Larry DiTillio

Steven Clark

To appease the human children who apparently live in the rebel camp at Whispering Woods, Madame Razz tells the tale of when She-Ra first visited Etheria's magical Crystal Castle. It was all to save Castle Bright Moon from a devious plot of Shadow Weaver, and... well, why don't you just listen to Madame tell it?

Madame Razz, Broom, Princess Adora (She-Ra), Glimmer, Queen Angella, Spirit (Swift Wind), Bow, Kowl, Light Hope

Shadow Weaver

various rebel children, Bright Moon guards, Weaver's slave, trolls, fire guardian, Agho, Horde soldiers, clock gargoyles, various Bright Moon citizens

wagons, destructo tanks

It's just so boring when you're a child who has to live in the camp of the Great Rebellion! There's nothing to do in the Whispering Woods except clean and oil Bow's vast collection of bows and novelty arrows (I assume); so when you can, you've got to beg Madame Razz to tell you a story. That's just what a collection of rebel children do of Madame Razz at the opening of today's episode, and she decides to tell them the story of that time when She-Ra saved Castle Bright Moon from an attack by the wicked sorceress, Shadow Weaver. It all started not long after the beginning of Season 1, when Queen Angella had just been rescued and put back in charge of Castle Bright Moon. The castle is being bombarded by magical attacks, so Madame Razz and Princess Adora fly over on Broom to see if they can help. They make a daring flight past the magical flak and through the briefly opened front gate, crash-landing inside. Within, Queen Angella and her daughter Glimmer explain the problem. As long as Queen Angella's magic, powered by the castle, is up and running, she'll have no problem shielding the place from the bombardments. The issue is, the castle's power comes from the light of Etheria's moons, and their light is due to be blocked out by an impending eclipse! With the castle's power lines clipped, the home base of the Great Rebellion will be as vulnerable as a Twigget in the big city!

The heroes put their heads together over some way to prevent this catastrophe. Angella remembers an old tale of a magical Crystal Castle, haven for treasures from the days of Etheria's First Ones. If they could find this mysterious and legendary place, they'd be all set! Trouble is, the queen has no idea of its location. Broom then pipes up, stating that one Agho, king of the trolls of Spikeheart, claims to have seen the castle. The trouble with that is, Agho rules a very testy race of trolls who hate humans and wouldn't take kindly to strangers showing up, asking for favors. Adora announces that they have no choice and will have to try the troll's generosity; besides, She-Ra might appear to offer aid (wink, wink). So the princess wanders away to the forest to get her steed and make their transformation, and She-Ra and Swift Wind fly off to the rocky, hole-pocked terrain of Spikeheart.

As soon as they land, She-Ra and her horse are ambushed and set upon by a band of trolls. She-Ra pleads her innocence and peaceful intentions, but the trolls are - as advertised - mistrustful of humans. She has no choice but to bust up their attempts to imprison her and take back to the air, causing her would-be attackers to flee. She-Ra cleverly follows one of the fleeing trolls back to his base, planning to break her way inside; but she's outwitted when she springs a trapdoor at the gate, falling to a cavernous area below and leaving her dismayed horse flat-footed at the entrance. In the underground caves, our heroine fights tentacle-like rocks and a mouthy fire guardian, but does finally come face-to-face with Agho. She-Ra explains her mission: to find a way to protect the Great Rebellion from extinction, and keep the fight alive against the Evil Horde. Agho explains that he, too, hates the Horde, but when the conquerors first moved in, his people offered their help in the fight for freedom but were shunned by the prejudiced humans. She-Ra ensures the king that she has no such biases.

Agho, who has been kept informed of this strange lady's doings in his territory, knows that she didn't actually harm any of his people, and decides to trust in her professed good intentions. He has in fact come upon the Crystal Castle, and he would tell her how to reach it if he could; but, as he explains, the castle's keeper made him promise never to reveal its location. Instead, he tells She-Ra a riddle: "The castle is always where its seeker most wants it to be: in plain sight, yet never seen. This is its nature." When he asks if she gets his meaning, She-Ra claims that she does - though I think she was just being polite, because it was pretty incomprehensible. Realizing it's all she's going to get, She-Ra bids Agho farewell, having potentially improved diplomatic relations between humans and trolls (if nothing else). The king magically reunites She-Ra with her very relieved horse, and together the pair head back towards Bright Moon.

