Second Skin

King Hiss is alive, and Lord Dactys brings King Randor a Snake Skin to prove it. The Sorceress's weakened vision points to a Serpent Ring and the Sea of Rakash, so the Masters dive in Snake Armor, but Hiss finds the Ring first. The heroes capture Rattlor, who warns that it will doom Eternia. Hiss uses the Ring to turn the villagers of Felis Folia into Snake Men, then the Masters, Duncan among them. Orko forces Rattlor to reveal the Ophidian Spire, which would spread the Ring's power over the planet, and the heroes stop Hiss, though the Snake Men escape.

"It's always a good idea to have a backup plan, just in case something unexpected happens."

Teela: "Did she also have a vision of us kicking snake butt?"

He-Man: "Don't count on it."

Rattlor: "When King Hiss finds it, Eternia is doomed."

King Hiss: "Your persistence is most impressive."

Man-At-Arms: "Nor do I want to!"

Orko: "You can't cast a spell if you can't say the words."

The opening scene of "Second Skin" is a chess game, and Orko loses it. He had captured the empress and thought he had the board surrounded, but he was led into a trap, and the lecture that follows is the premise of everything after it: "You must learn to think several moves ahead, and to always have a backup plan in case things go wrong." Most of the other heroes are then taken off the board, until the one who was just told off for his planning is the one left standing.

The setup is quick. Lord Dactys brings King Randor a Snake Skin his patrol found in Subternia, and its openings for five heads tell the room that King Hiss is alive. The Sorceress, still recovering from Hiss's venom, can offer only a fragment of a vision, "A Serpent Ring, and the Sea of Rakash," and Zodak is too deep in meditation to be woken. Orko stays behind to read the ancient texts while the Masters head for the sea in Snake Armor, and Hiss, who has already decoded the Tablet of the Elders, is waiting for them.

The title fits two kinds of armor: the kind the Masters put on by choice and the kind that is done to them. The Masters' suits exist because, as one line explains, the Snake Men's shed skin supplied the DNA to make them. The Serpent's Ring does the opposite job, turning the villagers of Felis Folia into Snake Men and, a few scenes later, doing the same to friends. When Duncan is told "fight it," his answer, "I can't! Nor do I want to!", is the cruelest line in the script, because the second skin has taken the wanting along with the body.

Steven Melching's writing is at its best when a problem is answered with something the audience was already holding. Rattlor says nothing on Eternia can destroy the Ring, and the answer is to take it off Eternia; the frames of the long wordless fight show a small green object streaking toward a blazing sun, which the He-Man wiki identifies as the Ophidian Spire. The weaker side of the script is its exposition. The Ring's power comes in a single line of dialogue, the Spire's purpose arrives in a single speech, and the Tablet's secrets are delivered in a library and then again in a lair.

The voice work leans on the lines it is handed. Hiss gets courtly menace, "Your persistence is most impressive. And most foolish," which sounds like a king and not a monster. The animation builds the village fight from one vocabulary, green energy: Roboto sealed in a bubble and then wrapped in a spiraling field, He-Man struggling inside swirling green light, a purple-spotted brute spitting a stream of it.

The standout is Orko's interrogation of Rattlor. The captive has just laughed at him, and then Orko realizes "Snakes have one natural enemy." The mongoose straining at the vault door, the cry of "Mangoose, keep it away, keep it away!" and Rattlor's "I'll talk, I'll talk!" are the funniest beats of the episode, and the joke works because Orko is finally doing what the chess lecture told him to do.

The weakness is the ending. Orko asks "How can they be changed back? There's gotta be a way," and the script never answers him on screen; the Spire goes into the sun, and the only acknowledgment afterward is a voice saying "I had the worst nightmare." The audience has to assume that sending the Spire into the sun also undid the Ring. The closing moral about having a backup plan ties the episode off neatly, though the idea has already come up at the chess board and in the phrase "backup backup plan."

As a Snake Men episode it sits in a good spot. "Rise of the Snake Men, Part 2" closes on "King Hiss is no more," and this one takes that back in its second scene.

1. Voice cast: the He-Man wiki's cast list for this episode gives Gabe Khouth both Mekaneck and Orko, Richard Newman both Rattlor and Lord Dactys, Brian Dobson both King Hiss and Sssqueeze, and Michel Donovan Roboto, King Randor and Tung Lashor.
2. Goofs: the He-Man wiki's trivia notes that Scott McNeil is listed in the cast as voicing both Kobra Khan and Merman, but Merman never appears in the episode.
3. Continuity: Zodak is only seen as a meditating figure in a glowing porthole, and the Sorceress explains that he cannot be awakened. The He-Man wiki lists him as a non-speaking cameo.
4. Continuity: the Sorceress says she is still recovering from King Hiss's venom, which follows Rise of the Snake Men, Part 2, where Hiss announces his serpents' venom and the Sorceress is heard whimpering. That two-parter ends on the line "King Hiss is no more," which this episode, aired three weeks later, reverses.
5. Continuity: the Sea of Rakash was already part of the series. The Beginning, Part 1 mentions the Coridite Crystal from its deepest reaches, and The Deep End opens on a power surge from it. The He-Man wiki's Sea of Rakash entry says it did not exist until Hordak invoked the Spell of Separation, which is the explanation this episode gives.
6. Continuity: King Carnivus is named in the Felis Folia scene and the He-Man wiki lists him here as a non-speaking role. He had already appeared in Dragon's Brood and Turnabout, and Mattel released him as a Masters of the Universe Classics figure in 2010, according to the wiki.
7. Toys: Lord Dactys, who brings the Snake Skin to Randor, first appeared as an articulated figure in August 2013 as the second figure in Mattel's Club Filmation subscription for Masters of the Universe Classics, where his name was changed to Dactus, according to the He-Man wiki.
8. Fan observation: the He-Man wiki's Ophidian Spire entry notes that the name Ophidian means snake and suggests it could be a reference to the Viper Tower from the comics. The wiki marks this as a possibility, not a confirmed homage.
9. Fan observation: the wiki's Serpent's Ring entry describes how each victim of the Ring changes differently, with Man-At-Arms losing his beard and gaining a yellow scaly face and Mekaneck's head and neck becoming a cobra hood.