Orko's Missing Magic

Orko's magic is stolen by a small creature which escapes to another world. He-Man and Orko travel to the surreal world of Omiros to get Orko's magic back. Orko tells viewers they do not need talent or possessions, they are special just for being themselves and real friends will know it.

Orko: "I was really unhappy when I lost my magic. I was afraid that people wouldn't like me anymore because I couldn't make them laugh or give them magic presents. And then Adam told me something:" Prince Adam: "You don't have to amuse people or give them gifts to be loved. You're a special person, Orko." Orko: "And you know what? You're special! And you don't have to buy presents or be a clown to make people like you. That way you'll know that the friends you make are real friends. That they like you for yourself."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam, Tik and Zalt

Alan Oppenheimer as Man-At-Arms, Battle Cat/Cringer and Tok

Linda Gary as Teela, the Sorceress and Queen Marlena

Lou Scheimer (credited as Erik Gunden) as Orko, King Randor and Giant

"We love you for yourself and not for your magic."

- Teela

Orko loses the one thing he thinks makes him worth loving, and "Orko's Missing Magic" spends its first act proving him wrong before it ever gets to the dimension-hopping rescue plot.

The disaster hits before the title card has finished: Orko's latest home experiment to "increase my magic power" goes kablooey for what he counts as the third time this month, and when he tries to cover with a trick for King Randor that evening, nothing happens. "My magic. It won't work. It's gone," he tells Teela, and the scene plays it for a beat of comedy before it turns into something sadder. "Without it, I'm no good to anyone," he says, and the episode is specific about what's actually broken: not his spells, but his sense that the spells are the whole reason anyone keeps him around.

That's the idea the rest of the episode has to answer, and it answers it twice, once in the dialogue and once in the plot. Teela gets there first, plainly: "We love you for yourself and not for your magic." Then the adventure makes her argue it structurally. Orko insists on joining the rescue even though, as he admits, "I know I won't be very useful" without his powers, and for most of the trip to Omiros that's exactly true. He contributes nothing to the fight at Castle Ackle. He's along anyway, because Teela's line was never conditional on him being useful in the first place.

Omiros itself is the episode's best idea and its least developed one. Tik and Tok, the first locals He-Man and company meet, finish each other's sentences in a literal sense, one character speaking a clause and the other supplying its end, which plays as a neat bit of alien vocal design right up until it has to carry actual plot information and starts slowing every exchange down. The device is charming for exactly as long as the episode doesn't need Tik and Tok to explain anything complicated, and Zalt, the wizard holding Orko's stolen magic, needs them to explain quite a lot.

Zalt himself gets one good trick and coasts on it. He lifts He-Man's sword out of his hand with a flattering question, "how does it work," and when He-Man obliges with "by the power of Grayskull," the transformation lightning hits Zalt instead. It's a sharp enough gag that the show reuses its own transformation animation to sell it, and it's the episode's single cleverest visual idea. It's also as far as Zalt goes as a villain. He never gets an ambition beyond draining whatever magic is nearby, and once the gronk carrying Orko's power is freed from its cage, he's swept through a collapsing dimensional gate and deposited on Eternia as a captive, no comeuppance scene required because the show never gave him a real threat to be punished for.

What survives all of that, and what makes the back half worth sitting through a thin villain and a slowed-down translation gimmick, is that the episode remembers its own setup. The gronk is recovered, the Sorceress restores Orko's magic, and the first thing he does with it back is turn Man-At-Arms' new hat into water. He was never going to stop being chaotic, and the show never asked him to. The point, stated by Teela in act one and repeated by Orko himself to the audience at the close, was never the tricks. "Orko's Missing Magic" is a slight adventure wrapped around a sincere one, and we remember the sincere one long after Zalt and his castle are forgotten.

1. Behind the scenes: Script was approved May 4, 1983 and final script revision took place June 27, 1983.
2. Continuity: The design for the blue creature persued by Gronk would be reused as Pooki in Into the Abyss. The Gronk would be seen again as an Omiran in Mistaken Identity. The animated sequence of the Sorceress creating a portal would be used again in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode Loo-Kee Lends a Hand. The lightning that Zalt inadvertently summons is reused from He-Man's transformation sequence.
3. More continuity: The animation model for one of Zalt's Mechacats was considered to be used as the Growler in The Huntsman before it was decided it should look like a mechanical dog. The character models of both Tik Tok and Zalt can be seen as part of the Keeper's menagerie in The Heart of a Giant.
4. Animation errors and goofs: When Orko is performing his spell with the crystal, the same portrait of a bearded Trollan can be seen inside his room as well as through the open door when the two creatures sneak in. The Sorceress consults a book of magic to open an inter dimensional gate. In one shot, her cape is missing from the space between her arm and her body. When she appears again, the cape is present and correct.
5. Orko's magic goes completely missing after a spell rebound. The Heroic Warriors race to restore it before Trolla learns of his shame.