Series Summary

Looking back at Revelation and Revolution.

Okay… what to say about Revelation and Revolution? I think my thoughts have been fairly clear throughout: they’re exciting and ambitious, if occasionally somewhat flawed, entries into the Masters of the Universe franchise. Trying to update He-Man for an adult audience is a tough ask: it’s an inherently silly concept, and there’s a danger in making it aimed at adults that you’ll simply take all the fun out of it, or make it actively embarrassing.

He-Man: “Embarrassing? Me?”

Revelation, more than Revolution, fell into this trap: episodes like Land of the Dead felt tedious where they were trying to be scary, and the less said about the Evil-Lyn/Skeletor seduction scene, the better. I still have PTSD from that one. The grand finale, with Evil-Lyn destroying Preternia and messing about with the celestial apex, made absolutely no sense to me, and in trying to raise the stakes to the survival of the entire universe, I found the series became considerably less interesting.

Revolution, on the other hand, really leaned into the sort of thing that I would want from a more adult-oriented version of the franchise: we’ve got action, we’ve got high stakes, we don’t know if all the characters will survive, but it keeps itself grounded without going down the mystical road. With the exception of Teela’s Preternia business – which, to be honest, wasn’t dwelt on too much – the plotline was understandable and pretty relatable: the old “evil uncle tries to dominate the kingdom resulting in a sudden abolition of the monarchy and the instantaneous development of democracy” is a classic fairytale, after all.

Skeletor: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

Speaking of evil uncles, I’m always ambivalent about this interpretation of Skeletor: frankly, I think he’s better when he’s a demented demonic sorcerer rather than an undesirable member of the royal family. (My lawyers have advised me at this juncture against making jokes about Prince Andrew.) But this series manages to have its cake and eat it: making Skeletor into Keldor, having forgotten his origins thanks to his already-established background with Hordak – who even, with Adora, has previous with brainwashing – is a very clever way to allow him to be both Keldor and the extradimensional demon, or at least believe he is. And if it gives William Shatner the opportunity to pop up to chew the scenery, so much the better.

And there’s a decent link into discussion of the voice acting: Revelation and Revolution gathered an excellent cast (and Alicia Silverstone) to give life to these characters, and there’s little I’d quibble with in this department. Some people had an issue with Buffy being Teela in Revelation, but she didn’t bother me, though I’ll grant that Melissa Benoist probably did a better job when the recasting for Revolution rolled around. The Queen Marlena recast, adding Gates McFadden, was also an excellent move.

Queen Marlena: “I really am a lot better now, aren’t I?”

With that disjointed little ramble behind us, I’m sure what we’re really all here for is my highlights and lowlights list. As with the CGI series, we’ve got very few episodes to work with, so I’m going to limit myself to a Top 3 and a Bottom 3. Even that’s going to be a challenge, I suspect.

Highlights

3. The Power of Grayskull

This one gets a spot on the list for its excellent action-packed story. It’s great to see such a faithful updating of the 1980s series, and then for the series to suddenly up the stakes in such an unexpected way by offing both He-Man and Skeletor really made me sit up and pay attention. Not without its problems – King Randor acts like a complete tool, for example – but despite them, it’s an almost perfect sequel to Filmation.

Cringer: “Who doesn’t love some Filmation-style Orko shenanigans? I don’t, that’s who.”

2. Reason and Blood

Perhaps He-Man and Skeletor’s most epic showdown ever, with the added edge that one of them is now a god and the other is an out-of-control savage. All that action is great, but it’s really the touching reunion with King Randor – in which he shows his heartfelt love for Prince Adam – that makes this a true series highlight.

1. Even For Kings

Possibly this is the recency effect, but I found Even For Kings a genuinely touching outing: the death of King Randor is dealt with extremely sympathetically, and it’s great to see the series think of an another unexpected direction to take the story. In a short five-episode run, it would have been easy to gloss over the emotional stuff, but the writers took the time to deliver a fairly quiet opening episode that shows the depth of the characters’ relationships. Very good.

