{"id":505477,"date":"2026-06-18T04:47:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T04:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/505477\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T04:47:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T04:47:18","slug":"star-treks-william-shatner-played-a-lesser-known-version-of-a-he-man-villain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/505477\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek&#8217;s William Shatner Played A Lesser Known Version Of A He-Man Villain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/intro-1781289319.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2193336\/star-trek-william-shatner-he-man-villain-keldor-skeletor\/\" data-post-id=\"2193336\" data-slide-num=\"0\" data-slide-title=\"Star Trek's William Shatner Played A Lesser Known Version Of A Major He-Man Villain: \" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"William Shatner at the Saturn Awards.\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    Jb Lacroix\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Netflix&#8217;s &#8220;Masters of the Universe&#8221; animated series boldly went where no He-Man had gone before by recruiting &#8220;Star Trek&#8221; legend William Shatner as a lesser-known version of his most famous villain. Yes, Captain Kirk himself is a key player in the sequel series from Kevin Smith\u00a0\u2014 one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2178646\/best-tv-show-revivals-ranked\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">best TV revivals of all time<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;Masters of the Universe: Revolution&#8221;\u00a0picks up years after the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2181990\/he-man-original-cartoon-bizarre-strangely-logical-approach-violence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">original 1983 &#8220;He-Man&#8221; series (which had to limit its amount of violence)<\/a>. It dives deep into the lore to develop Skeletor (Mark Hamill) and explain his history before he was just a skull-faced agent of chaos. Shatner plays Keldor, the man Skeletor used to be. More importantly, he&#8217;s\u00a0King Randor&#8217;s (Diedrich Bader) half-brother.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In flashbacks, the show reveals that his face was burnt off when Hordak (Keith David) gave him the Havoc staff. This jaw-dropping reveal was hinted at in the original mini comics from the 1980s, and it was also referenced in the 2002 &#8220;He-Man&#8221; animated series, but it was never explored in as much depth as in &#8220;Masters of the Universe: Revolution.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                Kevin Smith knew he had to recruit William Shatner<\/p>\n<p>                                             &#13;<br \/>\n                                                    &#13;<br \/>\n                            &#13;<br \/>\n                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"gallery-image \" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/kevin-smith-knew-he-had-to-recruit-william-shatner-1781289320.jpg\" data-slide-url=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2193336\/star-trek-william-shatner-he-man-villain-keldor-skeletor\/\" data-post-id=\"2193336\" data-slide-num=\"1\" data-slide-title=\"Star Trek's William Shatner Played A Lesser Known Version Of A Major He-Man Villain: Kevin Smith knew he had to recruit William Shatner\" width=\"780\" height=\"438\" alt=\"Keldor in Masters of the Universe: Revolution\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                    Netflix<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">William Shatner told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment-arts\/tv\/story\/2024-03-12\/william-shatner-interview-masters-of-the-universe\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Los Angeles Times<\/a> that he wasn&#8217;t sure how to bring Keldor to life, saying, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know what to do about it, an ancient animated character. How do you look for some way to do it in a new fashion, add some character to it? I didn&#8217;t know how to make choices so I just sort of intuitively went along.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">While Shatner may seem like an odd choice for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvline.com\/2130678\/most-underrated-animated-shows-all-time\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">underrated animated show<\/a>, Kevin Smith told SFX Magazine\u00a0(per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cinemablend.com\/sfx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">MovieWeb<\/a>) that he had a specific motivation for doing so. Smith explained, &#8220;When we were talking about casting the role, his was the first name that came up. I said, &#8216;If we do this, then Captain Kirk and Luke Skywalker will act opposite each other. Like, we&#8217;ll have them actually chewing the scenery around each other.&#8217; And for an old-school pop culture junkie from the &#8217;70s like myself, that would be worth the journey alone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This makes &#8220;Masters of the Universe: Revolution&#8221; something of an unofficial crossover between &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; and &#8220;Star Trek.&#8221; Actors and fans alike have long wondered what the two franchises would look like together. But it&#8217;s likely never going to happen considering how different they are, and because they&#8217;re owned by completely separate companies.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; Jb Lacroix\/Getty Images Netflix&#8217;s &#8220;Masters of the Universe&#8221;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-505477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}