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bloodyshadow1 · 5 years

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Glitched “Catra”

The more I think about it, the more I start to believe the theory that the Catra Adora fought in the collapsing portal world, the crazy corrupted one, wasn’t the real Catra. Maybe she’s alien technology, maybe Catra go possessed by something in the portal who had a grudge against She-Ra, maybe it’s first one’s hologram technology something like Light Hope’s training sims (will actually be talking about this later). I know people have argued against it since once Catra is back in the prime world she rubs her cheek where Adora punched ‘her.’ I’m not saying this isn’t true, but that seems to be the only argument from this theory and it doesn’t disprove anything.

I’m going to start off saying that Catra is my favorite character and I ship Catradora, I find Catra far more relatable and likable than any of the main cast and her story just feels more fleshed out to me. I’m not going to pretend I’m not bias, but this isn’t about me trying to say she did nothing wrong or anything like that, I’m not an idiot, I know what she’s done is bad and definitely wrong, but I can talk about that in another post. I legitimately think there are some holes in the idea that Catra was the Corrupted Catra in the portal world that was browbeating Adora. This is also just one of many theories I have, try not to get too wrapped up in it if you believe it or hate my ideas. When I watched it the first time, it felt wrong I think is the best word I can think of, I thought it was because my favorite was becoming a monster who was unforgivable. But I think there’s more to it than just the tragic feelings of your fave going insane.

The first piece of evidence is what I think sparked the theory is that the Catra who got corrupted by the portal knew things that the real Catra shouldn’t know. Adora came through the portal from Eternia, and Corrupted Catra, CC, uses that to hurt Adora saying if she never came through the portal than everything would have been fine, but Catra shouldn’t know that. The ‘good guys’ only know Adora’s origins because Shadow Weaver told them, but before that only 3 people knew Adora’s origins, Shadow Weaver, Hordak, and Light Hope, so unless Adora told Catra while they returned to the Frightzone to get her to listen, Catra could only learn about Adora’s past from one of these three people. Light Hope would have tried to get security to kill Catra if they even tried to talk to each other, Hordak didn’t care enough about Adora to waste time thinking of her, and Shadow Weaver hates Catra, why would she tell her a secret that she keeps from Adora if she bothered to do anything but threaten her? Not to mention that until Adora mentions the portal in ep 3, Catra didn’t even know what it was or that it’s what Hordak and Entrapta have been working. She basically laughs it off as a tall tale until she has her breakdown when Adora mentions Shadow Weaver, and even then she just hears that Adora doesn’t want it to be activated. So how did CC know that Adora came through the portal in the first place as a baby when Catra didn’t. Maybe this is just a bit of a writing snafu since it’s hard to remember who knows what when writing, but it seems out of place. Not Catra blaming everything on Adora unfortunately, but she still shouldn’t know that Adora is from another dimension and a first one.

My second point is more disbelief than anything else, I just find it strange that Catra, corrupted or not, went down with a single punch from Adora. Now granted it was a high stress situation and Adora is not exactly a lightweight even outside of being She-Ra, but it seems to me like it’s almost unrealistic for Catra to go down in one punch, even if it was to the face. Catra might be a speed fighter as opposed to a power fighter like Adora or Scorpia, but she’s stronger and a lot tougher than she looks. She’s taken a lot of punishment in the series from what we’ve seen and the only thing that has knocked her out was being asphyxiated by Hordak’s atmosphere thing. She’s been blasted by magic, countless times, slammed into mountains by She-Ra, not Adora, been Loki’d by She-Ra when she was in her rage mode and likely wasn’t holding back, fallen from a an unspecified height to land on her face like Wily Coyote, crushed by Shadow Weaver’s magic, oh and blasted away by a magic rainbow of power being used by the combined might of all the princesses, and Bow, which tossed tanks aside. Through all that she’s gotten up immediately and started fighting again, yet one punch from Adora, again regular still super strong, but not She-Ra super strong Adora, puts her down? Narratively it makes sense, Adora decides that Catra is her enemy and stops holding back against her former friend (love of her life) and shows Catra what she can do when she’s fighting an enemy. But it still doesn’t make sense for Catra to go down in a single punch, especially when she’s hopped up on crazy portal juice. You could say that maybe the mountain thing was Adora holding back, not wanting to kill Catra and that falling on her face wasn’t super high up, maybe since Catra has slowly been breaking down over the past few weeks her mental toughness has degraded so she couldn’t get up, maybe these answer the question it doesn’t change the fact that it is out of place. Catra is one tough bitch, suicidal and mentally broken maybe, but tough all the same. One punch from a super strong normal girl her own age should not put her down. I mean this all could be explained by it being more narratively important for Adora to be the one to put her down and that it’s a cartoon, why am overthinking it, but hey, it’s kind of a thing people do nowadays, at least I do.

