She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: System Failure Review

Hello Heroclub, this is Darkon633 and I am back with another She-Ra and the Princesses of Power review. Last time I looked at “The Sea Gate,” which introduced several reoccurring characters in the series. Whereas, this week’s episode features another kingdom and another princess being introduced. Now, the featured kingdom in this episode is by far the weirdest in the series thus far in my opinion, and it is for various reasons. With that out of the way we will now begin to look at episode 6 titled, “System Failure.”

 

[Warning: The following review contains several spoilers]

 

Synopsis:

 

In the kingdom of Dryl, the castle’s staff is doing their normal routine with assistance of robots. Within Princess Entrapta’s laboratory she begins working on an experiment to de-encode an ancient disc that could hold the secrets to the First Ones. Little does she know the object injects a virus that infects all the major computers and robots causing them to attack the citizens of the kingdom. Shortly afterwards Adora, Glimmer, and Bow arrive at the kingdom of Dryl seeking to meet with Entrapta. Our heroes soon witness electrical surges throughout the area and decide to investigate. Adora quickly transforms into She-Ra and just senses that something is off. While proceeding further into the castle our heroes are stopped by the corrupted robots.

She-Ra and Glimmer notice a door nearby, hoping it to be an exit route to avoid a fight with the robots. However, the door is the trigger to trap door that sends She-Ra and Glimmer down a pit. Bow attempts to follow them but is grabbed by a mysterious pair of arms, only to discover he has been saved by the castle staff. Bow then begins plot with the staff on how to stop the robots and regroup with his friends. However, their plans are cut short when they realize robots are closing in on them. Whereas, She-Ra and Glimmer soon find themselves in a cage, so Glimmer is forced to teleport them out. They then encounter a mysterious figure who quickly reveals herself to be Princess Entrapta, who proceeds to lead them to the main control room.

A large robot appears before She-Ra and the others, and chases after them. Entrapta tries to stop the robot, but in the process gets caught due to hair being tangled in the robot’s brushes. She-Ra jumps to the rescue but is somehow goes berserk during her attack on the robot. Glimmer realizes that the Sword of Power somehow became infected by the virus and it is also affecting She-Ra. Glimmer quickly then gets the sword away from She-Ra, breaking the trance and the transformation. Adora is exhausted from the experience and collapses. Meanwhile, Bow and castle staff manage to defend themselves from the infected robots, and proceed to locate the others. Whereas, Entrapta explains to Glimmer that Adora had to be infected due to the virus and experiment she was doing with ancient disc she had discovered. Soon Adora wakes up, although a bit delirious, but they manage to continue onwards to Entrapta’s laboratory.

Upon arriving to the laboratory, Entrapta tries to open the door but realizes the virus has infected the door and locked them out. Glimmer decides to teleport the group within room, only to discover it is being heavily guarded by robots. Luckily, Bow and the staff finally arrived to assist in taking back the control room; Entrapta and Bow focus on the main computer while the others hold off the corrupted robots. Our heroes decide to remove the power conduit however, they discover the ancient disc is self-powering the system. Bow then decides to use the sonic arrow to try and disrupt the system, which successfully manages to blow up the disc, saving everyone in the process. Entrapta immediately agrees to join the Rebellion after seeing the others helping her in her time of need. Yet, the episode concludes with Entrapta putting the disc back together in order to continue more tests on it.

 

My Thoughts:

Personally, I feel like this episode is rather weird since it starts off quite differently than most of the previous episodes. This is due to the episode starting with the new characters instead of the main characters that have been introduced so far. Now, I am not saying that is a bad thing since it does make things feel less stale, although it is offsetting at first. In addition, the setting itself is weird too although I will be getting to that in a little bit. First off, I will be explaining my thoughts about the new characters.

 

Now, Princess Entrapta is a pretty interesting character for various reasons. The first reason is that Entrapta is an actual princess this time around unlike her original counterpart who was one of the Evil Horde generals. The second reason is that she is a lot more into technology advancements and discoveries, giving Entrapta more depth and making her a much more interesting character. The original version of Entrapta, as stated moments ago was Evil Horde member, whose defining feature was her ability to manipulate her hair; the original would simply use it as weapon or method to snare her foes, so for the new version to have an interest in technology is an overly welcomed change.

However, this episode has a lot of areas in which it falters. To start, while the castle staff did a lot of things to help the team, they did not seem to have enough characterization to make them characters. This really is an issue since they are also never named on screen, making them just a random supporting cast. Furthermore, following this episode these characters will not be seen for the rest of the season. Then the second issue is that while the setting is different than what was shown previously, its execution and involvement with story is poor. The entire episode is supposed to be set in the “Kingdom of Dryl,” however it just takes place within the castle itself. The castle, itself, is not that interesting, as it is rather generic and does not have nearly enough people working there to make it look lively.

 

In conclusion, while I cannot personally say that this is a bad episode it just seems to be the blandest one yet. Entrapta is interesting enough to keep viewers entertained and luckily, she will play a much larger role later in the series. However, it does not excuse the fact that her debut episode does not leave that much of an impact. With that being said, the series is said to pick up quite fast after this episode, so it is good to see that there are not outright terrible episodes in the first season.

Recent posts

Leave a Reply