Return of Evil

An electrical storm over the Royal Palace announces the arrival of Aremesh, an Electroid who has crossed dimensions hunting for a "secret thing" hidden by Orko. Watching from Snake Mountain, Skeletor has no idea what Aremesh is after, only that he wants it for himself, and offers the Electroid an alliance before anyone on Eternia can intervene.

Aremesh knocks Teela and Man-At-Arms unconscious and seizes Orko. Adam, grabbing a sword and shield rather than running, takes a jolt meant to stop him and uses the moment Aremesh flees to transform into He-Man. When Skeletor teleports Aremesh and Orko to Snake Mountain, he strikes his bargain: help him conquer Eternia, and he'll help retrieve the secret. Skeletor then threatens to unleash Aremesh on Eternos unless Orko gives it up, buying himself an hour's grace from Man-At-Arms while he figures out what to do.

Orko finally admits what he has been hiding: a Dimension Sphere entrusted to him back on Trolla, tucked away inside a wall of Castle Grayskull. With the Sorceress's help, He-Man and Orko lure Aremesh to the Tar Swamp and lay a trap, using the sphere to open a gate back to Aremesh's home dimension. Skeletor, trying to double-cross everyone at once, slips into the gate chasing Orko, while Aremesh, sensing the trick, holds back. He-Man seizes him anyway, his strength draining with every second of contact, and throws him into the closing tunnel just as it seals, trapping Skeletor and Aremesh together on the other side.

Back at the palace, Queen Marlena knights Orko for the courage he showed despite being frightened through the whole ordeal, and He-Man reminds him that real courage is only possible because of the fear it overcomes.

Teela: "Today Orko was being chased by an evil robot. Orko was very frightened. But in the end he overcame his fear and helped He-Man defeat the robot. All of us are frightened at one time or another, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Fear is natural. It makes us aware of possible danger. Without fear, we'd wind up in all kinds of trouble. So never feel guilty because you're afraid. Listen to your fears. They'll help you stay out of trouble. Until later, bye now."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam, Beast Man and Aramesh

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

Linda Gary as Teela, Evil-Lyn, the Sorceress and Queen Marlena

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

"Very interesting. So that little floating bag of wind has a secret hidden somewhere... Perhaps we should let this walking lightbulb, Aremesh, do our dirty work for us!"

― Skeletor

Nobody in "Return of Evil" is allowed to admit they are afraid, except the one character the show has already decided gets to be a coward. The episode opens on an almost lazy court scene, Orko balancing a drinks tray while Cringer sprawls across the terrace floor. It takes a full storm and an alien in gold armor before anyone's fear becomes the plot rather than a running joke at Orko's expense. Richard Pardee's script is telling two stories about the same feeling, and it only owns up to that at the very end.

The Electroid Aremesh is a better idea than the episode quite knows what to do with. He is not a conqueror with his own agenda, but a courier sent to retrieve something that was never Eternia's problem until Skeletor made it one. The writing keeps him just sympathetic enough that his deal with Skeletor plays less like a villain team-up and more like two separate kinds of desperation colliding. Skeletor wants the secret Aremesh is chasing without caring what it costs Orko to keep hidden, and that is where the episode's real spine sits: everyone around Orko treats his fear as a punchline, until the Electroid shows up and makes it the only thing standing between Eternia and whatever Aremesh was sent to collect.

Adam gets the episode's best physical beat for it, and we feel the transformation earned rather than cued on reflex. He takes up a sword and shield against an opponent he cannot yet match, shields Teela's unconscious body with his own, and only calls on the power of Grayskull once the Electroid has already fled with Orko in tow. It is a small reordering of the usual formula, hero reacts to loss before he reacts to threat! That one choice buys the sequence a beat of real stakes a court-room episode this busy does not always bother to earn elsewhere.

The strongest stretch comes later, in the Tar Swamp, once He-Man finally gets his hands on Aremesh. The fight stops being about blows and starts being about endurance. Holding on drains his strength visibly, animated as a slow bleed of power rather than a single knockout blow, and he staggers before he manages to throw Aremesh into the collapsing dimensional tunnel. It is the rare He-Man set piece that treats victory as costly instead of inevitable, and Zoar circling overhead while the gate closes gives the moment a scale the rest of the episode's palace scheming never quite reaches.

What the episode does not solve is Skeletor's half of the bargain. He spends two acts threatening to loose Aremesh on Eternos unless Orko hands over the secret, and then the plan simply evaporates once Man-At-Arms buys an hour to talk it over. Nothing forces Skeletor to answer for the bluff. Evil-Lyn and Beast Man, dragged along for most of the runtime, get almost nothing to do once the trap door in the throne room swallows them. For a secret worth threatening a kingdom over, the show stays strangely incurious about what it actually costs anyone to protect.

It closes, rightly, on the one character who was never allowed to pretend otherwise. Queen Marlena dubs Orko a knight for the fear he carried through the whole plot, and He-Man's reminder that courage cannot exist without it reframes everything that came before. Every other hero in this episode got to look brave by simply never admitting what Orko said out loud. The medal is a small gesture for a season this loud, but we would call it pointed in the right direction.

1. Behind the scenes: Script was approved May 9, 1983. The sequence in which Cringer is frightened by lightning and runs past the heroic warriors was animated by Tom Sito. The dimensional gate that appears in the Tar Swamp was originally scripted to be projected on the the base of an old oak tree.
2. Continuity: Aremesh is an Electroid from Orko's home dimension of Trolla. Different looking Electroids are featured in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode The Greatest Magic, which takes place in Trolla. Orko references his arrival on Eternia in the Tar Swamp. This was seen in flashback in Creatures from the Tar Swamp, an episode that was also written by Richard Pardee. The animation of He-Man landing on his feet after jumping from his Sky Sled will be seen again in The Problem with Power. The animation of Skeletor tripping and falling was first used in The Dragon's Gift.
3. More continuity: The animated sequence of Skeletor sitting in a pool of water will be seen again in The Good Shall Survive. The close-up of the Energy Transport Lever is a reuse of the control levers seen aboard the Collector in Colossor Awakes, including the same background.
4. Animation errors and goofs: When Skeletor is using his view screen to scan Eternia, the panning shot reveals the unpainted side of the Evergreen Forest background plate. As He-Man first confronts Aremesh in the Evergreen Forest, he is animated to be holding his sword, but is not holding it. In two separate scenes, Orko hides behind Battle Cat at the Royal Palace, but the Trollan is drawn much too large in comparison to the mighty cat. The Sorceress appears in human form in the Tar Swamp despite not being able to manifest herself outside of Castle Grayskull. During Orko's knighting by Queen Marlena, He-Man is sitting on the steps to the royal thrones. When he calls Orko over to talk to him, Queen Marlena is no longer standing in the background. But she returns to her usual spot during the final wide shot.