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.