Humanoid robot who appears in all nine "Star Wars" episodes, informally / MON 4-24-23 / One-act Oscar Wilde tragedy / Yammerer's sentence type / Foldable part of a Twister game / Crackle as a fire

Constructor: Emily Carroll

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME:"WHAT'S POPPIN'?" (61A: Slangy question of greeting ... or a hint to 18-, 23-, 40- and 53-Across) — things that you pop:

Theme answers:

• CORN KERNELS (18A: Edible parts of an ear)
• PIMPLES (23A: Benzoyl peroxide targets)
• CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE (40A: Item smashed before a ship's maiden voyage)
• WHEELIE (53A: Basic bicycle trick)

Word of the Day: SHE-RA (34D: Comic book superheroine whose name is an anagram SHARE) —

Adora, known by her alter-ego She-Ra, is a fictional superheroine in the Masters of the Universe franchise. She is introduced as the protagonist of the 1985 Filmation series She-Ra: Princess of Power and again appears in the 2018 reboot She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. A series of toys under her name was produced by Mattel in 1984.

Her first published appearance was in the 1984 minicomic "The Story of She-ra", which, like the subsequent He-Man and She-Ra animated feature film, introduced her as He-Man's twin sister, Princess Adora, kidnapped by Hordak in her infancy. That minicomic, which features He-Man, the Sorceress of Castle Grayskull, and Castle Grayskull itself, also features one of the very first published appearances of both Hordak and Catra. The minicomic was shipped with the 1985 released original She-Ra action-figure/doll.

In the 1985 series, She-Ra was intended to extend the appeal of the Masters of the Universe setting by being of interest to young girls in the same way that He-Man appealed to young boys. Filmation writers Larry DiTillio and J. Michael Straczynski created the backstory for the property. She-Ra was introduced in the movie The Secret of the Sword as Force Captain Adora of the Horde ruling Etheria, but turned out to be Princess Adora, the long-lost twin sister of He-Man, Prince Adam. (wikipedia)

Do people still say "WHAT'S POPPIN'?" Maybe. Seems plausible. These theme answers aren't so much things that pop as things that someone pops, so there's a slight agency problem with the whole concept, but basically it's all pretty straightforward and innocuous. Anodyne. Kinda dull. I absolutely did not need want or ask for the image of someone popping their PIMPLES all over my Monday (or any day) puzzle. That was unpleasant, however much it "fit" the theme. Otherwise, it's mostly just a yawn. The grid is much more boring than it might otherwise be because it's constructed so that there are only *two* non-theme answers longer than 6 (!?!?) letters long in the whole grid. That's 78 answers total, five of which are themers (7+ letters long), and two of which are 8 letters long, leaving a whopping 71 (!?!?!) answers of 6 letters or shorter. You cannot expect a grid to be very interesting with a make-up like that. THREEPIO is the most interesting thing in the grid, though PARMESAN is definitely the tastiest. Speaking of PARMESAN (41D: Freshly grated cheese at a trattoria), the "trattoria" in the clue had me thinking we were gonna get the more Italian-sounding "Parmigiano," but technically the cheese is either PARMESAN or "Parmigiano Reggiano" (both of them are PDOs, or "protected designations of origin," but outside the EU, the name "PARMESAN" can be used for similar cheeses (per wikipedia), whereas "Parmigiano Reggiano" always refers to the specifically Italian PDO). Cheese knowledge, that is what I'm getting out of the puzzle-blogging experience today. You take what you can get.