After the Masters capture Skeletor's evil warriors and lock them in Man-At-Arms' new prison compound, King Randor lifts the state of High Alert and sends the Masters home on leave. Skeletor, still free, has planned for this. Reports of disturbances draw the Masters out in small groups, and a new Council of Evil picks them off, from Stratos at the Eye of Zarkane to Man-At-Arms in the Sands of Fire, where Skeletor admits the captures were staged so the kingdom would drop its guard. With Teela unable to reach anyone, Adam slips away to become He-Man, and Skeletor waits for him.
Skeletor: "Who was it that said, "Divide and conquer"? Oh, me."
Skeletor: "Duncan, old chum. Just you and I. Like in the good old days."
Man-At-Arms: "You wanted them captured to get us to let down our guard!"
Man-At-Arms: "Actually, yes. I designed this entire compound for that very purpose."
Ram-Man: "Ah. You got no rod, Man-E."
Cartoon villains lose every week, and by convention they never learn anything from it. The Council of Evil Part 1 opens on what looks like another of those weeks. Skeletor's warriors pick their way along a canyon ledge after a weapon he claims has been hidden for a thousand years, but the Masters are out on one of their regular patrols, and after a long, mostly wordless brawl the villains end up behind the glowing green bars of a prison compound Man-At-Arms built for that very purpose. The kingdom exhales! King Randor lifts the state of High Alert, the Masters are sent home on leave, and the King and Queen take their first real holiday in years.
What follows is a rare few relaxed minutes for the supporting cast. Ram-Man goes fishing, Man-E-Faces turns up without a rod, Buzz-Off flies off to fetch honeyberries for his Queen, Roboto accepts a game, and Stratos heads for Avion with Orko along for the ride. It is charming, but it is also a list of targets, and Skeletor is watching them scatter.
The episode is about a victory that turns out to be the trap. Dean Stefan plants it early and plays fair with it; when someone asks whether the palace is leaving itself short-handed, the answer is that Skeletor would be a fool to attack on his own, and Skeletor, listening from his throne, agrees with a snicker. A minute later he states the plan of the two-parter as a joke: he asks who it was that said "Divide and conquer", then answers himself.
The writing then turns the Masters' sense of duty against them. Man-At-Arms reports disturbances across the planet, yet the Masters cut their leave short without complaint and split up to cover separate trouble spots, with Roboto reasoning that it is probably nothing worse than a trade dispute. The captures are handled as fragments: a raft dragged under by dark tendrils in a green pool, a web in the Eye of Zarkane that Orko can only describe in a panic, a pair of big green hands closing over a grey helmet. It is closer to a horror film than a toy commercial, and it works because we never get a clear look at the attackers.
The animation keeps changing the light to match. The opening fight is staged under a teal sky, the palace glows at sunset while a courtyard crowd cheers the King's decree, and the Sands of Fire are a plain of smoking volcanoes where Skeletor arrives inside a crackling ball of yellow energy and leaves on a ram-horned war chariot.
That volcanic plain holds the standout scene. Man-At-Arms goes out alone to investigate an explosion, and Skeletor greets him as "Duncan, old chum", reminiscing about the old days when Duncan had Captain Randor to hide behind. The performance is all purr and familiarity. Then Duncan works it out and says it aloud: the evil warriors were captured on purpose so the kingdom would let down its guard. Skeletor's delighted "Yes!" is the best reading in the episode, and the hero solving the puzzle a moment before he is trapped in an energy bubble makes the defeat sting more.
The weakness is the Council itself. It assembles in the final minutes around a fiery cauldron throne, and apart from Count Marzo recapping the plan it is mostly a chorus of flattery, one member telling Skeletor he is like a genius while the hulking brutes around the throne stand about like furniture. A two-parter spends its first half on setup, and Part 2 is where the Council will have to earn its name. Teela's mounting alarm back at the palace, and Adam's excuse to slip away and find He-Man, get more feeling in less time.
Near the close of the first season, this is the strongest villain plan the show had built so far, and the reason is that it grows out of the heroes winning. Skeletor ends the episode telling his new allies that he is counting on He-Man coming to the rescue, and we believe him.
- Continuity: Stratos recalls that the last time he flew through the Eye of Zarkane, he and Prince Adam were attacked by Skeletor's forces. That ambush is the one Skeletor sets for them in The Courage of Adam.
- Continuity: Skeletor's jibe that Duncan always had Captain Randor to hide behind, and Man-At-Arms calling him Keldor, both reach back to the prologue of The Beginning Part 1, where Captain Randor defends the Hall of Wisdom against Keldor's forces.
- Continuity: The "accursed Mystic Wall" Skeletor mentions is the barrier he set out to destroy in the opening three-parter, The Beginning.
- Continuity: Evil Seed, heard cackling as the Masters are picked off, was first seen imprisoned in Orko's Garden. The He-Man wiki says Skeletor freed him to join the Council.
- Fan observation: Fan observation: The He-Man wiki counts this as Webstor's full introduction, after a glimpse of a spider's eyes in Snake Pit. Here the only trace of him in the dialogue is Orko's account of a big web before Stratos is grabbed.
- Voice cast: According to the He-Man wiki, Michael Donovan voices Roboto, King Randor and Count Marzo in this episode, and Brian Dobson doubles Skeletor with Buzz-Off and Webstor.
- Voice cast: The He-Man wiki credits Garry Chalk as both Man-At-Arms and Whiplash, which puts him on both sides of the bars in the prison-compound scene, where Whiplash asks about the prisoners' chances and Man-At-Arms explains he designed the place to hold them.
- Production: There is no closing moral segment. The final minute is a preview of Part 2, introduced by He-Man.
- Toys: The He-Man wiki records that a Count Marzo figure based on this version of the character was sold in 2010 in the Masters of the Universe Classics line.
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