The Laughing Dragon

Bow drops a brick down an abandoned Horde fuel tank in Elberon, and She-Ra and Swift Wind carry the fire off to a lake before a dragon appears. Sorrowful is afraid of everything and wants courage, so Adora, Bow and Kowl take him to Queen Castaspella in Mystacor, whose Ceremony of Courage changes nothing. When the Horde invades Greenvale, She-Ra tells him he only lacks a reason, and when Hordesmen threaten his friends he breathes fire on them.

Loo-Kee: "Hi! It's me again, Loo-Kee. Did you find my hiding place today? If not, take another look. See me now? In today's story, Sorrowful thought he didn't have courage. He found that he had more than he thought. So if you ever need to look for courage, you can find it in the same place Sorrowful did, right in your heart. Bye now!"

She-Ra: "You are not a coward. You just haven't found a reason to have courage."

Sorrowful: "Uh, they are the first friends I've ever had, and they mean everything to me."

Sorrowful: "Oh, see now, that's where I think you're wrong."

Bow drops a brick down a dry well in Elberon while the mayor is still making his independence speech, and a villager walks up just after to say the well was a Horde fuel tank. The explosion sets the town alight until She-Ra and Swift Wind whip up a whirlwind, lift the fire and drop it in a lake. Kowl's verdict is "Dropping a brick down a fuel tank." Adora's is milder: "just be careful what you drop down a hole." Then the dragon turns up.

Sorrowful is introduced by way of Bow in a pink gown, who charges in to save Adora with "All right, dragon, I've had it." The dragon answers, "you sure have a pretty dress," and Adora agrees: "That's true. Bow, you've never looked so lovely." Pressed on why he is so timid, Sorrowful says "Oh, but I'm afraid of everything" and then "You name it, I'm afraid of it." Later he calls himself "a joke, a clown." He asks Adora for a sorceress who could give him courage, and she sends him to Castaspella.

The episode's idea is simple: Sorrowful does not need courage handed to him, he needs a reason to use it. Castaspella's Ceremony of Courage is the test case. She calls for a fanfare and a "hero's welcome," announces "Arise, Sorrowful the Courageous!" and gets back "I don't feel any different." Kowl then shouts "Boo!" to check, and Castaspella admits it "may just be impossible." The answer comes from She-Ra on the battlefield: "You are not a coward. You just haven't found a reason to have courage." She tells him to let his love for his friends help, and he says he never had any friends before.

That sets up the best scene in the episode. Sorrowful goes up to a Hordesman and says "Uh, Mr. Hordesman, could I talk to you?" He adds that he does not want to trouble anyone, yet he does not like what is being done to his friends. The answer is "Go away, clown," a word he applied to himself in the meadow. He tries again with "they are the first friends I've ever had, and they mean everything to me." The Hordesman threatens a leash in the Fright Zone and dungeon duty, and Sorrowful replies, "Oh, see now, that's where I think you're wrong." He stays polite until the moment he breathes fire on them.

The weak point is how much the script says out loud. She-Ra tells him he lacks only a reason before the fight, tells him to let his love for his friends help, and then explains afterward that the flowers she gave him were not magical and "The courage was all yours." Sorrowful has just shown that on screen, so the speech adds nothing the Hordesman scene had not already done. The setup also leans on a trick, the flower garland, and Sorrowful credits it first ("it was those magic flowers you gave me"), so the payoff has to be taken back before it counts. Kowl's "Boo!" test is a cheap joke at the dragon's expense and sits oddly beside a story about being kind to him.

The Horde side is thin. Hordak sends Imp to spy on Castaspella, Mantenna and Leech clear a road through Greenvale, and King Gruff gets one line, "What do we know of war?", before the plot moves on. None of it is more than a reason for the battle to happen.

The episode is modest, and the Hordesman scene is its one good stretch. The talk with the Hordesman is worth the wait, and the fainting that returns at the end ("Force of habit") and then lands on Bow is a fair last laugh.