Masters of the Universe Confirms a Major Character Won’t Appear in Reboot (And How They Decided)

The Masters of the Universe movie will feature some of your favorite heroes and villains of Eternia, and the roster for both sides is stacked. Skeletor, He-Man, Teela, Evil-Lyn, Beast Man, Ram Man, Fisto, Trap Jaw, and more are all getting some screen time, but even with that larger lineup, there are still a bevy of characters who won’t be included. That includes one major character who is also a favorite of director Travis Knight, and in an interview with ComicBook, Knight revealed why they won’t appear in the movie and how they decided on the characters that ultimately did.

While villains like Beast Man, Trap Jaw, Goat Man, Tri-Klops, and more are all featured in the film, one major villain who isn’t included is Mer-Man, though that wasn’t for lack of trying on Knight’s part. “I really wanted to get Mer-Man in there. I couldn’t make it work. But if you look in the background, my prosthetics guy did me a solid. If you look in the background, there’s a dude who looks exactly like Mer-Man wandering around in the crowd. So there are a few of those things in there, just because we weren’t able to properly get them in the movie. But for the keen-eyed fan, they’ll see some cool stuff,” Knight said.

Travis Knight Reveals How He Decided On Which Characters To Use In Masters of the Universe

When you have a franchise that has been around as long as Masters of the Universe, there is no shortage of characters to choose from. When we asked how Knight managed to narrow down the list of who would appear in the film, he admitted his fandom of the franchise didn’t make it easy.

“Film is a time-based art. You only have so much time to tell the story that you want to tell and it does have to be focused…You want to have a really kind of focused point of view on the story that you’re trying to tell, and what the emotional content is, and then everything is built around that,” Knight said.

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“So because this really was Adam’s story, it meant that all the other things had to be in service of his story, you find nuance, you find depth, you find complexity in all those other characters. But it’s obvious, the more people, the more characters you stack in there, the less you can do with them. And so at some point, I was just being a ridiculously irresponsible fanboy as opposed to a filmmaker,” Knight said. “But the thing about this universe and these characters is that it’s so rich. It’s dense. It’s got over 40 years of history, of mythology.”

“So we really just scratch the surface of the kind of things you can do in this world. I’m lucky, I feel very fortunate that I was able to get some of my favorites in there, Ram Man, and Fisto, and Mekaneck,” Knight said.

Mer-Man isn’t the only character missing from the reboot lineup, either, as the heroes have their own major missing character in Orko. As Knight said though, the more characters you throw in, the less time everybody gets, but the good news is that if the first film is successful, Mer-Man and Orko will be perfect characters to bring some shine to in the sequel.

Masters of the Universe is set to hit theaters on June 5th, 2026.

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