What to Know
There’s nothing like some pronoun confusion to, well, confuse conservatives into thinking they’ve been had. That’s what happened for some after the He-Man movie trailer for Masters of the Universe was released and there was a nameplate shown in the preview with the words ‘he/him’ under He-Man’s disguise name, Adam Glenn. Almost immediately after the trailer dropped for the 2026 adaptation of the 1987 film, conservatives flew to X (formerly Twitter) to air their grievances.
Is there really anywhere else, besides maybe Truth Social, where conservatives might feel so comfortable to do so? In a thread on X about the alleged “woke” media surrounding the Masters of the Universe movie, some criticized using the film for a political agenda that includes pronouns that seemingly have to be said outright. Others pointed out that the clip in the trailer is literally a joke.
Now they're making a Masters of the Universe and giving He-man pronouns.
— Jon Del Arroz | Pop Culture & Gaming 🎮 (@jondelarroz) January 22, 2026
These people won't stop until they ruin everything. pic.twitter.com/cqAYIfRHmM
The ‘He-Man’ pronoun joke is literally just a joke about He-Man’s name.
Masters of the Universe features He-Man as its star character, as all of the other iterations of the franchise have. The character is from another planet, and his name is, to humans at least, redundant and overly masculine to the point where it feels silly to be someone’s name. But that has always been a thing with the Masters of the Universe character. So for the trailer to feature him with he/him on the nameplate, it seems to be a clear nod to this and meant to be nothing more than a joke. But tell that to the critics ready to boycott the He-Man movie now.
The X post that started a thread of discussion about the pronoun joke was made by Christian author Jon Del Arroz.
He wrote, “Now they’re making a Masters of the Universe and giving He-man pronouns. These people won’t stop until they ruin everything.”
When someone commented to point out that the pronoun joke was meant to be just that, a joke, Jon doubled down.
“The whole crew is a diversity crew Netflix cast with a strong female lead who is going to be so perfect and better than him at everything like usual,” he wrote. “Did people not watch this?” I mean, the movie is from Amazon MGM Studios and not Netflix, but alright.
Someone else wrote in the X thread, “It’s not He-Man. It’s They-Man.”
Another user pointed out the sheer obvious nod to He-Man’s name with the subtitles under his alias on his nameplate in the trailer. “It’s a play on his name,” they wrote. “The hope is that by the end of the film, he goes from ‘He/Him’ to ‘He-Man’.”
At the start of Masters of the Universe, Adam is stuck in a desk job and very much unlike his He-Man royalty counterpart. The pronouns on his nameplate are a clear tongue in cheek moment to He-Man’s name that fans know him as from across different movies and cartoons. Unfortunately, conservatives just don’t get the joke. Like, at all.
