J. Michael Straczynski

Bill Reed

A mishap with a Horde attack sends both Hordak and She-Ra tumbling into the realm of the Dark One, a powerful individual who forces the two foes to work together to earn their freedom - that, or face eternal slavery in his dark dimension! In the process, perhaps these archenemies will learn a little something about each other - and the nature of good and evil.

Glimmer, Frosta, Broom, Madame Razz, Princess Adora (She-Ra), Bow, Kowl

Hordak, Scorpia, Shadow Weaver, Catra

Horde soldiers, giant worm, the Dark One, shy monkey, dragon, crystal-browed fox

batmeks

This is it, people! This is the Big One! The Great Rebellion is in the midst of a frontal attack on the Evil Horde's Fright Zone. Will we finally decide once and for all whether there will be freedom on Etheria? The way this battle is going, we have to hope not! The rebels are pinned down outside the walls of the fortress: Glimmer, Frosta, Broom, Madame Razz, Princess Adora, Bow, and Kowl. They're unable to press the attack under a withering barrage of fire from the many Horde soldiers, commanded by Hordak and Scorpia. Bow tries one last-ditch move with a trick arrow shot that sends Scorpia and her men running; but he's hit by a stun beam and collapses at the feet of Adora and Kowl.

Too bad for our mustached archer; but it does give Adora the opportunity to say her magic words with no one watching who shouldn't be. She-Ra then joins the attack; but it seems Hordak has a plan in place for just this eventuality. He speaks to his sorceress Shadow Weaver about springing a "surprise" on the golden-haired heroine, and Weaver believes the moment has come for her to use a magic spell she's been cooking up for the last month. But Force Captain Catra disagrees, certain that what Hordak is referring to is the feline villain's own dark blaster. In the event, when She-Ra leaps inside to confront Hordak and he yells "surprise," both women launch their attack at the same time - definitely not what the Horde leader intended. The glowing energy of their combined beams grows and surrounds both She-Ra and Hordak, until - POP - the pair vanish!

They find themselves twirling through the psychedelic void between dimensions, thrown through a gateway and into some other universe. Drawn into the gravity of a nearby planet, the pair use their separate abilities to land safely in an underground chamber. They're lost on an unknown planet, and quickly assaulted by a giant green worm, again testing their powers. Once She-Ra traps the beast within a ring of dropped stalactites, Hordak and She-Ra come face to face with the ruler of this strange, in-between realm. He's a large, dragon-like fellow who names himself "the Dark One." Per the Dark One, the two visitors from Etheria are destined to become eternal slaves in his kingdom, unless they can conquer a series of challenges and find the key to the exit. Not giving them a lot of time to think about their options, the Dark One causes a cave-in that sends his players running for safety - and leads them into a cavernous maze.

The remainder of the episode consists mainly of the various challenges She-Ra and Hordak, having been forced into a temporary truce, must face and surmount together - though it's mainly She-Ra doing the surmounting. In their first real test, they find their way blocked by a closed drawbridge, with a stone face above it that has one empty eye socket. Hordak, not stopping to reason out the problem, attempts to smash in the door and is magically rebuffed. She-Ra finds an eyeball-shaped rock which fits perfectly in the empty socket and proves to be the key to the door, and they move on. In their next test, Hordak nearly frightens away the shy little monkey creature that offers them advice on the correct path. Once She-Ra convinces the dictator to use his transforming powers to fetch the high, dangling berries that are the monkey's price for its advice, Hordak refuses to trust the creature's directions, sure that it will resort to lying now that it has what it wants. He's almost devoured by a dragon when he tries going the opposite way.

Though we don't see the other challenges, it seems that the unlikely duo face many more, as we find them taking a breather and discussing the seemingly endless time they have spent wandering through the Dark One's gloomy caves. In the final test (the Test of Mercy), a tired She-Ra overhears the cry of an animal in distress, and against Hordak's argument that they have their own problems to attend to, the heroine climbs to a high and narrow platform of rock to fetch the unhappy creature. She is holding the rescued animal - a fox-like thing with a crystal embedded in its forehead - and just beginning to stroke it when it vanishes, leaving behind only the crystal, which tumbles to the ground and breaks into three. At this, the Dark One (who we know has been spying on and secretly analyzing the subjects of his game) reappears, and angrily informs the players that, unlike all the other contestants he's badgered over the course of a millenia of kidnappings, they have won. No one else has managed to display the mercy and selflessness that She-Ra just did.

