Last week, Cartoon Network premiered a Powerpuff Girls TV special, Power of Four. In the special, the girls find out they have an older sister named Blisstina or Bliss for short. Not only was she created before the other three, she’s black! There is finally a black Powerpuff Girl and nobody in the episode questions why she’s black and she actually has hips. And they honestly shouldn’t because the professor created these girls in his lab in the first place. So they don’t necessarily have to be white anyway. Also Bliss was a teenager, meaning that she actually grew up. So I wonder if the other girls will eventually grow up as well.
The professor pretty much admits that she was his favorite child. Especially since she had all the attributes of the other girls at once. She was “sweet, strong, and incredibly smart” making her more multidimensional and instead of having one character trait. Plus she had blue hair making her more unique. I would have loved if they had given her an afro or at least some curls to portray some natural hair.
In the movie, Blossom and Buttercup think that Bliss is just Bubbles’ imaginary friend because they haven’t seen her. And I thought she was gonna be imaginary too. But she shows up and saves her sisters at the movie theater and the professor explains that he made Bliss with chemical W and that her powers are unstable. In the flashback, they show Bliss throwing temper tantrums and blowing up the house over trivial things. When I see this I immediately think “Wow! So Bliss is an angry black woman now? Never mind that Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup are always fighting, but when Bliss gets upset she explodes? Are they serious?”
And the other girls have to show Bliss how to be a superhero because she didn’t come out of the test tube fighting crime like they did. She had a normal life on a deserted island all by herself. Except for her little elephant friend Mee which I’ll get to later. But it was weird to me that Bliss had to learn how to be a hero while it was just instinct and self explanatory for the other girls. Honestly, she just needed practice in controlling her powers. Here’s my theory on why this was the case. Bliss is clearly more powerful than the other girls. While their creation resulted in three separate vessels to contain their abilities, Bliss’s creation resulted in one. Meaning that all of the power from chemical W was contained in her alone and chemical X was split into Bubbles, Blossom, and Buttercup. This made their powers more controllable and easier to use, plus they could practice with each other and learn with each other. Bliss was the only one of her kind, making it harder to learn and the professor didn’t have any experience with superpowers so who was she supposed to turn to? Of course she ran away. And the professor thought she exploded and died so he didn’t go looking for her.
I don’t like that the professor wouldn’t let her go out and save the day with the others. Sure, at first her powers were unstable but she learned to use them properly. Bliss even showed her progress in the simulation. She literally scored perfect on every test. But for whatever reason, the professor thought her perfect score was luck even though there were multiple tests. Being lucky works once and not many, consecutive times. At that point it’s skill. This scenario kind of reminded me of how when Black people excel at something other people will call it luck even after they continue to succeed. For example, Serena Williams and her haters. She won a tournament while pregnant and white people still question her legitimacy. Or when black people get into schools over white people, it was luck and affirmative action and not their amazing grades and extracurricular activities over mediocre white students. Furthermore, I remember when Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup (I’m gonna call them BBB from now on) gained their ability to form different shapes and animals to use in combat. They literally were allowed to perfect this new ability while battling a pig monster and the professor didn’t stop them.
Coming back to the little elephant Mee, I was so surprised when it turned out to be HIM. But it makes sense because he always transforms himself into some object or person that gets close to the girls and manipulates them into turning against each other. Flashback to the original PPG when Buttercup and Blossom were fighting and he used the opportunity to become Octi and kidnap Bubbles. I should’ve saw HIM coming when Mee started talking and transforming. Especially when Mee turned into a snake. That was literally an allusion to the snake from the Adam and Eve story from the Bible.
Another thing from the Power of Four that I appreciated was when all of the girls combined to form a giant PPG. Not only did it remind me of giant monster and robot battles from anime, Power Rangers, and Voltron, it also reminded me of Dynamo from the OG PPG. I was like yaaaaass Dynamo! It made me want to go watch that episode again. For those of you who don’t know who Dynamo is, why are you even reading this? Nah, I’m jk. But Dynamo was a giant robot that the Professor created in the OG PPG because he wanted the girls to be safe while fighting a blowfish monster. She had missiles and killer dance moves. The giant PPG that was formed during this special was more of a spiritual representation and not a robotic one. I loved how they had a giant sword and Bliss had to pull them together.
At the end, I’m happy that the only reason Bliss had to leave was to put Saturn back into its natural orbit. I was afraid that she was going to die or blow up like Bunny from the OG PPG. Since she has a specific reason for leaving maybe she will appear later on in the series. I hope that’s the case because she would be an excellent addition in my opinion.
Overall, I thought the TV special was great and I loved the references to the OG PPG. I also loved that they finally gave the PPG some diversity because this has been one of my favorite shows since childhood.
