Episode 52 – Heart, Part 2

In which She-Ra and Catra save the day, to nobody’s surprise.

We pick up right where we were at the end of last week: in case you need reminding, that’s Bow duking it out with Scorpia, Glimmer going up against King Micah, and Adora facing a stupid big First Ones monster. In the latter case, Catra and Shadow Weaver arrive just in time to provide a distraction, and Shadow Weaver sacrifices herself to allow Adora and Catra time to reach the Heart of Etheria.

Meanwhile, Glimmer taps into magical strength she barely knew she had to defeat King Micah, while Bow manages to finalise Entrapta’s plan for deactivating the chips. This has the result of restoring all the compromised rebels to normal, which is great, but it also gives Bow the chance to broadcast a message to the whole of Etheria to deliver a trite little speech about not giving up the fight. Judging by the looks on the faces of those hearing his message – particularly Perfuma – they’d welcome the opportunity to have a fight with Bow himself.

Perfuma: “Next time I see Bow, that’s it for him.”

So anyway, Bow’s speech prompts Horde Prime to despatch about a billion clones and Troopers to Etheria, which keeps most of the rebels busy while Adora and Catra hurry along to the Heart. When they arrive, though, Adora finds she can’t transform into She-Ra thanks to a virus implanted by Horde Prime, so she starts off on her favourite topic of “I have to do this on my own”. If I had a penny for every time she’s said that over the course of the series…

Catra suspects that if Adora – rather than She-Ra – transfers the failsafe to the Heart, it will probably prove fatal, and she refuses to leave Adora to die alone. Unfortunately, this becomes moot, since at this point Horde Prime manages to tap into the Heart’s energy and starts absorbing it for himself. He then orders Original Hordak to kill Entrapta, but Original Hordak opts to kill Horde Prime instead, which was unexpected.

Horde Prime: “Okay, okay, calm down, I’ll give you some pens so you can colour yourself in.”

Sadly, Original Hordak doesn’t last long either – before dying, Horde Prime transfers his mind into Original Hordak and carries on where he left off. He teleports down to Etheria with Entrapta, where he starts a whole load of earthquakes and various other nonsense, and also indulges in a spot of remarkable overacting.

Meanwhile, Adora and Catra are enjoying a load of psychobabbly nonsense which eventually leads them to finally admit what was pretty evident about 50 episodes ago – they love one another. This admission allows Adora to turn into She-Ra, hurrah, and the failsafe transfers to the Heart of Etheria, hurrah. She-Ra then returns to the surface of Etheria, extracts the essence of Horde Prime from Original Hordak, and turns the Horde spaceship into a tree. As the episode finishes, she, Catra, Glimmer and Bow start making plans to go on a road trip to restore magic to the universe. Fine, guys. Let me know how that goes, won’t you?

Bow: “I sometimes worry, are we actually a bit deranged?”

In today’s adventure…

I’m not 100% sure, but I think that love conquers all might have been the message here.

Character checklist

Even more people than last time: there’s Adora, She-Ra, Catra, Glimmer, Bow, Scorpia, Shadow Weaver, King Micah, Entrapta, Swift Wind, Spinnerella, Netossa, Mermista, Sea Hawk, Perfuma, Frosta, Castaspella, Wrong Hordak, Original Hordak, Melog, Horde Prime, loads of Hordak clones and Horde Troopers. There are quick cameos for a variety of others we’ve met over the course of the series, including Lonnie, Kyle, Rohalio, Imp, Lance, George, Huntara, Double Trouble, Madame Razz, Queen Angela, Emily the bot, those three guys from Entrapta’s castle way back in System Failure, Admiral Scurvy and his gang, and the inhabitants of Elberon. Very few of these people get more than one line, though.

Mermista: “Is that Original Hordak or Wrong Hordak? And while we’re at it, what was the deal with Wrong Hordak again?”

Insults

King Micah gets the boot in early on, referring to Glimmer as a “weakling” and a “failure”. Otherwise, it’s over to Catra, who calls Adora an “idiot” and a “dummy”.

Oh No, Bow!

Okay, so Melog’s made Bow invisible to help him to evade Scorpia and run Entrapta’s dechipping programme. Bow manages to set the programme in motion, and promptly exclaims, “Ha ha! I’ve got it!” in a voice loud enough for Scorpia to hear him. She immediately shoots him, and I’m afraid that my opinion is that he only has himself to blame.

Does it have the Power?

The first half of the episode borders on excellent: it’s exciting, snappy, and the fight scenes have real personal stakes to them. We really feel for Glimmer having to fight King Micah, and Shadow Weaver’s sacrifice is truly moving, showing that all along – beneath it all – she did care for both Adora and Catra, even if she had a very funny way of showing it. On the other side of the coin, Horde Prime’s increasing fury at the setbacks the rebels inflict on him is disconcerting – though I must say I found him to be a more scary presence in episodes such as Horde Prime, when he was oily with an undercurrent of menace.

Shadow Weaver: “Flash flash, bang bang, reckon time’s up for me.”

The second half of the episode is perhaps a little less strong, focusing as it does on the magical powers of the Heart of Etheria, which I’ve always found a little vague and not enormously compelling. It hung together here rather better than I expected it to, but it still felt quite wishy-washy, with things seemingly happening just because of unexplained powers of magic. Original Hordak’s voice acting was distractingly bad too.

All in all, this is a satisfying conclusion to what has been an extremely uneven series. We’ll touch more on this in the whole series summary, but suffice it to say I had mostly lost interest in the story by this point, and wasn’t expecting anything terribly good from the finale. I’m pleased to say I was mostly wrong; while it’s not an amazing episode, it does wrap everything up enjoyably, and as such cannot be considered a failure.

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