Poisoned Chalice

Teela and Andra work as mercenaries, and the episode opens with them tracking the stolen Glove of Globolah to the thief Stinkor and returning it to a grateful temple. A hooded stranger, Majestra, pays them to steal a sentimental goblet from Snake Mountain, which they find remade by Tri-Klops into a cult of Motherboard, where drinkers of the cup are converted into machines. Teela and Andra fight through Tri-Klops, Trap Jaw and Whiplash, take the cup and escape. Majestra then asks them to carry it to Grayskull, and Andra talks Teela into coming. At the castle Majestra is revealed as Evil-Lyn, who has brought the last of the Havoc Staff's magic to feed the Sorceress. Cringer coaxes a furious Teela into the quest to reforge the Sword of Power.

Majestra: "Not magical, just sentimental."

Teela: "No, I'm experienced."

Teela: "I thought I smelled dirty motor oil."

Teela: "I sullied Snake Mountain? I don't even recognize this place anymore with all your new techno-crap!"

Teela: "Last time I saw this place was the day Adam died."

Cringer: "You're not angry, you're scared."

Cringer: "But, Teela, you knew his heart."

Teela and Andra open the episode in green gas masks, following a tracker to a rubbish heap in search of a stolen relic, and the opening shows them doing jobs taken for pay, with a gadget "hand-built by an engineer" and a cheerful belief that good tech beats old magic. The Poisoned Chalice [1] is a scruffy, easy opening that lets the show do what the premiere had no room for: watching two people be good at something. Teela leaves Stinkor in a heap of splintered wood in the market square, Andra's tracker is credited out loud, and a temple thanks them with gratitude to spare.

The writing spends its middle stretch on a heist. Snake Mountain has a pressure plate, an airtight door and a plan to go in by the one entrance nobody is watching, the one everybody assumes is certain death; then the place turns out to have been redecorated, all neon pillars and hex tiles, with Tri-Klops preaching Motherboard to rows of hooded followers who sing "Glory be unto we who live and diode". The pun is a good one, and the sermon about magic setting neighbour against neighbour is delivered in the gentle voice of a recruiter. Teela's complaint about "techno-crap" in a place she remembers differently is the funniest beat in the half hour.

Here is the idea underneath it: this is an episode about a woman who walked away from magic because she is afraid of failing Adam, and who has to hear that said aloud before she can walk back. Snake Mountain's cult makes the same move Teela has made, since Tri-Klops has replaced magic with machines and Teela has replaced adventuring with contract work.

The animation and art direction give each location its own palette. The market town and the temple are sunlit stone and white, Snake Mountain is violet, cyan and hot orange, and Grayskull is gold-trimmed crystal under a bright sky, so the three stops are easy to tell apart at a glance.

The best scene is in the garden, with Cringer. Teela insists she is done with all of this, and Cringer answers with his own name: she gave it to him when he was a scared little cat, and he knows fear when he sees it. "You're not angry, you're scared" works because it comes from someone with nothing at stake except love, and because the staging has him pad across the clearing as he starts and down the golden steps to her as he finishes. It is the best scene of the first two episodes.

The weakness is the poison in the title. The cup is shown turning a drinker into a man with a metal hand and a mechanical eye, and then it stops mattering once Majestra reaches Grayskull; nothing in the episode says why Evil-Lyn wanted it. The likely reason is that a five-part serial needs a set piece in its second instalment and the answer can wait, and the machine cult does come back in the next episode. It still leaves the chalice a prop rather than a plot, and the lecture on the divided Sword carries the exposition the goblet could have shared [2].

As a verdict, this is a sturdy second instalment: lighter than the premiere, shaped around a single emotional beat, and leaning on errands in the middle. Teela comes round in the end, and the show is better for making her earn it.

[1] The on-screen title card reads "Poisoned Chalice", without the "The" that most listings give it. [2] The Orb Ember, introduced here as the last spark of Eternia's magic, is already shrinking by the next episode, where it is said to burn at almost half the height it did "only yesterday".

1. He-Mania reports that the masks Teela and Andra wear on their first encounter with Stinkor resemble the 1984 Road Ripper vehicle, and says Powerhouse Animation confirmed the resemblance was an intentional Easter egg.
2. Jason Mewes, a longtime Kevin Smith collaborator, voices Stinkor; the Outer Haven's review cites it as an example of Smith casting friends and family.
3. TV Tropes lists Stinkor's design as lifted from his Classics figure, with the gas mask head and tanks seen in the 2002 series.
4. TVmaze credits Diya Mishra with two Revelation scripts: this one and The Gutter Rat in Part 2.
5. The Motherboard cult introduced at Snake Mountain returns in the next episode, where cultists shout "Halt the heretics!" and "Magic is dead!".
6. The Sorceress says one half of the Sword of Power was forged in the Hall of Heroes in Preternia; the first episode had already spoken of He-Man's great reward in Preternia, so the place is mentioned before the story goes there.