After all, many fans seem ready for an openly gay He-Man, in part because for a lot of people, he has always been gay. Mattel has since announced new plans to reboot the series, with two shows in the works with Netflix- Masters of the Universe: Revelation (for adult fans) and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (to court the next generation), prompting a question about which version will appear next. (As the top comment on the video’s YouTube page puts it, “If this video is deleted will the internet die?”) Specifically, the popularity of a nostalgic and irreverent bootstrapped music video titled “Fabulous Secret Powers,” which redubs some of the original cartoon’s more evocative sequences to a techno version of 4 Non Blondes’ “What’s Up?” That homage went viral, with 170 million views on YouTube, and has since been clipped and shared as an endlessly joyful meme that both honors gay pride and serves as a sort of campy exclamation point for whatever adversity you might be experiencing, making it arguably a more indelible part of our culture than the show ever was. He was born out of something more modern and widespread: Internet mashup culture.
Joe, Transformers, and the original He-Man series, Laughing Prince Adam wasn’t molded from a made-for-TV action figure.
