Mike Chain

Tom Sito

For one day only, come visit the Rebels' Fair at Blackmoor Castle, hosted by Queen Angella and with a special appearance by the rebel heroine, She-Ra! Cheer the racers of the famous Rebels' Run, featuring past champion Bow and mysterious late entrant the Red Knight! Guaranteed to be no surprise attacks by the Horde!

Glimmer, Spirit (Swift Wind), Princess Adora (She-Ra), Kowl, Bow, Queen Angella

Leech, Mantenna, Scorpia, Imp, Hordak

Glimmer's horse, Arrow, swamp frog, the Red Knight, Red Knight's horse, various Etherian citizens, various rebels, Horde soldiers

runaway wagon, Hordak-faced ship, Horde flyers

Why are Glimmer, Adora, Bow, and Kowl taking a gloomy ride through a swampy forest? It's Bow's shortcut to Blackmoor Castle, site of this year's Rebels' Fair! Their chosen route proves a perfect one - for an ambush. A waterlogged Bow, tossed into a pond by his spooked horse, finds himself set upon by Leech! Then Mantenna shows up! Then Scorpia! This literal horde of Horde gains the upper hand on our friends, so it's mighty lucky they are saved by a crimson-armored knight with a zappy lance. The self-styled Red Knight, having chased the rebels' attackers away, then accompanies his grateful rescuees to Blackmoor, where he's introduced to Queen Angella. The queen is overseeing the festivities, including the famous Rebels' Run, a race which Bow is well known for winning year after year. Angella is sure she's heard the Red Knight's voice somewhere before, but he declares his vow never to reveal his identity until the Horde has been completely defeated.

The preceding conversation is overheard by Imp, who decides it would be great information to pass onto his boss. Meanwhile, the happy and peaceful celebrations are disrupted by a wild horse dragging a runaway wagon along with its hapless human driver! Bow and his new armored friend both pursue the wagon, and Adora finds a quiet alley in which she can change to She-Ra. Bow's attempts to leap aboard the wagon prove in vain, but She-Ra manages to save a man falling from a crumbling balcony struck by the rogue vehicle, and the Red Knight ultimately succeeds in calming the horse and ending the crisis. Impressed by the mystery man's bravery, Bow must watch while his usual cadre of child fans gather adoringly around their new champion.

A similar result awaits our friend at the conclusion of the Rebels' Run. The Red Knight enters the race as well, and the contest finds Bow and the scarlet stranger running neck and neck at the front of the pack, soon leaving the small collection of other competitors in the dust (or, in their case, water). The knight surmounts the final obstacle, a stone wall, by using his lance as a pole vault (a practice apparently deemed kosher by the race's regulatory committee), and Bow proves unable to regain the lead in the final stretch. Crushed, Bow looks on as the Red Knight garners all the accolades our poor mustached friend has come to expect.

The disappointed Bow can hardly bring himself to stay for the awards ceremony, in which She-Ra drapes a medal over the Red Knight's shoulders. Instead, telling Kowl to give him some time alone, Bow rides his horse Arrow off into the Whispering Woods for a good, long sulk. Kowl gives Adora this news after the ceremony, when the princess comes looking for her missing friend; so she changes right back to She-Ra and flies Swift Wind into the woods after him. Locating the despondent archer, She-Ra assures Bow that he has nothing to feel ashamed of as long as he tried his best, and she convinces him he can continue to hold his head high.

While our title character has been away from the fair, the poop has really hit the fan. Hordak, having heard from his mini-minion that Queen Angella has ventured away from the protecting walls of her home base, has swooped in to launch a sneak attack on the rebel queen and her followers. He's aided in his ambush by the element of surprise and his new invention: the laser bubble blaster. Fortunately (and as often seems to be the case in these situations), Kowl is entirely overlooked by the attacking Horde and flutters his way into the forest to warn She-Ra and Bow of the danger. The pair sneak their way back to Blackmoor Castle and start their own counter-surprise-attack, with She-Ra smashing down the wall to the room where Angella, Glimmer, and the Red Knight are being held in a bubble - as bait for a trap. Trap, shmap! Our heroine takes out Hordak's lackeys, and just when Hordak seems about to bubble her, Bow shoots a perfectly aimed arrow into the muzzle of the Horde leader's laser, causing it to backfire and encase him instead. She-Ra tosses the Hordak ball after the other retreating enemies. The day is saved!

