it as a deliberate inversion of He-Man, and it became one of the first action cartoons built around a female lead.

Built to serve the other half of the audience

He-Man was a phenomenon among boys almost from the day it premiered in 1983, and Lou Scheimer, the head of Filmation, decided quickly that the studio owed girls the same thing. His daughter Erika, who worked at Filmation, put his reasoning to SYFY WIRE in a 2019 oral history: "My dad had two very strong, feminist females at home. He felt a moral obligation." When He-Man took off, she said, "he instantly knew that we had to serve girls, too. They deserve to have something, too! So he went to Mattel and said, 'Hey, I want to do a girls' version of He-Man. Because the girls are underserved.'"

The business arrangement was different from He-Man's. Where He-Man had been Filmation building a show around an existing Mattel toy line, She-Ra was, per the production record, a genuine collaboration: Filmation and its writers created the core cast and premise, Mattel designed the later characters and financed the series alongside its own Princess of Power toy line. Mattel also set hard limits. When the studio needed villains for She-Ra's planet, it reached for figures it was already tooling. DiTillio, who was She-Ra's story editor, explained the logic to He-Man.org: Mattel "was more concerned with the heroine/hero figures in She-Ra, rightly thinking that they would sell better than the villains," so the Horde and its leader Hordak, already available in plastic, became her enemies "simply because they were there."

Not "He-Man with boobs"

The writers refused to make She-Ra a recolored He-Man, and they said so at the time and since. "One of the things Larry [DiTillio] and I decided, very early on, was that She-Ra couldn't just be 'He-Man with boobs,'" Straczynski told SYFY WIRE. "The show had to go deeper than that, especially given that we were creating this for a female lead character." Their solution was to flip the entire premise. "So in the original series, He-Man fights to maintain the status quo against forces out to pull down the monarchy and destroy the established order of things," Straczynski said. "In She-Ra, that's reversed. She's in a resistance group trying to pull down a government of occupation."

DiTillio describes the same inversion from the story-editor's chair, and traces it partly to his own tastes. "I too was a Star Wars fan and was influenced enough to create a storyline involving a Rebellion against a vast technological Empire," he told He-Man.org. "And yes Horde Troopers were just like Stormtroopers." The structural gap between the two shows was the whole point: "The main difference between He-Man and She-Ra was that Eternia was obviously ruled by the good guys, while Etheria was firmly in the hands of the bad guys," DiTillio said. "This is what made the storylines so different. She-Ra was always up against a greater power with lots more resources, He-Man and his crew were pretty much more in control of the planet."

That did not mean the show ignored who it was for. DiTillio is candid that the tone was tuned deliberately: "We also wanted to do more stories on She-Ra that had a good amount of 'girl appeal,' so we had more romantic relationships going on, more group activity, more magic and less battle." He allows himself one large claim about the show's reach: "I sometimes fancy that She-Ra kind of paved the way for Xena many years later." Not every choice was the writers'. The single most fannish detail, that She-Ra is Prince Adam's long-lost twin, came down from the toymaker. "It was Mattel who demanded Adora be Adam's sister," DiTillio said, "so that was out of my hands."

The name that was almost Hera

For years fans repeated a rumor that the character had first been called "He-Ra." DiTillio, who named her, corrected the record at He-Man.org and gave the real story. "No rumor. She-Ra was originally called Hera, like the Greek Goddess," he said. "But a copyright search showed that someone had the rights to the name and they asked me to come up with a new one. I thought about it and decided I wanted something that was goddess-like and wanted the SHE to coincide with the HE in He-Man. As I had just finished a big Egyptian RPG scenario, the name Ra was in my head and when I put them together, voila!"

The sword she wasn't allowed to swing

For all the care the writers put into building a strong lead, the biggest fight over She-Ra was about whether she was allowed to act like one. Straczynski's account of it is the sharpest in the record. "The only directives came when we were well into the writing process, when Filmation and Lou engaged the services of consultants who tried to do as much damage as possible to the idea of a strong female lead," he told SYFY WIRE. "They gave instructions that while she had a sword, she wasn't allowed to use it against anyone because that wasn't ladylike. We had to make it a rope or the like. They didn't want her to punch anyone, but rather do a ballet-style kick that hits the bad guy almost by accident and (once again) throws them out of frame."