King Randor: “I may be dying, but I’m quietly smug that I got a mention in the summary of each of the three best episodes.”

Lowlights

3. The Gutter Rat

Mostly fine, but contains the most misjudged scene in the entire franchise. You know which one. It’s lucky the rest of the episode is decent enough, because otherwise this would be the absolute bottom of the heap.

2. Comes With Everything You See Here

The Revelation finale earns its spot simply because it’s too overblown: I lost interest as soon as Evil-Lyn started pointlessly trying to destroy the universe, and I couldn’t give a monkey’s about watching her and Teela flying around shooting energy bolts at each other. This abstract nonsense was the focus over He-Man and Skeletor’s big battle, and I just found it difficult to care.

Teela: “Any idea what’s going on here? No, me neither.”

1. Land of the Dead

Land of the Dead was what no other episode of this series was: dull. Yes, okay, the last five minutes were great, but we had to sit through 20 minutes of pointless cod psychology between Teela and Scareglow before we got there. Shooting for ominous and landing squarely on boring, this one was my absolute least favourite of the entire run.

And next?

Well, that’s that: there’s no more Masters of the Universe to review at the moment. There seems to be some jabber about a third run of this Revelation/Revolution business, and allegedly the live-action film is back on track (again), but we can’t expect to see any more content for several years. Of course, I’ll review anything new that comes along, but for now, the last post will be next week, when I do a little overall summary of the whole franchise to date, which will probably be even more of an incoherent ramble than my usual. Bet you can’t wait.

Episode 5 – The Scepter and the Sword

In which meaningful democratic representation comes to Eternia.

Okay, so we start off with some sort of swirly vortexy thing in which Teela is suspended, flipping between the various guises of Sorceress, Snake Goddess, and Weird Demon. Evil-Lyn is trying to do something about it but can’t because she doesn’t have enough power, so it’s lucky that Orko and Gwildor choose this moment to show up holding the newly-upgraded power sword. Adam charges into the maelstrom, transforms into a new and really sleazy version of He-Man, and for good measure transforms Teela into a new version of herself too. Then they kiss! Hurrah! We’ve been waiting for this since at least the end of The Problem with Power, and probably longer.

Teela: “Is now a good time to mention I preferred the way you looked before?”

After a cringe-inducing interjection from Evil-Lyn – of which no further mention shall be made – He-Man dishes out the assignments: He-Man will cure the populace of the nanovirus and confront Skeletor, Teela is to carry on with her Preternia repair work, Man-at-Arms and Andra are to tackle the Horde, and Orko and Evil-Lyn are to fuck off somewhere out of sight and hopefully never darken our screens again.

He-Man’s job goes relatively smoothly: heading over to Grayskull, he quickly sorts out the nanovirus problem and then gets into a pummelling contest with Skeletor. This quickly extends to an almighty ruckus in which our various heroes come up against lots and lots of machines which I believe might be Monstroids – and, sadly, Granamyr shows up to the fight in order to get killed while protecting Teela. Luckily, Teela just manages to restore Preternia in time, and thus I assume Granamyr’s soul gets to go there and hang out with Wun-Dar and those various other knobs.

King Grayskull: “Bet you’re dead pleased to see me again, eh?”

Well, speaking of said knobs, it’s now time for the souls of everyone who ought to be in Preternia to put in an appearance, and several of them – including King Randor – join in the fight to give Skeletor a good battering. Once they’ve done that, they pose merrily in front of Preternia like an advert for an assisted living facility. Despite a last-minute attempt on Skeletor’s part to send King Randor to Subternia, He-Man settles matters once and for all by stabbing him with the power sword, which – presumably thanks to the nanovirus-combating upgrade – transforms him back into Keldor.

