1987’s Masters of the Universe–aka Masters of the Universe: The Motion Picture–had a pretty small roster of characters, so you might be wondering why they even bothered introducing new ones. What, you mean I can’t have Orko, but I can have whatever the fuck Gwildor is? And who the hell are “Blade” and “Saurod”?

You’ve probably heard by now that Gwildor was supposedly added since Orko would’ve been too expensive to do in live-action with the movie’s incredibly small budget. I’m pretty sure this is true, but cannot 100% confirm it, so if you’re ever on Jeopardy! and the question is “This character replaced Orko in the live-action 1987 He-Man movie because Orko would’ve been too fucking expensive,” make sure you answer…well, “Who is Gwildor?” in that case. Because who else would it fucking be then?

But what’s more confusing in a lot of ways is how many new villains the movie introduced. You wanna know how many new bad guys are in the current Masters of the Universe movie? By my count, only the “Skel-Knights” are original players, and really, they’re a bunch of nameless soldiers who serve Skeletor. None of them have individual personalities. Everyone else is pulled from pre-established lore, including Goat Man, who was introduced in a Golden Book and then never appeared ever again until the new film came out, and that sounds like something I made up for a bit but somehow didn’t. My point is, Mattel had a lot of baddies at their disposal. So why the hell was “Blade” a part of this?

It turns out that Mattel had the opposite of Hasbro’s philosophy when making The Transformers: The Movie only a year prior. In Hasbro’s case, everyone could die. And for the most part, they did die. Mattel wasn’t eager to take similar risks: if people were going to get killed in the movie, they couldn’t be characters from the franchise. In other words, they couldn’t bring Mer-Man in (not that they could afford him anyway, the dude couldn’t even be bothered to show up for the new movie) and have He-Man drown him (wait a minute…). Anyone from the series had to make it out alive. No exceptions.

This is somewhat puzzling since Masters of the Universe: The Motion Picture exists in a different timeline from the TV cartoon and everything else, so why would Mattel get cold feet over this? Were they that terrified of kids locking themselves up in their bedrooms without speaking for two weeks because live-action Beast Man died? I dunno. But that’s why Blade, Saurod (whose name is pronounced way too similarly to “Zoar”, the falcon which Sorceress takes the form of when leaving Grayskull), and all the other new villains exist: so He-Man could fucking kill them. They were born with the sole purpose of selling toys and dying. There’s likely an Adam McCay-approved metaphor for American capitalism in there somewhere. Really, these guys would be the most depressing Toy Story characters ever.

Have the power today, y’all! Also, I’M JUST SAYIN’ THAT THE TECHNOLOGY EXISTS TODAY TO MAKE ORKO A MAJOR CHARACTER IN A LIVE-ACTION HE-MAN MOVIE! ARE YOU READING THIS, TRAVIS KNIGHT? I’M JUST SAYIN’! DO YOU REALLY LIKE “GOAT MAN” MORE THAN ORKO? ANSWER MY CALLS, TRAVIS! I’VE BEEN WORKING MY ASS OFF TO GET PEOPLE TO GO TO YOUR MOVIE! SHOW ME SOME GODDAMN GRATITUDE! TRAVIS! DON’T BLOCK ME AGAIN, TRAVIS! TRAVIS!