After the Season 3 finale, in which Glimmer loses her mother, a line from an earlier episode becomes way harsher: in Season 3 Episode 4, Glimmer, arguing with her mother, says: "What's the point? You'll always be around, telling me what I can't do."
The Season 3 finale where Adora loses all sympathy for Catra due to her self-destructive tendencies and denounces her actions as unforgivable is harder to watch after the release of the first half of Elena of Avalor Season 3, where Aimee Carrero's other character Elena finds out about her cousin Esteban's past treachery and also loses sympathy for him, and his self-destructive tendencies cause all bridges to be burnt between them regardless of how badly he wants to be forgiven. Suffice it to say, Elena's and Adora's expressions towards their respective loved ones' betrayals are almost identical. What hurt about said betrayals was that Adora/Elena loved this person (though Adora revealed this much later on), and that made it hard for them to forgive. In other words, both of Aimee Carrero's characters will be dealing with a fallout with an estranged loved one around the same time. In Season 4, Adora gives Catra a talk similar to one Elena gave to Esteban during their last "amicable" about how hurtful her actions have been, both to her and to a lot of people, and how she will do what it takes to make sure no one gets hurt again, even if it means casting her aside. Just like Catra, Esteban’s instinct is to run and hide from the people he hurt when things go south for him. Sure enough, Adora does eventually find it in her to forgive Catra, and so does Elena for Esteban, and that happens after Catra/Esteban hit rock bottom and and decide to make a Heroic Sacrifice for their loved ones.
After Season 4, it's jarring to realize that the Etherian Horde was a more humane offshoot of Horde Prime's galactic army, which is staffed by drone-clones who are not permitted free will, individuality, or even names. For all of its evil actions and human rights violations, the Etherian Horde allowed its soldiers to have individuality, free will, friendships, and leisure time, and never practiced the kind of mental violation that Horde Prime inflicts on his clones.
Several of Hordak's lines, physical details, and behaviors are harsher in hindsight after the revelations of "Destiny, Part 2".
In Hordak's flashback in "Huntara", if one looks closely, one can see that the other clones have green eyes, in contrast to Hordak's red eyes. Hordak's eyes turn green again when he is reassimilated back into the Galactic Horde in Season 5. His red eyes may have signaled that he was malfunctioning.
In "The Price of Power", Hordak tells a unit of Horde soldiers that "There is nothing I do not know," meaning that his minions should never even try to lie to him. This line is much more ominous after "Destiny, Part 2", after Horde Prime forcibly enters Hordak's mind and learns all his secrets. There is nothing Horde Prime does not know about his clones. It's especially sinister after Horde Prime and clones proclaim that Horde Prime knows all and sees all in Season 5.
In "Razz", Hordak tells Shadow Weaver, "If you have failed to condition [Catra] properly, you have no one but yourself to blame." In "Destiny, Part 2", Horde Prime arranges for Hordak to be "reconditioned". Hordak thinks of childrearing as conditioning because he himself was not raised, but was conditioned as a mass-produced clone.
Hordak's first outfit looks like standard Evil Overlord attire. Viewers later learn that this outfit was a clone uniform recolored in black and red while the other clones wear white and gray versions of the same armor, in keeping with Horde Prime's claims that he brings light and casts out all shadows.
Worse, in "Light Spinner" we see Hordak without any armor on as machinery performs maintenance on his ports and re-attaches the armor. His bulky appearance is purely superficial as the armor is hiding a frail upper body with significant muscle loss, to the point that there's a gap between the ulna and radius bones in his forearms. When a piece of the machinery glitches and scrapes across his body he cries out and swats the equipment away in pain. When he retrieves the little tube of machinery without any armor on, his middle and ring fingers are unable to wrap around it properly and his expression goes wide-eyed, then turns shameful and resigned.
The small tube in question has prongs sticking out of it. Then "Destiny, Part 2" reveals that Horde Prime's "dreadlocks" are actually cables with prongs on the ends that he uses to interface with his clones via their neck ports. The broken cable might well have reminded Hordak of Prime, who cast him out to die when Hordak couldn't hide his physical "defect" anymore.
Several fans noticed that Hordak punishes minions and attacks opponents without ever putting his hands on them. Horde Prime violates Hordak's mind by touching Hordak's face with his hand and lifted him up by the neck before casting him out for his physical defect. Coupled with Prime's other uncomfortable touching of Glimmer, Catra, and his clone attendants, Hordak's inhibitions about hurting others with his hands might be due to more than just hiding his physical fragility.
In the Season 5 trailer, Horde Prime's clones are equipped with arm cannons as weapons. The arm cannon that Hordak built for himself in Season 4 was a larger version of the weaponry he used while fighting in Horde Prime's army.
After The Reveal in the series finale that Catra and Adora harboured feelings for each other the entire time and never acted upon them for their respective reasons, all while thinking that the other didn't feel the same, makes every single interaction they have up until Catra's Heel–Face Turn quite painful to watch, as they're literally two broken girls who want nothing more than being with each other.
It also makes Double Trouble's "The Reason You Suck" Speech all the more brutal, as they clearly saw through Catra's facade the entire time. Bringing her palm up to cup "Adora"'s cheek, something Catra has probably always longed to do, only helped them drive home how she's done nothing but push away the literal love of her life. No wonder she sobs when they do it.
