Evilseed

Plants are starting to grow wild all over Eternia, causing trouble for both He-Man and Skeletor. The two enemies must team up to defeat Evilseed, a plant like villain looking to take over Eternia for himself. He-Man tells viewers that working with others can be difficult, but respecting their ideas, even when you disagree, makes the job easier.

He-Man: "Today was a day for surprises, and the biggest one of all was Skeletor and He-Man working together. By joining their powers, He-Man and Skeletor were able to stop Evilseed. Working with others can sometimes be difficult, but if you listen to and respect the ideas of others, even when you don't agree with them, you'll find it's easier to get the job done. And who knows? You may even learn something."

Evilseed: "I am Evilseed, master of the Plant Kingdom, and I am taking over."

"Evilseed" begins with a running joke about Man-At-Arms sneezing through a flood rescue and ends with Skeletor standing in the one room he has sworn never to enter except as a conqueror. The episode spends its twenty minutes walking him there, earning the walk rather than skipping to the moral. This is not a story about a villain learning a lesson. It is a story about a villain cornered by circumstance into the one alliance he hates most, and the writers never once let him enjoy it.

The setup is almost throwaway: a hooded peddler sells gnome farmers a miracle fertilizer, tells them to plant it by the dam because that's where the water is, and vanishes. By the time the vines have swallowed the Dam of the Ancients and a towering green figure rises from the flood to announce himself, "I am Evilseed, master of the Plant Kingdom, and I am taking over," the episode has already made its real subject plain. Evilseed's only weakness is cold, and stopping him will take more power than He-Man or Skeletor commands alone. Cooperation here is not a moral choice. It's arithmetic nobody wants to do.

Barney Cohen's script gets real mileage out of how badly Skeletor wants out of that arithmetic. He refuses the Sorceress's summons outright ("Never will I set foot in Castle Grayskull until the day I enter as its conqueror"), sits on his own throne hoping He-Man will beg first, and abandons Trap Jaw mid-rescue with a shrug ("Sorry, but I've got to help myself"). When he finally does cross into Grayskull, it costs him something real: Evilseed's vines have already overrun his own mountain, Evil-Lyn is reduced to pleading with him to focus, and even his one ally in the room, Orko, refuses to pretend they're on the same side. "I say we can't trust him," Orko says, and nobody in the room argues the point. The alliance holds only as long as it benefits Skeletor. The moment the ice ball is airborne, he tries to strand He-Man on the Ice Mountains rather than share the credit.

Bob Arkwright's direction leans into that discomfort rather than smoothing it over. The vine attack on the Royal Palace plays as a real siege, King Randor and Queen Marlena bound and helpless in their own throne room while the building groans around them, and the Sorceress has to make an emergency teleport call she can only half complete, leaving Teela and the king and queen behind while she pulls He-Man and Orko clear. Snake Mountain gets the same treatment from the other side: Evilseed's vines choke Skeletor's own machinery, and the episode is content to let its villain's lair feel under real siege rather than treating it as a safe home base between fights.

Where the episode runs thin is Evilseed himself. He gets one strong entrance and a handful of effective threats, but no real interiority beyond wanting Eternia for his own, and he spends most of the back half as an offscreen flood level rather than a character in the room with the heroes. The ice-ball plan that finally stops him is rushed into the final act at the Ice Mountains on a hard sixty-second countdown, resolving by schedule rather than by anything Evilseed himself chooses to do.

None of that undoes what the episode gets right in its central pairing. The moral that closes the show, about working with others even when you don't agree with them, usually plays as a platitude tacked onto whatever happened that week. Here, it describes exactly what the audience just watched: two enemies forced to share power neither one wanted to give up, getting the job done anyway, and liking it about as little as you'd expect.

cereal:geek's commentary on Evilseed, with behind-the-scenes detail on how the episode was made.

1. Evilseed is set up by a hooded, unnamed peddler who sells gnome farmers a miracle fertilizer and tells them to plant it by the Dam of the Ancients. He is never identified and never reappears once Evilseed emerges from the flood.
2. Skeletor abandons two of his own allies on screen during the crisis. He refuses to send help to Mer-Man, who radios in under attack at Snake Mountain, and he later leaves Trap Jaw to fend for himself mid-fight with the words 'I must think of myself, not you.'
3. The Sorceress's plan hinges on combining what she calls the three greatest forces in Eternia: He-Man's strength, her own magic, and Skeletor's power, all amplified by proximity to Castle Grayskull. Skeletor only agrees once Evilseed's vines have overrun Snake Mountain's own machinery and he has run out of other options.
4. King Randor, Queen Marlena, and Teela are left bound by vines in the Royal Palace partway through the episode and are not shown being freed; they reappear safely only in the closing scene.