Returning to the ruins of the Palace, He-Man gives a speech in which he decrees that from now on, Eternia is a democratic republic and that the monarchy is no more. He pronounces “monarchy” in literally the most hilarious way I can think of to say it, but no one calls him out on that: they’re too busy celebrating their newfound freedom of self-government. They won’t be celebrating for long: Andra announces her intention to run for president, and I can’t imagine anyone will be that keen to vote for the person who developed the second wave of the nanovirus. Unless she’s planning on keeping that to herself and waiting for the inevitable scandal when the FOI request goes in.

Queen Marlena: “So, exactly what practical governmental experience do you have, Andra?”

But let’s not focus on that: instead it’s time to check in with He-Man and Teela, who wander off through the ruins of the Palace discussing their future, as all the populace cheer them. They make plans to live together at Castle Grayskull, presumably still doing a fair bit of Masters-of-the-Universing when the fancy takes them: Skeletor may be defeated for now, but he is, after all, only one of the many megalomaniacal loonies hanging around Eternia with unpleasant intentions…

In today’s adventure…

Okay! After my heartfelt wish last week (about getting a post-credits “in today’s adventure” sequence), today we kind of get one! It’s delivered by Zodak, though, so it’s hard to get too excited about it. He addresses the camera to intone that today we learned about balance, but before he goes off on some random tangent, he seems to catch himself and makes his little monologue a bit more plot-related, thanking Evil-Lyn for her services and welcoming her to the ranks of the Cosmic Enforcers. Bet she’s thrilled.

Zodak: “Look! There’s so many of me!”

We then end with a little sting in which we learn that an unidentified woman has recovered Hordak’s body and is using Horde Prime’s technology to restore him to life. She then gibbers on for a little while about heading back to Eternia to gain revenge on Skeletor and He-Man, but I expect that we’ll have to wait another two years or so before we get any development on this plotline.

Character checklist

For this final outing to Eternia, the cast list is Prince Adam, He-Man, Cringer, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Orko, Andra, Evil-Lyn, Queen Marlena, Gwildor, Granamyr, King Randor, Buzz-Off, Ram-Man, Snout Spout, Rio Blast, Fisto, Clamp Champ, Moss-Man, Roboto, the Sorceress, King Grayskull, Wun-Dar, Vikor, He-Ro, Stonedar or Rokkon (whichever), Skeletor, Zodak, and the unidentified woman who I suspect is probably Adora. The vast majority of these people don’t speak though, so don’t worry, it’s not a complete overload.

Rio-Blast: “Just showing up for one last hurrah before my inevitable relegation back into obscurity.”

Insults

Skeletor’s on the down today: all the insults – which are few and far between – are either addressed to him or directed at him behind his back. He-Man opts for “numbskull”, King Randor goes for “bully”, and Teela’s choice is “psychotic bad guy”.

Does it have the Power?

Yep – very satisfactory. It’s a well-handled round-up of the various plotlines that have developed throughout Revolution, and it’s to its credit that everything gets resolved neatly – halfway through, I was thinking this series was too sprawling to work within the confines of five episodes, but this last one does manage to finish things up nicely. And with an epic He-Man/Skeletor confrontation followed by He-Man and Teela finally finally getting together, no less.

He-Man: “I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, tbh.”

If I had to quibble, I’d say that the Eternian Independence Day business was goofy in the extreme, and it feels like a rather simplistic political transition which is liable to devolve into chaos. Let’s just say I have the sneaking suspicion that nobody’s bothered to write a constitution – although, on reflection, maybe they’re better off without a political system designed by halfwits like Man-at-Arms.

But when all’s said and done, this episode is a fun conclusion to Revolution, and the preceding Revelation series. Whether it’s the final stop, or whether we have a concluding batch of episodes dealing with that last-minute Potential Adora business, I can’t say, but if it is the end, it’s a fitting one. Good stuff all round.

Episode 4 – The Dogs of War

In which Rio Blast tries and fails to be intimidating.