Back at Bright Moon, things aren't looking too good: that pesky eclipse has come to pass, and Shadow Weaver has duly begun her "spell of shriving." Using a scale model of the castle as a sort of voodoo doll, she zaps the miniature, thus conveying a magical attack on the real object. Angella, Glimmer, Madame Razz, and Broom (is Broom a magician too?) join hands to try to bolster the fortress's shield, but they clearly won't be able to keep this up for long; and there's a huge army of Horde soldiers and tanks just milling around outside, ready to swoop in as soon as the defenses go down. Swift Wind, flapping nearby, thinks he and She-Ra need to go help their friends; but She-Ra knows their only hope lies at the legendary Crystal Castle. So where is it?

Looking off in the distance, our heroine catches a glimpse of Sky Dancer Mountain, its summit forever shrouded behind a dense cloud of mist. She realizes the mountain is the answer to Agho's riddle: its peak is in plain sight, yet due to the fog is never seen. Sure enough, when she and Swift Wind approach, they find a beautiful golden castle hidden amid the mist, with a huge red gem in its center. Surely this is the Crystal Castle! (We see it at the beginning of every episode, after all, so we could hardly mistake it.) Remembering there is some keeper within, She-Ra calls out to request entrance, and a strange voice grants her wish, saying that it has "awaited your coming." As we will already know from yesterday's episode, the castle's keeper is Light Hope, who introduces themself to She-Ra once she's landed inside. Already knowing why she's come, Light Hope wastes no time in providing the solution to her problem. That's right: it's about time! Light Hope teleports She-Ra to the heart of the planet, where a big clock is hanging which apparently controls the passage of time across Etheria. All She-Ra has to do is make the clock run faster, so the eclipse ends sooner and Bright Moon's danger is past.

There's one tiny obstacle: the clock has guardians, in the form of some shrieking gargoyles. But they're hardly much of an obstacle, since they seem to be made of glass, and shatter at the first hard kick. (On consideration, one is a bit concerned for the safety of time on Etheria!) With the gargoyles dashed to bits, She-Ra leaps onto the clock's pendulum and kicks it into super speed, ticking that eclipse right along. And just in time: up on the surface, all of our magic users have collapsed in a faint except tough Queen Angella, grimly holding onto the fading shield. When the eclipse passes sooner than expected, her power returns seemingly more full than ever, and she easily banishes the Horde army outside.

Back inside the Crystal Castle, Light Hope informs She-Ra that the danger is past, and that Queen Angella will do a better job protecting her house in the future (presumably precluding the possibility of other similar episode plots). She-Ra thanks Light Hope for their help, and in return, the magical mentor requests that She-Ra drop by for a visit once in a while, to spill some tea and keep some company. Also, could she please continue to keep the location of the castle a secret to everyone who doesn't know her secret? Why, sure she can! Their business concluded for the time being, Light Hope teleports She-Ra back to her rebel friends, who we already caught a glimpse of celebrating outside the castle with some random citizens.

As for us, the viewers, it's time we do some time traveling of our own, fading back to Madame Razz and her story circle. The children would like to know where Crystal Castle actually is (from which we conclude that Razz somehow related the events of today's episode without giving up that critical piece of information). Razz assures them that the castle's location is a secret which She-Ra has faithfully kept, and which will stay kept until Etheria has been freed from the clutches of the Horde. Razz and the children share the hope that that day will come soon.

• Princess Adora: What's the Crystal Castle? / Queen Angella: According to the old tales, it's the most magical place on Etheria. It holds all the secrets from the days of the First Ones, the founders of our world.
• Agho: When the Horde first came here, we trolls offered to help fight them. But you humans would not accept our help. You hated us; feared us; mistrusted us. So we came here to Spikeheart, away from the Horde - away from your hate.
• Agho: Long ago, I searched for the castle. With my magic I came to its gates and looked upon its magnificent beauty.
• Agho: The castle is always where its seeker most wants it to be: in plain sight, yet never seen. This is its nature.
• Light Hope: Welcome, She-Ra; long have I awaited your coming. I am Light Hope, spirit of this castle.
• Light Hope (to She-Ra): I wish you to treat this castle as your personal haven; visit it often, and speak with me.
• Rebel child: I sure wish I could see it. (the Crystal Castle) / Madame Razz: Some day you will; when Etheria is free. / Child: I hope that day comes soon. / Razz: We all do, deary; we all do.

