Separation

Sick of sharing one body, Two-Bad takes Stinkor's advice and visits Vormus, a dealer in spells, who refuses to sell the Spell of Separation. Two-Bad takes the tablet anyway and sets out to gather three artifacts and join them at the Well of Darkness. The Sorceress warns He-Man that the pieces form the Triad of Discidium, which Hordak once used to split Eternia into light and dark hemispheres, nearly destroying it. Two-Bad completes the spell, the planet begins to tear apart, and He-Man races to return each piece to its hiding place, while SyClone, mourning the family he lost long ago, finds a new one among the Masters.

"SyClone found that when people care deeply for one another, it's easy to think of them as family. And if enough of us start caring for our neighbors, maybe one day, the whole world will think of itself as one big family."

Bad: "Not my fault we share stomach."

Vormus: "Ever tried knocking, sonny?"

SyClone: "You never had a family, Roboto. You could not possibly understand."

SyClone: "For what is a family, but people who support and care for each other? The Masters of the Universe are my family."

Bad: "Stupid spell not work. Now stuck with you."

Nobody chooses their relatives, and Two-Bad did not choose the body he shares either. "Separation" opens at a Snake Mountain dinner table, where one half of Two-Bad gobbles his food, the other half complains about it, and the first half points out that it is hardly his fault they share a stomach. Stinkor, fresh from his own debut, wanders over to ask why they are always fighting and suggests his old pal Vormus, the biggest dealer of spells and potions in the Dark Hemisphere. It was magic that fused them, so magic, they reason, can pull them apart.

Larry DiTillio's script cuts from that table to another one. At the palace, Man-At-Arms and his royal partner lose a game to their children, Teela and Prince Adam, and SyClone, watching the parents and their children together, is reminded of his own family, now long gone. Roboto applies logic: families keep making new members, so some descendants should still exist. This is an episode about the people we are stuck with, and whether that is a curse or a family. Two-Bad wants out of a bond he never asked for, SyClone goes looking for a bond he has lost, and each story comments quietly on the other.

The middle third belongs to the lore, and DiTillio delivers a lot of it. Vormus reads the Spell of Separation off a stone tablet, sees what it does, and refuses to sell it at any price. The Sorceress then tells He-Man the history of the Triad of Discidium, made at the command of the Dark Warlord Hordak, whose spell at the Well of Darkness covered half of Eternia in darkness and created the Light and Dark hemispheres before the energies grew too strong even for him. It is a big piece of world-building to hang on a bickering two-headed thug, and that mismatch is the episode's best joke. Two-Bad has no interest in cosmology. He wants his own body back by tonight.

The animation rises to the flashback. A dark figure raises his arms on a stairway as a blue beam shoots skyward, a ring of fire circles the planet, and the world cracks open with light, all of it staged in silhouette and storm color. The present-day settings are just as varied, from a red cavern lit with floating crystals to a jungle with a stepped pyramid, lava caverns, and a giant red dragon that He-Man greets as an old friend and later rides from hiding place to hiding place.

The standout scene is at the Well, and the two halves of Two-Bad carry it between them. Bad, the one with the broken grammar, starts to wobble, remembering He-Man's warning about forces they do not understand, and suggests that maybe they had better stop; Two, the sneering half, answers that he will not spend the rest of his life attached to a foul breath cretin. The script gives the halves such different ways of speaking that a single body arguing with itself never gets confusing, and the closing scene, where the spell has failed and they are back to trading insults over dinner, needs nothing more.

The weakness is SyClone's half. His search is mostly told rather than shown: he and Roboto find an empty settlement with no one left in it, he refuses to discuss it with Roboto, and the resolution comes only after the crisis, when he tells Roboto that the Masters of the Universe are his family. With the Hordak history to deliver and a planet to save, the script had little room to spare, and its choice to keep SyClone's arc light is understandable, but his realization would have landed harder if the palace scenes had given him a moment of his own. As it is, he is welcomed back at the palace with a single line.

"Separation" is one of the first season's most ambitious episodes, a story that explains the map of Eternia while keeping its villain small and petty. The two halves of Two-Bad stay stuck with each other and hate it; SyClone chooses the people he is stuck with and calls them family.

1. Continuity: The He-Man wiki marks this as the first mention of Hordak in the 2002 series. He appears only in the flashback, kept in shadow throughout.
2. Production: According to Mattel's Ian Richter in a he-man.org Q&A cited by the He-Man wiki, Hordak was meant to be the main villain of a third season, which was never made after the line and the show were cancelled.
3. Continuity: Two-Bad's predicament comes from The Monster Within, where Skeletor punishes the rival bounty hunters Tuvar and Baddhra for refusing to work together; the He-Man wiki records that he bound them into one body.
4. Production: The He-Man wiki, citing the Season 1 Volume 2 DVD commentary, says Two-Bad was in the early scripts, but story editor Dean Stefan liked a writer's pitch about two rival bounty hunters and held him back for an origin episode.
5. Continuity: Stinkor sends Two-Bad to his "old pal Vormus" one episode after his own debut in The Sweet Smell of Victory.
6. Continuity: SyClone's search for family follows The Mystery of Anwat Gar, where he is introduced as the protector of the Legacy Stones and the last defender of Anwat Gar.
7. Fan observation: The He-Man wiki notes this as the first time He-Man rides a dragon.
8. Voice cast: Per the He-Man wiki, Brian Drummond voices both Two and Stinkor, Mark Gibbon voices Bad, Nicole Oliver doubles as the Sorceress and Queen Marlena, and John Payne voices SyClone.