More from He-Man’s Dean Stefan, part 2
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“He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” story editor Dean Stefan talks about the most interesting, and most difficult characters to write for on the show. The first 13 episodes are available now on DVD. The second 13 episodes of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” are set to come out on DVD on May 27.
Matt Price: When you were reviving these characters, who was the most interesting, that you hadn’t expected to be?
Dean Stefan: Two-Bad, in a way, because we originally had him in the pilot and then we took him out because we wanted to do an origin. So we made him two separate characters, two bounty hunters. And then we decided to fuse them at the end. Skeletor punishes them. That was kind of interesting, the way that we stumbled on the idea to do that. As far as just the characters fun to write for, I would say Teela and Evil-Lyn, I really enjoyed the women characters, because you don’t often get to see them in that kick-ass role. And Evil-Lyn was definitely the most complex, she was very duplicitous, you knew she would turn on Skeletor in a minute, and she was probably smarter than him.
MP: And she’s extremely powerful in the pilot.
MP: Who was the most difficult to write for?
DS: The most difficult character to write for was He-Man because in a sense he was a newborn. He was part Adam, but he had his own consciousness. He was sort of new to his powers and becoming this hero, and he was so good, that much like Superman, it’s hard to sometimes write for the perfect hero. No big inner conflict. In “Courage of Adam,” which was the first episode after the pilot, we did the flipside. We wanted to explore what it would mean to Adam to have this new responsibility and yet not be able to tell anybody about it. And still be thought of as a coward by Teela and by his dad, knowing he’s the most powerful man in the universe, but has to do the Clark Kent bit to sneak away in the midst of battle to change. He was trying to prove himself as Adam and prove to them that He-Man wasn’t needed. Like, if I can step up, we won’t need He-Man. So he was in a sense jealous of himself and he was trying to work that out, which is a very interesting kind of inner conflict.
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I think that was a great idea to make him two different characters!