Episode 07 – In the Shadows of Mystacor

In which Adora sees demons everywhere.

Intending to have a peaceful holiday, Adora, Glimmer and Bow are on their way to Mystacor, an invisible kingdom that’s home to Glimmer’s aunt Castaspella, as well as all of Etheria’s other magicians. Unfortunately, the vacation doesn’t prove as relaxing as they’d hoped, partly because Castaspella is a rather needy, snipey kind of person, but mostly because Shadow Weaver has sent a great big shadow demon to follow them and stir up trouble.

Castaspella: “Do you three always look this derpy?”

The shadow demon works by sneaking around behind Adora, letting her catch an occasional glimpse of it, and whispering subversive comments, making her believe that she’s going mad. It eventually leads her to accidentally destroy an artefact in the lunarium, a room in Mystacor’s palace that uses moon energy to keep the invisibility shield working. Luckily, she doesn’t destroy the shield mechanism itself, but Castaspella is nonetheless sincerely displeased, and I can’t really blame her.

Adora gets a chance to redeem herself pretty quickly: that evening, Castaspella is using the power of an eclipse to recharge Mystacor’s batteries, but Shadow Weaver disrupts the ceremony. Adora is the only one who doesn’t get knocked out by Shadow Weaver’s spell, and thus it’s up to her to finish the ceremony and keep the shield up. She somehow does this by waving her sword around and emitting some light beams. I’m not sure how this works, but I’m not sure I care either.

Adora: “Bright flashy lights for the win!”

In today’s adventure…

Today we learn that if your friend starts going a bit mental and insisting that there are baddies hiding everywhere, you should probably believe her. If you want to be a little less flippant, I suppose you could call this a demonstration of the need to always listen to your friend’s concerns, rather than dismissing them.

Character checklist

Again, it’s a relatively tight cast list, consisting of Adora, She-Ra, Glimmer, Bow, Castaspella, Shadow Weaver, Catra, various inhabitants of Mystacor, and there’s also a quick cameo for Hordak.

Shadow Weaver: “I love life in the spotlight.”

Oh No, Bow!

Castaspella is quick to note that Glimmer isn’t wearing a jumper that she’d previously knitted for her. Bow is equally quick to point out that he is wearing the socks Castaspella gave him. I think in Bow’s head this was supposed to be a helpful comment, but obviously it’s anything but.

Does it have the Power?

I’d call this one another relatively lacklustre effort, largely because of the characters it focuses on. Castaspella really is quite annoying: her constant passive-aggressive behaviour makes it inexplicable that Glimmer would ever consider Mystacor a relaxing place to visit, and it makes Castaspella pretty unlikeable. We also get some back story for Shadow Weaver: she was once a sorceress from Mystacor called Light Spinner, but she hungered for power and was seduced by the Horde. That’s fine, but to be honest, the revelation that Shadow Weaver comes from Mystacor doesn’t come with any particular impact: it doesn’t change how we view her, nor does it give any insight into why she does what she does. For me, she’s the least compelling character on the series, and sadly this doesn’t do anything to change that.

Adora is the other lead here, and I wouldn’t say this episode does much for her either. I think that we were supposed to view these events as Adora finally shaking off Shadow Weaver’s influence over her, but I kind of thought she did that about five episodes ago, so I wasn’t exactly invested. Topping it off was the oddly technobabbly ending, which seemed to give Adora victory purely because the episode needed to finish. All this in mind, I’d have to say this episode is a bit of a failure.

Episode 06 – System Failure

In which some robots give our heroes the run-around.

This week we meet Princess Entrapta, who is well known across Etheria for her technological inventions. She’s currently trying to understand a large cache of First Ones technology consisting primarily of robots, but unfortunately she’s triggered something which has made all the robots go crazy and attack her.

Naturally, the best friend squad are on hand to try to recruit Entrapta, but when they arrive at her castle, they find it apparently deserted. It doesn’t take long for the robots to reveal themselves, and in the ensuing chaos, the team gets split up. She-Ra and Glimmer meet Entrapta and learn about her recent experiments, while Bow finds himself stuck in the kitchen with three cowardly kitchen staff.

Bow: “Quick time-out to play on my Gameboy, lads.”

When a large robot attacks She-Ra, Glimmer and Entrapta, it becomes evident that it’s been infected with some sort of virus to make it turn evil. Worryingly, the virus quickly spreads to She-Ra’s sword – which as we’ll all remember is First Ones technology – and thence to She-Ra herself. She involuntarily changes back into Adora, and spends the rest of the episode feeling ill and thus being completely useless.