Annoyed at having to give up two such impressive potential slaves, the Dark One nevertheless honors his deal, giving them two of the three crystals and opening a rift in the air with the third. He explains that the crystals are the keys, and they need merely hold one and walk through the gate to get home. Hearing this, Hordak snatches both crystals and attempts to ditch his partner. As She-Ra impedes Hordak's escape, one of the crystals drops into a chasm and is lost forever. Only one of the players can now return home! Rather than let the betraying Hordak be the one to do so, the Dark One traps him in a force field and hands the win over to She-Ra.

Our heroine is now free to return home, leaving her archenemy to slave away in the Dark One's dimension for the remainder of his evil, lying, traitorous life. She-Ra almost does it; but just before walking through the gateway, she decides that even Hordak does not deserve such a fate. Her only option to save her enemy, she finds, is to battle the Dark One directly. He blasts She-Ra with lightning bolts of energy, which she blocks with her sword of protection. The assault is tremendous, and seemingly impossible to withstand, but because she has to, She-Ra withstands it. Having absorbed the entirety of the attack, She-Ra needs to shoot it off somewhere; but rather than direct the blast back at the Dark One - likely destroying him - She-Ra points her sword harmlessly away, crumbling part of the ceiling.

The awed Dark One, flummoxed by the incredible heroism and power of the woman before him, finally relents: She-Ra's courage and heart have earned her Hordak's freedom as well as her own. The speechless Hordak, freed from his force field, grunts and follows his enemy into the gateway and back to Etheria.

The pair appear right back at their vanishing point, smack in the middle of the gathered opposing armies of their respective sides. Due to the timeless nature of the dimension they visited, it seems that almost no time at all has passed while they were gone, and Scorpia and Bow have just begun accusing each other of causing the disappearance of their separate champions. With Hordak and She-Ra's return, the combatants are fully prepared to rejoin the battle; but Hordak calls off the attack. He explains that She-Ra has just saved his life, and he has no desire to remain in her debt - so he's paying her back now. The two sides should part ways peacefully. Hordak remains utterly bewildered at She-Ra's actions in saving him, repeatedly asking aloud, "Why? Why?" Impressed with Hordak's twisted sense of honor, She-Ra agrees to his terms and prepares to leave - wondering if, given enough time, the evil dictator will finally understand her act of self sacrifice. If so, the Great Rebellion just might open Hordak's mind to other possibilities, and in so doing, they'll "have won the greatest battle of them all."

• Bow: Ah, the sound of retreating Hordesmen! It's music to my ears.
• Bow: Just whose bright idea was it to lead a direct attack on the Fright Zone, anyway? / Kowl: Yours! "It's the last thing they'd expect," you said. "You'd have to be crazy to try something like this," you said. / Bow (ruefully): Well - I was right, wasn't I?
• The Dark One: I am the Dark One, and this is my home: a world between worlds; a place neither here nor there; a time between yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
• She-Ra: See? All you have to do is think. / Hordak: I'm a Horde Commander! I'm not supposed to think! ... What am I saying?
• She-Ra: Hordak, you know what your problem is? You lie all the time, so you naturally think everyone else does. But people can tell the truth, even when they don't have anything to gain. / Hordak (pauses to walk over to her): Why is it that with you, everything always comes down to good and bad - right and wrong? / She-Ra: Because when you get right down to it, every big decision involves knowing right from wrong. / Hordak: Ah! Then I'm in great shape! I don't know right from wrong! / She-Ra: Yes; and when I think of that, it's the only time I feel sorry for you.
• The Dark One: That was the Test of Mercy - the final one. In a thousand years, no one has ever put aside their own problems long enough to help someone else - until now.
• The Dark One: Impossible! No one has ever withstood such an attack. What manner of woman is this?
• The Dark One: Such power! And yet you chose not to harm me. You chose to endanger yourself rather than abandon an enemy. Your heart is as great as your courage. You have won not only your own freedom, but that of your companion.
• Hordak (to himself, and possibly also to Shadow Weaver, though she can't have the slightest idea what he's talking about): I still don't understand it. Why did she do it? She could have left me there and she didn't. Why? Why?! / She-Ra (to Bow): Besides, who knows? If he dwells on it long enough, maybe he'll figure it out; maybe he'll understand. And then, Bow, we'll have won the greatest battle of them all.