Afterward, now released from the bubble prison, the Red Knight marvels over Bow's fine shooting and requests to learn the bow and arrow from his friend the next time he's traveling through town. Our heroes all look forward to the day when the Horde is completely defeated and the Red Knight can finally peel himself out of that armor - it must be getting awfully ripe in there. To the freedom of Etheria!

• Bow: Kowl, you have no sense of humor. / Kowl: I only laugh at funny things. (Bow falls off his horse and into a pond) (laughing) Now that's funny!
• Red Knight: Fear not! The Red Knight is here.
• Young Bystander (to the Red Knight): You must be the greatest man in the whole world! / Bow: I'll be a Twigget's twinkle if the girl's not right about that.
• Kowl (very miffed at Bow with very little reason): Sometimes I think you haven't got the sense of a Grazellion fence lizard!
• Red Knight (trash talking in grandiloquent style, to Bow): Do hurry - this is a race, you know.
• Mantenna: Mmmm, I can't wait to face the Red Knight again. / Hordak: Face him? The last time you met, all he faced was your back as you ran away.
• Bow: The Red Knight beat me at my own game! / She-Ra: There's no shame in losing, so long as you tried your best ... you can only fail if you don't try. You know you did your best. That's all that matters: the way you feel about yourself, the feeling inside; the pride that comes when you know you've given your best shot.

• She-Ra spin kicks the viewer: To break down a castle wall and surprise the Horde

One partial (missing Spirit/Swift Wind sequence), one full

3:52 - In the establishing shot of Blackmoor Castle, Loo-Kee can be seen screen right, about two-thirds of the way down the screen, facing away from us and leaning against a branch.
Did I spot him? YES!

Loo-Kee pounds home the lesson that Bow learned from She-Ra today: "Win or lose, what counts is doing your best." Another important lesson that our friends didn't learn today: if you have the leader of the enemy forces trapped in a bubble and at your mercy, DON'T THROW HIM BACK!

