Huntara

Hordak, scolding the Force Squad because Horde Prime is displeased, brings in Huntara, a warrior from the planet Silax who will fight only a truly evil enemy. He shows her faked holo-vid pictures of She-Ra destroying a medicine convoy and burning a town, and Huntara agrees to meet She-Ra alone in single combat. To lure her out, Huntara shoots down Glimmer's craft and sends a hologram message saying she will send Glimmer away unless She-Ra comes to Tomb Rock in the Crimson Waste. She-Ra comes, and the fight becomes a chase through the hills in which she escapes an avalanche, a cage and sleep gas, then ties Huntara up with a rope from her sword. By the code of Silax Huntara declares herself She-Ra's slave, but She-Ra sets her free, and Huntara begins to doubt Hordak just as Scorpia and Catra put them all to sleep. In the Fright Zone Hordak sneers at her honor; Huntara breaks out, frees She-Ra and Glimmer, and leaves Etheria promising that when they meet again it will be as friends.

Loo-Kee: "Hi, it's me again, Loo-Kee. Did you find where I was hiding today? If not, here's another chance. See me now? Here I am. In today's story, Hordak thought he could beat She-Ra by telling Huntara lies. But it didn't work. Lies seldom do. Somehow the truth always comes out, and then it's big trouble. So save yourself that trouble, and always tell the truth."

Huntara: "I am not here for pretty speeches."

Hordak: "Huntara will believe them, even if they are all lies."

She-Ra: "The Horde takes slaves. I don't."

Hordak: "Your childish sense of fair play has no place here on Etheria."

Hordak builds a trap for She-Ra out of someone else's honor, and the flaw he never sees is that honor works in both directions. Huntara arrives from Silax, whose people Hordak calls the greatest warriors, hunters and trappers in the universe, and she cuts off his welcome at once: "I am not here for pretty speeches." Before she will lift a hand she needs proof that She-Ra is as evil as he says, and the whole episode is about what happens when that proof turns out to be something he had to fake.

The opening scene sets the stakes with a joke. Hordak berates his Force Squad for failing to catch a single woman, tells them Horde Prime is displeased, and threatens that if the newcomer succeeds they will spend the rest of their time cleaning garbage bins with very tiny brushes. It also tells us how he means to use a warrior of principle: by deceiving her. When someone asks how he will convince her, he says he has had false holo-vid pictures made, and that "Huntara will believe them, even if they are all lies."

The screening that follows is the scene the rest of the story hangs on. Over images of explosions and a burning village, Hordak tells her that She-Ra wrecked a convoy carrying medicine to a plague-struck village and burned a town that would not join her Rebellion. A voice in the room says it does not remember She-Ra doing all that. Huntara cuts him off, says she has seen enough, and sets her one condition: the fight is hers and She-Ra's alone, because that is how warriors of Silax settle things. Asked how she will draw the hero out, she wants to know whether She-Ra has friends, and she is told that there are many and that She-Ra is loyal to them.

What follows is well matched to its guest. Huntara is billed as a trapper, so her fight is a series of traps rather than a slugfest: an exploder star that brings down an avalanche, an ambush cage that fills with sleep gas, and finally stun swords. She-Ra gets out of each, with a tunnel she makes on the spot and the best line of the sequence, "Never seen an instant tunnel before?", and then wins with her sword turned to a rope. Along the way she tells Huntara that fighting does not solve anything and asks her why she is doing this, and Huntara hears all of it as the talk of a coward.

The weakness is that it is the defeat that persuades her, not the argument. She-Ra never answers the convoy or the burned town, and Huntara turns only after she has lost and the code of Silax makes her She-Ra's slave, to which She-Ra replies, "The Horde takes slaves. I don't." That is a good line, and it works; but the specific charges Hordak made are never mentioned again, and Huntara's doubt arrives on the strength of one act of mercy and a flat denial. When she throws his lies back at him, Hordak answers with her "childish sense of fair play", which is the code he used on her a few scenes earlier.

The ending keeps the pattern: Scorpia puts all three to sleep with a sting cannon, Huntara is chained, Hordak mocks her, and she vanishes with a soft chime and a blast and comes back for the others. Her farewell to She-Ra, that she is needed on her own planet but that they will meet again as friends, sends her off as an ally rather than an enemy. It is a brisk episode, and that last turn is the best thing in it.

cereal:geek's commentary on Huntara, with behind-the-scenes detail on how the episode was made.

1. Continuity: She-Ra says Huntara has "more tricks than my brother's friend Orko", tying the episode to He-Man's circle.
2. Continuity: Catra, Scorpia and the Crawler follow the duel to "take care of whoever wins"; Catra's reason is Hordak's garbage-bin threat from the opening scene.
3. Continuity: She-Ra tells Huntara that "Fighting doesn't solve anything", close to the Loo-Kee talk that closed The Rock People the day before.
4. Continuity: Hordak names Horde Prime as the one who is displeased; Horde Prime is named in the title of Horde Prime Takes a Holiday.