• She-Ra, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: At Hordak's thoughtless assertion that he's "not supposed to think"

One partial (missing Spirit/Swift Wind sequence)

9:50 - Loo-Kee is hardly trying today! (In fact, he doesn't seem to have been intending to hide at all; see the PSA section.) Most of his body is leaning out from behind a rock on the left side of the screen, in an establishing shot of the Dark Dimension. Unlike almost every other hiding spot Loo-Kee has used, today's terrain does not share any of the elfin fellow's bright color palette, and is uniformly plain bluish-gray.
Did I spot him? YES! Though in the event, it hardly seems an achievement.

Every other Loo-Kee PSA has begun with him first asking us whether we found his hiding place in the foregoing episode, then giving us one last chance to spot him with a paused view of the hiding-place background. But today is different. "Instead of playing our usual game," Loo-Kee starts right in, speaking and moving from his hiding place, "I'd like to talk to you about a very big problem: drugs!" Yes, that's right: Loo-Kee has been talking with our beloved First Lady, Nancy Reagan, and on her behalf would like to advise us to (literally) just "say 'No' to drugs." Expressing himself with a dubious turn of phrase, Loo-Kee tells us that "Drugs are not a turn-on; drugs are a turn-off."

Landmark Episode: Darn it! I just decided in the previous episode, 67038, that I'd gone long enough without a landmark that I could afford to add one more to the bunch. Then they have to go and give me two in a row! There's no way this special episode, with She-Ra and Hordak joining forces, topped off with Loo-Kee's very special lesson on drugs, can be passed over for the Landmark tag.

