Enchanted Castle

Adora tells Kowl at a Mystacor banquet how the kingdom was freed. She and Bow help an old woman out of a gully, then ride into the Dark Forest, where knights seize them and take them to the sorceress Mortella, who sets them to keep her magic fire burning and locks them in a dungeon behind a bottomless pit. The old woman turns up in the castle, an herb supplier to Mortella, and uses a bridge of playing cards to get them across the pit. Adora becomes She-Ra, beats the conjured knights, and with Bow rigs the drawbridge and the moat to flood the castle and put the fire out. Mortella's power dies with it, and the old woman is revealed as Castaspella, true queen of Mystacor, her spell lifted. Back at the banquet, a call for water for Bow ends with him dripping wet.

Loo-Kee: "Hi, well, here I am again. Did you find where I was hiding today? If not, here's another chance. See me now? Here I am. In today's exciting adventure, Bow and Adora helped a woman in trouble. By coming to her rescue, they did an act of kindness. That kindness came back to them when they were in trouble. As Adora said, kindness is repaid with kindness."

Mortella: "It must never, ever burn low."

She-Ra: "Three against one doesn't seem very fair to me."

Castaspella: "I am Castaspella, true queen of Mystacor."

What does a good deed buy you in Mystacor? Enchanted Castle puts the price in plain terms: a rope, a horse and a minute of effort at the edge of a gully, repaid with a rescue from a dungeon behind a bottomless pit. The story comes as a flashback at a banquet, with Adora telling Kowl how the party began, and the debt is set down early. Adora and Bow haul a woman up out of the gully, she says she cannot return the favour because she is "a poor old woman," and is told that thanks are payment enough. The woman gives them a warning about the Dark Forest instead, and the next few minutes are the forest proving her right.

The setup is tidy, and it starts before the forest. Bow plays his instrument from horseback, two red Hordesmen decide to grab him because one of the Rebels plays music, and one of them adds, "I hate music." She-Ra flies them off on Swift Wind for a bird's-eye view, then leaves them stranded on a ledge with their own tank, delivered for company. It is a throwaway. It also has Adora stepping in for Bow before anyone has asked.

Here is what the episode is about: Adora and Bow spend a kindness on a stranger, and the plot spends the rest of its length collecting the interest. Mortella is built to be beaten by that arrangement. She announces herself as the most powerful sorceress in the realm, sets her new slaves to tend a fire that must "never, ever burn low," and the script does not let the rule go quiet. Behind the throne, the fire is explained as the source of her power and of her knights, and when She-Ra and Bow drive the moat water into the castle, Mortella is left moaning, "My wonderful power." Mortella hands the heroes her weak spot in her first scene.

The best scene is the escape across the pit. The old woman arrives at the cell window after a visit in which she brings Mortella herbs for sleeping potions and is told never to try to leave the Dark Forest. She does something with a whirl of light, and the prisoners are out. Then pulls out a deck of playing cards and lays them into a bridge. She says she uses cards for tricks in the magic shows she does, and someone asks if she will show how it is done. The line is a quiet clue, since Mystacor's queen turns out to be the one who does the tricks, and the reveal at the end, when her spell lifts and she gives her name as Castaspella, lands because the card bridge has already told us she is more than she seems.

The weakness is the sword. Kowl points out at the start of the dungeon scene that Adora did not have hers, and at the capture the knights are seen leading a horse that carries a sword. Then Adora raises one on the steps of the hall and calls on the honor of Grayskull, and as far as the dialogue and frames show, nobody says how it came back to her. The transformation is a big moment, and here it arrives without the small piece of business that would have made the sword's return part of the rescue.

It is a modest episode, built on a debt, a fire and a bridge of cards. The closing gag, a call for water that leaves Bow dripping, keeps the story's rule intact: you have to say exactly what you mean around Castaspella's magic castle. The woman they helped gets her kingdom back.

1. Continuity: Castaspella, the old woman of this story, is the queen of Mystacor. Mystacor is also the setting of the next episode, Three Courageous Hearts. The old woman here says she uses her cards for tricks in the magic shows she does.
2. Continuity: The story is told as a flashback at a banquet in Mystacor, celebrating the day it was freed, with Kowl as the listener.
3. Continuity: Spirit becomes Swift Wind in the same flash as Adora's transformation into She-Ra, and She-Ra uses him to carry off the two Hordesmen.