#trap-jaw? who's her counterpart? is she just there to be played off/against catra?

[birindale]

Since you've done so much work uncovering the origins of Princess of Power, I was wondering if you know anything about this question: WHY DOES SCORPIA EXIST? Out of the named villains in the She-Ra pilot, we had Hordak, who was created by Larry DiTillio (or DiTillio + Straczynski) for the "He-Man's twin was raised by villains from outer space" plot, with an earlier name "Reaper". We had Mantenna, Leech and Grizzlor, who are more difficult to figure out if they were story-first or started as boys' toys. Catra was developed by Justine Dantzer as one of the earlier Princess of Power toy concepts. Shadow Weaver seems to be the same deal as Hordak, just no toy. But Scorpia? It seems like Dantzer and her fellow doll designers were going with Catra as She-Ra's sole antagonist, other characters being good. Her monstrous design with tail and pincers might suggest an origin with the MotU team, but I've never seen concept art. And DiTilio's script introduced her as just another lieutenant of Force Captain Adora's alongside others. It's all baffling.

Hmm!! Good question, I know she was a Filmation original, because her toy rights were in that bundle... My instinct is that she was a creation of Larry DiTillio and/or J. Micheal Straczynski in their efforts to flesh out the Horde. The Mantenna-Leech-Grizzlor trio I'm inclined to attribute to Mattel, since Dave Capper came up with the line & presumably the 'mind-control bat' thing, and they all seem very action-feature-based, you know? Mantenna has bug eyes, Leech has suction cups, Grizzlor's furry... they all say "toy first" to me.

Scorpia, though. Knowing she originated with Filmation, my bet would be that they wanted to introduce more female characters to the Horde. If nothing else, to give Linda Gary something to do. She was designed by Dale Hendrickson, as we can see on her model sheets (god bless Filmation's labeling practices):

(images from MOTUCfigures.com)

But the female characters were sort of his specialty, so it's not terribly surprising he'd take point with supervision by Diane Keener & Herb Hazelton. (Diane Keener, of course, being the one who designed Filmation's She-Ra model).

I don't think I've ever seen any Scorpia concepts either, come to think of it. And people don't seem to ask about her in interviews as much, so there's less information to be had. Hmm... I think our next step would be finding some LD/JMS interviews where they even mentioned her. It has to have come up at some point, right?