Something curious is happening with Kevin Smith and his social media promotion of Netflix’s upcoming Masters of the Universe: Revelation. It has been happening, and it’s still happening.
YouTubers Kneon and Geeky Sparkles of ClownfishTV noted the strange descriptor for the show in 2019 when it was first announced.
In one of their videos, they alleged that a source had revealed to them that Teela would be the main character for the show. Not only that, but she would also have a girlfriend, and He-Man would be stepping aside for the two women to be the heroes of the story.
The ClownfishTV duo even talked about a presentation at Power-Con in Anaheim where the synopsis of the show presented Teela as the protagonist, noting that it was up to her to find the missing sword of Power and save Eternia from the clutches of Skeletor.
Having shared this information prior to the premiere of the show’s first trailer, the duo were reproached by Smith himself on Twitter last March, as the show runner sought to correct some misinformation he believed the YouTubers were spreading about the show he was making.
He makes this claim three times against the YouTubers. In his first tweet on the subject, Smith replied to Clownfish TV by asserting that “As showrunner, I really could’ve used these story suggestions *before* we locked the scripts.”
“However, no – He-Man does no stepping aside and Teela has no girlfriend in our show,” he continued. “The storyline is pretty dark and way metal. Before REVELATION we were calling it END OF THE UNIVERSE.”
When Clownfish TV presented a quote from Screenrant’s coverage of the new series’ story details which noted that He-Man “won’t be the main protagonist anymore”, but rather “the focus will be on Teela”, Smith pushed back against the article “with all due respect”.
“With all due respect to @screenrant, I’ve read every @MastersOfficial script for our shows (plus wrote a few) and viewed 4 amazing animatics,” said Smith. “While Teela is as present as she’s always been in the MotU adventures and she plays a big role, our series is LITERALLY all about He-Man.”
After receiving pushback for ‘bashing’ and ‘belittling’ Clownfish TV, Smith clarified that “There is no “side” to my story: this was my only interaction with the Tweeter prior to the correction I Tweeted yesterday.“
“I honestly don’t see where I bashed or belittled anyone,” added Smith. I thought it was an extremely good-natured, non-combative exchange. Am I misreading my own Tweet?
However, following the release of the show’s animated trailer, which dropped to much awe and wonder, fans found that Clownfish TV was impressively spot on in their summary, despite Smith’s insistence that everything that had been said online about the show was wrong.
As such, it was reasonable that, at this point, fans began questioning the validity of Smith’s answers about his Masters of the Universe series.
Unverified and Verified Sources
All of this is some strange combative and behavior coming from Smith, but it gets even more strange and combative in light of a recent tweet made by Smith.
In response to someone denigrating the Fandom Menace for saying that “Tesla is the main star of @ThatKevinSmith MOTU show yet shoe’s only in 6 episodes,” Smith exclaimed, “Stop making sense.”
“Good eye @ItsThatJunkman!” wrote Smith. “But you’ll notice there’s an Evil-Lyn figure in Wave 1. That’s a BIG hint right there, kids. And only on July 23rd, all the secrets of Castle Grayskull will be revealed when Masters of the Universe: Revelation premieres! Only on @netflix!”
However, in a previous interview with Screenrant – the same ScreenRant he chastised earlier last year for purportedly spreading a false narrative – Smith admitted that Teela would indeed be the focus of the show.
“Revelation in the title – Masters of the Universe: Revelation – refers to Teela’s journey, Smith told the entertainment news outlet. “Teela finds out something about her that was hinted at in the old legacy show. And that’s a kernel that we blew out and really played with in this show. So the revelation in question really has to do with Teela.”
He continued, “And that’s because, if you remember the old show, at the very beginning, they would talk about, ‘Only three others know his secret.’ And it was like, the Sorceress, Man-At-Arms, and Orko, as well as Cringer. Teela, who He-Man fought [with] side-by-side, and Teela, who protected Adam when he wasn’t He-Man, was always left out of that. She was kept in the dark like Lois Lane.”
“So our approach for the story was like, ‘What happens if she finds out? What happens when she learns who He-Man really is? And what if she learned that not from him confessing?’” explained Smith. “It wasn’t him going, ‘You know what, I think you can handle this.’ It was by way of the adventure, of the epic. Something happens that kind of breaks everybody’s world and all the revelations are revealed.”
With all of this back and forth from Smith, it’s hard to trust the guy as a reliable source of information about his own show.
Did Kevin Smith Lie? Was ClownfishTV Right?
Bounding Into Comics documented the some of the back and forth between Smith and Clownfish TV last year, as well as Smith correcting Screenrant for their seemingly erroneous information about the show (which turned, a year later, turned out to be true.
As seen in the below screenshot, the article clipped by ClownfishTV stated the show would have He-Man “around, he won’t be the main protagonist anymore. Instead, the focus will be on Teela.”
“Even so,” continued Screenrant, “He-Man should still have a large presence, since the series never did get to explore the final battle between He-Man and his greatest enemy, Skeletor. Smith has teased that this fight could finally be shown in Masters of the Universe: Revelation.”
Unsurprisingly, as seen in the next image, which was clipped from the same article, Screenrant has since updated the story and made a correction to their description series’ story.
Instead of referencing Teela, the article now simply notes that “He-Man is the main protagonist in this updated version of the story.”
Why would Smith agree with a Twitter user about the Fandom Menace falsely pushing the narrative that Teela would be the main character of Revelation when he just did an interview with ScreenRant stating as much? All this after a year of denying it, even to the same publication he now admits it to.
Smith’s answer to the specific Twitter user stops short of telling the user he was wrong – So what does this mean for the show? Should we believe his words from the recent interview, stating that Teela is the protagonist for the show, or is it going to actually be He-Man?
The answer to that question seems to shift depending on who Smith is talking to.
What do you make of Smith’s comments and his constant shifting positions? Was ClownfishTV and ScreenRant right in their first assesment of the show? Sound off in the comments below or let’s talk about it on social media!