The Island

Man-At-Arms brings Teela and Prince Adam to a remote island to visit Dekker, the Teacher-At-Arms who trained him, but two crab people have overheard the plan and clicked word to their cousin Clawful. Skeletor sets an ambush to capture Man-At-Arms and his knowledge of inventions. Dekker is taken as bait, Teela charges into a trap, and all three end up tied on the beach. Dekker and Duncan stage a quarrel to break free, He-Man joins the fight, and Man-At-Arms is stung by a toxic Pulmos. With Dekker's memory failing, Teela recalls the antidote, Milk of Madrona, while Skeletor is left waiting for a delivery.

"You learn your lessons, and you put them into action! That's the key to success."

Dekker: "Used to call him Randy back when he was a cadet."

Teela: "No, not everything. Just significantly more than you."

Man-At-Arms: "Ugh. Teenagers."

Man-At-Arms: "You didn't really think Dekker and I were angry at each other?"

Teela: "I know I act like I know everything, Father, but I don't."

Every teacher eventually finds out which lessons stuck, and the answer rarely arrives at a convenient moment. "The Island" sends Man-At-Arms, Teela and Prince Adam out across the sea to visit Dekker, the old Teacher-At-Arms who trained Duncan, and the trap is laid before the boat has even left. (Dekker also used to call King Randor "Randy" back when the king was a cadet, a nice glimpse of the court in its younger days.) A pair of crab people in the shallows overhear the plan, click the news across the water to their cousin Clawful, and Skeletor sees a chance to take Man-At-Arms alive and pick his brain about his inventions.

Dean Stefan builds the script out of instruction, layered three deep. Man-At-Arms tells Teela that a good student and warrior never stops learning, and credits Dekker with teaching him that; Teela, who has just steered the water craft into trouble, answers Adam's teasing by claiming to know "significantly more than you." This is an episode about what happens when a lesson has to work without the person who taught it. Almost every scene after the capture turns on that idea, from the staged argument on the beach to the moment the man who was supposed to have all the answers cannot find one.

The argument is the cleverest beat in the writing, and it works because the episode lets us believe it for a minute. Dekker scolds Duncan for walking into a trap, Duncan shouts back that he was only coming to help, Teela tries to take the blame and both men tell her to stay out of it. The crab people wander over to enjoy the fight and walk straight into a trick the two old soldiers worked out years ago against bandits on the Isle of Blakely. Teela falls for it as completely as the captors do. A minute earlier she was told to think before she acts, and now two old soldiers show her what that looks like.

The standout scene comes after the Pulmos sting. Dekker reaches for the cure and finds nothing there. Teela calls it out instead: Milk of Madrona, from a tree that grows far to the south, but whose pods float and wash up on shores across the hemisphere. The student finishes the teacher's sentence. Then the episode slows right down, and Man-At-Arms, halting between breaths, tells his daughter he is hard on her only because much is expected, and Teela admits that she acts like she knows everything when she does not. The voice performances keep it small: his lines come apart word by word, and her answer arrives through quiet sobs rather than a speech.

The animation gives the island a real sense of place, with green water, barnacled pillars, coral caves hung with starfish, and a closing stretch washed in orange sunset light. The Pulmos are a good design as well, tall coral creatures with blue tentacles that rear up over the sand and loom above anyone running from them.

The weakness is the middle. From He-Man's arrival to Teela's cry of "Father!" the episode runs almost entirely on growls, shrieks and grunts, and the crab people never become characters beyond their wish for a reward from Skeletor and a place among his Evil Warriors. A He-Man show owes its audience a fight, and this one needed He-Man somewhere, but the brawl stalls the story the quiet scenes are telling, and the sting that matters happens almost in passing inside it. Adam's absence, meanwhile, is covered by two passing lines, one of them a suggestion that someone should go and look for the prince.

Orko's closing exchange with He-Man about practice puts the theme into words, but the episode had already earned it on the beach. "The Island" belongs to Man-At-Arms and Teela more than to He-Man. The old soldier forgets, the daughter remembers, and the lesson survives the trip from one to the other.

1. Voice cast: The He-Man wiki lists Blu Mankuma as Dekker, opposite Garry Chalk's Man-At-Arms.
2. Voice cast: The two crab people are credited on the He-Man wiki as Claw Guy #1 and #2, voiced by Paul Dobson and Brian Drummond, with Richard Newman as the old fisherman, credited simply as Old Guy.
3. Continuity: Dekker never returns. The He-Man wiki lists The Island as his only appearance in the 2002 series.
4. Toys: Dekker got a Masters of the Universe Classics figure in Mattel's Club Eternia subscription for November 2012, armed with a metal club, according to the He-Man wiki.
5. Continuity: Clawful cannot read the claw-click code of his own people ("Never was too good at spellin' stuff."), and the He-Man wiki's Clawful entry cites this episode for his cousin being considerably sharper than he is.
6. Fan observation: The He-Man wiki says this episode introduces Pinsore, Clawful's cousin. The name is never spoken in the dialogue.
7. Continuity: Orkas Island was named before this episode. The Monster Within opens with a fight over the Emerald of Orkas Island.
8. Toys: Mattel's Masters of the Universe Classics line later gave Clawful's crab people a species name, Karikoni, per the He-Man wiki.