Well. It’s been a week and a half. I think I’ve recovered enough to put my feelings into coherent order. Maybe. So: Hordak’s reformatting.
I sobbed. Hard. Not at first, mind you. I’d prepared myself, you see? I knew it was going to be bad when he reunited with Prime. I expected humiliation, both emotional and physical. I expected cruel dismissal. I was ready for ridicule, beatings, jailing: the standard fare. I’m an incorrigible pessimist; I expected the worst.
But I didn’t know he could do that. I didn’t know that anyone could do that to Hordak. I didn’t know you could just.. just reach in and violate him like that. I didn’t know! I didn’t know that… that that horror was a possibility. That that was something that Hordak was risking.
But it just emphasizes how sick, how desperate Hordak is inside, doesn’t it? He must have known that this could happen. He knew his brother, what he was capable of. He knew, yet he prostrated himself and begged and pleaded and tried so hard to win that coveted favor back.
Look at this. Look at this goddamned mess. He’s wounded from the fight with Catra, suffering without the crystal properly powering his armor, not even able to stand, but he tries. He tries to convey his effort, tries to convey how hard he’s toiled to gain back this esteem he needs so badly. And it’s just nauseating to watch.
I know what he’s been through. Y’all know what he’s been through. The isolation, the chronic pain, the years of failures eating away at his meager self-confidence. The loss of Entrapta. We know how arduous it has been, how it’s culminated in this one desperate attempt to plead his case, and it’s nauseating to watch because while he’s on his knees, Horde Prime is just… unmoved.
Clean, cold, disinterested. Detached. For all of Hordak’s pained effort to impress, to make that connection, Horde Prime treats him like a passing curiosity, a little oddity to casually examine before ultimately deciding it unworthy.
The juxtaposition of them is so jarring: Prime calm and impeccably groomed and nonchalant, Hordak a scruffy, bedraggled mess, positioned like a prisoner, like Glimmer, rather than like a proud general returning home. And it just gets worse as Hordak continues, as Prime starts to chafe at actions Hordak clearly did not have his permission to take.
This is where it really distresses me, friends and neighbors: this moment when Hordak truly realizes that he’s made a grave error, that Horde Prime sees his efforts not as faithful tribute but as repulsive heresy. The moment he starts to back-pedal, proclaim his devotion more and more frantically. This is where his eyes go wide, and he starts to tremble, and you can feel his heart start to race, panicked and thudding. I often wonder if he has an arrhythmia because of his condition and if he’s fighting syncope right now fighting to stay stable while pleading This is where the desperation peaks, because he knows what’s coming, doesn’t he? He knows what Prime can do. You and I are about to learn, friends and neighbors, but he knows.
He knows that Prime can violate him in a way none of us on this here planet Earth can fathom, because we can’t be plugged into, our minds read like ragged open books. But he can. He can sense the danger, sense the final crumbling of everything he’s worked for, the futility of his pleading. He can feel those vulgar hands on his face, caressing and probing, a warning of what’s to come. He knows what can happen, what’s going to happen, yet he can’t move away. He’s too wounded and too… too devoted. Too dependent. Those hands, that voice, that awful man are all his undoing, but he needs that deceptive touch.
And this is the moment where I honestly don’t see how people can’t understand what Hordak is, how they can continue to think him a simple imperial warlord. How can they think that when he’s brought himself to this? How could they think that when he could have just stayed on Etheria. He could have taken it over. He could have ruled unchallenged, millions of hapless victims at his feet, the most powerful man on a magical planet bent entirely to his will. He could have done that. He could have just not built that portal. He could have… he could have been that supposed warlord.
He could have been with Entrapta. We know now that he loved her, loved her enough that, for a time, this sick devotion to Prime had waned, and he might have even broken free. He could have stayed on Etheria, hidden from his brother, ruling all with Entrapta by his side.
Instead, he’s a miserably terrified, shaking wreck, doomed to destruction by this narcissistic horror, because it was never about ruling anything. It was always about filling that internal emptiness with the only thing that mattered: brother’s esteem. Brother’s pride. Perhaps brother’s equivalent of love.
But brother feels no such thing, appreciates no such thing, cares for no such thing. Brother, apparently, doesn’t believe his lesser siblings should have the free will, the gall, to do anything that he hasn’t personally approved. Our dear brother Horde Prime sees Hordak’s dedicated efforts and toil as an abomination. And so, we get to watch what Hordak was desperately trying to avoid: his erasure.
So that’s it. That’s the scene. What did I get from it?
I got the ultimate confirmation that, rather than being the warlord instigator of Etherian conquest, Hordak is a hollow, suffering thing so desperate for his progenitor’s validation, that he will march himself straight to his own death to get it. I got the knowledge that all of the misery on Etheria stems not from territorial ambition, but from deep pain.
And I got tears, friends and neighbors. As I’m sure y’all know.
