More from He-Man’s Dean Stefan, part 4

Dean Stefan, story editor of “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” talks about what the future might have been for the series, and what he’s working on now in the final installment of our interview.

Matt Price: There were some things you didn’t get to that you intended?

Dean Stefan: We did 39 episodes with a 40^th that never got produced. The second season, the Snakemen played a big role. In the 3^rd season we were going to probably have Hordak be freed, so there’d be all these different factions. Skeletor’s guys, Snakemen, Hordak.

We had plans for He-Man and his father, we were going to have this whole line where he gets sent to this nasty world of Despondus, his father would. And He-Man would have to follow him. Something would happen with the Masters where they would become renegades, not quite guerillas, but Skeletor would have taken over the good kingdom, and our guys would have to fight their way back. There was a lot of elements, a lot of balls in the air so to speak. Because I expected it to go for several years, til my kid went to college at least.

Matt Price: What caused the cancellation?

Dean Stefan: I’m sure it relates to finances and ratings in some way. Some fans said the timeslot got changed around a lot, some people said that kids don’t want to see a guy in a loincloth with swords after everything they’ve been exposed to. I don’t really know. I think working in this business you just never know what’s going to catch on, for whatever reason.

I’ve certainly seen plenty of TV shows that I thought were brilliant that didn’t last for more than a few seasons. Then they come out on DVD, and you say, wow, that was really good. It’s a whole new generation almost. It’s not quite ten years, but it’s been seven years, six years maybe. I’m really proud of it, and everybody who worked on it was really passionate. Obviously you want it to be a huge rating success and last as many years as it can, but hopefully with people writing about it, it’ll sell some DVDs and people will be exposed to it and like it. The next He-Man DVD will be coming out in May, the 2^nd 13 episodes.