N/A

• Interesting point regarding Bow's horse, who appears early in the episode and who we saw first at the very beginning of the series (67001) when it carried Bow and Prince Adam on a cozy ride into the Whispering Woods. Mattel produced a toy steed for Bow named "Arrow," but it bears zero resemblance to the animated one, being white and winged where the cartoon horse is tan and flightless. I was hesitant to even use the same name for the horse, except that "Arrow" was eventually rereleased under the MOTU Classics line, looking exactly like the animated version. To seal the deal, late in this episode we hear Bow address the horse definitively as "Arrow."
• On the subject of horses, this opener also sees Glimmer riding her own, but a corresponding toy was never produced, and we don't hear its name.
• Our show writers seem to think the POP series, already brimming with Horde and Rebel members from day one, just doesn't have enough characters in it; because just after being introduced to the Sea Hawk in 67007, we here encounter the Red Knight. In classic Arthurian style, our heroes meet the mysterious knight when he rescues them from being waylaid by Horde bandits on the road. Somewhat diverging from medieval technology, we find that the Knight's lance fires lasers.
• Speaking of show writers, this episode's writer - Mike Chain - is a MOTU/POP newbie. Interestingly, MU112 was written by a Barbara Chain, though I suppose this could just be a coincidence and not a family connection. This Chain will contribute three scripts to She-Ra. The director - Tom Sito - is also new to the series, though he will return.
• Our first (and possibly only) visit to Blackmoor Castle, the turrets of which look like they are topped with the armored caps of Spanish conquistadores - or possibly the shell-like homes of the insect people from MU106.
• Hordak's little buddy Imp returns to the series, after a very brief first showing in 67003. Also reappearing for the first time since the SOTS storyline (67004, 67005) is Queen Angella.
• To celebrate the Rebels' Fair, we are treated to the same whimsical music heard in the infamous MU100's "The Greatest Show on Eternia."
• The fair, we learn, is being held in celebration of "the start of the Rebellion." You could interpret this to mean the rebellion has literally just begun, and they are celebrating it on its first occurrence, rather than as an anniversary. It would be nice to consider this episode as being in the beginning of a larger chronology - a clarity that MOTU usually avoided at all costs. We saw something similar in 67006 and 67007, where She-Ra was as yet unheard-of by the people she met. However other evidence in the show suggests this is the latest in a long line of fairs, and that any number of years may have passed between this episode and 67005; for instance, we find that rather than being a barely known recruit of the rebels, She-Ra has achieved celebrity status, since she's the one giving away the prize to the winner of the Rebels' Run.
• The villager in the runaway wagon is another clone of Mallek (MU024), an oft-used character design. The greenclad figure up in the balcony, among several put in danger by the wagon, looks very much like the grown Duke of Abra from MU058. The woman next to him looks familiar as well; possibly I'm thinking of Princess Rhea from MU031's "A Tale of Two Cities." The yarmulke-wearing gentleman who nearly busts his head falling off the balcony looks like one of the villagers in Teela Na's flashback from MU073.
• Secret identity issues: Observing the precarious situation caused by the runaway wagon, Adora announces: "This looks like a job for She-Ra!" But she says this while standing amidst a crowd of fellow onlookers, who will surely overhear her. Maybe keep that monologue to yourself, Princess.
• To insult his best friend, Kowl claims that Bow doesn't have the sense of (according to my DVD captions) a "Grazellion fence lizard." It would be interesting to know what such a creature looks like, and how much sense it has.
• Hordak transformations: We find that Hordak's arm-transforming powers extend beyond laser cannons, when he changes his right arm into a mallet to smash a tankard resting on the arm of his throne. It calls to mind a similar moment when Skeletor proved a point by crushing a gem he just happened to be holding (see MU013).
• There's an interesting collection of rebels (all male, sadly) competing in the race. One of them just looks like a cave man. Another looks like a soldier out of Flash Gordon. The middle fellow, with his silver flesh-baring chest armor, metal wrist bracers, and hairy underwear, looks not a little like He-Man. The main thing spoiling the resemblance is his stubby mohawk hairdo.
• Hordak is just thrilled at the chance to show the rebels his latest device: "the laser bubble blaster." If you can't tell from the name, it's a laser gun that traps people in bubbles. Sticking people in bubbles was a common tactic in MOTU as well, so it feels like Hordak is a little behind the Eternian villain technology curve here.