Skeletor kick things off with a gibbering monologue directed at Prince Adam, in which he explains that yes, he is Keldor and no, he didn’t remember that he was Keldor until Motherboard unlocked his memories. Good to know, for those of us who were on the edge of our seats about that. He finishes up by explaining that he’s going to carry on being right nasty for a while, though he’s fairly non-specific about exactly what he’s going to do, and then shoves Queen Marlena into Adam’s prison cell before wandering off.

Skeletor: “Loving my new skeleton/king/Borg mash-up outfit.”

It’s at this point that Teela bothers to rejoin the main narrative: she and Evil-Lyn arrive at Eternos, where Teela wants to rescue Adam, while Evil-Lyn thinks they should steal Skeletor’s Havoc Staff so they can use the combined power of something or other to defeat Hordak. I think this has to do with that falcon, snake and goat malarkey that we saw back in Hope, For a Destination, but I don’t know because I’m easily distracted during conversations about that sort of thing.

Anyway, Teela probably shouldn’t interrupt Skeletor right now, because he’s indulging in a nice little rebellion against Hordak. He’s begun by ripping Motherboard’s head off and presenting it to Hordak in a box – always has a taste for the pointlessly dramatic, does our Skeletor. This naturally doesn’t go down well with Hordak, who responds by trying to beat Skeletor up, resulting in an epic confrontation that goes on for much of the rest of the episode and ends with Skeletor stabbing and killing Hordak. So long, you prize porker – we barely knew you.

Hordak: “Oh bloody hell, this is embarrassing.”

Meanwhile, perhaps trying to make up for her epic fuck-up last week, Andra shows up in the dungeons to rescue Prince Adam, Cringer and Queen Marlena, and she leads them to safety outside the Palace. Here they reunite with Teela, Evil-Lyn and Man-at-Arms, who’s dolled himself up in a smart new suit in an effort to distract himself from the gaping hole in his soul. While most of the gang merrily beat up some Horde Troopers (plus Ram-Man, Buzz-Off, Snout Spout and Rio Blast, all of whom are infected with the nanovirus), Evil-Lyn quickly nips off and quick as a flash, nicks the Havoc Staff from Skeletor. As the episode ends, Teela blends the Havoc Staff with the Zoar staff and a snakey staff, then hovers in the sky shrieking.

In today’s adventure…

Yay – it’s classic Filmation stuff! Queen Marlena rabbits on for a while about how love, courage and the willingness to fight for what’s right are the most important types of power. I know I’m like a broken record, but really, if the writers are going to lean this hard into the Filmation-style messaging, why couldn’t they just give us an actual “In today’s adventure” segment? I think it would actually make my heart burst with joy.

Prince Adam: “You know, mother, it’s much easier to take you seriously now you’re not Alicia Silverstone.”

Character checklist

This Eternian excursion features Prince Adam, Cringer, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Andra, Evil-Lyn, Queen Marlena, Orko, Gwildor, Buzz-Off, Ram-Man, Snout Spout, Rio Blast, Skeletor, Hordak, Grizzlor, Mantenna, Leech, Motherboard, and everyone’s favourite, the endless ranks of Horde Troopers. Skeletor’s alter ego, Keldor, also shows up fairly regularly, and there’s a quick flashback appearance of King Miro.

Insults

Keldor describes Motherboard as “metal mummy”, which sounds insulting enough to warrant listing here. I’m really not sure what to make of Gwildor calling Grizzlor, Mantenna and Leech “clondorks”, but since he prefaces it with “mangy”, I think we can take it that this is an insult. We’re on safer ground with Hordak calling Skeletor a “fool”, and with Skeletor’s retaliatory volleys of “tool” and, a little surprisingly, “prick”.

Gwildor: “I realise it looks like I’m trying to kill Orko, but that’s honestly not what’s happening, officer.”

Does it have the Power?

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to write other than “enjoyable”. This episode is a good solid romp, with good action setpieces that don’t overdo it. Skeletor’s fight with Hordak perhaps comes close to being overblown, but thanks to its cross-cutting with the backstory of Hordak’s apprenticeship of Keldor, it manages to remain grounded: these two may be mega-powerful demons wielding awesome magic and scientific gimmickry, but at heart they’re a teacher-pupil relationship gone awry.

