Glimmer's Story

Hordak's troopers stop the real Prince Highcliff of Blue Mountain on the road to Bright Moon, and the shapeshifter False Face takes his place, with Imp along to help. While Glimmer, bent on impressing the visitor, has Madame Razz turn her hair purple, Adora is the first to sense that the prince is wrong. False Face tours the castle with Glimmer, learns about the floodgates and the Moonstone that keeps Bright Moon safe, closes the floodgates to flood the castle, then (with a fire set to keep She-Ra busy) takes the Moonstone, and Glimmer ends up in a Fright Zone cell beside the real prince. Glimmer and the real prince escape with the stone while She-Ra holds off Hordak's robots, and Bow's glider, now flying, and sticky glue arrowheads stop the pursuers on the road. Queen Angella and Glimmer restore its power through the bond between mother and daughter, She-Ra uses the energies of the Crystal Castle to protect Bright Moon until the stone is back in place, and Glimmer decides the real prince will have to like her just the way she is.

Loo-Kee: "Hi, it's your friend Loo Kee. Did you find my hiding place? If not, find me now. I'm hiding here. Here I am. Today, Glimmer learned that appearance, the way you look on the outside, isn't everything. You see, you can change the color of your hair and the clothes you wear, but still, the thing that's important is the person you are on the inside. Bye, now. See you next time."

Catra: "A pickle jar would be more like you."

Adora: "Hmm, there's something about him that's not right."

Hordak: "Even She-Ra can't be in the sky and on the ground at the same time."

Glimmer: "Prince Highcliff is going to have to like me just the way I am."

Who gets fooled by a face, and who sees through it? Glimmer's Story runs that question twice in parallel. Glimmer talks Madame Razz into giving her purple hair so she can make a grand impression on the visiting Prince Highcliff, and Hordak's troopers meanwhile stop the real prince on the road and have False Face copy him. Imp is sent along to help. Adora, watching the hair job, says "You don't need purple hair to make a grand impression, Glimmer." The line sets up everything that follows: the impression the princess is trying to make is the very thing the villain is faking.

The writing is cleverest where it lets the visitor ask questions. False Face tours the castle with Glimmer and keeps answering her with "Fascinating." She tells him the floodgates are controlled from a room where closing them at high water would flood the castle. When he remarks on the smooth walls with no doors or windows, she explains that no evil force can take Bright Moon while the Moonstone is energized, and then admits she carries a key to its chamber for emergencies. Every piece of Bright Moon's defense gets handed over in one pleasant stroll. Adora is the first to read him, and she does it without proof: "Hmm, there's something about him that's not right." The script lets her suspicion rest on character.

Here is what the episode is about: the gap between how someone looks and what they are, and the Moonstone sequence is where the idea pays. When the stone is taken from its pedestal, Queen Angella explains that its power can only be restored through a bond from generation to generation, and she and Glimmer clasp hands to do it. The defense of the kingdom turns out to be inherited, internal and unseen, nothing like the haircut or the borrowed face. Cutting back and forth, She-Ra calls on the energies of the Crystal Castle to protect Bright Moon until the stone is back in place, and admits she cannot hold them much longer. The stone comes back to them.

Bow's glider is the episode's other quiet payoff. It fails in the opening scene while Kowl says he hates to say "I told you so," and it returns later, with Madame Razz's sticky glue arrowheads, to pin down Hordak's pursuers. The doubter's admission that he was wrong is the small version of the same lesson: a flimsy-looking machine proved worth more than it appeared.

The weakness is the connection between the plot and the moral. Glimmer's actual mistake is answering every question a stranger asks about Bright Moon, including the admission that she carries a key to a chamber nobody may enter without the queen, and the script lets her say that this is not an emergency before the Moonstone vanishes. Yet what she is made to learn is about hair. The purple dye has no part in the theft and disappears from the story for long stretches, so the closing lesson feels attached rather than earned. A line from Glimmer about her own carelessness would have joined the two.

Still, as an episode about Bright Moon's defenses, it makes good use of Angella, who is given something to do other than stand beside her daughter. Glimmer's closing choice to let the prince like her just as she is lands with a laugh, and someone is left to ask if that is the way she always wears it.

1. Continuity: Imp's disguises are a running gag here (a salt shaker on the queen's table, a mirror threat to Catra, a raygun, a medal); he is also at Hordak's side in Treasure of the First Ones.
2. Continuity: Queen Angella is Glimmer's mother ("Yes, Mother") and the Moonstone's power passes between them; Bright Moon is also the setting of Battle for Bright Moon.
3. Continuity: Hordak's attack sends robot planes at the castle and Destructo Tanks onto the road, and She-Ra draws on "the energies of the Crystal Castle," the place where Light Hope summons her in Treasure of the First Ones.