Cleaved in Twain

Part 2 opens on a flashback: Duncan and Teela's mother cradle their baby, and the child is told her mother is going away for a while. In the present, Skeletor holds the Sword of Power and gloats over the awakened Sorceress while Prince Adam, who cannot become He-Man, fails to stop him. The Sorceress dies after Skeletor turns on her, and Man-At-Arms is locked in the dungeons. Skeletor makes Evil-Lyn the new Sorceress of Grayskull, reveals that he survived inside her staff, and binds her to the castle. Teela carries the wounded Adam out and heals him at the royal palace in Eternos, where Clamp-Champ and Fisto fall to Skeletor's Army of the Dead. Skeletor mocks the swordless Adam, who calls on the power of Grayskull anyway.

Skeletor: "I finally know the real secret of Grayskull."

Skeletor: "But there is only power."

Skeletor: "Beautiful, chaotic, naked power!"

Skeletor: "The best thing that ever happened to me in my entire life was getting killed."

Evil-Lyn: "You used me!"

Skeletor: "Of course I used you!"

Skeletor: "Without your silly sword, you're no longer He-Man."

Prince Adam: "See, the sword is just the conduit. But the spark? That was always me."

Part 2 opens in a candlelit chamber where Duncan holds a crying baby Teela while her mother tells him to train the girl to protect herself, and the baby is told that her mother is "going away for a while." It is a quiet scene, and the animation matches it: warm candle colour, bare feet crossing a carved floor, a glowing blue pool, and very little movement. Then the recap rhyme ends on "it was all for Skeletor!" and the show swings to the opposite register.

Skeletor stands in the skull-lined hall with the sword raised, savouring "transcendent triumph", and the Sorceress wakes in time to hear that her habit of letting Eternia drink the returning magic first is what undid her. His speech about a universe with no grand architecture, only "Beautiful, chaotic, naked power", is the writing at its most confident; it gives Skeletor a stated worldview and sets up his claim on the Sorceress's magic.

The spine is simple: take away the sword, the office, the friend and the love, and see what is left standing. Adam loses the sword, so "I'm not He-Man!" is a plea where it used to be a secret. The Sorceress loses her life, and Man-At-Arms loses the woman he calls "my love". Evil-Lyn loses her freedom, made the new Sorceress of Grayskull and told she can never leave its halls [1]. Clamp-Champ and Fisto lose their souls, which Skeletor claims for his army.

The best scene belongs to Skeletor and Evil-Lyn. He says he cast his soul into her wand staff before the orb destroyed him and fed on her "like a tick" while he regrew his body, and the script lets him be delighted with himself where it could have made him merely cruel. Evil-Lyn's reply is "You used me!", and he does not deny it: "Of course I used you!" Her new dark costume, with its fur collar and cowl, marks the change in a single scene.

The weak stretch is Eternos. Clamp-Champ and Fisto get a brisk comic introduction, taking the newcomers for looters and trading fist jokes [2], and they are dead and damned within a few scenes. The likely reason is plain: Part 2 has five episodes to carry a great deal of plot, and the Army of the Dead needs to show its teeth quickly. The cost is that the deaths land lightly, and Skeletor has to explain how bad things are in a monologue because the fight has not had time to show it. The art direction is better than the staging, with purple mist curling through a darkening sky and skull-faced versions of the old friends, though the throne room fight is a scramble.

The final beat answers the question the episode has been asking. Skeletor, laughing at the swordless Adam, is told that "the sword is just the conduit" and that the spark "was always me." In the last shot a hulking figure rises on the dais: not the He-Man we know.

As an opener it is bleak, talkative and sure of itself, and it undoes the Part 1 quest by putting the sword in Skeletor's hand. Not everything in it is earned, but the episode hangs together: it asks who Adam is without the sword, and it lets him answer.

[1] The MOTU wiki says Evil-Lyn's new look as Sorceress of Grayskull was inspired by her Sorceress of Horokoth outfit from the 2016 comic series He-Man: The Eternity War. [2] Den of Geek reported that Kevin Smith expected Fisto's line about Skeletor to be cut, but had Ralph Garman record it anyway and it stayed in.

1. The MOTU wiki notes this is the only episode in the series where the title does not appear on screen over the opening shot of Castle Grayskull.
2. The MOTU wiki points out that Chris Wood is credited for both Adam and He-Man here although his He-Man never appears; the Savage He-Man who does appear gets a separate voice credit for Dee Bradley Baker.
3. The MOTU wiki notes that Stephen Root is credited as both Cringer and Battle Cat in this episode even though Battle Cat never appears.
4. Adam calls Clamp-Champ by the name Raenius, which the MOTU wiki says matches his bio on the packaging of the Masters of the Universe Classics figure first released in 2013.
5. According to Wikipedia's cast list, Clamp-Champ is voiced by rapper Method Man (Cliff Smith) and Fisto by Ralph Garman.
6. Den of Geek reported that Kevin Smith expected Fisto's double-entendre line about Skeletor to be cut before the script stage, but had his podcast collaborator Ralph Garman record it anyway and it stayed in; Smith described it as a nod to internet jokes about Fisto.
7. TV Tropes says the Savage He-Man design is inspired by the He-Man of the earliest MOTU minicomics.
8. Skeletor's talk of damning souls to Subternia echoes the land of the dead that the heroes set out for in The Most Dangerous Man in Eternia, where they bargain with Mer-Man to get them safely to the gates of Subternia.