• When Bow gets grabbed by Leech, Adora cries "Look out!" twice in a row, using exactly the same audio. It seems like a repetition that would originally have been divided by a commercial break, but if so, you'd think there would be a fade to black.
• Personal achievement: For the first time in my adult watching of the series, I actually found Loo-Kee without that little son of a gun having to show me where he was hiding. Truly, I am a man now.
• I'm stating this without knowing who the Red Knight is under all that armor, so it might turn out to be creepy or weird; but I seem to detect more than a few homoerotic undertones in Bow's reactions to the fellow.
• As one example of the preceding, Bow agrees with some children who declare the Red Knight "terrific" and "the greatest man in the whole world." The odd thing about Bow's statement is he specifically references the words of a "girl," when the last child to speak was clearly a boy.
• There's something weird about this whole Rebels' Fair. As I noted above, it's described by Adora as being in celebration of the start of the Rebellion, so you'd think this was the first time it ever took place; but it's also quite clear that Bow has competed in the Rebels' Run race many times before, since people keep saying that he always wins. In order for these two ideas to jibe, we have to imagine that there has always been a fair at Blackmoor and it has always featured a race, but this is the first year they've added the word "Rebel" to the names of everything. Either that, or Adora's imprecise phrasing was meant to convey that the fair commemorates the anniversary of the start of the rebellion, which was actually many years ago. (Later episodes will confirm the latter to be the case; people have been rebelling against the Horde ever since the occupation of Etheria began, which seems to have been approximately twenty years before She-Ra's appearance on the scene.)
• In the scene preceding the race, where Kowl berates Bow in the tent, he is animated very strangely, his body and limbs looking large and out of proportion with other depictions. A similar style is used to animate him in the scene where Adora finds him in (we assume) Bow's bedroom in the castle.
• This episode brings us more of the typical verbal sparring between Kowl and Bow, who have a sort of C-3PO and R2-D2 way of sniping at each other to express their love. Kowl shows himself to be particularly irritated with Bow for entering the Rebels' Race, for reasons which remain obscure. If the race were actually dangerous in some way, and Bow's competing put him in physical peril, you could maybe understand Kowl's angry concern; but in practice it seems the worst Bow is risking is a dunking in the water.
• Continuity error: The tankard that Hordak eventually smashes is clearly not present in the introductory wide shot showing the villain sitting on his throne.
• Hordak's reaction to the news that Angella is hosting the fair is to hatch a plan to capture her. My thought was that he should use this opportunity to retake Bright Moon, which was under Horde control until very recently (67005) due to Angella's imprisonment. It seems to me the territory is more important than the person!
• I see how, to maintain the secret of his true identity, the Red Knight must remain in armor; but doesn't it make for a severe handicap in a foot race? After all, he's got to be lugging around a few dozen pounds more weight than any of his fellow competitors! And isn't it hot in there? Surely this makes his victory even more impressive! What a may-uhn!
• It's odd that the three other racers who fall into the water immediately assume they've lost the race. "There's always next year," one of them wryly comments. Where's your competitive spirit, bro? Don't you know how to swim? Or is there some rule about instant disqualification if your whole body is submerged?
• For the mere purpose of finding a sulky Bow in the Whispering Woods, Adora decides to transform into She-Ra. She-Ra is a crutch, Adora! Does your heroic alter ego have built-in GPS or something?
• Having successfully bubbled Angella, Hordak seems to feel his victory is assured: "Without their queen, they can do nothing," he claims of the Rebellion. But he should know from experience that this is an absurd notion: the series began with Angella already captured, and the Rebellion continued anyway.
• Kowl avoids capture: Our elephant-eared friend, just as he did in 67002, manages to remain below the radar when Hordak comes calling on Angella and company, leaving him safe to bring the terrible news to She-Ra and Bow. You could also argue he manages the same feat in this episode's opening ambush, since none of the attacking Horde minions bother to go for him.
• It's interesting to contrast the two confrontations between Adora/She-Ra and the Horde. In the opening ambush, Adora gets herself caught by the disturbingly tentacle-like tail of Scorpia. In the ending battle, She-Ra senses Scorpia sneaking up behind her and deftly avoids being caught with the same trick twice. Was it being She-Ra that aided her the second time, or did she just learn a lesson about watching her six?
• Just as in the previous episode (67007), where She-Ra and Sea Hawk decided to abandon their Horde captives and conquered vessel and kindly return them to the bad guys, here we watch as the victorious She-Ra not only allows her enemies to run away, but sends a bubbled and helpless Hordak along with them. What in the name of all that is holy are you doing, woman?! It's like you want this series to keep on going, with no change in the status quo! To be fair, I enjoyed She-Ra's ending zinger: "Looks like they just took their ball and went home!"
• The other thing about the bad guys' defeat, which - unlike the non-defeat defeat just outlined - diverges from the standard MOTU villain practices, is that Hordak's minions flee and leave their boss to his own devices. This is a turnaround from Skeletor ditching his minions so he can escape first!
• The mystery of the Red Knight is quite intriguing and remains provokingly unresolved. Angella keeps saying how familiar the guy sounds, which implies he's someone from her past - perhaps the father of Glimmer, long thought lost? Just a guess. (A guess which will be proved wrong - though somewhat prophetic - by the events of 67046! -Future Guy-Dor) Given that the Red Knight intends to conceal himself until the Horde is completely defeated, it doesn't appear that we're ever going to find out who he really is, which is an interesting choice for the series to have made. Children, after all, crave resolution. And so do I! I'm tempted to google up who this guy really is, under the safe assumption that the internet has solved this problem by now; but I'm going to be strong and hold off. There's a narrow chance that the series itself will eventually unmask this mystery man...