10 pop culture characters who accurately depict mental health issues

Catra

Catra is certainly a willful nihilist in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power‘s first season. However, the second season starts to paint her as a morally ambiguous antagonist who’s approaching a redemption arc. With her additional arcs on mental and physical abuse (no thanks to Shadow Weaver or Hordak), season 2 starts to redefine her alliance — reversing a longstanding trope on villains and mental health in the process.

After a character is explicitly or implicitly diagnosed with a mental health condition, their character development has the unsavory habit of taking a villainous turn. The subtext seems to hint that mental health conditions are evil, which is why Catra’s ongoing transition away from evil is so critical. Recognizing her worth while implicitly straying away from the Horde’s goals in any context defrays the longstanding tropes that plague mental health issues.

Catra’s redemption arc is far from complete, because She-Ra season 2 has also solidified that her motivating factors are corrupt. Just like we’re living for Adora and Catra’s hopefully impending friends to enemies to lovers tropes, we’re also about She-Ra and the Princesses of Power subverting harmful tropes that conflate villainy to mental health conditions.