Tim Sheridan, one of the writers on Netflix and Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe: Revolution, recently admitted the entire show is about “deconstructing the whole thing.”
Masters of the Universe: Revolution. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2023
In an interview on the wordballon YouTube channel with John Sluntres, Sheridan was asked about the difference in fan reaction to Masters of the Universe: Revelation and Revolution.
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He said, “Markedly, there is a difference in the reaction to Revolution than we saw to Revelation. Some of the reaction for Revelation was from people who aren’t really fans, but wanted to make a lot of noise, they had a political agenda or whatever. There was some of that. But there were also legitimate long-time fans of the franchise who were looking for one thing, and they felt they got another thing. At least in the first five episodes. The second five episodes is a little bit more traditional…”
Sheridan then revealed, “I think what you have to remember is what we were trying to do was take 40 years of disparate versions of the canon and try to come up with the thing that felt like a natural extension of it. Kevin’s original title for the show was Masters of the Universe: End of the Universe and the reason for that was because he felt — and I think he was right because I think unfortunately we had to go through it with Revelation to get Revolution. But it was about deconstructing the whole thing. And reminding us why He-Man is so important and why Skeletor is so bad, and why He-Man’s friends are so important to him and to the universe. We needed to go through the deconstruction and rebuilding of that in order to have Revolution. That’s what Revolution revolves around now.”
Masters of the Universe: Revolution. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
He then described individuals who criticized the show as trolls, “I think we needed to start the way we did and it was always and it was always going to be shaky ground and we knew that from the beginning. What we weren’t expecting were the trolls who didn’t really care about it who wanted to make noise about it, clickbait stuff and everything. That was the stuff that took everybody by surprise.”
“And it got conflated with the legitimate criticisms of the real fans,” Sheridan continued. “Unfortunately, those things were very different. They had different intentions behind them. The good news is you’re not seeing a lot of that stuff for Revolution. And the stuff you do see it’s kind of like naysayers are people who didn’t get over the Revelation thing and want those clicks again.”
“I think you’re seeing a real genuine reaction from fans, a real positive reaction,” he said.
Masters of the Universe: Revolution. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2024
That “real positive reaction” might be coming because the show chased off viewers from Revelation and were not interested in watching Smith and Sheridan’s deconstruction of He-Man.
Netflix revealed in December viewership data for all of its titles between January and June 2023, Masters of the Universe: Revelation Part 1 only saw 1.1 million hours watched. That was outside the top 7600 programs on Netflix. Part 2 saw viewership decline to 900,000. That’s a decline of nearly 20%. That also dropped it to outside the top 8300.
Obviously, this data was just from January and June 2023 and does not include data from 2021 or 2022. The first part was originally released in July 2021.
Masters of the Universe: Revelation: Part 2 (L to R) Tiffany Smith as Andra, Sarah Michelle Gellar as Teela and Stephen Root as Cringer in Masters of the Universe: Revelation: Part 2. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2021
However, Netflix reported that He-Man and the Masters of the Universe Season 1 raked in 4.3 million hours. It was released on September 16, 2021. That was a top 4000 show.
The second season released in March 2022 only garnered 1.9 million hours. The third season released in August 2022 did 1.7 million hours.
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (L to R) Yuri Lowenthal as He-Man in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Cr. COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2022
The show did not chart on Netflix’s Top 10 English-language TV series when it was released back on July 23rd, 2021. It did not break into the chart in its second week either.
Netflix Top 10 English language TV series for July 26 to August 1, 2021
Masters of the Universe: Revelation Part 2 did not chart either when it debuted on Netflix on November 23, 2021.
Netflix Top 10 English language TV series for November 22 to November 28, 2021
What do you make of Sheridan’s comments?
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