N/A

One full

1:21 - Getting his contractual duties over with very quickly today, Loo-Kee appears in the first shot after the title screen, hanging onto a tree in the lower-left quadrant of the screen. In fact, the tree and his pose are identical to his hiding spot in 67020, so Loo-Kee really phoned it in today. (He'll use this exact same hiding place yet again, in 67031.)
Did I spot him? You'd better believe it.

Returning to the prejudice theme suggested by the trolls' backstory in today's episode, Loo-Kee reminds us that it's "silly" to judge people just by the way they look or talk. "Wouldn't it be a pretty dull world if we were all the same?" It sure would, Loo-Kee. That is an important and still pertinent message for all humanity. Now I feel guilty for bad-mouthing your choice of hiding place today.

Tell us a story
Hordak-less episodes in Season 1
Landmark Episode: At the risk of tagging an even greater proportion of POP episodes than MOTU episodes as "landmark," I feel compelled to tag this one along with all the others I've already tagged (which at the moment puts my landmark percentage at about 50% - yikes!). It tells the origin of the Crystal Castle and She-Ra's first meeting with Light Hope.
Gotta get back in time: I've decided this episode deserves the tagging of my "time travel" category (even though technically no one goes back in time), for the ending solution to the eclipse problem which involves some time shenanigans at the center of Etheria.

• My man, the great Larry DiTillio, brings us this script. Few writers can be said to have so thoroughly shaped the MOTU/POP universe. (I was worried I was overselling this episode putting this description here, but it is an important one!)
• In order to give Madame Razz someone to tell a story to, we are asked to believe that the Great Rebellion employs a miniature army of children. I guess maybe their tiny fingers are good at constructing bombs - right? Regardless, this is the first time I remember seeing tiny humans in the Whispering Woods camp.
• The frame and flashback structure of this story make it very similar to 67019's "Enchanted Castle," which had Adora relating the episode's story to Kowl. It means that we're once again being made privy to events that somehow happened in between earlier episodes.
• Razz tells the kids that her story "started a little while after the rebellion's first victory over the Horde." I think we have to assume that first victory was the battle for Bright Moon, subject of the rousing conclusion to the SOTS storyline (67005). So right after the rebels freed Bright Moon, the Horde... attacked Bright Moon again? I guess that makes sense.
• And once again, as with Adora's tale of Mystacor, we're going to have a secret identity problem here: how can Madame accurately tell a story of Adora and She-Ra without giving away that they're the same people? We have to assume the story we're watching is not quite the one that Madame told.
• We learn that Angella can use her own magic to shield her castle, but that her powers are ultimately tied to the Etherian moons. The moons also played an integral part in the plot of 67015's "He Ain't Heavy." However... there's a number problem with the moons! See the commentary. For more lore about Bright Moon's defensive shield, check out 67041's "Glimmer's Story."
• This episode brings back one of my favorite MOTU sub-categories, "only a legend." Angella tells the story of the Crystal Castle, "the most magical place on Etheria. It holds all the secrets from the days of the First Ones, the founders of our world." A scoffing Glimmer is surprised to hear her mother spouting such nonsense, claiming "that's only a story."
• So clearly, and to my great satisfaction, we are going to get the origin story I wanted for the Crystal Castle and Light Hope, which it looked like the series had skipped over in 67021. Thanks Larry!
• Adora's wink to Madame when she talks about She-Ra helping her implies that, even though this story takes place just a short time after the rebellion's first victory, it is already taking place after Madame has learned Adora's secret. Well now I want to know even more how Madame figured this out!