Similarly, Teela’s story spells out her motivations – she may want to restore Preternia, but it’s largely because she cares so much for Prince Adam; and Adam’s response is that Teela doesn’t have to restore Preternia just for him – all he cares about is that Teela is with him. It’s a touching step forward in their relationship, only slightly marred by the implicit suggestion that if Teela and Adam didn’t want to enjoy a little private time, then King Randor’s poor doomed soul could go hang.

Teela: “Why are you wearing a suit even my dad would be embarrassed to put on?”

So yes, this one is a good instalment. I have a sinking suspicion that what with Teela’s newfound magic staff blend, we’re heading for a mystical bang-bang-pow-pow grand finale next week, but let’s stay optimistic and hope that we’re steering away from any silly universe-ending shenanigans, eh?

Episode 3 – More Things in Heaven and Eternia

In which the Horde capture Castle Grayskull.

Skeletor and Motherboard report in on their progress to Hordak, who cheerfully indulges in a few piggy snorts for old time’s sake before telling them to continue. Afterwards, Skeletor starts hearing Captain Kirk’s voice in his head, before getting a vision of Keldor. The vision explains that Skeletor really is Keldor, even though he doesn’t remember it, and goes on to imply that Skeletor ought to betray the Horde and rule Eternia in his own right. I’m sure that clever little scheme hadn’t already occurred to Skeletor, who – let’s not forget – lives and breathes deception.

Speaking of deception, Skeletor now returns to Eternos and suggests that He-Man lead an attack on Snake Mountain. Once He-Man’s out of the way, he takes Andra aside, suggesting to her that she could work on developing an antidote to the nanobot virus: an antidote that will use the same technology. What he doesn’t tell Andra, but what is patently obvious to the viewer, is that this antidote will have basically exactly the same effect as the original virus. Andra merrily agrees and runs off to begin work.

Skeletor: “Fancy the opportunity to do something really stupid, Andra?”

Man-at-Arms and Orko are off on their own little quest: they’ve taken He-Man’s sword to be modified so that its power can cure everybody infected by Skeletor’s nanobots. The best person they can think of to make these improvements is Gwildor, that little Labyrinth wannabe from the Masters of the Universe film, who is an individual I honestly hadn’t expected to see again. Expected or hoped, tbh. Gwildor spouts a whole load of absolute gibberish, before eventually promising to try his best.

Orko: “Don’t you realise how dangerous it is to have the three most irritating characters in the franchise together in one room???”

He-Man arrives at Snake Mountain and entertains himself by beating Spikor, Whiplash and Webstor up, but soon discovers that Skeletor’s not at home. Thanks to Skeletor’s endless need to show off, He-Man quickly deduces that he’s allowed himself to be distracted. Too late now though: Motherboard has penetrated Castle Grayskull’s defences, a Horde armada has appeared in the Eternian skies, and – perhaps most concerning of all – Andra has completed her nanobot antidote and accidentally infected the entire populace. Fuck’s sake, Andra. That’s not going to look good on your next performance appraisal.

Meanwhile, in the background, Teela’s story continues: this week Evil-Lyn trains her in the use of Kaa magic, and also has a little chat with her suggesting that maybe she ought to get together with Prince Adam. That’s great advice, Evil-Lyn, but I think Prince Adam’s got more on his mind right now than getting his rocks off with Teela: he has, after all, been captured by the Horde and dragged inside the newly redecorated Castle Grayskull, where he learns to his horror that Keldor is Skeletor and that therefore Skeletor is his uncle. Consequently, if he is currently thinking about getting it on with Teela, he’s probably also musing that the invite list for the wedding is going to be an awkward discussion.

Teela: “I like not being in the series’ main storyline. Gives me way more time to relax.”

