Skeletor decides that He-Man must hold the vanished power of the Elders and sends his hounds after the hero's scent, but they come back with a garment belonging to Prince Adam. Stung by Teela calling him a coward, Adam volunteers to escort Stratos to Avion, refuses to flee an ambush at the Eye of Zarkane and is carried off to Snake Mountain as bait for He-Man. With Adam's sword left at the palace, a robot He-Man arrives as a decoy while Orko disguises Cringer as Panthor to smuggle the sword in. Freed by his friends, Adam becomes He-Man and drives off Skeletor's bone monster, the Power of One.
"Just as Adam is secretly He-Man, people aren't always necessarily what they seem. So don't be so quick to judge others. They might surprise you, possessing abilities and strengths not apparent to the naked eye."
Teela: "Just admit it. You got scared."
Prince Adam: "I'm no He-Man, but maybe he won't be needed."
Prince Adam: "Not a chance! I don't run."
Orko: "Uh... I'd like to, but high altitudes give me nosebleeds."
Man-At-Arms: "No, because you're the only one other than myself and the sorceress who knows of Adam's secret."
Teela: "We're either saving your tail or watching you turn tail."
Every secret identity story eventually has to answer an awkward question: what does the man in the ordinary clothes think of all this? The Courage of Adam puts that question to Adam directly, and it does not let him off lightly.
It opens on a training exercise, with He-Man fighting Man-At-Arms's robots over a pool of lava that Orko assumes is as fake as the bad guys, until it sizzles under him. Then the episode turns to Teela, who spars with Adam in a training game among floating golden cubes and tells him he is pretty good at running away from things. Adam cannot answer her, because the true answer is the one thing he is forbidden to say, so he takes it to Man-At-Arms instead, and his plan is a sympathetic one: prove himself as Adam, and maybe He-Man will not be needed.
The episode is about what that plan costs. Adam's pride is real, and the script makes it the weakness Skeletor has been looking for. A floating probe records Teela's taunt, the recording is played back in Snake Mountain, and from that one exchange the villains predict that the prince will stand and fight at the Eye of Zarkane rather than be thought a coward. Adam obliges, with "Not a chance! I don't run," and the bravest thing he says all episode is the line that gets him chained up as bait.
Dean Stefan's script is careful about who knows what. When Orko fishes for compliments about being the best and bravest, Man-At-Arms tells him he is going to Snake Mountain because he is the only one besides Man-At-Arms and the Sorceress who knows Adam's secret. It is a funny line, and it reminds us how small that circle is. Teela and Randor are kept outside it, so the misunderstanding has somewhere to live, and Randor's "Then it's time he became a man" stings because we know what the king does not.
The animation has fun with machines. The training sequence over the lava, the white probes skimming the palace lawn and the Power of One, a towering creature of white bone that Tri-Klops is ordered to build, set a hard mechanical texture against the purple and red of Snake Mountain. The best gag is a staging one: when "He-Man" finally arrives at Snake Mountain the soundtrack hands him his theme, and a minute later he glitches and turns out to be another robot!
The standout pairing is Orko and Cringer. Orko's spell turns the most nervous cat on Eternia into a passable Panthor, and Cringer gets the Power Sword all the way to Adam's cell before a machine chases him off with it. Orko also gets the episode's best excuses for staying home, from nosebleeds at high altitude to a pile of chores, and Gabe Khouth plays them as panic rather than laziness, so we like Orko even while he is being a coward in an episode about cowardice.
The real weakness is what the episode does with Stratos. He is the reason for the trip, he goes down first at the Eye of Zarkane shouting at Adam to save himself, and then he drops out of the story; back at the palace he is mentioned only as the man Adam went to Avion with, and the rescue at Snake Mountain is all about the prince. The plot needed Adam alone and in chains, and Stratos was in the way, but a single line would have covered it.
The closing lesson about not judging people by appearances fits Teela's misreading of Adam better than anything Adam learns. The lesson he actually takes home comes from Man-At-Arms in the last scene: he fought well, and He-Man will always be needed. After a three-part origin built to make him He-Man, this is the first episode to dwell on what being He-Man costs the prince.
- Homage: The plot of Skeletor kidnapping Adam to lure He-Man out was also used in the 1983 Filmation episode Disappearing Act, where Skeletor demands He-Man as the ransom for the prince.
- Homage: The He-Man wiki notes that the buttons Man-At-Arms uses to control his training robots resemble those of the Cosmic Key from the 1987 live-action Masters of the Universe film.
- Continuity: The trade dispute Stratos raises here, with the Andreenids blockading Avion's eastern skyways, becomes the plot of the very next episode, Sky War, where Skeletor exploits it to start a war.
- Continuity: Stratos goes down at the Eye of Zarkane and is not seen again in this episode, though the palace mentions him; he turns up unharmed in Sky War. He turns up unharmed in Sky War.
- Fan observation: When the robot He-Man's hologram flickers out, the He-Man wiki points out that it is briefly shown with blue skin, which resembles Faker, Skeletor's robot He-Man from the original toy line.
- Toys: The giant bone creature is modelled on the Mutant Warrior, which the He-Man wiki describes as the only character in the 2002 toy line not based on an 1980s character. The figure came with the Mutant Slime Pit playset in 2003, and Tri-Klops builds bone warriors again in Roboto's Gambit.
- Voice cast: Scott McNeil is credited for Stratos, Mer-Man, Ram-Man, Clawful and Beast Man, though Clawful has no lines in this installment. Garry Chalk doubles as Man-At-Arms and Whiplash.
- Fan observation: The He-Man wiki suggests the training game Teela and Adam play among floating platforms of light may be a variation on Flashball, an Eternian sport first described in a 1985 He-Man Magazine story.
- Production: According to the He-Man wiki, the first line of the closing lesson is spoken by a hologram of Man-At-Arms projected over one of his robot decoys, with the real Man-At-Arms finishing it and the decoy signing off.
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