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In a comic book tie-in to Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation, Skeletor revealed a heartbreaking origin story that may or may not be real.
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Masters of the Universe: Revelation #2, available now from Dark Horse Comics.
Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revelation has served up a truly surprising look at the future of Eternia, after the events of the original Masters of the Universe cartoon. However, it’s comic book prequel has been far more concerned with exploring the past of the He-Man franchise. After reintroducing the long-lost champions of Eternia and rewriting the origins of the source of He-Man’s powers, Skeletor just revealed his own secret origins in Masters of the Universe: Revelation #2 by Kevin Smith, Rob David, Tim Sheridan, Mindy Lee, Rico Renzi, and Deron Bennett.
And even though Evil-Lyn calls him out for making up a story that casts himself as a caring hero, the end of the issue hints that Skeletor may have been more honest than she realized.
After discovering the power of the interdimensional Orlax, Skeletor’s focus shifted entirely from felling his longtime foe He-Man and instead to unraveling the secrets of this impossible beast. When Evil-Lyn aks why Skeletor has become so desperate to learn whatever it is that the Orlax knows, he reveals that it is because the creature’s secrets are the quickest way for him to acquire the power he has fought so long to claim. He then regails her with what he says are his real reasons for wanting to become the Master of the Universe.
Before he was a power-hungry despot, Skeletor once lived among his own people, where he and his brethren were skull-faced denizens who had been made into slaves by minotaur-like beasts that had risen to power by force. One day Skeletor snapped and felled one of his subjugators before leading his village to freedom. Unfortunately, this rebellion was quickly quelled when more minotaurs arrived and killed Skeletor’s wife and young child. When all hope seemed lost, he wandered into the desert alone and found Hordak, who offered Skeletor a chance to take vengeance for his family and potentially revive them. In the years that followed, Skeletor would become one of Hordak’s most valuable generals. While Skeletor’s child was eventually resurrected, he was taken away from him, and the spirit of Hordak’s promise went largely unfulfilled.
By the time he was done telling Evil-Lyn his secret history, Skeletor had painted himself as a more tragic figure than ever before. When she calls him out as a liar, Skeletor asks how she knew he made it all up. While this story seems more designed to engender sympathy than reveal any deep truths. However, there may be more truth to his story than it seems.
The original 1982 minicomics which were distributed with the various Masters of the Universe toys included a rough origin for Skeletor that wasn’t far off from the one he offers here. Supposedly, Skeletor hailed from another dimension populated by a skull-faced people until a war on his homeworld sent him hurtling through a portal to Eternia. This cast Skeletor’s villainous nature in the light of someone desperate to return home, only to find an even greater obsession in a brave new land. Later minicomics would choose to ignore the established origin in favor of leaning into the more ambiguous one of the 1983 animated series, which suggested that Skeletor may have once been the brother of Eternia’s King Randor. The fact that this hasn’t been alluded to by Skeletor himself even in a series that follows that 1983 original also doesn’t lend this new origin any credence.
Whatever Skeletor’s true origin may be, the story he told here is certainly compelling, and it’s hard to imagine there isn’t some amount of truth to it. Whether that be the disdain that he feels for Hordak or the loss of a long-dead family remains to be seen, but the details of his past don’t mean that Skeletor isn’t still an existential threat to Eternia.
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