In today’s adventure…

Nobody’s helpful enough this week to address the camera to dispense a pearl of wisdom, which means I’ve got to work it out myself. Let’s perhaps concentrate on Andra: our moral could be that if something’s gone wrong and someone suggests making things less wrong by doing something that will probably make things more wrong, then perhaps that’s wrong. Or, to put it slightly more coherently, don’t double down on a mistake.

Character checklist

This one features Prince Adam, Cringer, He-Man, Battle-Cat, Teela, Evil-Lyn, Man-at-Arms, Orko, Gwildor, Andra, either Rokkon or Stonedar (the blue one – can’t remember which is which, and the episode doesn’t name him), Skeletor, Spikor, Whiplash, Webstor, the Keldor-vision, Hordak, Motherboard, Mantenna, Grizzlor, Leech, and multitudes of Horde Troopers. There’s also an exciting return for Skeletor’s robot bird, Screech, who I have to confess I’d forgotten all about.

Mantenna: “No trapdoors here, I’m pleased to note.”

Insults

There’s a whole load of insulting going on here, much of it springing from the ever-fertile lipless mouth of Skeletor. Our favourite skeleton begins by referring to the entire populace of Eternia as “suckers”, narrows things down to the royal family with the classic “royal boobs”, and gets properly specific by describing Prince Adam as “Little Lord Look-at-my-abs Adam”. After all that, he then finds time to diss Gwildor with the phrase “random troll”. Orko also puts the boot into Gwildor, calling him a “Thinarian warbat” (whatever that is), and Gwildor retaliates by addressing Orko as “half-pint” and “shorty”. Evil-Lyn attempts to get Teela’s goat by describing He-Man as her “lumbering love”, and it seems to work: Teela responds with a furious “heinous vicious witch” and “malicious enchantress”. Finally, He-Man triumphantly addresses Skeletor as a “numbskull”, which might have been effective if Skeletor had been in the room at the time.

Does it have the Power?

The opening scene is excellent: it reintroduces us to Hordak and his various minions, all of whom are actively frightening in a way that Skeletor’s crowd never have been. I genuinely did love the Filmation version of Mantenna, but by God his modern interpretation is fantastically terrifying. Grizzlor and Leech, meanwhile, were both complete nonentities back in the day, so it’s great to see them actually getting the chance to be scary.

Leech: “Always thought it’s scarier to not show my face.”

The remainder of the episode is a step down, but still fun: the meat of the story comes with Skeletor’s trickery, which comes to a pleasing triumph here. If I’m honest, I feel that Andra should perhaps have voiced some concerns about using nanobots to fight nanobots, but we’ve only got five episodes so need to barrel through the story, I suppose. The shorter run of this series is, in fact, my main complaint: it feels like the story is progressing extremely fast, giving it very little room to breathe. We’ve now only got two episodes to wrap the whole thing up, and it feels like we’re barely getting going.

Still, if my biggest problem with this series is that there isn’t enough of it, that can’t be a bad thing. Looking forward to seeing how all our various storylines resolve themselves. Except maybe Gwildor’s storyline: I wouldn’t mind if he vanished back into the void for another 37 years.

Episode 2 – Ascension

In which Granamyr steadfastly refuses to be helpful.

We open with a brief flashback to Randor’s childhood, in which it’s explained that Keldor is the bastard son of King Miro (remember him? Last seen randomly sloping around Etheria) and a woman from Anwat Gar (a location of which I do not need reminding). Although Keldor is older than Randor, his illegitimate status means that he will not be able to succeed to the throne, so Miro and his queen, Amelia, decide that it’s kinder to send Keldor back to Anwat Gar.

Cutting to the present, Keldor is telling Adam this story, and finishes up by noting that shortly after his return to Anwat Gar, Eternia was attacked by the Evil Horde, and it was thought that Keldor died in the battle. He’s now back, but in direct contradiction to what he said last week, he claims not to want the crown. It would presumably occur to Adam to ask what the bloody hell he does want then, but the two of them are distracted by a massive explosion in the city.

Prince Adam: “Do you think they’ll make an action figure of me in this goofy outfit?”

