The Cat and the Spider

An archaeology expedition led by Prince Adam and the royal scholar Melaktha uncovers the long-lost Temple of the Cat, confirming legends of an ancient feline race once thought extinct on Eternia, though neither man realizes they are being watched by a Cat Folk spy the whole time. When Melaktha is nearly crushed exploring the ruins, Adam becomes He-Man to free him and finish the exploration alone, eventually recovering a carved idol called the Grimalkin Statue from deep inside the temple.

The theft does not go unnoticed. The Cat Folk's King Paw sends his sharpest agent, a young woman named Kittrina, to reclaim the statue from the Royal Palace, while Skeletor, intrigued by rumors the idol holds real power, dispatches Webstor to steal it for Snake Mountain instead. Kittrina breaks into the palace vault the same night Webstor does, and her scuffle with Teela, each woman certain the other is the real thief, gives Webstor the opening he needs to make off with the Grimalkin himself. Only once Kittrina explains her mission to King Randor, revealing that the statue actually imprisons a dangerous spirit rather than any ordinary treasure, do the Eternians realize they fought the wrong intruder.

He-Man and Battle Cat race to Snake Mountain to stop Skeletor from unleashing whatever the Grimalkin holds, but arrive too late: Skeletor frees the demon trapped inside and immediately regrets it, fleeing his own fortress as the creature tears free. Kittrina, having survived a crash that knocked out Teela, fights her way to Battle Cat's side and helps take down Webstor before the demon can be dealt with. Drawing on Cat Folk legend that only a storm can stop the creature, He-Man conjures lightning from the planet's own mineral deposits and uses his sword to channel it, turning the demon back into harmless stone. Melaktha apologizes for disturbing the Cat Folk's temple, and Kittrina, charmed rather more than she expected by Battle Cat, promises to visit again soon.

Kittrina: "In today's story I made the mistake of not trusting the people of Eternia, just because they were different." Adam: "'You can't judge a book by its cover' means you can't tell from the outside what something is like on the inside. And that goes for books as well as people. Not liking a person beause he or she is a different race or religion is wrong. People should be judged for themselves, right Kittrina? Kittrina: "Right you are, Adam, right you are." Kittrina: & Adam: "So long."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam and Webstor

Alan Oppenheimer as Skeletor, Battle Cat/Cringer, Melaktha and Cat Spy

Linda Gary as Teela and Kittrina

Erik Gunden as Oroko, King Paw, King Randor and Royal Guard

"Wow, the mysteries of science, girl! When will you learn to enter my chamber in a normal fashion?"

- King Paw

The Cat and the Spider opens Season 2 the way a premiere should: with a new place, a new face, and a plot that Skeletor does not start. Prince Adam and the royal archaeologist Melaktha find the Temple of the Cat and the Grimalkin Statue inside it before anyone from Snake Mountain even notices there is a statue worth noticing. Larry DiTillio's script spends its first act on exploration rather than villainy, and the episode is better for it: He-Man clears traps and fights a guardian beast not to stop a scheme but to finish a dig.

The idea the episode is actually about shows up once Kittrina does. She arrives at the Royal Palace to reclaim the Grimalkin on her king's orders. Teela finds a cat burglar in the Tower Vault and does exactly what the job requires: she fights her. Nobody is wrong in that scene by the rules each woman is working from. Both of them are wrong about what is actually happening, and the real thief uses the fight as cover to walk out with the statue. The vault brawl is the episode's thesis acted out rather than argued: judging Kittrina by what she looks like costs the Eternians the one thing they could not afford to lose, time. Webstor is on a Wind Raider and gone before anyone stops swinging.

Webstor himself is a clean addition to Skeletor's roster. His Don Greer-designed model gives him a spider's patience to go with the toy's grapple-launching gimmick, and the show uses it well: he does not overpower He-Man so much as outmaneuver him, hanging back while Skeletor does the direct fighting and closing the trap when the opening appears. The animators gave him a spider-rigged mount instead of the script's sky sled, and the swap reads as an improvement, since a creature that climbs suits a character built around patience and verticality better than a vehicle would.

Kittrina herself is the episode's best addition. Linda Gary plays her as someone who has already decided the humans will underestimate her and finds that mildly funny rather than wounding, and the writing backs her up: she breaks into the vault, survives a crash, frees Battle Cat from a trap, and settles her own score with Webstor before He-Man or Teela catch up to her. The crush on Battle Cat that closes the episode could have played as a cheap gag, and in a weaker script it would have! Here it lands because she has spent twenty minutes being the most competent person in every scene she is in, so the moment of being plainly delighted by something costs her nothing.

The episode's weakness is Skeletor's half of the plot, which exists mainly to put the Grimalkin somewhere He-Man has to go get it. He frees the demon rather than controlling it, then panics and runs. A season opener deserves a sturdier reason for its villain to act. The Grimalkin itself fares better: a temple guardian turned loose on the world is a good shape for a Filmation monster. The storm climax gives us He-Man reading the salt in the local rock and calling lightning down through his own sword, a clever way to let the hero win with knowledge rather than muscle for once.

The closing moral, delivered by Kittrina and Adam rather than He-Man himself, says plainly what the Tower Vault scene already showed: you cannot judge a person's insides from their outside, and cat ears are no better a reason to doubt someone than a human face is to trust one. It is not subtle, but the episode earned the right to say it outright, having spent its whole runtime demonstrating the cost of not listening to that advice. As a premiere, The Cat and the Spider does what the job needs: a new location, a new ally worth bringing back, and a villain turn in Skeletor's camp that nobody saw coming because, for once, it was not about him at all.

cereal:geek's commentary on The Cat and the Spider, with behind-the-scenes detail on how the episode was made.

1. Behind the scenes: Script was approved March 2, 1984 and final script revision took place April 10, 1984. Character models were finalized on April 30, 1984. The animation model for Webstor, based on the toy prototype from Mattel, was designed by Don Greer. Beginning with this episode the opening is changed slightly to remove Hal Sutherland's credit, which is replaced with a shot of the Sorceress, Man-at-Arms and Orko together. The Sorceress now appears against her throne in Castle Grayskull, as opposed to the the blue background that accompanied the logos.
2. The script indicated that Webstor would pilot a spider like version of the Sky Sled, but the artists gave him a spider version of the Wind Raider instead. When He-Man says 'What does it take to stop that thing?" Kittrina moves into a position next to him as if to reply. The script reveals her omitted line: "It can't be stopped." This story was edited into the direct-to-video movie Skeletor's Revenge, designed to promote the 1985 batch of episodes, together with Trouble in Trolla and Day of the Machines. The MOTU Origins Cartoon Collection action figure of Webstor is packaged with the Grimalkin Statue as a special accessory. The Grimalkin Statue also appears in the included mini comic, The Shape of Vengeance, in which it once again unleashes the Grimalkin.
3. Continuity: King Paw's throne room is a reused background from Baron Grod's throne room as seen in The Huntsman. The animated sequence of He-Man holding aloft his magic sword and directing the lightning towards the Grimalkin was previously used in House of Shokoti Part 2. John Erwin uses the same voice for Webstor as another recurring character, Squinch the Widget. The animated sequence in which He-Man raises his fists, pounds them on the ground and leaps into the hole was first used in Golden Disks of Knowledge.
4. Animation errors and goofs: When King Randor is speaking to Kittrina in his throne room, the background behind her is from the Temple of the Cat instead of the Royal Palace for two shots.
5. Battle Cat and Webstor end up in an unlikely confrontation when Skeletor's plot to undermine the Heroic Warriors goes wrong.