Entrapta explains that the virus started when she inserted a newly-discovered First Ones disc into one of her computers, so Glimmer suggests going back to Entrapta’s lab and destroying said disc. This seems a great plan, but without She-Ra to help, the huge number of robots in the lab proves something of a hindrance. Luckily, Bow has by now convinced the kitchen staff to stand up for themselves and fight back, so with their help, Entrapta is able to destroy the disc and deactivate the robots. This has the happy side effect of curing Adora, and of course, the episode ends with Entrapta signing on the Rebellion’s dotted line – but, ominously, she also begins work on repairing the disc with the intention of making it work better next time…

Entrapta: “Just another perfectly normal day in my house.”

In today’s adventure…

Bow convinces the kitchen staff that everyone has their own special skill and they don’t need superpowers to be able to accomplish things. This is all well and good in theory, but the kitchen staff’s skills seem to be limited to throwing food at robots, which admittedly pays off today, but it’s not really something you’d expect to be useful all that often.

Character checklist

A very limited range today, just Adora, She-Ra, Glimmer, Bow, Entrapta, and the kitchen staff, who unless I missed it didn’t get names.

She-Ra: “Maybe there are some more characters hiding down here?”

Insults

None of these, probably because Catra wasn’t around.

Does it have the Power?

It’s by no means as awful as some of Filmation’s lower quality offerings – I still wake up in a cold sweat when I remember The Wizard – but this is by some distance the worst of the series so far. The vast majority of the episode consists of nothing more than our heroes either sneaking or running around the castle, trying to avoid the robots, which gets tired pretty quickly. Adora’s illness is also rather tedious, and Bow’s little sojourn with the kitchen staff seems like a less compelling repeat of the story we got only a few weeks ago with Flowers for She-Ra. Saving the episode somewhat is Entrapta herself, who’s a pretty fun character, obsessed with scientific experimentation and utterly oblivious to her own and others’ safety, but unfortunately she’s not really enough to stop this one being a miss.

Episode 05 – The Sea Gate

In which Sea Hawk explains that setting ships on fire is sensible.

Glimmer’s clearly been thinking about the Princess Alliance: today, she comes to the council meeting with a fully-formed plan, which is streets ahead of anything her old Filmation counterpart achieved. I like this far more capable Glimmer. Anyway, the plan is to recruit Princess Mermista to the rebels’ cause, since anyone coming to Bright Moon by ocean would have to pass through the Saelenius Sea Gate and would thus have to have Mermista’s permission. With Mermista on the Rebellion team, Bright Moon would be secure against Horde sea incursions.

So off go Adora, Glimmer and Bow to the port of Seaworthy, where they are seeking to hire a captain with a ship. This means the reintroduction of Sea Hawk, who has been reimagined as a gloriously insane braggart with unrivalled self-confidence. He does, however, claim to know Princess Mermista personally, so the deal is soon struck, and our team board Sea Hawk’s ship and begin their journey to Saelenius.

Bow: “This guy is just literally the coolest person I’ve ever seen!”

Shadow Weaver’s shadow spies have witnessed this conversation, and when they report back, Shadow Weaver sends Catra out to Saelenius as well to recapture Adora, accompanied by Scorpia – and I know I keep saying it, but this Scorpia is much better than the Filmation one, who was probably my least favourite member of the Horde due to her never doing anything interesting, coupled with sounding perpetually thick. The Dreamworks version of Scorpia is an exuberant, chatty, even friendly soul who genuinely made me laugh within her first two sentences.

When Adora, Bow, Glimmer and Sea Hawk arrive at Saelenius, they find the place eerily deserted – inhabited only by Mermista and one guard/butler/odd-job man. Mermista reveals that everyone else has fled because the Sea Gate is collapsing, so Glimmer strikes a deal: Mermista will join the Princess Alliance in exchange for Adora repairing the Sea Gate. Adora considers this possible because she’s found a bit of First Ones writing explaining how the Sea Gate works, just in case you were wondering: it would be a bit of a random deal if Adora didn’t have a clue how to do it.

Mermista: “Okay – this is odd.”

Adora transforms into She-Ra and channels energy through her sword back into the Sea Gate, which would probably have done the trick if Catra and Scorpia didn’t show up at this point, blasting energy bolts at the Gate and further destabilising it. Catra tries to distract She-Ra by wittering at her, while Bow, Sea Hawk, Glimmer and Mermista take on Scorpia and her massive Horde warship. Naturally, it’s an ultimate victory for the Rebellion, and Mermista decides to sign up. The whole thing ends with a completely mental sea shanty sung by Sea Hawk and Bow, so that’s nice.

