There was a discussion on Twitter from people who were confused about Bow’s character arc and whether he had one (he very much does, and it’s actually one of the clearest / most spelled out in the entire show!). To help anyone experiencing that confusion and because it’s never a bad idea to understand how character arcs work if you want to be a writer/storyteller, I might as well break Bow’s character arc down for anyone who might find it helpful.
Buckle in, it's nerd time!
At the most basic, a character arc is a change (usually growth) a character goes through over the course of a story. Usually good (positive change arc) but sometimes bad (negative change arc). It’s very often a reversal aka the character is often in the exact opposite state by the end of the story than how they start it out. It can be trickier to follow in an ensemble story like SPOP because there are a lot of characters with parallel story lines going on and multiple arcs colliding in different ways, but She-Ra does a really good job of giving each of the four leads arcs (with Catradora as the main leads, Glimbow as the secondary) near equal time.
Yes, including Bow.
What I think throws people about Bow’s arc is it’s based on hypocrisy.
Meaning…
He encourages his friends to talk it out and share their feelings… while hiding his own feelings from his dads and repressing his frustrations with having to be the middle man between Adora and Glimmer (Season 4)
He declares that average people (such as the kitchen staff at Dryl) don’t need the princesses and are just as capable of fighting the Horde themselves… while he believes himself and his abilities inferior to Princess Entrapta’s
He reminds the others (esp Adora) about the need to accept help… while refusing any help for himself (think about “Don't worry about me. I'm the one who worries about you. Can we go back to that? Please?” in Pulse through to that moment when he agrees to let Glimmer take him to check on his dads in Return to the Fright Zone and literally leans on her)
I think a funny way to sum up his character issue is: Not me, though.
This arc progresses across all five season as he gradually changes. He starts the series out repressing his feelings from both his family and friends while doubting his abilities and refusing to ask for help (he IS Adora’s mirror, after all!). Over the course of the series he learns to express his feelings instead of bottling them up (The Beacon > Reunion > really all of Season 4 but it comes to head starting with Boys Night Out through Beast Island > Stranded), gains more confidence in his tech skills (The Frozen Forest > Signals > Flutterina > Mer-Mysteries > Corridors), and starts to learn to ask for help (The Beacon > Pulse > Return to the Fright Zone).
Which of course all culminates in The Heart Parts 1 and 2 where he finally wraps up all threads at once by
a) asking Scorpia to trust him (putting faith in someone else to help)
b) completing Entrapta’s program to unchip everyone (proving he IS as good a scientist as she is)
c) giving the speech to everyone on Etheria rousing the common people to fight Prime (average people can make a difference… which he now fully believes that includes him).
And while you can make the argument that confessing to Glimmer is part of his arc to share his feelings, the fact is that he completes a full character arc without ever behind reduced to just someone’s love interest because none of his character growth is tied to his romantic relationship at all (which was what the original tweet claimed). It's all his inner journey to have faith in himself and his abilities and how they relate to his friends and loved ones.
And thus the guy who starts the series as “only one around here who’s not a princess” with doubt in his tech abilities ends the series as confident Tech Master and future King of the regular people he sought to inspire, which is about as textbook a reversal as you can get.
Does it come out of nowhere?
His character arc progresses and takes significant focus in the following episodes….
S1:E6 System Failure
S1:E10 The Beacon
S2:E1 The Frozen Forest
S2:E3 Signals
S2:E7 Reunion
S4:E3 Flutterina
S4:E4 Pulse
S4:E7 Mer-Mysteries
S4:E8 Boys Night Out
S4:E10 Fractures
S4:E11 Beast Island
S5:E3 Corridors
S5:E4 Stranded
S5:E9 An Ill Wind
S5:E10 Return to the Fright Zone
S5:E12 Heart Part 1
S5:E13 Heart Part 2
That’s 17 episodes out of 52 which means his character development gets approximately 32% of the focus of the entire show… which for an ensemble cast like this where he’s one of four leads is just about dead on as it's over a quarter of the episodes.