When Man-at-Arms explains that the attack is coming from Skeletor, Adam welcomes the opportunity to escape the politics and go to pummel his old nemesis for a while. Transforming into He-Man, he confronts Skeletor, who’s hanging out in the streets monologuing about how he and Motherboard are restoring the technological wonders from Eternia’s distant past. This essentially means digging up old robots and setting them to run amok in Eternos, and as such, He-Man isn’t cool with it.

While He-Man pursues Skeletor into an alley and learns that he can use the power sword to cure people who are infected with Motherboard’s nanobots, Keldor successfully leads the defence of the city against a giant robot, and as such, it’s he who is feted as the hero in the aftermath. This offers He-Man an easy way out from the “can I be king AND champion?” dilemma, and he decides to crown Keldor as Randor’s successor. As the episode ends, we learn that Keldor is in fact Skeletor in disguise. Who’d have thought it, eh.

Skeletor: “That’s King Skeletor to you, mate.”

Meanwhile, Teela has made her journey to Darksmoke, where Granamyr greets her with the revelation that he’s dying. Teela responds with the information that Randor is dead, so the two of them indulge in a quick pity party before getting to the point: Teela would like Granamyr’s help in restoring Preternia, using Kaa magic.

This sensible request is interrupted by the sudden appearance of Evil-Lyn, who explains that her messing about with the celestial apex is the reason for Granamyr’s impending doom. It’s lucky that she’s shown up: Granamyr refuses to grant Teela the Kaa magic, until Evil-Lyn joins in to help convince him. At this point, Granamyr hands over a snaky staff and Teela transforms into a weird green Snake Teela individual and hisses directly at the camera, which is a bit rude of her, tbh.

Granamyr: “Yeah, I didn’t give you those powers just so you can go round hissing at people.”

In today’s adventure…

“It’s not about what you hold in your hand, but what you hold in your heart,” says Man-at-Arms, portentously. God knows what he’s talking about. While on the one hand I can well imagine him uttering this nonsense at the end of a Filmation episode, on the other I’d simply like him to piss off.

Character checklist

It’s like the good old days: our leads here are Prince Adam, Cringer, He-Man, Battle-Cat, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Orko, Andra, Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, Keldor and Granamyr. There are also non-speaking appearances for Queen Marlena, Buzz-Off, Snout Spout, Trapjaw, Tri-Klops, Clawful, Webstor, Two Bad, Motherboard, and in flashback, there’s King Miro, Queen Amelia, a young Randor and a young Keldor.

He-Man: “Would it really be such an abuse of the power of Grayskull if I lopped Man-at-Arms’ head off?”

Insults

Not loads going on here, but can’t complain: Teela draws a full 75% of the insults, with Evil-Lyn referring to her as a “little bird” and a “simpleton”, and Granamyr opts for the classic “fool”. Elsewhere, He-Man’s diss of “Skeletech” for Skeletor needs work, frankly.

Does it have the Power?

I’d say there’s nothing to get too excited about in this episode, but it’s entertaining enough: it’s fun to see another incarnation of Keldor, and it seems I was wrong last week when I said he wasn’t Skeletor. Not quite sure what I was smoking when I made that bold claim, if I’m honest: it’s hardly a surprise revelation. Still, it’ll be interesting to see where we go with a disguised Skeletor on the throne: let’s find out if he’s subtle enough to keep the pretence up for more than five minutes. Quite fun too that the secret identity business has been kind of reversed: maybe if we’re lucky I’ll need to start up a new section called ‘Excuse for King Keldor’s disappearance’.

Elsewhere, Teela’s subplot feels entirely disconnected from the main story at the moment – though I daresay it’ll all marry up in the end – and I can’t say I was that enthralled with this version of Granamyr: his refusal to help followed by his about-face all felt very by the numbers. He-Man’s discovery that his sword can cure the Motherboard tech virus is pretty ho-hum too. So, yeah, it moves the story along, but I’d be lying if I said I thought it was a highlight.