We Have to Talk About He-Man’s Dad in ‘Masters of the Universe’

The following post contains SPOILERS for 2026’s Masters of the Universe movie. If you read this and then complain that I spoiled the movie, you stink worse than Stinkor. 

Every superhero has an origin story. Often that origin involves a child learning to cope with the death of a loved one (or multiple loved ones) by channeling their grief into selfless acts. Superman’s parents perished along with the rest of his home planet, Krypton. Peter Parker gained the powers of a radioactive spider from an insect bite, but he didn’t truly become Spider-Man until after a thief broke into his home in Queens and murdered his beloved Uncle Ben.

The He-Man of the new Masters of the Universe movie does not possess an origin like that — or if he does, it’s because he causes his own life-altering, heroism-inspiring tragedy. In what has to be one of the strangest character choices in any major blockbuster in recent memory, He-Man kills his own father and then arguably covers up his crime.

READ MORE: ScreenCrush’s Full Review of Masters of the Universe

When Skeletor (Jared Leto) invades the fantasy realm of Eternia, the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull (Morena Baccarin) sends the heir to its throne, young Prince Adam, to Earth for his own protection. 15 years later, the adult Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) can’t convince anyone that he comes from a world where tigers are green and can be ridden like horses — until he locates the lost Sword of Power from the back of a comic-book store.

Adam returns to Eternia to find it conquered by Skeletor, and he rallies his allies to lead an assault on the villain’s fortress in Snake Mountain. There, Skeletor reveals that he spared Adam’s father, King Randor (James Purefoy), when he took control of Eternia 15 years earlier. Using Randor as a hostage, Skeletor tortures and manipulates Adam in an attempt to gain control of the Sword of Power.

So far, so typical of most blockbusters; a lost hero on a quest to reclaim his homeland. But this is where things gets weird. Really, really weird.

This new Masters of the Universe’s most prominent theme is the nature of masculinity. As a boy, Adam likes to joke around and play with his pet cat Cringer; he goofs off during fight training with Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba), who’s ordered to “make a man out of” Adam by King Randor. Even after Adam grows up and nabs the Sword of Power, he still prefers to talk with his enemies rather than punch them. More than once, the movie asks the question: What makes someone a man? (Or a He-Man, in this case.) The Sorceress later claims that she chose Adam to wield the Power of Grayskull not because he’s physically strong, but because he’s so understanding.

It’s a nice message, I suppose, or it would be if the film actually found a way to make it feel like empathy was truly Adam’s super power. Instead, He-Man talks a lot about wanting to understand his enemies, then when they refuse to accept his diplomatic overtures, he punches or stabs them repeatedly anyway.

That’s ostensibly what happens in the film’s key scene: Adam picks violence over words during his first big confrontation with Skeletor in Skull Mountain. The power unleashed by the furious Adam is so overwhelming it actually cracks Skull Mountain. The ceiling promptly collapses, raining debris down on the decrepit King Randor, crushing him to death.

tl;dr Brave and noble warrior He-Man killed his own father.

Sure, you could say that Skeletor and his henchwoman Evil-Lyn (Alison Brie) manipulated Adam into losing his cool, and yes, Skeletor was the one who held King Randor captive for 15 years in the first place. I’m sure if Eternia has a coroner, their autopsy would list that stuff as contributing factors. But there’s only one dude who dropped a roof on the man, and that dude is his burly son with leather underpants and major daddy issues.

But it gets stranger still! The captured He-Man is tossed in the Snake Mountain dungeon, where he is reunited with his mother, Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley). It falls to him to tell his mom that her husband, the love of her life, is dead.

“He’s gone,” Adam solemnly whispers.

Okay, technically, that is true. King Randor is gone. But Adam: Who sent him away? You did! Adam conveniently omits this bit of information. In fact, he never tells anyone how King Randor died, possibly because if he did, Queen Marlena and the other imprisoned heroes of Eternia would arrest him for patricide instead of following him in a final assault on Skeletor’s forces.

This is an unfathomably bizarre decision on the part of director Travis Knight and his six screenwriters. It’s like a version of Batman’s origin where Bruce Wayne accidentally killed his parents while playing with the family’s gun, told no one what happened, and then declared “I must become a superhero to avenge their deaths!”

A fan of this Masters might argue that He-Man icing his own pops is important to his growth as a character; that this is the straw that breaks that camel’s back and finally makes him realize that violence is not the solution to his problems. But despite the movie’s lip service to mediation and deescalation, He-Man doesn’t actually learn this lesson. He still beats the crap out of Skeletor in the movie’s climax. When Skeletor’s tries to tap out during the big final fight, He-Man tells him “The time for talk is over” and then murders him in cold blood — kinda like how he bumped off his old man, except he does it on purpose this time.

Plus, given the fact that Adam never admits what he’s done, and never expresses any sort of remorse about it, I am not sure how you can argue that this act is some sort of formative, character-building moment. It’s not anything like Peter Parker not stopping the burglar who later kills Uncle Ben.

For one thing, one moment of inaction is not the same as dropping a ceiling on someone. For another, Peter Parker has spent the last 60 years grappling with the guilt he feels over that one moment of inaction in the pages of literally thousands of Marvel Comics. He-Man actively whacks his long-lost dad, and by the time the end credits roll on the new Masters of the Universe about 45 minutes later, no one in the movie appears to recall this event took place at all. King who? It’s as if the true Power of Grayskull is amnesia.