PrimeWire

Willow passes the Bechdel test. Quite well, actually.
(In case you’re unfamiliar, the test is quite simple. Three criteria. First, there must be two female characters with names. Second, these two must speak to each other. Third, they must speak to each other about something other than a man. Sound easy? It’s not. Apparently! A shocking number of films fail spectacularly at the Bechdel test.)
But here’s my problem. It’s Sorsha. You wouldn’t think it would be Sorsha, but it’s Sorsha. Hear me out. Sorsha is the daughter of the evil Queen Bavmorda. Sorsha is a warrior, an excellent fighter. She dresses in the armor of a man and is not discovered by other characters to be female until she takes off her helmet and lets down that bright red hair. (We get it, Ron Howard, we get it.) It’s predicted at the very start of the film that she will betray her mother. So of course she does.
And what turns her? Well…
Madmartigan, another excellent fighter turned theif, is played by Val Kilmer as a medieval fantasy Indiana Jones. (Don’t believe me? Watch it again. That’s Indiana goddamn Jones right there.) And at one point Madmartigan is smacked in the face with some love dust by a Brownie. (The Brownies are another issue, don’t get me started.) The first lady type he sees while he’s all gakked up on goo-goo potion? Yeah. It’s Shorsha. A women who has, up until this point, fought him (and won), captured him, mocked him, and kicked him in the face. He’s drunk on fairy potion number 5, so he starts confessing an undying love for her. It’s sappy poetry and he can’t even remember it in the morning. She confronts him about it and he admits he can’t remember it. But that’s it. She’s turned. It takes her a little while yet, but all it took to turn a warrior princess away from her all powerful mother was a boy to tell her she’s puuuurdy.
Sure, it’s passes the Bechdel test, but the test paper is smeared in ketchup. Ew.

(I know that was a lot, but I remember this differently from watching it as a small child, and now I’m all worked up about it.)