Bow's Farewell

Adora finds Bow in Twigget Village giving the young Twigget Spunky a harp lesson, scolds him about the Horde patrols, and watches him break a glass goblet with sound just before a patrol led by Catra arrives. Bow slips away with an illusion, She-Ra scatters the troopers, and afterward Bow offers to leave the Rebellion; Kowl turns that into a trip to the Mystic Stones. On the way Bow and Kowl find the Twiggets building an Eclipse Beam for the Horde, who are holding their king and queen. Bow plays a wandering magician to keep the troopers busy while the royal pair are freed, until Catra pulls off his beard. She-Ra destroys the machine, only to learn it was a decoy and that the real beam is aimed at Castle Bright Moon. She-Ra rides Swift Wind out to hold back the eclipse while Bow uses a machine as an amplifier and breaks the Eclipse Beam with his harp, just as his goblet lesson promised.

Loo-Kee: "Hi. It's me, Loo-Kee. Did you find my hiding place today? If not, look for me now. See me? Here I am! In today's story, Bow used what he knew about the science of sound to break the glass. Science teaches us how things work. You'll find lots of wonderful books about science at your library. Bye, now. See you next time."

Bow: "It really isn't a trick."

Bow: "Sorry you didn't like my longbow."

She-Ra: "You were never very good at telling the future, Catra."

What is a music lesson worth to a rebellion that would rather have its archer indoors? Bow's Farewell raises the question in its first scene and waits until the last minutes to answer it. Adora has heard that Bow is in Twigget Village, though he was warned that Horde patrols are in the area, and she arrives to give him a talking to. She finds him teaching the Twigget Spunky to play the harp. Her complaint is fair, and the episode never pretends otherwise; a Horde tank rolls through the forest minutes after the goblet breaks. What the script adds is that the harp was never a distraction.

The first scene has Bow promise Spunky some magic that is not a trick, hold up a glass goblet and break it without touching it. Spunky calls it a good trick and Bow corrects him: "everything has a certain frequency" that makes it vibrate, and if the sound is loud enough and long enough, the glass goes. That is a physics lesson for a child in a clearing, pop on cue. Loo-Kee files it under science at the close, after the ending has already run on it.

Between the lesson and the payoff the script spends a long middle getting Bow out of trouble with illusions. When the troopers take the harp, Bow says he is sorry they did not like his longbow and that maybe they will like his magic better, and then he is gone in a swirl of pink hearts. She-Ra turns up, the troopers pile into one another, and Catra ends up sitting in a pool of water after She-Ra reminds her how much cats love it. Then the story turns to its title. Adora tells Bow he is a wanted man whose presence puts others in danger, and Bow answers, "Then maybe the Rebellion's better off without me." Kowl cheerfully agrees ("An excellent idea!"), backpedals into a vacation at the Mystic Stones, and is sent along as company. The farewell is a short trip for the two of them, and it ends when they find the Twiggets building an Eclipse Beam for the Horde because the Horde holds their king and queen.

The best scene is Bow's magician disguise. A trooper calls him a beggar and he insists, "Songs and sleight of hand." The troopers keep him around to entertain them at the campfire, and he edges toward the control console while King Sprite and Queen Sparkle are freed elsewhere. He offers a trooper his fortune; Catra steps in to say it is time she told his, and tugs at the beard. The joke comes back at the end, when She-Ra says, "You were never very good at telling the future, Catra."

The weak part is how She-Ra buys the time Bow needs. The machine they smash turns out to be a fake and the real Eclipse Beam is already aimed at Bright Moon. She-Ra's plan, as she states it, is to slow down an eclipse, and on screen that means a sword turned into a chain and a ride through the stars with Swift Wind straining to pull. Nobody says why a chain should work on an eclipse. The harp scheme has rules (find the right note, use the machine as an amplifier, point the speaker at the target), so the cleverest idea in the episode sits beside the vaguest, and Bow's half has to carry the logic alone.

It is a modest episode and a good one for Bow, who saves a castle with a harp and a lesson in sound while his longbow comes up only as something the Horde remembers. She-Ra asks, "What about a trick that isn't magic?" and the answer was already in the clearing. Next to the episodes that rest on She-Ra's strength, this one rests on a rebel's hobby, and it earns the trade.

1. Continuity: A Horde speaker recalls how Bow handled a longbow at "the battle for Bright Moon", and Adora says his fighting there may have made him known, which points back to Battle for Bright Moon.
2. Continuity: Bow again plays his music for Twiggets in Play It Again, Bow, which aired two days later.
3. Continuity: Bow and Kowl are told to head for the Mystic Stones and are close to them when they hear the sounds of the Twiggets at work, so the episode never reaches the place.