#anwat gar

Conversation from my Discord server about the weird timeline and world building in the 2002 MotU cartoon.

Specifically talking about the weirdness of Evil-Lyn's backstory. Having her father lived and get cursed back in the time of King Grayskull, thereby requiring time travel to explain why Evil-Lyn is still alive and young enough to kick butt in Prince Adam's time.

And also, a detail from Keldor's extended backstory in the show bible.

Anwat Gar was destroyed very recently.

Those ruins that Adam and Man-at-Arms kept breaking in the season 1 episode "The Mysteries of Anwat Gar" can only be 30-40 years old. Anwat Gar was destroyed within Keldor's/Skeletor's lifetime.

They could have just as easily had the destruction of Zalesia and the destruction of Anwat Gar the same event. That would have solved a lot of the choppiness and awkward storytelling of having Evil-Lyn travel through time as an infant and then be raised in isolation by the ghost of her father.

Instead, what if Anwat Gar and Zalesia were allies. Maybe they were on the loosing side of a war against the Elders and blame Miro (and by extension Randor) for the destruction of their nations.

Not only does it get rid of the cluntyness of Evil-Lyn's backstory, but it also better explains Evil-Lyn's motivations for joining Keldor, her loyalty to Keldor, and why she's the only one willing to take him to Hordak's temple to save his life.

Because the "I like what I see" line they gave us in canon is funny. But Lyn doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would join up with a warlord just because he's hawt.

I gotta play around with this idea a bit more.

But as it stands right now, Keldor's mother and Lyn's father were allies on the same side of a loosing battle. Maybe Keldor and Lyn played together as children but after the respective destructions of their nations they fell out of contact. Maybe one or both of them thinks their old childhood friend is dead.

Then they meet again as adults. Keldor is leader of a rebel cell working covertly to take down the Council of Elders, Lyn has gotten by as a thief. They cross paths trying to steal the same item.

Maybe they don't quite recognize each other immediately and there's a short skirmish. But they eventually do recognize each other and agree that their goals are the same.

That's why Evil-Lyn joins him.

...or yet another similarity between DC Masters of he Universe and SPOP, and the first most probably inspiring the latter:

So, as far as I'm aware, there is not much canon information on planet Garius. We know it's name, and we know that the whole planet was vaporized when the Rosen Space Bridge deiced to rip right through it.

"Planet Garius" is now the Garius Asteroid Belt

The opening of the Rosen Bridge also threw the ship carrying the last surviving Gar back in time where they crashed on planet Eternia during its Preternia Era. The ship crashed in the Gnarl Ocean and dug deep into the seabed, burying the ship, but also pushing the land up to create the island of Anwat Gar, which became the Gar's new homeland on Eternia.

And, 1000 year later, the Gar spaceship is still buried under the planet's crust during the reign (heavily debated) "Reign of King Skeletor".

Season 1, Episode 15, "The Mysteries of Anwat Gar" - He-Man smashes statues, demolishes ruins, and reduces the Legacy Stones to dust.

Season 1, Episode 27, "The Last Stand" - He-Man smashes the Ram Stone, one of only 2 artifacts that remain from the ancient civilization of Zalesia.

Okay, so, in every MotU canon Keldor is always turned into Skeletor by Hordak. Either to save his life after a battle with Randor, or as part of his role as Hordak’s “Evil Apprentice”. 

But, Eternity War introduced an interesting detail that opens up the possibility for Skeletor to become Skeletor without Hordak’s involvement. 

At the end of Eternity War, Skeletor is killed. 

But Evil-Lyn revives him. 

She collects his bones and brings them to the island of Anwat Gar where there’s (apparently) an everlasting pool of his mother’s blood. (I got more things to say about that, but that is a different post entirely.) 

By soaking dead-Skeletor’s bones in his mother’s blood, and using the power of the cursed spot where she died, Evil-Lyn resurrects Skeletor. 

So, if Evil-Lyn could do this and revive a version of Skeletor from a full death, she totally could have done the same thing for him when he was still alive and just burned from an acid attack. 

Keldor doesn’t need Hordak so long as he has this pool.

Mortally injured? Just take a dip in mommy’s blood! 

There’s also a lot of potential here to make it a really emotional moment. 

Like, Keldor is injured in battle, his Evil Warriors retreat. They’re ready to give up Keldor for dead, but Evil-Lyn is in love with Keldor and she refuses to give up on him. She (and I guess Panthor too) rush him to Anwat Gar and carry him to the pool of his mother’s blood. Evil-Lyn submerges him under the surface, and he’s still alive enough to struggle. And Lyn is crying, sobbing, her tears falling into the blood, begging Keldor to just hold his breath, just a bit longer, it’ll work, I know it, just hold on, a bit more, a bit more...

She holds him down so long he stops struggling and Evil-Lyn thinks she’s killed him. There’s a moment of utter silence as the surface of the blood stills and Evil-Lyn has no idea what she’s just done. She just wanted to save Keldor, but instead she- she- 

Then something breaks the surface. 

A body rises from the pool of blood. 

Evil-Lyn gasps! ...then smiles, for one fleeting moment she think’s she’s done it. She saved him. She saved Keldor. 

I like this. This is a headcanon I can get behind.

And, there's actually a tiny detail in canon that supports this!

In the tie-in comics for the 2002 reboot, Skeletor and his minions are planning to attack a place called "Gar Firian".

