The Philosophy and Theology of He-Man, Then and Now

I have vague recollections from my early childhood of storming downstairs to the television in my parents’ bungalow to watch He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon. It aired early Saturday mornings and, as I remember it, again on Saturday afternoons and weekdays after school.

I watched He-Man and collected the action figures quite fervently. For a time, my mother would buy me one almost every week from the store at CHEO (the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario), where both my parents worked. The main characters, such as He-Man (Prince Adam), Battle Cat (Cringer), Man-At-Arms, Teela, Fisto, Orko, Man-E-Faces, Zodac, Skeletor, Trap Jaw, Beast Man, Mer-Man, and the rest of Eternia (a world of kingship, inheritance, and moral order, where Prince Adam receives rather than invents his identity and power to become He-Man), consequently captivated the contours of my childhood imagination long before I gained any philosophical or theological understanding to reflect upon the surprisingly valuable lessons taught by the show. It also helped me learn English, since Spanish was still my primary language at home when I entered school. He-Man became part of my early immersion in English.

Years later, a spin-off cartoon, She-Ra: Princess of Power, came out. In that series, we were introduced to He-Man’s twin sister, Adora (She-Ra), and Hordak, the tyrannical leader of the Evil Horde and Skeletor’s former master.

In 1987, I saw the live-action Masters of the Universe, which had a strong cast, including Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, Frank Langella as Skeletor, Jon Cypher (who passed away on August 3, 2026) as Man-At-Arms, and James Tolkan (who also died earlier this year) as Detective Hugh Lubic. Although the film eventually achieved cult status—Langella’s performance as Skeletor remains one of its strongest features—it was a strange experience for someone who had followed the cartoon series closely. Curiously, the movie doesn’t take place in Eternia but, rather, in Southern California. These larger-than-life figures from a different world are found roaming the streets of California searching for a cosmic key that serves as a portal between worlds. To add to the peculiarity, the movie features a young Courteney Cox, who unexpectedly becomes caught up in this cosmic struggle.

The new Masters of the Universe, which came out in June of this year, is much more faithful to the original cartoon series, even though it does take its own artistic liberties.

A few weeks ago, I took my teenage daughter to see it at a small, obscure cinema in Ottawa, Canada. We were the only two people in the cinema. The tickets cost the equivalent of roughly five U.S. dollars each. Despite the empty screening, which seemed appropriate for a movie already written off as a theatrical disappointment, we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

Nevertheless, something rather curious occurred afterward. The film found a dramatically larger audience once it arrived on Prime Video. Masters of the Universe was never intended to be as sophisticated as C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia or J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Its characters bore names like He-Man, Man-At-Arms, Fisto, Mekaneck, and Beast Man—names that sound almost like the spontaneous descriptions given by a child encountering these figures for the first time.

The new film offers something close to an explanation for this simplicity, suggesting that such names arise from a childlike way of identifying people by their most obvious physical characteristics. One wonders whether the original writers and artists arrived at them in much the same way—perhaps through the imagination of children seeing these characters come to life. Likewise, conflicts, too, were often resolved through swords, brute strength, transformations, or perfectly timed bursts of magic. And yet, despite the mesmerizing color schemes, the parade of bizarre and memorable characters, the exaggerated physiques and classical beauty, and the heavy commercial machinery of Filmation and Mattel, a remarkably clear moral universe nevertheless emerged.

The Moral Landscape of the Original Series

The original Filmation series assumed that children needed moral formation, whether by reinforcing values taught by their parents or by introducing moral lessons from a new perspective. Most of the episodes concluded with brief lessons about courage, honesty, responsibility, friendship, self-control, and personal safety. It was more acceptable back then to tell children that some things were right and others wrong—unlike today’s norm of promoting ideologies that are extremely insidious, like liberal sexuality, gender confusion, and the devaluation of life.

Recently, I stumbled upon one particularly striking clip circulating again online concerning inappropriate touching. Orko declares that if anyone tried such a thing with him, he would fight back. She-Ra corrects him not because resistance is wrong but because for a frightened child the situation may not be so simple. The lesson directs children toward trusted adults and makes it clear that violating a child’s bodily boundaries is wrong.

