A storm cracks open a long-sealed passage inside Snake Mountain, and Skeletor and Beast Man find the Mirror of Moravad, an artifact that creates an exact opposite double of anyone placed before it. Skeletor needs someone close enough to He-Man to be trusted inside Castle Grayskull, and the answer arrives that same day: Kol Darr, an old ally of He-Man's from a past campaign against the Trelians, comes to Eternos for a reception in his honor, with his shadow-creature companion Shadow Master in tow.
After He-Man and Kol Darr help drive off sand crawlers attacking the village of Cafene, Kol Darr heads back alone and is lured into a cave by Evil-Lyn, captured, and brought before Skeletor. Skeletor unveils the Mirror of Moravad and produces an evil double of Kol Darr, meant to talk its way into Grayskull and steal the secrets of He-Man's power. The double is given magic control stones to command Kol Darr's steed Stridor and a freeze device to hide inside the royal palace.
Back at Eternos, the double asks He-Man for a single favor in return for his help against the sand crawlers: a look inside Castle Grayskull. Bound by his own word, He-Man agrees and brings him in, only for the double to vanish into the castle's secret passages alone. The Sorceress tells He-Man she cannot intervene, since Grayskull's magic protects any friend of He-Man's, real or not, leaving He-Man to search the halls himself while the double searches for the way to the power of Grayskull.
Still a captive at Snake Mountain, the real Kol Darr manages to turn the Mirror of Moravad on Skeletor himself, producing a good double of the villain. The double frees itself, warns the royal palace about the freeze device, and helps Teela and Man-At-Arms figure out that something is wrong. Meanwhile, inside Grayskull, the double of Kol Darr is tested by the castle's guardian, declares he wants the power to rule Eternia and the universe, and opens the wrong door, which exposes his true, mirrored nature just as He-Man catches up to him. Orko, who witnessed the real exchange between Skeletor and his double, finally reaches He-Man with the truth that Kol Darr was never harmed.
At Snake Mountain, the good double of Skeletor leads He-Man, Teela, and Man-At-Arms to the real Kol Darr, while causing chaos for Beast Man by issuing orders alongside the real Skeletor. Man-At-Arms settles which Skeletor is genuine by asking each to say "He-Man, I am your friend," a line the real Skeletor cannot bring himself to finish. Kol Darr is freed, the good double returns to the mirror having done its job, and the episode closes back at the palace with Orko startled by his own reflection in a new mirror in Man-At-Arms' lab.
Man-At-Arms: "You know, sometimes we think of people as being all good or all bad. Well, we shouldn't. Very few people are all bad. It may be hard to find, but if you look for it, chances are you'll find some good in most everyone. And the best way to start is to never judge anyone by the way they look but rather by what they do. Actions speak louder than words or appearances. It's something to reflect on."
John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam
Alan Oppenheimer as Skeletor and Man-At-Arms
Linda Gary as Teela, Evil-Lyn and the Sorceress
Lou Scheimer (credited as Erik Gunden) as Orko, Kol Darr, Beast Man and Shadow Master
"Not you, perhaps, but what if there was another you?" -- Skeletor, unveiling the Mirror of Moravad to Kol Darr.
"It worked. Now I just hope the mirror did what it's supposed to do, and that you're a good version of Skeletor." -- Kol Darr, after turning his own captor's weapon against him.
"He-Man, I am your friend... Oh! I can't do it! And I do not look like you!" -- the real Skeletor, failing Man-At-Arms' test to tell the two apart.
Can a mirror be trusted to tell He-Man who his friends are? "Double Trouble" bets its whole runtime on the answer being no, and it's patient enough to let him get fooled by the same trick twice before he catches on.
The setup comes straight out of Snake Mountain's own foundations. A storm cracks open a passage Skeletor has apparently never found in all his years at Snake Mountain, and waiting inside is the Mirror of Moravad, a prop with its own warning carved into the stone above it: step in front of it and you get a double, but only your exact opposite, good flipped to evil or the other way around. It's a tidy bit of fantasy mechanics, and the script, credited to J. Michael Straczynski, wastes no time turning it into a weapon rather than a curiosity.
Kol Darr is the target, an old ally of He-Man's who barely gets through a palace reception and a sand-crawler fight before Evil-Lyn traps him in a cave. His evil double doesn't need muscle to get into Castle Grayskull, and that's the episode's sharpest idea, named out loud about a third of the way in when the double asks He-Man for a single favor and reminds him he already promised "anything." He-Man isn't beaten by force. He's beaten by his own code, the promise he's honor-bound to keep even when the person asking has every reason not to be trusted. Skeletor doesn't have to out-fight He-Man anywhere in this episode. He only has to find someone close enough that He-Man's own decency hands him the keys.
The episode's best scene turns that same idea back on Skeletor, and it's funnier for doing it with no fanfare at all. The real Kol Darr, still a captive, somehow gets the mirror turned on Skeletor himself and produces a good double of the villain, who promptly walks into Snake Mountain and spends several minutes getting Beast Man stuck between two identical masters giving contradictory orders. Beast Man's confusion plays as more than a gag: he never once suspects a trick, because taking orders from whichever Skeletor spoke last is exactly the kind of loyalty Snake Mountain has trained into him. The episode doesn't need to say that out loud. It just lets him flounder.
Where "Double Trouble" is thinnest is the exact mechanics of that turnaround. One scene shows Kol Darr bound and resigned, pretending defeat; the next has him already explaining that "it worked" and hoping the result is a good Skeletor rather than a worse one. Whatever he actually did to get the mirror aimed at his captor happens entirely off-screen, between two scenes that don't quite add up to an explanation. [1] The Orko and Shadow Master business sits even further outside the plot, a bookend of a new magic trick that never pays off and a shadow-creature sidekick who exists mainly to be the butt of a joke about a mislabeled mirror in Man-At-Arms' lab.
What holds the episode together anyway is how literally it takes its own title. Nearly every major figure gets doubled or nearly doubled: Kol Darr by Skeletor's mirror, Skeletor by his own captive's counter, even Orko by his own startled reflection in the closing scene. By the time Man-At-Arms has to tell two identical Skeletors apart by asking one of them to say "He-Man, I am your friend," the episode has made its case without needing to spell it out: a face tells you nothing, and the only double anyone should trust is the one whose actions already proved which side he's on.
[1] The gap is a real one. Kol Darr is shown captive and unarmed in one stretch of the episode and already in command of the mirror's effect by the next scene, with nothing shown in between to explain how he got access to it.
- The on-screen title card credits the episode to writer J. Michael Straczynski, spelled as on the card; the name is frequently misspelled "Stracynski" in other listings.
- The episode's title plays out almost literally: Kol Darr, Skeletor, and even Orko's own reflection in a new mirror all get doubled or startled by a double before the credits roll.
- Continuity: Teela calls Man-At-Arms "Father" when he arrives with the captured double (["Father, look!"]), consistent with the series' established father-daughter relationship between the two.
- Kol Darr's steed, Stridor, is the same winged, armored horse usually associated with He-Man himself; handing control of him to Skeletor's double via magic stones is the clearest visual cue that something about the 'ally' is wrong before the plot says so outright.
- Source: heman.org desk. Dialogue and moral verified against the episode's own subtitle track. Screencaps hand-selected and tagged from the source video.
DISCUSSION
Join the conversation.
Comments below are mirrored on the heman.org forum. Sign in once, post anywhere.