• Just like on Eternia, Etheria has trolls! And they live in a place called Spikeheart. He-Man met ice trolls on his way to visit Granamyr for the first time in my favorite MOTU episode, MU034's "The Dragon's Gift." It's interesting that that episode is coming up, because there are other similarities to be found here between that story and today's. Both were written by DiTillio, for one; and both feature our main character headed to seek help from a person who represents a non-human race that doesn't like humans. In MU034 it was Granamyr of the great dragons, and in this episode it's Agho, king of the trolls.
• Shadow Weaver shows up in what appears to be a new location, her own little corner of the Fright Zone, where she has a looming, eldritch tower and an interesting throne. She is seen hanging out with a donkey-like person with drooping ears and a long tail. I've identified him as "Weaver's slave" in the character list, as he remains unnamed. I was reminded of the weird vulture messenger, Styrax, which she employed in 67011. We'll revisit Weaver's lair and see some exciting bits of her interior decorating during a thrilling magicians' duel in 67027's "The Eldritch Mist." And though the building doesn't appear in the episode, we'll eventually discover, in 67043's "Welcome Back, Kowl," that its name is "Horror Hall."
• The terrain of Spikeheart is suspiciously familiar to the pockmarked geyser field where the pot-bellied Jarvan began his underwhelming revenge crusade against Eternia in MU010's "A Friend in Need."
• Early in my experience with Larry DiTillio's scripts, I noted his preoccupation with linguistics. As far back as MU008's "The Time Corridor," he realized that the ancient peoples of Eternia would speak a different language to He-Man and his time-travelling comrades, which necessitated Orko casting a spell of translation. The ice trolls of MU034, whom I've already had occasion to mention, also spoke a tongue other than He-Man's. Here, we see that Spikeheart's trolls have their own language.
• The fire guardian in Spikeheart looks surprisingly similar to the glimpse we got of the First Ones in 67021.
• We get another connection to MU034 when Agho explains that he has promised the Crystal Castle's "keeper" never to reveal its location. This is similar to the deal the Sorceress made with the great dragons, never to tell humans the location of Darksmoke. Instead, and like Agho with She-Ra, the Sorceress has to give He-Man a cryptic, riddle-like clue.
• Bow and Kowl make a late appearance in today's story, 14 minutes into the runtime. Bow quickly contributes the memorable expression, "by my grandfather's beard!"
• Shadow Weaver's tiny scale model of the Crystal Castle recalls Skeletor's own questionable, borderline-obsessive scale model of Grayskull, seen in the memorable MU022's "Song of Celice."
• As Light Hope claims, "At the heart of this planet lies the great clock which measures out all time on Etheria." This gimmick of being able to control time on a planet recalls the truly strange one-off He-Man story, "Time Doesn't Fly" (MU115), featuring a Keeper of Time and an evil sorcerer who found a way to freeze time on Eternia.
• She-Ra's chronological task is actually pretty simple, and just involves tinkering with a clock in a cave. It's much easier than what He-Man had to do with the sands of time, and it's a much quicker journey than the one Light Hope sent Adora on in yesterday's story (67021) - probably because he doesn't get around to sending her until the episode is 17 minutes into its runtime! Messing with time on a planetwide scale also makes me think of Christopher Reeve's first Superman movie (1978), which had him (with a cheerful disregard for the laws of science and logic) spinning Earth backwards to turn back time.
• The trolls, and even their king, will make other appearances in the series. For the next and probably most important, see 67034's "Troll's Dream."