The contrast with much contemporary culture is revealing. The problem is not that children should never be taught about their bodies or warned about abuse; He-Man and She-Ra were doing precisely that decades ago. The difference lies in the purpose and manner of the instruction. The older approach sought to preserve innocence while giving children the knowledge necessary to protect it. Too much contemporary entertainment and education instead seem preoccupied with initiating children into adult sexual categories, contributing to anxiety and confusion while threatening the sacredness and innocence of childhood.

A lesson that can be learned from He-Man then was that a cartoon created partly to sell plastic action figures understood that the adult world had an obligation to protect the sacredness of children. Whether intentionally or not, they have taken Jesus’ words seriously: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6).

When Heroism Was Allowed to Be Heroic

But the moral clarity extended far beyond those closing conversations. There was little moral ambiguity, aside from the peculiar Zodac, a Cosmic Enforcer who occupied a more ambiguous position between good and evil. He-Man and his allies were without a doubt good, whereas Skeletor and his minions were evil. It was just that simple. Courage was emphasized over cowardice. Strength fulfilled the purpose of protecting the weak, and power was always accompanied by responsibility.

This sort of simplicity is easy to dismiss, but perhaps our culture is lacking in understanding its usefulness, particularly in the moral world presented to children.

One could argue that the new film wears the external clothing of heroic masculinity, such as muscles, swords, warriors, and battles, while also, and quite often, undermining what those symbols traditionally mean. Having also recently watched The Odyssey, there are interesting comparisons that can be made on true masculinity.

One way of interpreting The Odyssey is that it confronts male ambition, violence, temptation, and failure without concluding that masculinity itself is absurd. Like Homer’s poem illustrates, the movie itself also demonstrates that Odysseus must mature. Masculine excess is criticized so that masculinity can be rightly ordered. Even though Odysseus is brave, he is also proud, glory-seeking, impulsive, and vulnerable to temptation. His reckless taunting of Polyphemus brings Poseidon’s wrath upon him, while the Sirens show how dangerous unchecked desire can be. His journey, therefore, becomes not the rejection of masculine greatness but its disciplining, until the warrior can finally return home as husband, father, and king.

One apparent criticism is that Masters of the Universe runs that process in the opposite direction. Adam’s exaggerated masculinity becomes the object of repeated jokes. Teela punctures his pretensions. Even the sword and transformation are subjected to sexual innuendo. One could see that the heroic exterior was a thin wrapper covering a deeper suspicion of male heroism. However, I tend to see another way of interpreting the movie.

I see that beneath the self-deprecation lies an unexpectedly sincere, old-fashioned adventure. Take, for instance, a once-hero, Man-At-Arms, as the movie’s motivational heart: a failed man, given in to drunkenness, who must rediscover courage, protect those entrusted to him, and learn to get back up after being devastatingly defeated by his nemesis, Trap Jaw. From this understanding, the film rightfully argues for redemption rather than looking down upon masculinity, even though many contemporary films, including the latest Star Wars installments, show that men are incompetent while women are always more virtuous and competent and must lead men. From this perspective, the film argues for redemption rather than the repudiation of masculinity. Whatever its intentions, it depicts masculine failure in order to ultimately recover masculine strength and responsibility.

Now, we may pose the following question: Is Masters of the Universe laughing at He-Man or laughing with him? Unlike some critics, I would argue that self-deprecation does not necessarily destroy heroism. I believe a hero can be ridiculous, embarrassed, wounded, and flawed. One need only think of Don Quixote, Rocky Balboa, Han Solo, Spider-Man, and even Frodo Baggins. What matters is whether the story ultimately believes there remains something beneath the absurdity worth admiring. Can the hero overcome such humiliations and inadequacies?

Isn’t that more faithful to the human predicament—namely, that despite our flaws, we are able to rise to the moral challenge of our lives, to live a properly ordered life in the service of others, and to do what is right even when it is extremely difficult to do so? Or even if we falter, we must keep fighting for what is true and right. Sin is always creeping in through the back door, but repentance and redemption are always waiting at the front.

This is why He-Man’s famous declaration, “I Have the Power,” remains more philosophically interesting than it appears. At first hearing, it sounds like the ultimate expression of self-assertion. But Prince Adam does not create his power. It is something bestowed upon him. It is important to realize that the sword and the power of Grayskull are entrusted to him, and their possession creates moral obligations to harness such power in the service and protection of the innocent.  

