Okay I really need to do this as it’s been building up for a very long time. I want to say I REALLY REALLY LOVE Mumm-Ra as a character. I love his design, both of them, and I love his personality.
That beign said Mumm-Ra was the reason I even got into Thundercats. I was curious about him and why he seemed to change his form of course at the time I thought he could only do that under very specific circumstances and it was rare. Just remember this was before I saw the show so I didn’t know how it all worked. Now that I’ve seen the show and understand how it works I can’t say I am complaining. His ever living form is AWESOME!
Lie dude LOOK at him. http://cdn.smosh.com/sites/default/files/ftpuploads/bloguploads/0713/racist-cartoons-mummra2.jpg LOOK AT HIM!http://www.tochio.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Mumm-Ra.jpg
AAAAAHHHHHHH! sorry i had a moment. Of course I am probably weird for saving depending on that animator’s he looks pretty “hot” sometimes as well. https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRMxD6JF1q8Cz0k8mI6zrld0pH-V7wu04VoBsB7YaA_vFgxrF_H Bow chicka bow wow. Shuddup let me be a dork for awhile
Putting aside that Mumm-Ra just interests me. He’s lived a long time and done a lot of things even managing to rule third earth but kind of leaving people to do whatever they wanted while he slept. of course that changed when the space invaders err I mean thundercats and mutants came along but meh.
Mumm-Ra has a rather interesting personality too. Yes, he’s evil. We know he’s evil. we know he’s super powerful and can do basically whatever he wants when he wants. But then again there’s more to it than that which become apparent later. Mumm-Ra hints at it in the episode he makes his first appearance in but later we see it elaborated on. His powers come at a price. He might be the biggest threat on third earth but he’s not the main source of evil. As becomes apparent later he’s a servant to something even worse than himself.
The ancient spirits of evil which don’t seem like much in the beginning but become more active later on and they are NASTY and they DON’T like failure as Mumm-Ra came to find out the hard way.
But we know he probably thinks it was worth it in the end. That is until the episode “The Heritage” which seemed to imply that Mumm-Ra didn’t want to be their slave anymore. But by the end of that he discovers he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. The spirits give him power but they can ALSO not give him anything if he ticks them off.
While later seasons of the story seemed to make him seem less threatening with a few notable exceptions it does give his personality more layers. In the past he seemed to come off as this horrible nasty heartless creature with no sense of compassion and then Ma-Mutt comes into the picture. http://65.media.tumblr.com/20b63a28d8724cf7bc17b5bc07216a38/tumblr_o6oqguWSBf1r9st9ro1_400.jpg
While most might seem to consider Ma-Mutt pointless and some probably believe it ruined our favorite mummy’s character for me it only made him better. Why? Because it showed as evil as Mumm-Ra is he is capable of loving something and being loved back. Yes, dogs are loyal to their masters but mumm-Ra doens’t really abuse the dog. yes he’s mean to him sometimes but who doens’t yell at their dog when it’s getting on your nerves? XD Plus for the most part his relationship with his “horrible hound” is adorable.
There’s also the fact that as the series progressed and Mumm-Ra seemed to get more and more desperate to rid the planet of those pesky cats and his masters got meaner and meaner to him he NEEDED somebody to give him some kind of comfort and as we see in 'the last day" he’s devastated when the spirits separate him and his dead doggy.
Sitting back and thinking about it all can you really blame him for the crazy stuff he does in the mini-series “return to thundera” he spends thousands of millions of years working on getting a planet under his rule and then these aliens come and start smashing down everything he’s done. By the end he looses everything, even his pyramid and he’s sent to another planet, the home planet of the pesky aliens and forced by his masters to destroy the planet and get rid of the cats. So he does the best he can to do it even basically exhausting himself and destroying the very thing keeping the planet together and what happened? He discovers the cats have user their magical macgufin sword to fix it all. Can you really blame him for being so mad about it? http://thundercats.org/forums/data/avatars/l/26/26022.jpg?1463786998
By the end of the series for me anyway I couldn’t herlp but WANT him to win because by then the cats seemed less like heros and more like.. well and issue. But I’m biased. I loved him at the beginning for being evil awesome and by the end I felt sorry for him. As I said before he became a “woobie”. what is a woobie? well somebody you feel bad for and want to hug.
So where was I going with this? Oh yeah. I lvoe Mumm-Ra and think he’s the best written character on the show. He looks cool in both of his forms and it’s fun to watch his antics. Plus he rocks that man in a skirt look. http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/scale_small/1/19745/713826-mummra_flame_sword2.jpg Nice legs, mumsy. He was a solid villain with a solid established character which was great.
Also there are other thigns to consider about Mumm-Ra that makes him awesome. He’s very smart. Not just in magic arts but science too. I mean he actually cloned Panthro after all, though he does seem to not like technology very much as he’s made clear in quite a few episodes and most everything he does has the magic aspect to it and not tech. Mechanical Plague seems to be the exception along with that awful Ma-Mutt’s confusion episode. >_<
Also I have to consider that in a lot of episodes when it’s just lion-o vs mumm-ra mumm-ra wins that is until lion-o has to summon his cat posse. This isn’t an RPG game, Lion-O, don’t cheat! Yes I consider him summoning the other thundercats to help him cheating. I mean how often does Mumm-Ra have people in the same room as him helping him fight them? Yes he did sometimes but it was mostly him against everyone else.
I have one last thing to say about him now. I don’t ship Mumm-Ra with anyone. I really don’t see him as a person who wants or NEEDS a love interesting. Yes, he’s shown interest in a few of the female characters. (ewww) but in the end he never got with them. I don’t want him with any girls OR guys. Let Mumm-Ra just be single, please, and if you are pairing him with somebody please let it be a joke.
Having said that, Mumm-Ra was usually easily defeated by his reflection…Skeletor went toe to toe against the most powerful man in the universe after all. But in a magic duel I would definitely give Mumm-Ra the edge with his magic.
I would have to agree with you. Magic and even sword skills. Not sure about how the 2011 Mumm-Ra would compare to 2002 Skeletor…I would have to say Skeletor.
