Of course He-Man and Skeletor clash and as the two battle it out, the animation itself lovingly focuses on He-Man’s strength and ability as a fighter. Skeletor can see the world crumbling around him and he doesn’t run away. He knows this could be his last chance at killing He-Man and he refuses to let it pass him by. These are two titans fighting for everything they believe in.
Seemingly a sizable chunk of the animation budget was allotted to one sequence in order to demonstrate what He-Man has always been, the most powerful person in the universe, showcasing He-Man kicking as much ass as possible, taking out hundreds of foes with a smirk on his face.
All of this shows that taking He-Man and Skeletor out of the first part of the series was a savvy dramatic move by Smith and Mattel. Their absence in part 1 is what makes their reappearance in part 2 so exciting and impactful.
Smith confirms that this was the point and that removing He-Man and Skeletor was in part a way to examine why those two characters are so important.
“The idea going in was do World Without a Superman,” Smith says, referencing a beloved arc of Superman stories where the Man of Steel was killed off and readers got to see how the world reacted to his absence.
“He-Man and Skeletor are the poles around which every other character circles. What happens if you remove them from the equation? It allowed us to look at all the other characters and go deeper into their worlds and deeper into their hearts.”
Doing this in turn created a vacuum in the world of Masters of the Universe that, as Smith explains, “demanded the return of those two characters.”
