Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation premiered on Friday, and the animated series has been generating no shortage of discussion and more than a little backlash online. There was a major twist at the end of the first episode, one that set up Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Teela as the protagonist of the story, and some longtime fans weren’t happy.
One of the recurring criticisms is that the rug-pull felt like a betrayal for those who tuned in to see He-Man, only for Prince Adam to meet a swift demise and then show up via a series of flashbacks to tie the overall narrative together. Obviously, if the show was called He-Man: Revelation then you could understand, but it isn’t, and it incorporates plenty of other elements from Masters of the Universe canon to compensate.
The fury has resulted in Revelation being review bombed online by disgruntled fans, but that hasn’t stopped it from racing into the top end of the Netflix most-watched list, where it’s currently the fifth most popular show on the platform at the time of writing. Part 2 doesn’t have an official release date as of yet, but as you can see below, Smith has offered an update teasing that things are coming along nicely.
There was never going to be too long of a wait between installments when Masters of the Universe: Revelation was largely animated and recorded in one block, with Parts 1 and 2 forming two halves of the same story. Netflix will be encouraged by the early viewing numbers, so it shouldn’t be too long until we get a locked-in premiere for the next batch of episodes, which might end up pissing off the diehards all over again.