What is odd is that there is such a divide between reviewers and watchers.
I can sort of see what the reviewers are excited about, because other characters other than just He-Man have a chance to be in the spotlight. The concept of "an Eternia without He-Man/Castle Grayskull/magic" is interesting. They almost succeeded except for three things:
- Netflix made a trailer where it looked like He-Man was going to be front and center, with everyone else have their chance to be awesome. Then they killed off He-Man, made Duncan a scared pussy, and gave us The Teela Show.
- They also made Teela pretty unlikable by the end of the first episode ("Wah! Wah! Wah! I deserved to know the secret identity that even Adam's own father was unaware of!"), and never really had her recover. She does some badass things, but then we have to witness her personality again.
- It wasn't long enough. The king and queen get written out completely, and there are a few lines about how magic is gone and things have all gone to shit. But other than the one cyber-cult and a fight over a cup of magic-infused water we don't really see how things are all that bad other than everyone moping about. For a show that is about flipping the script, they sort of forgot to make a new script.
Which leads to the hilarious results of Kevin Smith getting pissy because everyone should love his mediocre project. Sure, a lot of the negative reviews are from the incel cunts who hate everything made with a female lead, but a lot of He-Man fans have not liked getting slapped in the face repeatedly with "this is your hero now, and you better love her, also she is written to be pretty unlikable".
It wasn't entirely Smith's fault that Netflix made a trailer hyping the dead guy, leading to inevitable feelings of betrayal by the fan base, but dedicating half to show to "I am a horrible person because I have aaaaaaangst" was not a winning move. The reviewers got this one wrong. It is not very good at all.