The Price of Deceit

Skeletor has his throne back and wants Evil-Lyn punished for freeing the Snake Men, so he runs her down and takes her to the Pool of Shadows to offer her to the horrors of the Forsaken Realm. Evil-Lyn calls on her father, the Faceless One, who cannot leave his walls and warns He-Man instead. While she reminds Skeletor how they met, when he was still Keldor, and how she saved his life by summoning Hordak, He-Man fights past the Evil Warriors and disrupts the portal. Freed, Evil-Lyn turns on her rescuer and earns her way back to Skeletor's side.

"It's important to forgive. It shows that you care enough about someone to give them a second chance. Try to practice forgiveness the next time someone disappoints you or hurts your feelings. Forgive them, and chances are you'll both feel a lot better."

Skeletor: "Such is the price of deceit."

Keldor: "I am Keldor, future ruler of Eternia."

Hordak: "There will be... a price."

Skeletor: "Keldor is no more."

Evil-Lyn: "Think I'll pass."

Evil-Lyn: "Can you blame me for learning your lessons so well?"

What does a villain owe the man who taught her villainy? Evil-Lyn helped let King Hiss out of the void, and with Skeletor restored to Snake Mountain, Larry DiTillio's script spends its half hour on the bill.

It opens fast: Skeletor runs her down in a ruin, she calls out to her father, and the Faceless One, cursing the forces that keep him prisoner inside his walls, appears at the palace to warn He-Man that Skeletor means to banish a living being through the Pool of Shadows at moonrise. He does not say who. The Masters are not sure they can trust him, and He-Man goes anyway, only working out at the pool whose life he has come to save. "I might live to regret it," he says, "but I've got to stop this."

Skeletor's speech at the pool names the title, "Such is the price of deceit," and the rest of the episode tests whether he means it. This is a story about a teacher being beaten with his own lesson. Evil-Lyn's defence is a history, and the flashbacks that carry it are the best material in the episode: a young Keldor, his face still his own, finding her in a storeroom with the Orb of Agony she has just lifted from under the noses of Beast Man and Tri-Klops, and telling her he likes what he has heard about her, and what he sees even more.

The second flashback is the standout scene. Keldor, dying from the injury he took at the Hall of Wisdom, has Evil-Lyn activate something with her magic, and Hordak answers. The animation shows almost nothing of him: a pale chest crossed by a black harness, smoke curling round a clawed shoulder, red-eyed gargoyles on the walls. The restraint makes his one condition land harder; "There will be... a price," and Keldor's answer that no price is too great is followed by screaming. When Evil-Lyn says his name afterwards, the reply is "Keldor is no more." Brian Dobson voices both young Keldor and the skull, according to the cast list on the He-Man wiki, and the script gives him a cackle to cross from one to the other.

Kathleen Barr has the harder job, because Evil-Lyn spends most of the episode chained beneath a twisted black arch under a pale moon, pleading. The change of heart she floats to He-Man is the con. Once He-Man has broken the portal and pulled her clear, she weighs the offer out loud, a life of virtue and light, fighting evil and protecting the innocent, then decides "Think I'll pass" and turns her staff on her rescuer. Skeletor concludes he misjudged her after all, and the two of them end up laughing together in the throne room once she asks whether he can blame her for learning his lessons so well.

The action is functional. He-Man's test flight in the new Wind Raider ends in a burning wreck, which pays off at the end when we learn the new Wind Raider will need a little tune-up. The fight with the Evil Warriors at the pool is quick, but the thing from the Forsaken Realm is well handled, suggested by purple claws, tentacles and green eyes among the ruins and never explained.

The weak point is the lesson read out at the end. It asks viewers to forgive, because forgiving shows you care enough about someone to give them a second chance, and the only reconciliation the episode offers is two villains laughing over treachery before Skeletor warns her never to betray him again. The series closes on a lesson every week, and forgiveness is a fair summary of the plot on paper, but what DiTillio actually wrote is a truce bought with a useful act, and the lesson asks it to carry a warmth it never had.

None of that dents what the episode gets right. It finishes this Skeletor's origin on screen, and then it trusts Evil-Lyn to be the better student. Skeletor named the price of deceit, and by the end Evil-Lyn has turned it back on him with a joke about his own lessons.

1. Continuity: the injury Evil-Lyn mentions was shown in The Beginning Part 1, where Keldor's fight with Captain Randor at the Hall of Wisdom ends with him crying "My face!" The flashback here picks up from that moment.
2. Continuity: the Faceless One is Evil-Lyn's father in this series and calls himself the former guardian of the Ram Stone. The He-Man wiki records that He-Man destroyed the stone in The Last Stand, and that the Faceless One's only earlier appearance was in Lessons.
3. Production: Larry DiTillio also wrote Lessons, the Faceless One's earlier episode, and before that wrote more than a dozen episodes of the 1983 Filmation series, among them The Dragon's Gift and the House of Shokoti two-parter.
4. Voice cast: Brian Dobson voices Keldor, Skeletor and Sssqueeze here. His brother Paul Dobson voices Kronis, Tri-Klops and the thing in the Pool of Shadows.
5. Voice cast: Hordak, seen only in the flashback, is voiced by Colin Murdock, and the Faceless One by Richard Newman, who voiced Rattlor in the previous episode.
6. Continuity: the Tablet of the Elders the Snake Men dig out of the Hall of Wisdom here records where the Elders hid the Serpent's Ring, which King Hiss goes after in Second Skin.
7. Production: Hordak's flashback cameo was meant to lead somewhere. Ian Richter of Mattel said Hordak would have conquered Eternia as the main villain of a third season, but the line and the show were cancelled before it was made.
8. Production: the writers intended Keldor to be revealed as Randor's half-brother. It never made it to screen and was confirmed in the character biographies on the BCI Eclipse DVD release.
9. Continuity: Evil-Lyn's restored loyalty does not last. The He-Man wiki notes she later tries to free Hordak from Despondos with Count Marzo, and that in the unproduced third season she would have succeeded.