Rob David is the executive producer of Netflix’s Masters of the Universe: Revolution. All five episodes are now streaming. David, who’s also Mattel’s Vice President, Content Creative, joins me for this Non-Spoiler Animation Scoop Q&A to talk about what continues to make MOTU an animation event. (This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: I recently learned a little bit about the origins of the toys of Masters of the Universe. How did you get invested in the toys, and how do you see toys come into play and that play factor when it comes to this show?

Rob David: Oh, wow. Well, I’m a child of the ’80s. So I first fell in love with the toys for Masters of the Universe when I was going through the toy aisles being led by my mother. And I think I had tried to get all of the Star Wars figures I could at the time. And then there on the peg was this all new figure who was like three times bigger than Luke Skywalker. No disrespect to Luke because now Mark Hamill, of course, is in our show. So it was all great. But this new figure was three times the size of Luke. And the muscles and muscles and just all sorts of exotic visages and powers and abilities, and I was just completely transfixed. I got it home and inside each of the toy packages was an in-package mini comic which first told the story of He-Man. No Prince Adam back then. It had the staples that you know, with Castle Grayskull and Skeletor.

Rob David: And so I just played. I completely played with all the different figures… and it just basically terraformed my young imagination. I wrote the DC Comics He Man and the Masters of the Universe for many years, and the fact that I get to be privileged enough to serve as an executive producer on a few of these shows that we’re doing for Masters of the Universe now for Mattel Television Studios is a complete dream come true. And then in terms of playing metaphorically with our toys in the show — absolutely. Some of the stuff that makes Masters of the Universe Masters of the Universe… unlike anything else. One is the crazy mashup between technology and magic, which was represented right there in the original toy line. The fact that magic and technology both coexist in these worlds. When we have a battle between two characters in our show, it needs to feel with every punch the heavens themselves shake.

And then all the specialties of each of the characters are weird. And I mean that with all due respect to every single one of these characters. He-Man is kind of the straight man at the circus, so to speak, because he’s got around him these most extraordinary characters from talking skunks to talking trees — you name it. And each of them has a unique speciality to them that is their source of the greatest powers. We always want to celebrate that and let that come loose in our storytelling.

JM: As I was watching these episodes, I was just amazed at what the animators are able to do with these sequences. Yes, that play factor comes to life. The action scenes are unbelievable. Just the shot composition. It’s amazing.

RD: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Our partners on this, Powerhouse Animation Studios, have become really terrifically close friends of mine. And one of the greatest joys of my working life is meeting with them several times a week to go over exactly what you’re talking about. “What kind of visual storytelling are we using for this episode? What are the designs? What’s the layout? What’s the composition? What’s the lighting? How are we going to bring this together?” And they have some of the most amazing storyboard artists over there at Powerhouse. And then two great directors, Patrick [Stannard] and Adam [Conarroe], who are absolutely insane and thoughtful. They lay out everything with two purposes: dynamic storytelling and also thematic meaning. So where the characters are placed within any shot, not just shot to shot over sequences, but in a shot, has dramatic and symbolic significance all the time.

And then on top of that, it’s not just a composition, but it’s the depth in the composition — how much world and world building you’re seeing in every shot. In the background you might see engravings on a wall leading into a cavern and the thoughtfulness that goes into each of the lettering of the engraving, what it means in terms of the lore. Patrick ended up creating an entire language for Motu based on that. I am just a total geek fan… like anyone watching this in terms of the type of awe and complexity that they bring to it, and we want them to bring to it.

JM: MOTU fans, you are not going to be disappointed by what Revolution offers. I want to stress this is Non-Spoiler as I ask some of these questions now. The first episode goes a little bit into the second episode with the theme of death. How did you want to approach that? It’s done in a very sophisticated way that I think is going to be powerful to a lot of people.