That's a significant chunk of screentime with multiple episodes devoted specifically to his character journey.
Is his journey as flashy and action sequence-y as what Adora, Catra and Glimmer get? No, but it's a) a show marketed to girls so it makes sense they get the more cinematic scenes and b) his arc is more emotional and thus didn't need to hinge on big action like theirs did. Though considering the culmination of his arc is him as a 100 foot tall hologram speaking to the entire planet, I personally feel like that was pretty hard to miss.
If you look at all of this and still want to say that Bow did nothing or had no character arc, I think the thing to ask yourself is: why is it so important to you to discount the accomplishments and character growth of this character specifically?
In conclusion, this is the face Bow makes when he spent five season growing, changing and kicking butt as Tech Master and Voice of Reason and you say he did "literally nothing"...
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Bow wanted to see the sunrise so Glimmer teleported them right out of bed at daybreak to see it. But they were both so tired they ended up falling asleep and missing it anyway.
Somehow, they didn't mind.
(I was on a long car ride today so I decided to doodle this over one of these chibi bases on my preschooler's Fire using a very chewed-on freebie stylus. There are probably far better ways to do art and higher quality equipment but, eh, whatever works.)
There have always been a too many pillows at Bright Moon. Not just in the prison/spare room but everywhere. They seem to multiply when you aren't looking and most guests to the castle end up taking about half of them off the bed before they sleep because it's just a bit too much when you aren't used to it.
But all the other former Horde kids (outside of Adora) cannot get enough of all the wonderful softness, something they saw so little of growing up. When Catra moves in, pillows start disappearing from all around the castle and invariably the staff find them in a colossal pile in the corner of a room, her and Scorpia napping somewhere in the middle, like a dragon with a cuddle hoard.
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I ship all the cannon couples in the sense that I love these characters and I want them all to be happy.
Look, I am not here to condone the actions of either Entrapta or Hordak. They both did many messed up things. Many characters on the show did but those two are in the top five and we all know this. They are the literal bad guys of the cartoon.
But I absolutely love their dynamic.
That scene when she's insulating the cables and his shadow looms and we've already seen the horrible stuff Hordak did to Catra so as the audience you're like, "Oh no! Run Entrapta!!!" But then he yells at her at his most scary cartoon villain and she's like yeah yeah keep your pants on completely unfazed and he is just so completely bewildered by this. I am not exaggerating when I tell you this is one of my top favorite moments in the entire series.
He just has no idea what to make of her and her complete disregard of the whole scary persona he's built up for years. So he has no choice but to just be himself around her because she doesn't fall for any of the rest. It forces him to consider who is he, really, underneath everything else? Which plants the seeds that allow him to break through Prime's reconditioning and finally actually figure out who he is free of that shadow.
Even if you aren't interested in them as a ship, Hordak, like Emily, was a machine built for war and Entrapta completely reprogrammed him by extending her friendship and how can you not love that? Beyond everything else, it's interesting which is the main thing I require of characters and stories.
Do you think Bow never felt unplatonic feelings towards Adora due to his gaydar?
This is a really interesting question and one my buddies and I have talked about before.
Basically, I cannot see Bow ever having feelings for Adora at all. Maybe because of gaydar or because the first time he meets her she's such a mess he's like, "Wow, OK, someone needs to care about this disaster girl so... free sister!"
But this came up because we were joking that if Bow likes Glimmer and Glimmer and Catra are very similar people, might he have theoretically been attracted to Catra at some point? And I guess it's technically possible, but I just cannot see that at all!
If you want an in-universe for why Bow never thought about Catra that way either, I would say because even though Catra and Glimmer are similar, Bow's somewhat black and white view of good guy vs bad guy (especially in the early seasons) would kind of prejudice him against Catra, make him think about her more negatively. And then, by the time he knows her better, he already knows he's in love with Glimmer and that Adora and Catra are in love with each other so it doesn't even blip on his radar as an option because he's already categorized her as another free sister.