In today’s adventure…

If today’s story taught me anything, it’s that being a demented sea captain with a predilection for setting your ships on fire is actually a great career choice. It seems to work out well enough for Sea Hawk. There’s also some inspirational stuff in there about being better off with friends, but I’m preferring to focus on the arson aspect.

Character checklist

The main players today are Adora, She-Ra, Glimmer, Bow, Sea Hawk, Mermista, Catra, Scorpia, Shadow Weaver, Lonnie, Kyle, and the lizard guy. There’s also a scene in the council chamber for Queen Angela, Spinnerella, Netossa, and someone else who I couldn’t identify.

Scorpia: “Yes, I do struggle to use a knife and fork.”

Insults

Once again, it’s Catra leading this rather limited field, with a heartfelt “dumb” addressed to She-Ra.

Oh No, Bow!

While She-Ra is repairing the Sea Gate, Bow sees fit to interrupt her and ask how it’s going. This distracts She-Ra and nearly causes her to do something wrong. Bow’s lucky it’s not his fault the entire Sea Gate falls down, otherwise I’d be ripping him to shreds.

And damn him, but he’s still on about the best friend squad, and seems to have even recruited Sea Hawk to join him in this ill-advised phrase. Bow, please just drop it.

Mermista: “I’m already having second thoughts about this rebellion business.”

Does it have the Power?

Here’s a great indication that this series isn’t afraid to sometimes go completely out of its mind. Sea Hawk is a fantastic character, larger-than-life and extremely funny. His voice actor understands exactly what level he needs to be played – or rather, overplayed – and the result is brilliant. And he’s not completely one-note either: a late scene with Glimmer reveals unexpected depth to him. He’s a great addition to the series.

I’m less convinced by the deadpan Mermista: she’s fine for now, but I can anticipate she might get a bit irritating if she doesn’t do anything other than offer bitingly sarcastic comments. On the Horde side of things, Scorpia’s great too: a really funny character, who rather lulls you into a false sense of security with her cuddly nature, so much so that you can’t quite believe she works for the Evil Horde – that is, until she fires energy bolts at the Sea Gate without so much as a second thought.

The story itself is no more than workaday: something’s broken, She-Ra fixes it. There’s nothing here that really feeds into the greater back story surrounding the First Ones, or She-Ra’s powers. All we really see that moves the main story along is Catra once again trying to persuade Adora to return to the Horde, which is a conversation I kind of wish they’d stop having now. As a standalone episode, though, this is excellent, quite possibly my favourite episode of the series to date.

Episode 04 – Flowers for She-Ra

In which Perfuma learns to do it herself.

Glimmer and Bow take Adora to the weekly Rebellion meeting, which Adora notes is somewhat under-attended. Glimmer explains that due to a massive defeat many years ago, most of the Princesses of Etheria now keep themselves to themselves, preferring to defend their own territories rather than unite to drive the Horde from the planet. With this new information revealed, it’s only a matter of time before Adora decides to bring all the Princesses back into the Rebellion. I can see it coming.

Glimmer: “Yeah, I’d probably be miserable too if I wore such horrible socks.”

In the meantime, though, the mission of the day is humanitarian aid. The kingdom of Plumeria is under attack by the Horde, and Princess Perfuma has asked Bright Moon for help. Queen Angela sends Adora, Glimmer and Bow to lead the mission to deliver supplies to Plumeria, leaving them with strict instructions not to get into a fight with the Horde. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to stick to that.

When the trio reach Plumeria, they discover that the once-verdant kingdom is now full of withering plants. The only tree that remains alive is the Heart Blossom, which luckily is the tree from which Perfuma draws all her powers. Perfuma explains that after the Horde began laying siege to the kingdom, the plants all developed a blight. She then drops the subject, preferring to throw a party and cover She-Ra, Glimmer and Bow in flowers, only returning to the topic of the blighted land by casually revealing that she expects She-Ra to heal all the plants. Obviously, She-Ra hasn’t got a clue how to do this, but agrees to try.

Perfuma: “Yeah, social distancing’s not really a thing here.”

Over in the Fright Zone, Shadow Weaver receives orders from an impatient Hordak, who wants the siege of Plumeria to come to a triumphant end. Consequently, Shadow Weaver steps up the assault, and very soon the Heart Blossom becomes infected with the blight. She-Ra’s attempts to heal it end in failure, and the Plumerians become disillusioned and despondent, even more so when She-Ra transforms back into Adora and admits she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

Adora does have one suggestion, though: why not attack the Horde and destroy their machinery causing the blight? This is such an obvious solution that it seems weird no one’s thought of this before. Perfuma and her people argue that they’re not strong enough to fight the Horde, but Adora and Glimmer persuade them that they need to at least try. With the Plumerians fighting alongside them, She-Ra, Glimmer and Bow easily defeat the Horde and cure the kingdom, after which Perfuma agrees to join the Rebellion and be the first to sign up to the reformed Princess Alliance.

