Hope, For a Destination

Teela struggles to broadcast a call to arms across Eternia and fears it failed. Prince Adam and Skeletor study Evil-Lyn's growing power; Skeletor says Adam must call down the power without the sword, and Adam refuses. Evil-Lyn, now a god, hears Beast Man's doubts and dismisses him. Adam and Skeletor reach Grayskull and fight her while Teela and Andra make their way through the dungeon and meet Man-At-Arms, who has already escaped. He sends Teela through an iron door to a crystal pool, where her mother Teela-Na tells her what the Sorceress must give up. Beast Man turns on Evil-Lyn, Skeletor begs for his life and is cast down, and Evil-Lyn vows to unmake everything while a dark army takes up a cry for Subternia and Dark-Lyn.

Teela: "I don't need training! I need a working transmitter. A big one, with buttons."

Skeletor: "Think bigger, boy. Preternia was just her opening act!"

Man-At-Arms: "My place is out here. Yours is through that door."

Teela: "My message didn't work because I don't work."

Teela-Na: "My story is written. But there's still time to write yours."

Beast Man: "You asked me, am I man or beast. Today, I am beast."

Evil-Lyn: "You can't love. You merely crave."

Evil-Lyn: "I am my own."

Man-At-Arms points his daughter down a corridor, tells her "My place is out here. Yours is through that door." and stays behind; a few scenes later King Randor and Queen Marlena promise each other, in front of their guards, to live for each other if the end comes, and in the throne room Evil-Lyn tells Skeletor she will play host to him no longer. "Hope, For a Destination" is built from partings, and nearly every character in it is made to choose whom to let go.

The writing is strongest where it pairs scenes. Teela begins by struggling to send her message and, by the middle of the episode, is told that the Sorceress's post demands the surrender of everyone she loves. Evil-Lyn's long speech to Skeletor is the reverse: she refuses to stay attached to the man who made her. The spine is this: both sides lose people to get free. Most of the episode is spent on conversations rather than on the battle at Grayskull.

The scene between Teela and Teela-Na is the standout. It could have been a lecture, yet it plays as an argument between two people who love each other and disagree about what love asks of them. Teela-Na says there is no higher calling than to love her daughter; Teela answers "You abandoned me." and gets the reply that she has been with her every second of every day. Teela finds that comforting and confining at once. Man-At-Arms sets the scene up earlier: he tells her he heard her message "As loudly and clearly as I hear myself speak right now," and Teela believes him.

Animation and art direction are at their most inventive when the story goes cosmic. Evil-Lyn's godhood is drawn in swirling pink and blue cloud, and she receives Beast Man and Skeletor in a skull-lined throne room. Randor and Marlena wait with their guards on a red-lit plain. The dungeon is livelier, all green light, purple slime and a tentacle in the water, and the henchmen are played for comedy [1].

The voice cast carries the quiet scenes. Evil-Lyn's "You can't love. You merely crave." is the bluntest line in the confrontation, and it lands because it comes straight after Skeletor's "I loved you, Lyn." Skeletor goes from "Don't kill me, Lyn" to "I saved you, woman!" to "No, please" as he runs out of arguments. Beast Man's answer to the question she put to him earlier, "Today, I am beast."

The weakness is structural. Adam's refusal to call down the power without the sword is raised in a few lines and then left alone, so the Grayskull fight has no stakes until Adam acts. The likely reason is placement: this is the penultimate episode, and the finale needs the board left open rather than won. As a deliberate hold it works, though a viewer could want the refusal to cost him something [2].

It follows "The Gutter Rat", which gave Evil-Lyn her past, and it is where she faces the consequences. It is the most emotional episode of Part 2, and the one most willing to let people talk.

[1] The Orlax is already named in "Reason and Blood" and "The Gutter Rat", so the slime Man-At-Arms credits for his escape comes from a creature the series has set up. [2] "I am my own" is the saying put to Evil-Lyn in "The Gutter Rat", right after she tells the story of the Zalesian gutter.

1. The MOTU wiki says the title is a lyric from the song What's Up? by 4 Non Blondes, and notes the song is used in the Masters of the Universe meme Fabulous Secret Powers by SLACKCiRCUS, which the franchise has referenced before.
2. The MOTU wiki notes Jason Mewes is credited for voicing Stinkor in this episode but the character does not appear at all, and suggests his scenes were possibly cut for time.
3. The MOTU wiki notes Phil LaMarr is credited for voicing Spikor here, though Spikor only grunts and groans and has no actual lines.
4. The MOTU wiki says a Spikor action figure based on his appearance in the Revelation premiere was announced for the second Masterverse wave the day after the show premiered on Netflix.
5. TV Tropes notes Spikor has a trident in place of his left hand, as on his original toy, and that Blade and Pigboy from the 1987 live-action film appear briefly in Part 2.
6. Wikipedia lists Kevin Smith as the voice of both Goatman and Pigboy in the series; in this episode the pair appear among Evil-Lyn's dungeon henchmen and a character in the dungeon asks, "Is that Pigboy and Goat Man?"
7. Evil-Lyn's line about being lifted out of a Zalesian gutter repeats the wording of her own account in the previous episode, "The Gutter Rat", where the line is "He lifted me out of the Zalesian gutter."
8. Skeletor says Evil-Lyn's power will multiply once the Apex is reached; "The Gutter Rat" introduces the Celestial Apex with the line "I give you... the Celestial Apex!"