He-Man Has Been A Gay Icon Since The 80s, And The New Film Lands Right On Cue
He-Man has been read as a gay icon for more than 40 years, long before any Hollywood studio said it out loud. The muscle, the leather harness, the closeted prince with a double life: the subtext was never very sub.
Now Nicholas Galitzine is raising the Sword of Power in a new live-action Masters of the Universe, in cinemas from 5 June, with Jared Leto as Skeletor. The old conversation is loud again.
A prince, a secret, and a very familiar metaphor
Start with the premise. Prince Adam of Eternia spends his days as a soft, pastel-clad royal with no visible interest in women. Then he raises his sword, says the words, and becomes the most muscular man in the universe.
Only a tiny circle knows the truth. Critics have long read that double life as the closet, and it is hardly a leap. The cartoon scholar Jes Battis said the show “dealt in themes of queerness and secrecy”.
That body, that harness
Then there is the look. He-Man fights in a leather harness and fur briefs, his body framed as the entire point. Literature professor Michael G. Cornelius has noted how closely this mirrors the 1980s gay “clone” aesthetic, all muscle and leather and display. He-Man, he wrote, with his “leather strapping and furry underwear”, would have “blended right in”.
Men’s Health once reported that adult collectors of the toys split into three camps: gay men, bodybuilders and police officers. Make of that what you will.
Skeletor, the original drama queen
The supporting cast helps the reading along. He-Man never dates a woman, as academic Jeffery P. Dennis pointed out, yet his rivalry with Skeletor crackles with something warmer than hatred.
Pride ranked the show’s most queer-coded characters and called Skeletor “so clearly a queen”, a villain who can read a hero for filth and plainly wants more than a duel. Have you ever seen two enemies this invested in each other?
From accidental coding to in-joke
None of this was official. The cartoon aired 130 episodes from 1983, during a Reagan era when explicit gay characters were off the table, so any queerness lived in code.
The internet later made it text. In 2005, a fan video called Fabulous Secret Powers set He-Man clips to 4 Non Blondes’ What’s Up and turned him into a meme gay men claimed as their own.
Even Mattel has made peace with it. Rob David, the company’s vice-president of creative content, has said Mattel is “very comfortable” with He-Man’s gay audience.
Galitzine has played gay Legends (2015), Handsome Devil (2016), The Craft: Legacy (2020), Red, White And Royal Blue (2023) and Mary And George (2024), so when he swaggers out as He-Man this week, we’ll be adding Master Of The Universe to the list, and plenty of us will be watching with four decades of subtext in mind.
At DNA, we always knew He-Man was one of ours. The new film simply hands a younger crowd the chance to work it out too.