• She-Ra co-creator and otherwise famous television and comic book writer JMS brings us his fifth POP script, of what will make a total of nine.
• The opening of this episode brings us one of my long-cherished dreams of both the MOTU and POP universes: an actual frontal attack by our heroes on the base of their enemy. And not only that - actual freedom fighting is happening here, with the Great Rebellion acting towards their She-Ra-given purpose: "striv[ing] to free Etheria from the evil forces of Hordak!" As I've noted in other episodes (see commentary for 67010, for instance), up until now the rebels have largely tended towards a passive, reactive style of rebelling.
• Madame's Magic: Not even managing to come up with a rhyming word to cast a wacky, not-quite-on-target spell, today Razz fumbles for a while and then just gives up. A sure sign our heroes are in a tough spot!
• Very few members of our impressively large cast stay on screen for very long today, since this episode focuses mainly on Hordak and She-Ra; but Bow does the most with his brief role, managing a Green Arrow/Hawkeye-worthy trick shot that simultaneously plugs the muzzles of three Horde soldiers' stun rays. You'll always be the winner of my archery contest, Bow!
• Speaking of that large cast, it's missing an important member: Spirit. Adora's horse will not appear in this episode. Glimmer and Frosta, though visible, are on screen for only a few seconds and have no dialogue.
• The setup for today's story reminds us, as did events of 67017 (see Mantenna's trapdoor revenge scene), that Hordak is a terrible manager. If he'd been a better communicator, his underlings Catra and Shadow Weaver wouldn't have misunderstood what his "surprise" was, and no one would have ended up in the Dark One's dimension.
• She-Ra makes a facetious comment which happens to mention Hordak's "metal ears." So that head is made of metal?! I always assumed it was some kind of bone, or perhaps a hard exoskeleton-type material, like chitin. Indeed, when Orko tried insulting the dictator in 67033, he chose the epithet "Bone Brain."
• Hordak and She-Ra's accident sends them to the void between dimensions, a place our MOTU/POP characters visit surprisingly frequently, and which is depicted with surprising consistency. The last time we saw this goofy hellscape was when Adam was pulled through it to Etheria by way of the Moon Mirror, in 67015's "He Ain't Heavy."
• Hordak seems to have a flashback to his military service during his journey between dimensions. She-Ra informs the dictator that "I don't know where we are, I don't know where we're going, and we won't know where we are when we get there!" Hordak replies: "Just like being in the Horde Army!"
• By the way, though fellow POP creator Larry DiTillio recently suggested that He-Man would have difficulty breathing in space (see the disappointing 67033's "A Talent for Trouble"), today we return to the more common supposition that our superpowered twins can exist in the starry void with no ill effects. She-Ra carries on a conversation with Hordak while the pair float between dimensions and planets, then easily survives her entry into a planet's atmosphere (just as she did at the beginning of 67032's "Friends Are Where You Find Them").
• Hordak transformations: Placed in a variety of challenging situations today, Hordak will have call to use his chameleon abilities many times. The first instance is when he makes his lower body into a giant drill bit to soften a very long fall. Once the drill has served its purpose, he quickly regrows legs, joins his feet together into a rear fin, and adds a helicopter rotor to his back, for easy hovering. He'll reuse this copter form near the end of the episode.
• To solve the same problem as Hordak, She-Ra opts to spin around and drill into the ground with her sword - a trick she last pulled in 67036's "The Unicorn King."
• Hordak and She-Ra find themselves on a strange, completely unfamiliar planet; but the first two creatures they meet there should be no strangers to MOTU scholars. The giant green worm they face first is a recycled monster used in two different contexts in MOTU: once as Whiplash's pet scarg in MU077's "Trouble in Trolla," and again even earlier as a sand devil that apparently eats Evil-Lyn and Teela in the classic MU059's "The Witch and the Warrior."
• (In fact, today's story, which involves a temporary truce between two enemies resulting in a lot of one-on-one discussions of their differing philosophies on life, is very similar to Evil-Lyn and Teela's truce and subsequent character-defining dialogue in MU059.)
• Hordak transformations: To escape from the wormy clutches of the worm, Hordak assumes his full-body rocket form, a jet-like variant which he last used to escape a trapdoor pit at the end of 67017.
• She-Ra uses a boomerang throw with her sword of protection, a move most recently seen in 67058 - that thing comes back to her like Cap's shield after he's bounced it off the heads of a half-dozen Hydra agents!
• The second creature they meet, parading around as "the Dark One," is really just Dragoon from MU020's "Dawn of Dragoon."
• Now is as good a time as any to point out that the title's "Dark Dimension" is never explicitly called that in the episode, though it seems a much more convenient name than the ostentatiously wordy description the Dark One gives it in his introductory scene (see my memorable lines section). Still, it's probably better to limit references to that shorter name, since we've heard it before in contradictory contexts. The Dark Dimension was a place Duncan discovered in MU017's "Daimar the Demon;" in addition to its being the title demon's home, Man-at-Arms claimed it was a nearby universe helping to maintain the balance of science and sorcery on Eternia. And of course, MCU fans will remember the Dark Dimension as the home of Dormammu in Doctor Strange (2016). I doubt today's Dark Dimension is meant to jibe with either of these incarnations.
• The concept of the Dark One forcing Hordak and She-Ra to play a game to win their freedom is suspiciously similar to that of the evil Salistica making She-Ra do some gaming to get out of his sixth dimension in 67020's "Three Courageous Hearts." Both times our masterminds required their players to pass through challenges and find a "key" before reaching the exit.
• Hordak transformations: In a fit of vindictive self-delusion, Hordak convinces himself that his predicament is all She-Ra's fault and decides to punish her for it by launching a rocket at her. It comes out of his cannon arm, but the cannon shape is a little different than past versions, having a top edge that tapers to a point.
• Hordak transformations: In his brute-force solution to their first real puzzle, Hordak decides to try to break down a drawbridge. To do so, he turns his whole body into... something. Gotta be honest: I'm not sure what it is. My best guess is it's some kind of big metal hammer attached by an arm to a rotating base.
• Hordak transformations: And the hits just keep coming! At She-Ra's direction, and to retrieve the shy monkey's berries, our Horde Commander changes one arm to an extendable jobber ending in a pair of shears. It's very Inspector Gadget.
• Swiss army sword: Just when you thought Hordak was going to hog all the transformations today, She-Ra pulls a late sword change with her standard "sword to rope" command. Today it changes the sword into a sword-shaped pile of rope, with the hilt remaining in place for easy handling.
• As an added unique event in today's episode, our friend Loo-Kee doesn't give us the usual chance at the end of the story to find his hiding spot. As noted in the PSA section, his lesson is a special one near and dear to the hearts of all good 80s Republicans: saying "No" to drugs. He-Man has danced around this subject in the past (in episodes such as MU010 and MU112), but Loo-Kee takes it courageously head on, even though the subject was not raised even a little during the episode proper. It's an unusual format for Loo-Kee which was probably meant to emphasize the importance of the message, and has the feel of an emergency broadcast. "Billy, put that crack pipe down! Loo-Kee says no!"

