Things That Go Bump in the Night

During King Randor's birthday celebration at the palace, Orko's magic backfires and sends him fleeing to the garage, where he accidentally sets the Stratoblaster, meant as Randor's birthday gift, careening out of control. The joyride ends with a crash near Snake Mountain, where Skeletor sends Clawful, Evil-Lyn, and his newest and most reluctant recruit, a boy named Glitch, to attack the Eternians who come to retrieve it. He-Man arrives in time to drive the villains off.

Back at Snake Mountain, Skeletor dares his warriors to prove their nerve by crossing a laser beam over a deep chasm. When a terrified Glitch refuses, Skeletor abandons him in the Enchanted Forest, where Prince Adam, Cringer, and Teela find him and learn he is actually the runaway prince of Sallasia, hoping that joining Skeletor's ranks would cure his fearfulness. Brought back to the palace, Glitch struggles to shake his anxieties, though Man-At-Arms can't help noticing how much the boy reminds him of a young Prince Adam.

Later, while Adam and Cringer try to befriend Glitch in the forest, Skeletor maliciously animates the plants to attack them for sport. When Adam is knocked unconscious before he can transform, Glitch has to overcome his fear and brave the forest alone to fetch help, while Cringer manages to rouse Adam just enough to summon He-Man's power and clear the plants away himself.

Meanwhile, Glitch's father King Sallas arrives in a massive ship to rescue his son, but Skeletor tricks him into believing Randor is the real kidnapper and traps the palace under a wall of stalactites. After He-Man forces the ship down and Skeletor takes Sallas hostage, Glitch finally finds his courage, charging in with his Havoc Staff to distract Skeletor long enough for He-Man and Sallas to subdue him and send him packing. With the misunderstanding cleared up, Sallas thanks Randor for his son's care before the Sallasians head home.

Adam (using He-Man's voice): "Is there something that frightens you? Are you afraid of water or high places? I used to be afraid of the dark when I was little. Some fears are good if they make you more careful. Fear of fire may save you from a burn. Fear of getting hurt may make you think twice before trying something. So fear is nothing to be concerned about. As a matter of fact, it's healthy. So don't worry. Only a fool fears nothing. Now I'm afraid it's time to go. Bye for now."

John Erwin as He-Man/Prince Adam and King Sallas

Alan Oppenheimer as Skeletor, Man-At-Arms and Cringer

Linda Gary as Teela, Evil-Lyn and Glitch

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

Jay Scheimer (uncredited) as Queen Marlena

"Why Glitch, how really unpleasant it is to see you, you sniveling coward."

- Skeletor

Glitch spends most of "Things That Go Bump in the Night" terrified of something, and the episode never once plays that fear for a laugh.

John Curtin's script gets there by way of a birthday party gone sideways. Orko wrecks King Randor's gift within minutes of the opening titles, and the Stratoblaster crash lands the heroes close enough to Snake Mountain that Skeletor can send Clawful and a reluctant new recruit to finish the job. Glitch kneels in chains between Evil-Lyn and Clawful before he gets a single line, and the show spends the next several scenes making sure the audience sees just how badly he wants out: he begs off a laser-beam dare that Evil-Lyn and Clawful cross without a second thought, and Skeletor casts him out of Snake Mountain in disgust rather than coddle him.

That ejection is the hinge the episode turns on. Dropped alone in the Enchanted Forest, Glitch is adopted first by Teela and then by the Royal Palace, and the show quietly sets him beside its own hero for comparison. Adam gets knocked unconscious at the worst possible moment, in the one forest sequence built to need He-Man. Glitch walks through the animated vines alone to get help instead. The episode is not subtle about the parallel, but it is patient about which character gets to say so out loud. The real subject here is a boy who is afraid of everything, airing right alongside a hero who spends every episode hiding a fear of his own: that anyone will learn who he actually is.

The best scene in the episode is not He-Man's fight with the animated forest, satisfying as that sequence is, but Glitch's climb onto King Sallas's captured ship near the end. Skeletor has the king hostage and dares the boy to try something; He-Man tells Skeletor to pick on someone his own size, and Glitch answers the dare anyway, inching along a ledge toward a villain who has spent the episode mocking him for this kind of fear. It works because the show has earned it. Nothing about Glitch's arc suggests he stops being afraid; he is visibly terrified in the scene itself. He goes anyway.

The episode's weak spot is King Sallas: he arrives already convinced Eternia kidnapped his son, and the setup is pure plot mechanism. Skeletor talks him into attacking the palace in a couple of lines of dialogue. Even a show that resolves most of its misunderstandings inside a single scene usually asks for more than that. Sallas gets little to do once his ship is grounded beyond standing next to his son and looking relieved, and the episode never quite earns the warmth of the farewell it wants to close on.

What holds the episode together regardless is how little interest it has in treating Glitch's fear as a flaw to be cured. He-Man's closing message says as much directly: a fear of fire, of heights, of getting hurt, is the kind that keeps a person careful rather than the kind that needs fixing. "Things That Go Bump in the Night" spends its runtime making that argument with a character instead of just a speech, and Glitch's last scene, laughing with Orko instead of flinching from him, is the kind of ending the show earns far less often than it would like to admit.

1. Behind the scenes: the script was approved April 30, 1984, with a final revision dated June 15, 1984. The on-screen title card credits the script to John Curtin, not "Curtain" as the episode's content stub previously had it; the title card also confirms Lou Kachivas as director. This episode carries a genuine per-episode title card rather than the generic HE-MAN bumper used for most of the season, and the end-credit crawl lists Fred Carrillo among the model artists, consistent with his credit for designing King Sallas's character model.
2. Continuity: the animated sequence of Skeletor cowering over his viewscreen reuses animation from "Evilseed." The close-up of He-Man lifting King Sallas's warship off the palace would be reused again in the She-Ra: Princess of Power episode "Sweet Bee's Home." The character model for Glitch was recolored for use as Opie in "The Ancient Mirror of Avathar."
3. Animation errors and goofs: in the close-ups of Glitch kneeling beside Evil-Lyn, her cape is missing. Skeletor calls out the name of his henchman Webstor at Snake Mountain ("Clawful, Webstor, let's show them..."), but Webstor never actually appears on screen this episode; the line survives from an earlier draft of the script that did include him. In the farewell scene, King Randor is drawn noticeably smaller relative to Queen Marlena and Teela standing beside him.