Perfuma: “Hang on, wait, you’re Horde now?”

In today’s adventure…

This one’s a very clear example of “don’t expect the universe to solve all your problems for you if you won’t lift a finger to help yourself”. It’s pretty much that harsh as well; no point in kid gloves this week, apparently.

Character checklist

On the goody side, we’ve got Adora, She-Ra, Glimmer, Bow, Perfuma, Queen Angela, Spinnerella, Netossa, and the various inhabitants of Plumeria. Showing up for the baddies are Catra, Shadow Weaver, Hordak, Imp, and innumerable Horde Troopers. Adora’s old cadet squad also shows up: that’s Kyle, the as-yet-unnamed lizard guy, and a girl who we learn this week is called Lonnie.

Queen Angela: “To my left, the useful people. To my right, er, well, let’s move on.”

Insults

We only learn Lonnie’s name because Catra addresses her as “sweet, dumb Lonnie”. Otherwise, there are no insults this week.

Oh No, Bow!

Bow decides to boost his own status in Plumeria by telling stories (a.k.a. lies) about She-Ra’s enormous prowess against the Horde. I’m not really sure what he thinks he has to gain from this, but the result is that the Plumerians mob She-Ra, giving her vast quantities of fruit and forcing her to hold a baby. It’s left to Glimmer to defuse the situation, which isn’t much better, since Glimmer’s solution is to ask the Plumerians to form an orderly queue for their mobbing. If I were She-Ra, I’d be questioning my friends’ sanity.

It’s also worth noting that Bow makes another reference to the “best friend squad”, which really is dreadfully annoying. Luckily, this time Adora and Glimmer call him out on it, so hopefully he’ll drop it soon, but being honest, he seems to be awfully keen on this phrase.

Bow: “Wait, what? ‘Best friend squad’ is irritating? I had no idea.”

Does it have the Power?

Certainly does; we’re back on form after last week’s slightly less good offering. Taking the amazing Filmation episode Flowers for Hordak as its jumping-off point, the introduction of Perfuma serves as a great way in for what would appear to be the series format: every week, She-Ra and co. will meet and recruit a new Princess to the Rebellion. This will presumably continue until every Princess that we see in the opening credits has joined the team.

This episode remains as funny as the others have been, and it’s a lot easier to sympathise with Adora/She-Ra in this series than it was in Filmation, because she’s not all-knowing and is prone to making mistakes, as opposed to the smugly self-confident character in the earlier series. Here, we get to know Adora and really feel for her when things go wrong. Glimmer says it best at the end of the episode: “do you have any idea how annoying you’d be if you were perfect?”

Bow: “Hurrah! Wanton violence!”

It’s slightly harder to sympathise with Perfuma and her kingdom, who seem to be too stupid to see that they need to stand up against the Horde. I know the idea was that they were too scared – Perfuma touches on this at one point, noting that her power is to create flowers, rather than fight – but this mostly doesn’t come across, and they thus seem to be simply whinging. When they do get their mojo on, though, it’s a great moment. The victories in this series really seem to be earned, which means we care and – if we weren’t watching on the train – we might even cheer.

We’ve also got a bit more setup and back story: we learn here that Queen Angela’s husband, King Micah, was an early casualty of the Horde, and Angela is still rather upset about it. It’s just ambiguous enough that he might not be dead: maybe we’ll eventually meet him, though hopefully if we do he won’t be as useless as he was in Filmation. Meanwhile, Shadow Weaver assigns Catra the long-term task of bringing Adora back in, and sends out some creepy shadow creatures to spy on Adora’s every move. I expect this will form important plot points shortly.

All in all, it’s another great success. Let’s hope it remains this good all the way through. I’d say the chances are high.

Episode 03 – Razz

In which Catra succeeds by failing.

Adora, Glimmer and Bow arrive at Bright Moon, but it suddenly occurs to Bow that the people of Bright Moon really hate the Horde and it thus might not be a great idea if Adora comes waltzing in through the front gate wearing her silly white Horde uniform. They consequently smuggle her into Glimmer’s bedroom, where they tell her to turn into She-Ra while they go to get Queen Angela.

Glimmer: “Bow, you’ve actually got a brain? You ARE different.”

