The story of Season Three picks up where Season Two left off, with Shadow Weaver having arrived on Bright Moon. Adora heals the ailing Shadow Weaver in exchange for knowledge, and Shadow Weaver decides to fight for the Rebellion against Hordak, telling Adora that she is a First One. Light Hope confirms this, and Adora seeks out a message from Mara about her identity in the Crimson Waste. At the same time, Hordak sends Catra into the Crimson Waste as punishment.
Hordak reveals himself to be the clone of an alien, Horde Prime, and that he somehow landed on Etheria and built his army from nothing. He wishes to build a portal in order to reach Horde Prime and bring his armies to Etheria, and Entrapta helps him, both with the portal and with his failing armor. She and Hordak begin to become friends, while Adora becomes friends with Huntara, another Horde defect like herself, in the Crimson Waste. Together they arrive at Mara's crashed ship.
Catra takes a liking to the Crimson Waste, using intimidation to get locals to serve her. She takes command of a large band of ruffians from Tung Lashor and pursues Adora, who listens to an ancient recording from Mara about reality as they know it. Etheria has no stars because Mara cut Etheria off from the rest of the universe, from the Horde, placing it in a completely empty realm known as Despondos. She urges no one to ever create a portal to allow this to be reversed, but Catra captures Adora, takes her sword, and intends to use it as the key to open a portal.
Entrapta and Hordak's friendship grows to the point where Entrapta almost doesn't want Hordak to open a portal and leave, but when Catra arrives with exactly what they need to do so, Hordak goes ahead with it. Before he can however, Glimmer teams up with Shadow Weaver to teleport numerous Princesses directly from Bright Moon to the Fright Zone. Once there, the group attempt to free Adora while Entrapta decides stop the portal being opened, but as a result of Catra's actions it ends up opened anyway.
Adora wakes up in the Fright Zone with her memory wiped, but ill at ease, as her memories slowly return. Although no one believes her, she sees reality starting to fall apart and takes action, trying to reach the portal to close it, only to find it not in Hordak's lab. She presses on with guidance from Razz, dogged by Catra, until she recovers her friends and eventually defeats Catra. As reality nearly completely unravels, Angella arrives and sacrifices herself to halt the expansion of the portal, saving Etheria and allowing Adora (as She-Ra) to close the portal for good and rout Catra and Hordak.
It is the shortest season, as Season 1, 4 and 5 all have 13 episodes and Season 2 has 7 episodes.
Season Two and Season Three were planned as part of one 13-episode arc, but were released as two separate seasons. The writers did not know whether the episodes would be released as one season or two.[1]
Season 3 was summarized by showrunner ND Stevenson in the form of a number of emojis on Twitter (link to a number of screenshots including Season 3, as the original tweet is gone), as shown by this image.
