The Deep End

A power surge from the Sea of Rakash tells Man-At-Arms that use one spelling site-wide, which helped topple the Mystic Wall, still exists. Skeletor wants it back, but Mer-Man has already claimed it, and Man-At-Arms dives alone in a diving suit to recover it. In the struggle a sea beast swallows Man-At-Arms and the crystal, which mutates the creature into a giant that tears through a village and heads for Castle Grayskull. He-Man goes inside the beast after him, while Man-At-Arms orders Teela to destroy it if it threatens Grayskull. He-Man finally absorbs the crystal's power through his sword and is briefly turned to stone.

"I knew the risks, Orko. But I wasn't about to leave Man-At-Arms behind, no matter what. Friends stick together through thick and thin."

Orko: "Trolley moly! I could have been a trolley pancake!"

Evil-Lyn: "You didn't even think of it this time."

Man-At-Arms: "And just keep your fins where I can see them."

He-Man: "The stomach acid lightened it up quite a bit."

Skeletor: "Now, what could possibly be in that old pile of stones worth dying for?"

Some orders are easier to give than to carry out. The Deep End builds toward a very hard one, and it gets there by way of a fish's stomach.

Brooks Wachtel's script starts small, with Orko poking at Man-At-Arms's inventions until a power surge from the Sea of Rakash sends the readings nearly off the scale. The source is the Corodite Crystal, the gem that helped bring down the Mystic Wall, and three parties go after it: Skeletor, who only remembers it exists because Evil-Lyn tells him, Mer-Man, who has kept it for himself, and Man-At-Arms, who goes down alone in a diving suit because he can travel more covertly that way. The underwater scramble ends with a sea beast swallowing Man-At-Arms and the crystal together, and the crystal starts mutating the beast from inside.

The episode is about what guarding a secret asks of the people who are not in on it. Man-At-Arms leaves Teela and Adam in charge of the Masters, and when the beast turns toward Castle Grayskull he calls Teela from inside it with an order: if the castle is in the slightest danger of being breached, she must destroy the creature, with him and He-Man still in it. He does not tell her why the old ruin matters that much, and Teela is asked to act on it anyway.

Lisa Ann Beley and Garry Chalk play that call as an argument neither can win. Teela tries twice to object and is cut off both times, and Man-At-Arms ends it with "I am." Then she turns to the Masters and gives the order as her own: do not allow the creature to reach the Castle. The scene that follows, Teela taking her troops through ready and aim before calling on them to stand down, is the best thing in the episode, because for a few seconds we believe she will give the order to fire.

The beast itself gives the animators plenty to play with. Inside, it is all red folds of flesh and green acid streaming down the walls, with the crystal glowing pink somewhere in the middle, and He-Man wades through it to reach Man-At-Arms. Outside, it grows from a toothy fish into something with green claws that reach over a village tower. He-Man gets the best joke in the gut: when Man-At-Arms says his armor is too heavy to carry, He-Man tells him the stomach acid has lightened it up quite a bit.

Skeletor's side is played for comedy for most of the running time, and Snake Mountain is a lot of fun this week! A weapon test blows up in his face, a henchman asks what the crystal rhymes with, and Evil-Lyn gets the sharpest line in the lair when Skeletor wonders why he did not think of the crystal before. The comedy pays off in the last Snake Mountain scene, where Skeletor loses the crystal and decides he has gained something worth more: knowledge. Teela was prepared to sacrifice her father to save Grayskull, so what could be in that old pile of stones worth dying for?

Where the episode stumbles is the ending it chooses. After He-Man takes the crystal's power through his sword and breaks free of the stone, the closing scene goes to Orko and a joke about slime, with He-Man explaining that friends stick together through thick and thin. The line fits the rescue, but it walks past the harder story the episode set up. Teela was ordered to kill her father and came close to doing it, and the script gives the two of them an embrace and no conversation about it.

Oddly, the only character who stops to think about what the order meant is Skeletor, and handing him that job is the cleverest thing in the script. The Deep End lets Teela and Man-At-Arms carry its weight while He-Man does the lifting, and Skeletor's last scene leaves a crack in Grayskull's secrecy: nothing was breached, but he now suspects there is something inside worth dying for..

1. Continuity: The crystal is the one Mer-Man spent two years hunting in the deepest reaches of the Sea of Rakash in The Beginning Part 1, where Skeletor used it to crack the Mystic Wall.
2. Production: Writer Brooks Wachtel had co-written the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode Hordak's Power Play with Tom Bagen for Filmation. The He-Man wiki lists The Deep End as his only script for the 2002 series.
3. Voice cast: Nicole Oliver is credited for the Sorceress, who appears but has no lines.
4. Voice cast: Scott McNeil is credited for Stratos, Clawful, Beast Man, Mer-Man and Ram-Man, and Gabe Khouth doubles as Orko and Mekaneck.
5. Toys: The He-Man wiki lists the Attack Squid, the Evil Warriors' sea vehicle, as appearing here, and this is its only listed appearance in the series.
6. Fan observation: The He-Man wiki lists Man-At-Arms's Bashin' Beetle among the episode's vehicles, seen under construction.
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