They never do, though. Immediately after this panel some plot happens that diverts Skeletor's attention to another matter. We, the readers, never get to see Gar Firian, but it is entirely possible that it's a place like what you describe. An isolated enclave of Gar that do not acknowledge the authority of the Council of Elders, or the Royal seat in Eternos.

Great headcanon!

There is one episode in particular that kinda bothers me. 

Season 1, Episode 15

The Mystery of Anwat Gar

The episode begins with Sorceress have a prophetic dream about Skeletor gaining new and formidable power from the ancient and mysterious island of Anwat Gar. Which was once home to the (now almost extinct*) Gar race. 

This is pretty average for Masters of the Universe cartoons as almost all MotU cartoons are made to sell toys. Unsurprisingly, the climactic fight of the episode features both He-Man and Skeletor getting gimmicky new armor which I’m sure Mattel happily turned a profit on. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

Back to the summary. 

Hearing Sorceress’ prophecy, He-Man and Man-at-Arms rush off to Anwat Gar to stop Skeletor from gaining this fearsome power. 

While there, they are confronted by multiple traps which they must, thwart, escape, or overcome in order to get to their goal. Most of their strategies for getting out of these traps seem to be breaking or outright destroying them.

Finally, they get to the center of the island in which there is a large temple modeled after Japanese architecture (which provides a flimsy excuse for Mattel modeling their gimmicky new toys after samurai armor). There, they meet the guardian of the power, our newest action figure available at a store near you! 

Sy-Klone

Tell your parents to buy him now, kids! 

Anyway, Sy-Klone explains that the power He-Man and Man-at-Arms are seeking is sacred to his people and that he cannot let outsiders desecrate the temple and loot it. He-Man tries to reason with Sy-Klone and explain that they don’t want to steal it, they just want to take it back to Eternos with them to keep it away from Skeletor. (Ya know, cause that’s not “stealing” at all.)

There’s the obligatory fight to show off Sy-Klone’s action figure features. This show was made to sell toys, they have to.

At some point while Sy-Klone and He-Man are fighting, Skeletor has already managed to get inside the temple and steal the power for himself. There’s the traditional gloating in front of his enemies before Skeletor uses it to do a magical girl transformation that gives him to fetishized sci-fi samurai armor pictured above. 

Skeletor cackles evilly and then exits stage left, vowing to use his now power armor to destroy Castle Grayskull and claim it’s power for his own, blah, blah, blah. Standard villain shpiel. 

He-Man then goes and grabs the second set of overtly culture-coded armor for himself and goes to fight Skeletor. 

They fight. 

He-Man wins. 

Skeletor escapes. 

There’s not much else to be said about that. It’s pretty standard fair for a shallow children’s cartoon who’s purpose is not to tell a story but just to sell merchandise. You really can’t expect much. 

He-Man returns to the temple with both sets of armor. 

Now, one would think this is the part where the “hero” returns these very significant cultural artifacts to their rightful place in the temple under the custodianship of the guardian who is a member of the culture these artifacts are from. This is a kid’s show and -presumably- is also meant to tell some sort of moral to each episode beyond just “buy our toys”. 

But no. 

Instead of giving them back, He-Man fucking obliterates them. 

Right in front of the guardian who’s life’s mission was to protect them. 

Sy-Klone tries to stop him, but is thrown back by the force of He-Man’s power and can do nothing but look on in horror as these sacred artifacts of his dying culture are reduced to nothing but dust. 

And I’m not exaggerating. 

I mean -literal- dust.

Watching that, I 100% expected Sy-Klone to become an enemy. Really, and truly. I would have become He-Man’s enemy if I watched him destroy something significant and sacred to my culture. And I’m pretty casual about my cultural identity. But Sy-Klone devoted his entire life to preserving and protecting these items. So, as pissed as I would be, he’s gotta be that times 1000, right?

Wrong. 

After the artifacts are destroyed, Sy-Klone doesn’t even bat an eyelash. 

He’s just like, “My life’s purpose is gone? Oh, well. Guess I’ll just go die now.”

(This being a Japanese-coded society, I can only assume he was going to commit the Gar equivalent of seppuku.)

But He-Man stops him and is all like, “Listen, I know I just destroyed one of the last remnants of your dying culture and made you watch while I did it, but how about you come join my crew.”

And that’s what Sy-Klone does. 

The End

And, like the original He-Man show from the 80s, and the New Adventures of He-Man show from the later-80s, this one had a “moral” at the end of the episode. 

The “moral” of the episode was this:

“Doing your duty is important, but there's more to it than just following orders. The most important duty of all, is to do what’s right. Until next time!”

But like... what the fuck was “right” in that episode? How the hell are we, the viewer supposed to know what “the right thing” was. 

We just watched our hero... 

break into a sacred site

demolish ancient buildings and statues from an already vanishing culture

and outright destroy artifacts of particular cultural significance while a native of that culture looked on and begged him not to

Like, what the fuck, He-Man!?

I thought He-Man was supposed to be the good guy. But, I really don’t think there were any “good guys” in this episode and I cannot fathom what the writers were thinking when they drafted this episode or what the producers were thinking when they pushed it through production. 

I just-

This episode really, really bothered me and I had to vent about it. 

--

* Gar being nearly extinct is not mentioned outright in the show, but it is implied since the island is a ruin, and on the Grayskull wiki and the Classics line of the toys outright call the Gar a “rare race”.