Out of the Past

After a clash with Skeletor, Teela rides off alone, drawn to a village she seems to remember, and wakes in Pelleezeea, where the villagers greet her as the woman who once saved them and show her a carving that looks like her. At Castle Grayskull the Sorceress tells Man-At-Arms that long ago she lived in that village, drove off the warlord Prahvus after a boy named Odiphus betrayed it, and fell in love with a wounded soldier who had lost his memory. When Skeletor sends clay monsters against Pelleezeea, He-Man, Teela and Man-At-Arms bake and shatter them, and the Sorceress tells Man-At-Arms that Teela is her daughter.

"Everything that happens in your life gets stored in your mind, and becomes part of your memory. Things you read in books, people you meet. The things you do today will be what you remember tomorrow, and what others will remember about you. So always try to do your best. Be kind and helpful. And you'll have wonderful memories to look back on."

Stinkor: "My home village of Pelleezeea. They got it coming!"

Teela: "Well, there you go. I wasn't even born. I'm only 16."

Sorceress: "He, unable to remember his past. And I, trying to forget my own."

Teela: "Unless you count theft of vehicle parts."

Skeletor: "Oh, I wouldn't waste my talents on the likes of you. But they will."

Man-At-Arms: "My... adopted child."

A village that remembers you better than you remember yourself belongs in a ghost story, and "Out of the Past" opens like one. Teela leaves the convoy escort alone, half sure she knows the way to a place she has never been. She wakes after a crash among owl-eyed villagers who tell her, warmly, that she has returned and that they have not forgotten. She puts it down to a knock on the head, and the rest of the episode keeps her in the dark.

The village is Pelleezeea, and its Wall of Remembrance carries a carving of a woman who looks a good deal like Teela. The elder reckons it at seventeen seasons of the field; Teela points out that she is only sixteen, and he replies that a sorceress can appear as any age she pleases. At Castle Grayskull the Sorceress summons Man-At-Arms and tells him something no mortal has ever been told. Years ago, lonely inside those walls, she went to live among the Pelleezeeans, drove off the warlord Prahvus after a village boy named Odiphus sold out the weapon store, and nursed a wounded soldier with no memory until caring turned into love.

This is an episode about a secret, and about which of the people who love Teela are allowed to hear it. The Sorceress tells Man-At-Arms. The villagers remember the Sorceress and carved her into their Wall of Remembrance. Even the elder who steals a part from Teela's vehicle does it so she will stay and protect them "as in the past." Teela, who has the best claim to it, is the one person who never learns what the story is about. The script keeps it that way right up to her puzzled report that the villagers "think I'm someone else."

The flashback is where the writing is strongest. The Sorceress narrates in long, unhurried sentences, longing "to hear the laughter of children" and feeling, for once, "so needed." She gets the episode's best line when she reflects that her soldier could not remember his past while she was trying to forget her own. It is a grown-up sentiment for an action cartoon, delivered without apology, and Nicole Oliver plays it as memory.

The animation finds a rhyme the dialogue never points out. In the flashback a long-haired woman looks into a pond among lily pads and catches a faint reflection; later Teela stands at a pond and looks down at her own reflection among the lily pads. The flashback's battle is as considered, the Sorceress's eyes glowing yellow as she pushes a bubble of blue energy into the dark warlord's chest.

The present-day threat is where the episode is weakest. Skeletor has a new army of sticky monsters and wants a first target, and Stinkor happens to suggest his own home village, which happens to be where Teela has just crashed. An episode carrying this much mythology needs some way to put the heroes in the village, and a coincidence is the cheapest. But it leaves Skeletor's plot feeling like a delivery van for the real story, and he does not even stay for the fight; he would not waste his talents, he says, and leaves it to the monsters.

The fight itself has a good idea in it. The monsters are sticky and hard to put down until somebody remembers that clay is soft until it is fired and brittle afterwards, and the climax becomes a kiln. We also get a joke about Teela's haircut along the way. Stinkor's cheerful "They got it coming!" about his own home village plays darker in a place with such a long memory for traitors.

This is one of season two's most important half hours, and its last real beat is the secret, not the fight. The Sorceress tells Man-At-Arms that the soldier left her a gift, a child, and that the child is Teela. Garry Chalk gives his answer a pause in the middle, "My... adopted child," and the episode lets that pause stand while Teela goes on believing she was mistaken for someone else.

1. Continuity: The He-Man wiki identifies young Odiphus, the boy who betrays Pelleezeea in the flashback, as the future Stinkor, and lists Brian Drummond as the voice of both. Stinkor offers Pelleezeea to Skeletor as "My home village".
2. Continuity: Season one's "The Ties That Bind" left Teela curious about her past, and its closing message spoke of the sacrifice the Sorceress made for Teela. This episode shows the viewer what that sacrifice was.
3. Homage: The 1983 Filmation series covered the same secret in "Teela's Quest", written by Paul Dini, where the Sorceress leaves the truth about Teela's mother with He-Man. Here the confidant is Man-At-Arms, and Teela again goes home without the answer.
4. Toys: Prahvus, the warlord of the flashback, was released as an action figure through Mattel's Club 200X subscription in December 2015, according to the He-Man wiki.
5. Continuity: The He-Man wiki lists Prahvus appearing again in flashback in the later season two episode "Of Machines and Men".
6. Production: Man-At-Arms closes the episode with a message about memory, telling viewers that "The things you do today, will be what you remember tomorrow".
7. Voice cast: The He-Man wiki lists Nicole Oliver as the Sorceress and John Payne as Sy-Klone, who rides escort with Teela in the opening.
8. Toys: Stinkor was among the figures Mattel planned for summer 2004 that went unreleased when the 200X toy line ended, according to the He-Man wiki's history of the line.