Battle for Bright Moon

Skeletor and Hordak spring a sleeping-gas cake on the royal dinner on Eternia, and Skeletor then double-crosses Hordak and has Adora taken to the dungeons. She escapes by raising her sword and calling on the honor of Grayskull. Back in the palace, she tells Randor and Marlena she cannot leave Etheria in the hands of the Horde while the fight is unfinished, and rides back toward Etheria, where Adam catches up with her. At Whispering Woods the Rebellion marches on Castle Bright Moon, She-Ra heals Swift Wind, and the Horde's Stunners are put out of action.

Melendy Britt as Adora/She-Ra

George DiCenzo as Hordak, Bow

Linda Gary as Sorceress, Teela, Marlena, Glimmer, Shadow Weaver, Madame Razz

John Erwin as He-Man/Adam, Beast Man, Webstor

Alan Oppenheimer as Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Battle Cat/Cringer, Chef Alan, Announcer

Erika Scheimer as Queen Angella

Lou Scheimer (credited as Erik Gunden) as Randor, Trap Jaw, Tri-Klops, Kobra Khan, Kowl, Swift Wind, Sprag, Sprocker, Horde Computer

Adora: "I love you all, but Etheria is my world. I can't just leave it in the hands of the Horde."

Adora: "But if it was Eternia under the boot of the Horde, could you leave the fight before it was over?"

Cringer: "Isn't anybody gonna miss me?"

Hordak: "One battle does not win a war, She-Ra."

A chef wheels a tall tiered cake into the dining room on Eternia, sleeping gas sprays across Randor, and Battle for Bright Moon opens as a kidnapping. The plot then turns on Skeletor. Hordak has been promised a way back to Etheria, and when he orders the girl brought to him, Skeletor says "I have better use for the Princess of Eternia than you." Hordak shouts "Skeletor, you traitor!" and Skeletor is left to remark "That takes care of him." Beast Man takes the fainted Adora to the dungeons.

Once she is out of the cell as She-Ra, the script gives her the jokes. She meets Skeletor's men with "My, you boys are forward" and "One dance, and that's it." She then has to cover for the missing princess in front of Teela and Man-At-Arms with a stammered "Oh, she's safe." The episode is about Adora choosing Etheria over the family she has just found, and the best scene in it is the one where she says so.

That scene is in the throne room, with no chase around it. Adora tells her parents "I love you all, but Etheria is my world. I can't just leave it in the hands of the Horde." Randor does not forbid her. He asks "How many more years will we be without our daughter?" and she answers with a question of her own: "But if it was Eternia under the boot of the Horde, could you leave the fight before it was over?" Her parents give way, with "I wish you could stay, but I understand" and "I'm very, very proud of you." Then Cringer, a tear running down his face, asks "Isn't anybody gonna miss me?" The joke lands straight after the goodbyes and the goodbyes stay sad.

The woods sequence pays the choice back. When the woodland creatures approach and the rebels brace for a Horde trick, She-Ra tells them "They don't want to harm us," and when asked how she knows, says "It's as if I could feel what they felt." The next remark is "I wish we'd asked the Sorceress a little more about your powers." Later Swift Wind is hit by Horde fire, She-Ra says "I can feel the pain," her hands begin to glow, and she heals him with "For the honor of Grayskull, let your wounds be healed." The power is planted in one scene and used in the next, and it gives the battle something to turn on besides force.

The weakness is what the Horde does with the betrayal. Skeletor's double cross is the best thing either villain does, and after the portal scene nobody mentions it again. Hordak holds Castle Bright Moon when the rebels arrive, answers Queen Angella's demand to surrender with "You always were a fool, Angella," and launches Bat-Meks and Destructo Tanks without a word about the ally who left him behind. One line about Skeletor would have tied the Eternia half to the Etheria half and given Hordak a grudge to fight with. Instead the castle falls mostly offstage, with a computer reporting "Stunners inoperative" and "Rebel forces have entered the castle." The sabotage we are shown is rats chewing a cable and green woodland folk passing gadgets to one another.

Hordak's parting line, "One battle does not win a war, She-Ra," is the one she repeats to He-Man at the end: "Hordak was right. One battle doesn't win a war." Her last words are "Tell Mother and Father I love them." The Eternia half is the stronger of the two, because the argument about leaving is written and acted with more care than the battle that follows it.

1. Behind the scenes: The episode was originally titled "The Sword of She-Ra Part V".
2. Continuity: The episode follows Reunions, originally "Part IV", and the alliance of Skeletor and Hordak collapses here when Skeletor says "I have better use for the Princess of Eternia than you."
3. Continuity: Someone at the dinner says Madame Razz sounds like their Orko, and Adora has to ask "Who's Orko?", so she has not yet met him.
4. Continuity: The Sea Hawk later notes that telepathic communication was previously used in this episode.