• Nice to see Castle Bright Moon with Angella on the throne, being queenly. This is actually the first time we've seen that since 67005. It's odd that there's been so little use of the castle and its queen, given how much importance they were given in SOTS.
• It has to be said: it's also odd that it's taken the series 20 episodes to start using the Crystal Castle, given that every episode of the show begins with Adora announcing herself as "defender of the Crystal Castle." Up until just the previous episode (67021), it hadn't even come up in a story. He-Man was defending Castle Grayskull from day one!
• Larry gives us an interesting subtext of racism/prejudice in this story, with Agho indicating that the human rebels mistrusted the trolls and refused to ask for their help against the Horde.
• Bucking the trend of other recent episodes, where Swift Wind or Spirit has been ditched partway through the episode and never seen again (67014, 67015), here we get to see She-Ra happily reunited with her beloved steed. Aw, that's nice!
• To add some spicy excitement to the story, before Adora has managed to reach the Crystal Castle, the catastrophic eclipse gets underway. Yes, a shadow is blocking out all three of Etheria's moons... Wait a minute. THREE??!! There have only ever been two before!! (See 67015, or even 67006.) Where did this freaky bonus moon come from?
• Bow specifically refers to the tanks outside the castle as "destructo tanks;" yet the look of them is the white-faced, Hordak-like design that I've been identifying as "Horde tanks." I'd been reserving the "destructo" label for the variety with gray, vulture-like faces. Is this an animation error, or just me not being broad enough with my terminology? Perhaps time will tell. (No, Guy-Dor of the past; it only gets worse from here! See my discussion of Horde vehicles and their naming in commentary for 67038; and also see an even broader definition of "destructo" tanks in 67041.)
• It's curious that Broom gets chosen to join the magic sewing circle that's going to help defend Castle Bright Moon. As I questioned in the plot summary: does this mean he's a magician, too? I mean, clearly a talking, sentient broom is magical to some extent, but does he cast spells? I was reminded of that time very early in MOTU's history (see MU001's "The Cosmic Comet"), when Skeletor and Evil-Lyn joined hands with Beast Man to do some evil magic. Beast Man? Really?
• Animation error? In the final shot of Etheria's great clock ticking extra fast, we see the pendulum swinging like crazy, but no She-Ra hanging onto it. Did she leap off at some point between scenes? So is the clock just going extra-fast of its own volition now? This seems like a problem. How are we going to get back to a normal rate of time passage? Is everyone just going to age super-fast now? Will Etherian milk expire even faster than usual?
• And I have more questions about this whole time-speed business... Why is the eclipse, which presumably is the shadow of Etheria falling in between the moons and the sun, seemingly the only thing that speeds up when She-Ra winds the clock forwards? Why wouldn't everything happening on Etheria just happen faster? Like, people speeding around like the Flash, and so forth. Of course, if that happened, the attack on Bright Moon would succeed - just faster.
• In a rare oversight, no one just happens to mention that the time gargoyles are "non-living things" before Swift Wind and She-Ra callously smash them into tiny pieces. So... are they dead now? Is She-Ra a murderer? Well, I guess what happens in the heart of Etheria next to the great clock, stays in the heart of Etheria next to the great clock!
• But also - again, as I mentioned in the plot summary - if it's that easy to smash the guardians, you have to wonder that no one else has made a raid on Etheria's time mechanism before now. Maybe the problem is that only Light Hope can get you into the cave. They're like Etheria's time bouncer.
• One indication of just how much is going on in this episode, and how many fun new concepts are introduced, is the extraordinary volume of screenshots I took.
• It's kind of sad that Light Hope's request of She-Ra is that she come and visit them and talk to them every once in a while. I mean, they did this to themself by making sure their house was in a secret location, and they don't have anyone else to blame; but they're clearly very lonely being a beam of light at the top of a foggy mountain. Poor fella!
• The whole secretive bit is a huge advantage that the Crystal Castle has over Castle Grayskull. One of Grayskull's security problems, I now see, was that everybody knew exactly where it was! If Grayskull has so much power and magic at its command, why didn't it spend some hiding itself from jerks like Skeletor?
• As I said in the lore section, we have to assume that when Madame Razz was telling this story to the rebel children, she skipped over the bit where Adora left and turned into She-Ra; or she had to outright lie to them, with some story about Adora "asking for help from She-Ra." But as we realize upon reaching the story's other bookend, Madame Razz also couldn't have told the children the whole story about She-Ra discovering the ultra-secret location of the Crystal Castle. In contrast, the viewers of this episode know exactly where it is; so how did Razz skate over that pitfall? "She-Ra thought really hard, and then she found the castle. It was... in a place." I'm glad we didn't hear Razz's version of this story - it must have been pretty boring!
• Given these limitations enforced by multiple secrets, it seems odd that Larry chose the framing structure that he did to tell his story. Nevertheless, it's a rousing tale and it did not disappoint.
• The last line of the episode, with Razz agreeing with the rebel child's wish that Etheria will soon be freed from the Horde, could have been played as optimistic and hopeful; however, Razz's delivery and the animators' choice to draw her with a droopy, frowning expression end up making for a rather depressing conclusion. Looking into the senile witch's gloomy face, we realize that, for as long as this series runs, She-Ra's adopted planet will remain in the grip of an oppressive dictatorship that makes slaves of its inhabitants. Yeesh! Loo-Kee, come here and tell us something nice! We need cheering up.
• A bit of a continuity error for those of us who are choosing to be incredibly, nerdily nitpicky: in Loo-Kee's PSA sequence, after he reveals his hiding place in a tree in the Whispering Woods, he drops out of the tree and to the ground. The ground proves to be in the geyser fields of Spikeheart, a very long way from the tree he just jumped out of. How'd 'e do dat?