Unfortunately, once left alone, Adora can’t turn into She-Ra, no matter how often she shouts about the honour of Grayskull. In the course of her attempts, she accidentally turns Horsey into a winged unicorn (that’s Swift Wind to you and me, not that anyone says so until the end of the episode), and he panics. In the ensuing debacle, Swift Wind destroys a marketplace, and the angry townspeople discover that Adora is a Horde soldier.

Run out of town by the townsfolk, Adora escapes into the woods, where she finds a ramshackle little hut inhabited by an old lady who calls herself Madame Razz. She’s immediately less irritating than our old friend Filmation Madame Razz, so plus points there. On the other hand, she has a fan with a picture of Loo-Kee on it, so that’s a minus for reminding me of that little wanker, and another minus comes a second later when she actually says Loo-Kee’s name. Hasn’t she ever heard of the saying about speaking of the devil and he shalt appear? For God’s sake, keep quiet about Loo-Kee.

Adora: “I feel like you could become annoying, given half the chance.”

Madame Razz also believes that Adora is someone called Mara, and despite Adora’s protestations, this idea persists. Even so, Madame Razz isn’t as mental as she first appears, and she soon takes Adora to a First Ones ruin where Adora has another vision, though it’s a montage of images that can’t mean much to her. After this, Adora and Madame Razz stumble upon a unit of Horde Troopers trying to capture Swift Wind.

Adora decides once and for all that the Horde are evil, and with that conclusion drawn, she’s again able to transform into She-Ra. This cues another epic session of tank destruction, after which she realises that she must return to Bright Moon and pledge herself to the Rebellion. Entering the hall as She-Ra, she quickly reveals her true identity as a former Horde soldier, but even so, Queen Angela accepts her service.

In the meantime, Catra has spent a few moments throughout the episode venting her displeasure at Adora’s departure, and Shadow Weaver isn’t that pleased either, given Catra’s failed mission last week to retrieve Adora. Catra is brought before Hordak himself, but instead of punishing her, he rather surprisingly promotes her to Force Captain – a decision which brings a smug smile to Catra’s face.

Hordak: “Today’s lesson for evil overlords: always stand ominously in the shadows.”

In today’s adventure…

I think this episode’s message is along the lines of believing in yourself: Adora could only become She-Ra once she was fully sure that helping the Rebellion was the right thing to do. On the other hand, Catra got promoted for failing, so I’m not totally sure how that fits. Let’s just forget about that bit, and then my theory works.

Character checklist

It’s a fairly long roll call today: Adora, She-Ra, Glimmer, Bow, Queen Angela, Swift Wind, Madame Razz, Catra, Shadow Weaver, Hordak, Kyle, the rest of Catra’s Horde unit, numerous Bright Moon inhabitants, and some Horde Troopers. We also get a brief appearance for a redesigned Grizzlor, and Imp makes a short cameo at the end. In addition, I feel like I may have spotted a reimagining of Netossa too, but I can’t be certain on that one. As noted above, there’s a mention of Loo-Kee and a short sighting of his face, which is linked to a sneaky reference to Broom as well. Finally, there’s a stuffed toy of Kowl in Glimmer’s bedroom, which is both nice to see and a disappointment, since it presumably means we won’t get a real Kowl, and he was one of my favourites from the original series.

Adora: “Is this really all the Kowl we get? No wonder I look so depressed.”

Insults

Nothing too serious here: just Catra calling Shadow Weaver an “old lady”, and Madame Razz referring to a Horde Trooper as a “great lump”.

Does it have the Power?

Yes, it does, but not as much as the opening two-parter. It doesn’t actually progress the story very much: aside from the final scenes – in which Adora is accepted into the Rebellion, and Catra becomes a Force Captain – there isn’t much change to the situation as it stood at the end of last week. Adora’s inability to become She-Ra seems to be a bit out of nowhere: it’s implied it’s due to self-doubt, but I didn’t really get much of a feeling for that from the beginning of the episode.

What this episode does do is throw out lots of fan-pleasing stuff: Madame Razz is back, and the references to Loo-Kee, Broom and Kowl are all great for those of us who remember the 1980s series – and better yet, it’s done subtly enough that a new fan wouldn’t be left thinking “What’s that about?” It’s also good to see Grizzlor and, of course, Hordak, especially since in this incarnation he’s darkly menacing and not a snorting pig boy.

She-Ra: “What’s with this guy?”

So, to conclude, it’s an enjoyable enough episode, but I don’t think it’s an essential one – though it serves to build up the series mythology a little, and it’s always possible that Madame Razz is more important than she seems. This Mara business definitely seemed significant: unlikely as it sounds, I couldn’t help wondering if this was a reference to the New Adventures character. With any luck, all will be revealed later on.