The actor who voiced her did not get, or want, that memo. Melendy Britt, cast as She-Ra, told SYFY WIRE she was left alone to build the character: "I had no directive except to give it my personal interpretation as a powerful female superhero." Whatever the consultants intended, the show that aired landed as something girls had not really been offered before, a hero at the center of her own war. Erika Scheimer has watched the reaction outlive the show by decades. "Little did we know that the LGBTQ community would be just so served and excited about it," she told SYFY WIRE. "That's one thing that's really amazing about She-Ra. And continues to be."

The movie that came first

She-Ra reached audiences in an unusual order. Rather than debut on television, she was introduced in a theatrical animated feature, He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword, released March 22, 1985. The film was not a separate story; it was assembled from what became the series' first five episodes, "Into Etheria," "Beast Island," "She-Ra Unchained," "Reunions," and "Battle for Bright Moon." Those episodes told the origin: how Adam's twin sister Adora, raised by the occupying Horde, learns the truth, claims the Sword of Protection, and joins the rebellion on the planet Etheria. The daily series followed on September 9, 1985, and ran two seasons of 93 episodes before ending in 1987. Reruns aired on USA Network from September 1988 to September 1989.

How the telling has grown over the decades

The drift here is mostly about credit and control. She-Ra's two chief architects worked uncredited by studio habit, so for decades the public record of who created her was thin, and both men have had to state their roles after the fact, DiTillio calling her the character "I had more of a hand in creating," Straczynski naming their co-authored bible only in 2018. The name was long misremembered as "He-Ra" until DiTillio corrected it to Hera. And the sister twist that defines the character was a toy-company order, not a writers' idea. The dates and episode counts are firm. The authorship had to be reconstructed because the studio erased it on purpose.

The honest bottom line

She-Ra was a spin-off of a toy commercial, financed by a toymaker, saddled with plot points dictated by which figures were ready to ship, and nearly hobbled by consultants who thought a heroine should not raise a sword. It should have been a lazy pink repaint of her brother. It was not. The writers used the assignment to build the more ambitious of the two shows, a serialized rebellion against an occupying power with a woman leading it, at a time when girls were mostly handed the sidekick role. The compromises were real and the toy company's fingerprints are all over it. What survived the compromises is why people still name the show forty years later.

Sources

More show stories live at /full-story/. Related: the full story of He-Man and the full story of Jem and the Holograms.

Frequently asked

How was She-Ra created?

Filmation chief Lou Scheimer pushed to make a girls' counterpart to the hit He-Man, telling Mattel that girls were underserved. Writers Larry DiTillio and J. Michael Straczynski designed the premise and cast for Filmation, Mattel designed later characters and financed the show and its Princess of Power toy line, and She-Ra launched in 1985.

Who created She-Ra: Princess of Power?

The core show was created by writers Larry DiTillio and J. Michael Straczynski, who co-wrote its story bible. Filmation did not credit writers on those documents, so their authorship went unacknowledged for years. Straczynski confirmed it publicly in 2018.

Why is She-Ra so different from He-Man?

The writers deliberately inverted the premise. He-Man defends an established kingdom, while She-Ra leads a rebellion against the Horde, an empire that already occupies her planet Etheria. Straczynski and DiTillio have both said they refused to make her, in Straczynski's words, "He-Man with boobs."

Was She-Ra almost called Hera?

Yes. Story editor Larry DiTillio has said the character was originally named Hera, after the Greek goddess, but a copyright search found the name was taken. He coined She-Ra to echo the "He" in He-Man, drawing "Ra" from an Egyptian role-playing scenario he had just finished.

Why is She-Ra He-Man's sister?

That plot point was Mattel's decision, not the writers'. DiTillio has said the toymaker demanded that Adora be Prince Adam's twin sister, and that it "was out of my hands."

When did She-Ra come out and how many episodes are there?

She-Ra was introduced in the theatrical film He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword on March 22, 1985, then premiered as a daily series on September 9, 1985. It ran two seasons and 93 episodes before ending in 1987.