I watched the whole thing over the last couple weeks. It's good, especially looking at it as a children's show. Even though I suspect the target audience was weirdos like me who watch children's shows and not children. Regardless, it did an impressive job of adapting a silly character designed to sell toys to children in the 80s to a more serious story without losing all the charm of the dumb 80s children's fantasy setting.
In particular, it's kind of refreshing to see a very unironic "power of friendship" story. Love and friendship are strong and the characters seriously, genuinely embrace that. And even the big bad evil guys make friends and have understandable motivations even when those motivations lead them to unforgivable actions.
For a significant chunk of the first few seasons it made me think of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but in a negative way. Like they were trying to imitate it in a sense, and not quite nailing it. However, I'd bet that (as someone who hasn't watched any of the popular / "good" kid's shows between Avatar and whatever's popular now) I'm probably missing some context, and that what I see as imitating Avatar is probably more accurately following tropes that Avatar helped to cement. But also, maybe Bow is just a sub-par Sokka. Both are possible
Something that pleasantly surprised me, on the other hand, is how well executed the ending was. Avatar was fantastic all the way through, and then really fumbled the end. And it wasn't a terrible ending, but it was confused and muddled and just not executed very well. The second half of She-Ra's final season was flawlessly executed imo. It delivered on everything it had been setting up in such a satisfying and sincere way.
In particular, I was so happy to see the relationship between Catra and Adora actually ... follow through. Throughout the entire show that shit has been building up, and I was really concerned they weren't going to be particularly explicit about it. Of course, there's plenty of gay shit going on in the show throughout, from Bow's dads to Netassa and Spinnerella to subtler stuff like Scorpia maybe crushing on Catra (am I reading too much into that dynamic? possibly) but even these didn't convince me. Because the theme I noticed is that they never wrote romance. All the couples were already couples before the events of episode 1. They don't usually say anything particularly romantic to each other, with the exception of Sea Hawk which is played so silly that for most of the show it's not even clear whether there is any mutual affection at all.
But then they were just like "lol you thought we were chicken? actually the gay kiss is the most powerful magic you've seen in the entire show."
the kind of ending which elevates an otherwise only pretty-good show to ... idk. really good.
its good folks.
Catra was never stuck there, she could have left just as easily as Adora did. She didn't need saving, she needed to decide to leave.
Catra felt betrayed by the one person who might have cared, doesn't excuse her actions, but gives it context. Adora literally could have framed it as "lets get away from shadow weaver" and it could have gone well.
Sure, but that's a believable flaw that I don't think is really a problem with the writing. All Adora needed to leave was the knowledge that the organization she was with was doing morally wrong stuff. Catra wasn't quite as oblivious and had already figured that out, and she simply didn't care. Catra needed a different motivation to leave, and Adora didn't understand that. It's possible a more socially capable and manipulative Adora could have convinced Catra to come with her, but I don't think it was her responsibility. They both had access to the same information. Catra made and repeatedly reaffirmed her decision to stay on what she saw as the winning side. And the moment Catra took the slightest step away from that mentality Adora was like "alright guys we're going to the most dangerous possible location in the entire universe to go get her."