She-Ra Cast Pays Tribute to Larry DiTillio

When Larry DiTillio passed away on March 16^th, 2019, he left behind a huge body of beloved work. Beast Wars: Transformers, Babylon 5, The Real Ghostbusters, and He-Man and the Masters of the Universe are just some of the many series he wrote or story edited in his many years in the business. One of the biggest highlights of his work was co-creating and writing many episodes of the original She-Ra: Princess of Power.

The power and long lasting impact of that work was proven when last year the series was rebooted as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power on Netflix. While the series changed some elements of DiTillio’s work it was still very much a love letter to his work, with many direct references throughout.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power developer Noelle Stevenson has nothing but respect for DiTillio’s work, calling the original series “mind blowing. The fact that it was this action show with such a large female cast in the mid ’80s when there really wasn’t anything else like that on that classic sword and sorcery action show? There was nothing like it. There still really hasn’t been.”

further reading: How Classic Masters of the Universe Fans Influenced the New She-Ra

The original She-Ra was Lauren Ash’s (Scorpia) favorite cartoon growing up and it was the first time she could remember, “seeing a woman being powerful in that way. It resonated with me from the beginning.”

Merit Leighton (Frosta) concurs with Ash, calling She-Ra, “a movement in its time. There hadn’t been many powerful female characters, so it was a big move forward.” 

Even with all the updates to the original characters in the new series, “it was important to Noelle to keep the integral characteristics of a lot of our characters (from the original She-Ra),” says Marcus Scribner (Bow).

Aime Carrero (Adora) hopes that the new series is only continuing the work DiTillio and the original She-Ra did. “We get to bring this fantasy to a whole new generation of young girls and that’s really exciting.”

further reading: How She-Ra Balances Characters and Worldbuilding

Stevenson says that they want to “pay our respects to (DiTillio). We wanna do something to memorialize him.”

While it may take some time for that to possibly show up in the show, it’s fitting that the second season of the new She-Ra will include a segment that features the characters dressing in their 80’s outfits and shot in the style of the original series. Even more poignant is that it’s done during a role-playing game. DiTillio developed several RPG games and was a huge fan of board games in general.

The second season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power series will drop April 26^th on Netflix. Keep up with all the news about it here.

Shamus Kelley is a pop culture/television writer and official Power Rangers expert. Follow him on Twitter! Read more articles by him here!