Power, therefore, rightly understood, is not liberation from responsibility; it creates responsibility. This is closer to the classical understanding of virtue and approximates the Christian conception of vocation more than the modern idea that freedom consists principally in removing external limits—limits that would constrain one from seeking their maximal gusto. This is where strength becomes virtuous only when it is governed by prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. Contrary to how contemporary culture deceives its use, the alternative to toxic masculinity is not emasculation but rather virtuous masculinity.

The old He-Man understood this instinctively. The strong man was good not because he was strong but because his strength was exercised in the service of others.

But there is a deeper point that I think is not often given adequate reflection when it comes to fantasy and heroism—and that is when fantasy becomes a substitute for real courage. A boy—or man, for that matter—can watch films or shows about warriors, heroes, sacrifice, and adventure, only to live vicariously through these fictional characters while never becoming courageous in his own life. The original He-Man often did precisely the opposite: its closing moral lesson returned the child from fantasy to the real world and asked how the lesson might be lived. The fantasy pointed outward toward real-life conduct. I believe that this may be one reason the old episodes remain more interesting than their commercial origins would suggest. It wasn’t merely about entertainment and escapism but also moral development, which was an integral component of the stories.

Quite simply, this explains why audiences keep returning to Eternia. Beneath the sword fights, hybridized beast and human villains, ripped muscular physiques, and toy-store mythology lies something that both children and adults recognize—a moral heroism that is reflective, in an imperfect way, of the one true hero who defeated evil once and for all: Christ.

The human spirit desires heroes who understand that evil exists. We desire strength that is meant to protect instead of dominate and power that is in the service of something transcendent.

Perhaps the film’s most philosophically and theologically illuminating moment comes in the climactic confrontation between He-Man and Skeletor. Throughout the story, Adam is defined almost as much by his inadequacies as by his potential: he struggles with physical strength (in one amusing cameo, Adam even seeks strength advice from Dolph Lundgren, the original live-action He-Man), lacks direction at work, struggles to master his emotions, stumbles romantically, and endures many of the emasculating jokes.

Skeletor exploits these weaknesses, taunting Adam as a “feeble, worthless child” who has power but is “too scared to use it.” Adam’s reply is fundamental: “I know how to use it. I just prefer not to.” The exchange gives the film a surprisingly classical understanding of strength.

Aristotle distinguishes genuine courage from action driven merely by anger or passion, arguing that the courageous person acts for what is noble and according to right reason (Nicomachean Ethics III.8, 1116b–1117a). Likewise, Proverbs tells us that “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit” is greater than one who conquers a city (Proverbs 16:32). He-Man’s superiority lies not simply in possessing greater force but in possessing the self-restraint not to unleash it unnecessarily.

He-Man even offers Skeletor mercy. In a comically contemporary scene, Adam suggests that his villainy may stem from rejection or childhood wounds and that perhaps he needs help, or even a hug. And yet despite the humor, there is an important lesson—namely, that suffering may help explain a person, but it does not erase moral responsibility. As St. Paul writes, “Each of us shall account for himself to God” (Romans 14:12).

Skeletor refuses and insists there is no hidden goodness to uncover, and he openly embraces evil because it feels good. The theological analogy is suggestive. Aquinas holds that the wills of Satan and the fallen angels become fixed in evil through their rejection of God (Summa Theologiae I, q. 64, a. 2). Skeletor is no fallen angel, of course, but the dramatic point is similar: mercy can be offered and still freely rejected.

Worse, Skeletor mistakes mercy for weakness and continues his assault. Only then does Adam stop holding back. Once Skeletor realizes he is hopelessly outmatched, his bravado gives way to pleading. But He-Man responds, “The time for talk is over.” The scene captures an uncomfortable truth: mercy does not abolish consequences. “Whatever a man sows, that will he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

Seen this way, the final battle answers some of the film’s earlier mockery of masculinity. Adam does not become heroic merely by gaining muscles, wielding a sword, or overpowering his enemy. He becomes heroic when he can possess great power without being possessed by it.

Skeletor wants power to dominate. He-Man exercises power only after restraint and mercy have failed. The difference is not strength versus weakness but power enslaved to appetite versus power ordered toward the good.

The reason He-Man, both as a character and as a series/films, endures is that the deepest lesson of Eternia remains true: power finds its proper purpose only when it is ordered toward the good. In our present predicament, where moral ambiguity is so prevalent, moral clarity and heroic virtue may be lessons worth rediscovering. He-Man’s journey mirrors our own life journey, where we have the opportunity to be courageous and merciful in the fulfillment of God’s plan for us.