Fisto's Forest

A boy picking fruit in an Eternian forest is cornered by a Grazzler until Fisto arrives to save him, and the grateful boy is startled to learn that his rescuer was once the villain of these very woods. Fisto admits as much, and tells the boy how he came to change.

Years earlier, Fisto used Skeletor-granted magic to redirect a village's river and imprison the local Elf Lord, ruling the surrounding forest as a bully backed by his monstrous spider, Arakna. When the village elder Yarrow confronted him, Fisto and Arakna captured him outright, and only the timely arrival of Prince Adam, Teela and Orko, there at King Randor's request, kept Yarrow's daughter Raina and the rest of the rescue party from being trapped as well. Adam and Cringer became He-Man and Battle Cat to pull everyone free of Arakna's web, and when Fisto tried to drown his pursuers by flooding a cave, his own trap pinned him under a fallen log. It was Raina, not He-Man, who chose to risk freeing him before anyone had reason to trust he deserved it.

Fisto repaid that trust. He helped He-Man break Skeletor's hold over the forest and free the imprisoned Elf Lord, undoing the spell that had given him his stolen power in the first place, and Arakna's sudden loyalty to Skeletor over her old master could not stop them. King Randor ultimately pardoned Fisto for his crimes once the river and the forest were restored.

Back in the present, He-Man happens by just as Fisto reaches the end of his story and finishes it himself, confirming that Fisto made things right with Yarrow personally. The boy thanks Fisto for the rescue, and Fisto offers to lend a hand anytime, a line He-Man can't resist a parting joke about.

Teela: "You all saw how Fisto changed from a bad guy who nobody liked into a real hero. At first he caused nothing but trouble. In today's episode, Fisto learned that if you treat a person with respect and courtesy, chances are that's the way they'll treat you in return. If you mistreat somebody, you'll only earn their disrespect. Remember the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So long, until next time."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam, Raina's grandfather, and the Elf Lord

Alan Oppenheimer as Skeletor and Battle Cat/Cringer

Linda Gary as Teela and Raina

Erik Gunden as Orko, King Randor, Fisto, and Yarrow

Erika Scheimer as Peasant boy

"And when Fisto offers you his hand, boy, that's a big offer."

- He-Man

Fisto's Forest hands its moral to the villain. Most of this season's redemption stories are told about a character; Douglas Booth's script is told by one, with Fisto narrating his own fall and recovery to a boy who has no reason yet to trust him. That framing device is the episode's real subject: whether a story about extending trust to an enemy still works when the enemy is also the one telling it, shaping how badly he comes off along the way.

For a while it does not. That restraint is the episode's best choice. Fisto spends the opening act doing damage rather than apologizing for it, diverting Yarrow's river, threatening the village, and setting his spider Arakna on Teela and Raina before He-Man and Battle Cat arrive to pull them free. Director Lou Kachivas lets these scenes run with real menace. The twisted purple roots choking the forest stand in for how far Fisto's borrowed magic, granted by Skeletor, has warped the land around him, and the show rarely commits this hard to making a soon-to-be ally unpleasant first.

The turn, when it comes, is structural rather than earned through dialogue. Fisto gets caught in his own trap, pinned under a log meant for He-Man. Raina, not He-Man, is the one who chooses to free him, before anyone has evidence he deserves it. It is the episode's best scene, because it carries real risk: Raina has no idea whether Fisto will turn on her the moment he is loose, and the writing does not pretend otherwise. He does not, and the rest of the episode is Fisto spending that trust back, teaming with He-Man to break Skeletor's spell and free the imprisoned Elf Lord.

Where the episode loses its nerve is in how it handles the audience for all this. The frame story keeps Fisto's reform small and local rather than costly, and it lets the character off the hook at the close by having He-Man finish the story for him, stepping in with the detail that Fisto asked Yarrow's forgiveness directly rather than letting Fisto say so himself. A character built around taking responsibility is handed his own credit by someone else.

Arakna is the episode's other missed opportunity. Skeletor's offer of a spell to seal the heroes' doom implies a version of Fisto's spider worth being afraid of, but the character spends most of its screen time as a web-slinging obstacle rather than a real threat, and its sudden loyalty to Skeletor over Fisto in the final act plays as plot convenience more than a believable betrayal. Yarrow and Raina fare a little better as the village side of the story, but neither gets much beyond the function the plot needs from them: an elder to be endangered, a granddaughter to run for help.

What holds the episode together is Fisto. The show commits to reforming him on screen, in something close to real time. Ram-Man and Stratos were both already Heroic Warriors by the time the show introduced them; Fisto has to earn that standing in front of the camera. The closing joke, that a hand from Fisto is a pretty big offer, only lands because the hour has earned the right to treat his gesture as warmth rather than threat. Few episodes this early in the show let a villain travel this far and still make the audience believe he walked there, rather than being carried.

1. Behind the scenes: Script was approved March 14, 1984 and final script revision took place April 9, 1984. Fisto's character model, based on the toy concept from Mattel, was designed by Charles Zembillas and Diane Keener.
2. Continuity: The character model for Rayna was previously used as Podi in It's Not My Fault and will be seen again as Ariane in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode Book Burning. The Grazzler will be seen again as one of the prisoners of Beast Island in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode The Prisoners of Beast Island. Arakna's character model would also be reused as the spider in the Abyss in The Problem with Power. The animation of He-Man lifting and throwing is a reanimated version of the sequence first seen in The Taking of Grayskull and used again in Return of the Gryphon; Quest for the Sword and The Gambler.
3. More continuity: An altered version of the animation model of the Grazzler will be used as a bear that She-Ra befriends in the She-Ra Princess of Power episode Battle for Bright Moon. The animation model used for the Grazzler will be used again as the Polar Beast in the She-Ra Princess of Power episode Three Courageous Hearts. Even though the story is supposed to be narrated by Fisto, it includes Prince Adam turning into He-Man, something he shouldn't know about and wouldn't tell the boy about if he did.
4. Fisto's Filmation introduction. The script sets up the character as a former villain who reforms after his confrontation with He-Man, joining the Heroic Warriors as one of the few characters in the run to make that transition on-screen. The 2002 MYP series later established his personal name Malcolm and his relationship as Man-At-Arms's brother.