3rd point, why was Catra able to come back all corrupted and even more insane than usual? There were other characters in the false reality, but they disappeared and in some cases reality rewrote itself as if they never existed, yet Catra who willingly fell into the void managed to come back somehow. Again, it makes sense narratively since Adora and Catra’s relationship is one of the most important plot points of the series and confronting a Catra who blames her for everything and Adora as the hero, realising that she isn’t responsible for Catra’s choices is an important part of her story. But that doesn’t explain why or how Catra came back, she literally fell into a bright, light pink and purple void, she didn’t have anything to grab onto, no way to return, she didn’t want to come back seeing as she let go of the rock holding her in place, she wanted to die. Even if she was, why didn’t she fade away with the Horde in that reality, why didn’t she fade away with Brightmoon and Bow and Glimmer, she was still there for no reason other than it’s important for Adora to have this slate cleaning battle with her. ‘Catra’ came back for some reason, apparently to fuck with Adora one last time and blame everything on her. I’m not going to pretend like that isn’t a very Catra thing to do, but it still doesn’t explain why she was able to come back and it also doesn’t explain why she was able to control the reality in the portal. When they fight, or when CC is wailing on Adora, everytime Catra hits her or throws her around, they shift where they are, first at the bar in the Crimson Wastes, then the cold place, then Salineas, then in Frosta’s castle, then in what looks to be the Horde, then Mara’s ship when Adora fights back and they’re finally back to where they started in the crumbling reality. Adora notices the shifts in reality and it messes with her, but Catra doesn’t, she just does it, disappearing and appearing where she can mess with Adora the most. Maybe Catra’s just too crazy to realize what’s happening, maybe reality is just shifting around them to places they’ve both been since there are only 3 people left in that reality while it crumbles around them. Maybe it’s a moment of ‘don’t think feel,’ and Catra who is all rage and passion was able to warp the world into what she wanted because she was in control, but it hasn’t been explained so I’m free to speculate.

My 4th point is more an interesting theory to compound the already theory. Mara did something so that portals couldn’t be opened in Despondos, at least that’s what I got out of it, I could be wrong. Mara was the last She-Ra so that makes her a First One, and probably far more familiar with First One’s technology than anyone in the series, even Entrapta or Hordak, I mean Mara had a ship and everything and was able to strand Etheria into the void of Despondos, so I think that’s a safe assumption. If she trapped Etheria in Despondos I have to assume she used First One’s technology to do so since it seems to be basically magic and the only thing powerful enough so far that could do that to a planet. Apparently she sabotaged it so that if someone on Etheria opened a portal would destroy the planet, yet when Catra activated the portal, it took them to a new reality, maybe? Maybe it was explained well and I just missed it, there was a lot of stuff going on those eps, so I’m sorry if I got some things wrong. Regardless, it’s weird, I know the reality they were in was faulty, it was falling apart, but other than Angella being trapped in there, nothing else happened, at least from what we can see. I mean everyone and everything fades away except for Angella, Catra, and Adora, yet once they’re out of that reality everyone is alive, Catra isn't corrupted anymore, it’s like nothing happened. It almost feels like it was one of Light Hope’s/the Temple’s holograms but more. I don’t mean like Light Hope’s Training holograms, I mean when the Temple scanned Catra and Adora and had them relive their memories. Catra and Adora faded in and out of their past selves and memories fluidly, going from observer to participant without realizing it. It seemed like it reacted to how they were feeling, when Catra and Adora were arguing with each other they shifted from their past selves to their current selves to yell at each other. Which is similar to what happened when CC started beating on Adora and shifting reality around them, not the same, but similar is enough for theorizing.

A lot of people have had thoughts about Light Hope not being as good as she seems, from the Promise ep where the memories seemed specifically made to divide Catra and Adora, hence why Catra only saw the sad outcome of the match and was abducted right after that by the spider creature, or that she saw the promise they made when they were kids when Adora didn’t. Also Madame Razz, she’s kooky and a bit hard to understand, but she remembers Mara as a hero and her friend from Ep 3, despite Light Hope leading Adora to think of Mara as a failure and a traitor, Madame Razz seems to have more going on than she seems so I think I would err on her side. Come Season 3 (or 2.5) we see that at least from Mara’s perspective she didn’t think she was a hero, but still needed to do what needed to be done. She mentions Light Hope in her message but it isn’t clear, something about a weapon that can’t be used I think. It kind of sounds like Mara had to do something otherwise Light Hope or someone else was going to do something worse, so Mara chose to strand Etheria in Despondos so there wouldn’t be any other First Ones to pick up the sword and become the next She-Ra. It seems like Light Hope is incredibly shady or at the very least the ones who created/controlled Light Hope. I’m not saying the portal was related to Light Hope or her doing, but it made Adora, the current She-Ra, the center of the reality. It’s possible if not likely that it was doing something similar to what Light Hope might have done to Catra and Adora in the Promise, under a much larger scale. I mean if Mara as She-Ra trapped Despondos for that reason, likely with First Ones Technology, then I mean it might act like Light Hope even if they aren’t the same. It might want what’s best for the current She-Ra even if it doesn’t really know what Adora wants, sort of like how both Light Hope and Shadow Weaver both claim to want what’s best for Adora despite it not being good for her, what she wants or good for the world.

Additionally, if the portal reality was a simulation instead of a whole new reality, it would be an interesting bookend to the start of the season. Season 2 and 3 were written together and were supposed to be watched as one season, the first thing we see of Adora is her in a training simulation against Catra. It’s revealed that no matter how mean Catra is or what she’s done, Adora can’t bring herself to finish her off, even a simulation of her is too much. Now at the end of season 3 if the portal reality was a simulation, it was a successful one because it did exactly what Light Hope was trying to teach Adora in ep 1. Now Adora doesn’t see Catra as her former best friend, she sees her as an enemy, an enemy who was willing to doom the whole world and Angella paid the price. Adora is exactly where Light Hope wanted her to be at the start of the season, just needed to be pushed too far by Catra or CC.

Anyway, this is it, I do realize that I’m probably just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, I’m not delusional and likely the portal talk was just a plot hole, and the rest was just due to be written because it’s a cartoon. It’s still fun to think about, especially since we don’t know when season 4 is coming out. The whole thing at the end of this last season just felt to me more like Adora exorcising her demons rather than her defeating her enemy, it’s not always separate, but it felt different. I don’t know, maybe I’m just imagining things, regardless, I thought it would be interesting to talk about.

#spop #spop spoilers #catra #catradora #adora #she-ra #she-ra and the princesses of power spoilers #she ra and the princesses of power #she-ra spoilers

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