RD: Well, thank you. It was very important to me and to Kevin Smith, our showrunner, and our friend partner over at Netflix, Ted Biaselli, to really hit that theme of death. There’s a line in it spoken by King Randor, who, it’s no spoiler, it’s in our trailer, I suppose, to say that he passes away in the first episode. And he has a line that we gave him where he says, “Death comes for us all, even for kings, it comes.” And there’s a certain intrinsic inevitability that all life dies that’s written into the universe. And even for characters who profess to be the masters of the universe — even they too must bend a knee to the inevitability of death. But in facing death, it’s really important to ask yourself questions and for us and for these characters and how you view life.

What we wanted to do with this is to show that as every generation… our parents pass on, we’re left with a choice with how we want to forge a new future. And for us it was important to represent the idea that we should really honor our past. We should honor our legacy and the people who created the world for us to inherit. And that was symbolized in Teela’s journey in the episode and what she’s trying to accomplish. What she’s trying to bring back to the universe is symbolic and represents honoring our legacy in the world that came before us. But at the same time, we have to decide how we want to forge the future for ourselves, given our honoring the past ,and that forging our own new destiny is something that Adam is facing and all our characters are facing.

JM: And I would say that Adam and Teela’s connection is one of the core elements of the foundation of this arc of the five episodes.

RD: You know, it’s funny, because their relationship isn’t just an arc of the show. In my mind, it’s an arc of the entire saga of Masters of the Universe starting from the beginning. To me, the relationship between Adam and Teela is core. It’s the beating heart of the entire storyline and franchise. And for both of those characters, these episodes in particular are a coming of age story. These two characters both have parents who have raised a bar and they’re kind of big shoes to fill. And both of them are trying to figure out who they are supposed to be. They’ve known each other since they were kids. They’ve grown up together.

JM: How was it working with Keith David, the voice of Hordak? That voice, wow.

RD: Keith is unbelievable, right? I have been a fan of Keith since “Platoon”. He has got the greatest voice there. He lent Kordak gravitas. And then on top of that, as an actor and a person, he really respected the material and respected the character. And he really got into it. And he really always asked questions. And he really got into the idea that Hordak is this cosmic vampire chess player who’s behind the scenes working his dark voodoo to gain the system and take over the universe. And he compared it to Shakespeare in terms of the kind of complexity of stories of kings and rulers and revenge and passion and family. So he just got so into it.

JM: I’m so glad he was so passionate about this. Passionate is a word I could also use to describe Kevin Smith when it comes to just about everything he’s a part of. How have you seen that firsthand?

RD: Well, from the very beginning… it was my idea to approach Kevin. I was a fan of his comic books. I know he’s directed a movie or two in the past. For me, I’m a huge comic book fan, and I read his Daredevil comics, and I really love that he loved Frank Miller’s run on Daredevil, but he also found a way to still make it fresh and do new things. And that’s what I was really looking for for Masters of Universe: Revelation and for Revolution — somebody who could sink their teeth into the genre, but still have some plenty of surprises in store. And from the first time we started working together — first day at his house — we were cracking the story that we would then go to pitch to Netflix… he got super into it. I’d given him a copy of our encyclopedia, the Masters of the Universe Encyclopedia that we did with Dark Horse. And I gave it to him the first time we met, and the second time I came over when we were cracking the initial story — he had already had it posted on so many different pages and ideas and he wanted to really talk them through. He continued to go back and reference it.

JM: This show is about heroes and heroics. How would you say this show has been a hero to fans of this brand, to animation fans, and to you and everyone who has worked on it?

RD: Heroism to me is about tapping into some strength that you have inside and then using it to overcome tremendous obstacles in the service of good and helping others. So for me, Adam, and I think everyone who grew up on this taps into it… Adam embodies that. The story of Prince Adam is that you wouldn’t look at him judging by just the sight of him. But deep inside Adam is his inner strength and strength of character. And if he can unlock it… he can unleash the strength and transform himself into the best version of himself to help his world. For Adam, it’s about the recognition that we, each of us, every single person in this world has something unique about us, something special inside that is actually the source of our greatest power. And if we can unlock it and recognize it and perhaps even master it, we can not only transform ourselves, but transform our entire universe for good.