Noelle Stevenson:
Season two is building so much. Season one was so much about set-up, so it was about the characters coming into their roles: Adora coming into her role as She-Ra, Catra coming into her role as a villain, the Princess Alliance coming together… Now that we have all of that set — the board is set — in the new season, we build off that.
We evolve those relationships, evolve the characters. It was really exciting for us, because it really freed us up to be able to explore all of these other characters and their interiority and their motivations and the way they saw the world. We could just keep changing the status quo and figuring out new, interesting and fun pairings of characters.
So much of that did come from the actors, as well. I think Scorpia is a great example. Lauren [Ash] ad-libs a lot when she records and it’s something where we just let her go and we record everything. All of it always makes it in and then we end up writing it into the script. So, you know, she developed this inside joke or callback that we have to write into the script where every time Scorpia is trying to get Catra’s attention, she says, “Catra! Catra! Catra! Hey Catra!” So that’s what really made the characters feel alive and fleshed-out to us, was being able to explore them with the writers and with the actors.
I think Scorpia is someone who is so loyal. She’s on the side of the Horde, but she’s the sweetest, most sincere, most open-hearted character that we have. She sees Catra as someone that she needs to protect — as someone that she can fix, honestly. She’s sees someone who’s very sad and very broken and in her own mind, she thinks, “This person — we are destined to be together. I can save her.” Catra’s not really in a place right now where she can accept that, even though she is someone who is looking for love, looking for validation, looking for acceptance — although she would never admit that.
At this point, Catra’s heart’s been so broken that she’s sort of shut herself off from all of that. She’s not letting herself accept this kind of positive attention at all. For her, she’s still very skeptical of that, I think. It’s interesting because she really does have this chance to grow past Adora in a way that is healthy, but she’s not really taking that chance. She’s pretending she is. She’s pretending that she can be her own person, be this badass villain who is always in control, but that’s a facade. She’s struggling so much with her own interiority and her own feelings of not being enough and she’s looking for that validation from places like Adora and Shadow Weaver — places that aren’t really healthy for her.
So, I think the tension between Catra and Scorpia is that Scorpia thinks this is a problem that can be easily solved with hugs, with care-taking, with positive attention. Catra is just — while she does need to open herself to other people and have healthy relationships, she’s not ready to do that. She’s doubling down on the, “I don’t need anybody. I can make my own way” type of outlook.
Shadow Weaver is honestly one of my favorite characters to write, because I find her very, very compelling but also unpredictable. Honestly, my plan was for her to remain with the Horde a little bit longer and that isn’t really how it shook out. It definitely felt like she had reached the end of her arc as Hordak’s second-in-command and so then the question was, how does her arc evolve from there? Even once she’s reduced from her place of authority and imprisoned, she still continues to be such a huge figure in both Catra’s and Adora’s minds. She’s still controlling things even with absolutely no power.
Digging into her backstory like that, we definitely wanted to avoid doing the sort of tragic backstory that would try and excuse her actions. We wanted to show that everything — her selfishness and her hunger for power — these had always been things that she had in her, but at a certain time, that presented itself differently. So, [we tried] getting more into how she sees the world but definitely not trying to sand down any of what she’s done. Showing that backstory was really fun for us, because it was like, “Oh, she used to be this different person on the side of good, but also, you can see all the ways that she’s always been the same person.” But you do get to see this different side of her.
With Bow, it was the same. When we were getting into [figuring out how] we want to show where these characters are from, [we asked], how can we dodge the expectations of what that would mean? As Glimmer says, Bow’s past is mysterious; he’s never really talked about it. She’s not sure where he goes when he’s not at Bright Moon. So of course, we’re like, “Oh, Bow must have this dark, mysterious past.” And then we see that he has such a normal life with his dads, this really normal family with their really normal jobs.
It’s something where even though his family life is a lot less angsty than some of the other characters, we wanted to show that even just the act of trying to hide who you are from the people who love you is still painful. It still has a huge impact on him and he struggles with it. Even opening himself up and being honest with his parents is something that is kind of a risk for him. Bow’s not sure if they’ll be angry at him or if they’ll accept him. [We wanted] to show that even in this more relatable, less dark and dramatic way, that Bow is going through a search for his own identity as well. Of course, having the catharsis of seeing his dads totally support him and love him for who he is was really important for us as well. They’re really great characters. We really love them. I’m so pleased with how that episode came out.
I guess I do draw a lot of inspiration from my DND experiences, but this one was really fun because each character sort of embodies a different type of DND player. Glimmer’s like, “I’m really cool! I’m really badass. I have all these cool spells” and then, you know, not enough spell slots, so she runs out of power at key points. Someone like Adora is like, “No, we have to get this absolutely perfect and I have to know exactly what will happen before we go into it. I have a plan. I can plan this out.” Bow is very kind of a classic, heroic sword-and-sorcery [type] who has a strong concept of everyone in these classic archetypes in this heroic sense.
I think Mermista is kind of like the cool, older sister who doesn’t really know what’s going on in the game and just keeps doubling down on these weird concepts that don’t really fit with the game and everyone just, like, doesn’t know how to stop her. Perfuma is the one who is always trying to use spells in new and creative ways, ways that kind of push the boundaries of reality. Frosta’s just the one who’s drawn a really cool original character and just really wants to talk to everyone about her OC and how cool she is.
I think we’ve all played with at least some of those archetypes in DND, so it was really cool to get to explore the characters through that lens.