The Most Dangerous Man in Eternia

Evil-Lyn tells Teela and Andra a flashback about Man-At-Arms, then the three reach a village where robed cultists of Motherboard attack villagers they call heretics for clinging to magic. Teela finds Duncan hiding under a grey hood, holding the enchanted water she needs for a sick Orko. Evil-Lyn asks him to reforge the Sword of Power; Duncan refuses, saying he lost his rank by royal decree and could be executed for welding. Roboto offers to do it from Duncan's memories, and Orko insists on coming. Teela sends Duncan to Grayskull to protect the dying Sorceress, but he turns up aboard the ship anyway. Mer-Man's Aquaticans ambush the party, and the party forces him to guide them to the Gate to Subternia, where she says she has to go in.

Teela: "Take no life advice from the likes of Evil-Lyn, Andra. Remember, she's the only one here carrying around a Skeletor in her closet."

Orko: "That's the Royal Buffoon, thank you very much."

Duncan: "Family is what you make of it."

Roboto: "I was built by the younger you, so I'm only attempting to do exactly what you would've done."

Evil-Lyn: "If something is dead, you bury it. If it isn't, you nurture it."

Mer-Man: "You forgot all about Mer-Man. Now you'll never forget Mer-Man!"

Duncan: "And I told you that I love you."

Teela: "I don't know how I feel about the past anymore, but if you want to make it all up to me... save the Sorceress, Dad."

Evil-Lyn tells the story that opens the episode, a flashback to a fight on a pirate ship where, by her account, He-Man told Skeletor "you're all wet" and Man-At-Arms was "the most dangerous man in all of Eternia". She is telling it to Teela and Andra, and when Andra says "I gotta meet the guy behind that gear," Evil-Lyn warns her off dangerous men, and Teela answers that Evil-Lyn is "the only one here carrying around a Skeletor in her closet."

The plot then sends the three to a village where robed cultists of Motherboard are attacking villagers they call heretics for clinging to magic. Teela is there for a cup of enchanted water to keep a sick Orko alive, and she finds Duncan hiding under a grey hood. Everyone in this episode is carrying someone who is gone, and the story is about what happens to people who shelve their grief instead of facing it. Duncan lost Adam and his rank ("You still miss him," Teela says, and he answers "Every day."); Orko is fading because the magic is; Evil-Lyn is still carrying a torch for a dead Skeletor, as Teela points out, though on the ship she calls her old devotion foolish.

The scenes in Duncan's room are the best of the half hour for that reason. The argument is a family quarrel: Teela accuses him of having "so much concern for the Royal Family and so little concern for his own," and Duncan answers with a short speech about the surrogate daughter, the surrogate son and the imp from another dimension. Roboto's reply when Duncan tells him he is not going, that his neural pathways are based on Duncan's and so he would not have taken no for an answer either, is a neat piece of logic, and it lets the show split father and son without a villain. The script gives Orko a plea for one more adventure that ends "I'll be good," and Duncan's apology breaks off mid promise before he can finish it.

The standout is the ship scene between Evil-Lyn and Teela, staged against ice crystals with Evil-Lyn's white hair streaming in the wind. Evil-Lyn tells Teela "You haven't moved on. You've just run away," and sets out the episode's rule: if something is dead, you bury it, and if it is not, you nurture it. Teela asks her to save the lecture, and Evil-Lyn's retort about the warrior en route to Hell lands because both women are right about each other. The art direction backs them up; the lantern-lit hut, the red curtain and the fire pit are warm and cramped, while the sea, the crystal wall and the black obelisk gate at the end are vast and cold.

The weakness is pace. Beast Man turns up in the village courtyard defending Evil-Lyn, swearing by the bones of Skeletor, and is travelling with the group a few scenes later without a line to say why; the Mer-Man ambush is just as brisk, and the clock on the quest gets a single line of dialogue [1]. The likely reason is that this is the middle of a five-part release and the party has to be on a boat before the credits, but the shortcuts show.

As an instalment it is the show catching its breath and assembling its cast, and it spends most of its time on character. The last image is a row of them before a gate to the land of the dead, with Evil-Lyn calling anyone who says they are not afraid a fool, and the right place to stop.

[1] The clock is the Orb Ember, which "is at almost half the height it burned only yesterday": a deadline the dialogue sets up once and a tighter script might have shown us.

1. The MOTU wiki says the ship in the opening flashback resembles the Sea Eagle from the 1984 Ladybird book Skeletor's Ice Attack.
2. The MOTU wiki notes that He-Man's hands are bound by Coridite cuffs in the flashback, though the material is never named on screen; Coridite first appeared in the original series episode Evil-Lyn's Plot.
3. The MOTU wiki says the Aquaticans first appeared in the Filmation episode City Beneath the Sea.
4. According to the MOTU wiki, Evil-Lyn refers to the Evil Warriors as Snake Mountaineers, and the phrase turns up in her flashback narration to Andra and Teela.
5. The MOTU wiki notes that a chest beside Orko's bed holds the Hero medal from the Filmation episode Creatures from the Tar Swamp and a Trollan Magic Pyramid surrounded by meteorite fragments, the combination that let Dree Elle reach Eternia in Dawn of Dragoon.
6. The MOTU wiki observes that Beast Man and Mer-Man have lost their chest armor and that Mer-Man is visibly scarred, as if he had been played with as an action figure.
7. The MOTU wiki says the headless body guarding the entrance to Subternia is based on the Faceless One, who debuted in the 2002 series episode Lessons.
8. Animation Magazine's cast announcement lists the late Kevin Conroy as the voice of Mer-Man, and the Outer Haven's review says he and Alicia Silverstone were hard to recognize.
9. TV Tropes says Liam Cunningham voices Duncan with an English accent that occasionally slips into his natural Irish one, and that the Preternia and Subternia gates resemble the Doors of Durin from The Fellowship of the Ring.