'She-Ra' Season 2: He-Man Is "Not on the Table,' Showrunner Says

The universe of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is brimming with colorful, memorable characters, but anyone familiar with the story of She-Ra may be curious to know the whereabouts of her brother, He-Man. The beefcake in a loincloth fought Skeletor every Saturday morning in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, set in a shared universe he shared with She-Ra. Season 1 of the Netflix reboot totally ignored He-Man, but some fans have speculated that the series could be building up to a bigger reveal in Season 2 or beyond.

Series producer Noelle Stevenson, however, tells Inverse she doesn’t have any plans to include Prince Adam of Eternia.

“He-Man is not really on the table for this iteration of She-Ra at all,” Stevenson says.

The character poses “a challenge” for her modern interpretation of She-Ra’s universe. but Stevenson isn’t ruling him out forever either.

“It would be a challenge, I think, to bring He-Man to life in the present day. Even more so than She-Ra,” Stevenson says. “He’s a very iconic character. It’d be a lot of fun to incorporate him into the world of She-Ra, but I don’t know what my what my approach to that would be.”

Introduced to toy shelves in 1982 by Mattel (after the manufacturer pitched for the license to the Arnold Schwarzenegger film Conan the Barbarian), He-Man was the hero of “Masters of the Universe,” a franchise heavily inspired by the work of American artist Frank Frazetta. A TV series based on the toys, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, was produced by Filmation and aired in 1983.

Both the TV show and the toys centered around Prince Adam of Eternia. With one-half of the Power Sword (the other half belonging to his nemesis, Skeletor), Adam can become the superhuman warrior, He-Man.

Following the popularity of He-Man, Filmation produced a spin-off to target a female audience. The result was She-Ra: Princess of Power, which was created by Larry DiTillio and J. Michael Straczynski, the latter of whom would later produce the sci-fi drama Babylon 5 and Netflix’s Sense8.

A documentary about the Masters of the Universe franchise, Power of Grayskull, was released in 2017 and is available to stream on Netflix.

Although She-Ra’s story was previously intertwined with He-Man’s, Stevenson aims to establish the female hero without tying the character to her brother.

“It’s sort of a dance of figuring out how to incorporate the larger lore of Masters of the Universe without needing to visit Eternia or see these very, very iconic characters appear,” she says. “Just letting it be about She-Ra’s story and her being disconnected from where she came from, from her family on Eternia.”

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is now streaming on Netflix.