The Stone in the Sword

Hordak and Grizzlor take the Doom Balloon, a weapon that gathers lightning, out in a storm to burn Whispering Woods. She-Ra overloads its circuits and destroys it, but the blast turns her back into Adora, and Hordak takes Bow prisoner. The stone in the Sword of Protection is cracked and will not transform her, so she and Kowl climb Skydancer Mountain to Light Hope in the Crystal Castle, who sends them to the First Ones. They pass the Jaws of Darkness, a cave-in, a maze and the Cavern of Fire, where the First Ones praise her courage and let her try the sword again. She-Ra gets into Fright Zone Prison, tumbles Hordak's troopers, hits Hordak himself with Giggleberry powder and frees Bow.

Loo-Kee: "Hi! Did you find where I was hiding today? If not, here's another chance. See me now? Here I am. Today, let's talk about sticktoitiveness. Wow, that's a big word. But it simply means doing what Adora did today: sticking to a job until the job is done. When you have a job like your homework, use sticktoitiveness. Stick to it until the job is done."

Hordak: "Tonight we will destroy Whispering Woods."

Adora: "Then I can never become She-Ra again."

The First Ones: "Are these not the qualities of She-Ra?"

What is She-Ra without the stone in her sword? The Stone in the Sword puts the question in the most literal way the show has available, with a crack in a gem and a transformation that will not happen, and it answers that the power she lost was never only in the stone. The episode is a quest, and a good one, because the person doing the questing is Adora, holding a sword that no longer works, with Kowl for company.

It begins in the Fright Zone with a gag about Hordak's good luck charm, which seems to be a small white armoured figure and ends up in pieces at Hordak's feet while Grizzlor takes the blame. It sets the tone: this is a comedy villain's episode, with a weapon called the Doom Balloon, a vacuum cleaner attachment gag and a storm announced as the night he has been waiting for. The weapon is clever enough. It draws lightning, focuses it and throws it out at its target, and it burns blue trees at night, which looks better than it sounds.

The rebels' side is a planted joke. In the camp, Sprocker brings pollen from a Giggleberry bush, and the pollen gets into the air and Adora, Bow and Sprocker laugh through the news that Hordak has a terrible new weapon. It pays off in the last minutes, when She-Ra hits Hordak with Giggleberry powder and he ends up sitting on the floor laughing. Her "What are friends for?" to Bow is a line that already turned up on the mountain.

Here is what the episode is about: when the stone cracks, Adora keeps going, and what she is worth was in her all along. Skydancer Mountain is the first test: told that no one can climb it, Adora answers "Watch me!" and goes up with a rope. The Jaws of Darkness stairs are the best scene. The mouth of a monster opens with a stairway for a tongue, Adora takes up a round shield and rides it down the tunnel with Kowl clinging to her shoulder, asking how soon they will stop. "As soon as we hit that wall up ahead" is the answer, and the cave-in a moment later is the kind of sequence this show does well, because it is fast and it makes Kowl suffer. When the First Ones finally speak, they ask: "Are these not the qualities of She-Ra?"

The weakness is that the First Ones spell it out. They list the climb, the shield, the cave-in and the falling rocks of the forbidden corner, then ask whether those are not the qualities of She-Ra, then invite her to try her sword. As far as the dialogue and frames show, no one mentions the crack again or says what was done to the stone. The recital repeats the last ten minutes, and the sword simply works. A line or a shot of the gem whole would have given the episode its payoff.

Bow, meanwhile, sits in a red cage and refuses to give up when Hordak boasts of the strongest metal in the galaxy. His defiance echoes Adora's. It is thin, but it gives the cuts back to the Fright Zone a job. The episode closes with the sticktoitiveness moral, and the show's own word for it is fair.

1. Continuity: Whispering Woods is the Rebellion's hiding place here ("he'll never find our camp"), and also gives its name to The Peril of Whispering Woods.
2. Continuity: Adora summons Light Hope to open the gates of the Crystal Castle, the place that gives its name to the next episode in broadcast order, The Crystal Castle.
3. Continuity: Hordak is attended by Grizzlor and Shadow Weaver in the Doom Balloon, and Kowl is Adora's companion on the quest.