• I argued several times in my analysis of MOTU episodes (for the first time in MU009's "The Dragon Invasion") that if He-Man and his friends have such an easy time getting into Snake Mountain (search for "home invasion" in the lore/commentary and you'll see what I mean), they should really just invade the fortress, fight it out with Skeletor once and for all, and have done with it. He-Man always seemed to find some reason not to do this (the most obvious being so that he could continue filming new episodes of his show); but today, She-Ra and crew actually put their money where their mouths are, and take a shot at the Fright Zone. Unfortunately, though on previous occasions small parties have had no difficulty penetrating to its most inner precincts, today the Horde fortress complex proves a particularly tough nut to crack!
• Maybe it wouldn't have been quite so tough a nut if Princess Adora had decided to make way for someone with a tiara over their blonde locks. This is a prime example of the reverse "She-Ra is a crutch" theme I've been noting (see for instance commentary of 67026 or 67028). Adora: don't you want the rebellion to win? To ensure victory, shouldn't you give them every advantage you can? Particularly when undertaking a front-on battle against the full forces of the Horde? Yes? Then why don't you raise your @#$%# sword aloft before showing up at the enemy gates, for First Ones' sakes!
• This episode features an episode-long, so-far unique sound issue. It seems like before their big battle today, all the combatants paused to take a healthy huff of helium. All the voices, particularly those of Bow and Adora, sound more high-pitched than usual. My working theory is that Filmation discovered too late that the runtime on today's episode was just a tad over, and rather than find some scenes to cut, they just sped everything up a little. Overall, it makes for a bizarre listening experience, with everyone just on the verge of being able to join Alvin and his Chipmunks on the mic.
• In the process of watching these episodes to put them into my database, I end up watching them several times; usually at least twice all the way through, sometimes thrice, and some scenes I scan through more than that. Every time I watched the scene where Shadow Weaver and Catra fight over which of their weapons to use on She-Ra, I laughed. Every time.
• Stuck together to play out the Dark One's game, She-Ra and Hordak have several conversations with each other about their dichotomous outlooks on life. Most of their discussions, while fun, are predictable and by-the-numbers: everything we'd expect these two to say to each other in this situation. Hordak is selfish and evil and trusts no one, She-Ra is compassionate and giving, yadda yadda. It's when the story reaches its climax that their interactions become really interesting. She-Ra is given the option to abandon Hordak to a life of slavery in the Dark One's domain, but she makes the difficult and very heroic choice to stay and attempt his rescue, even after he's betrayed her. This is a great scene, reminiscent somewhat of He-Man's rescue of Skeletor to end their iconic duel in MU081's "The Arena." Even after absorbing an impossible amount of energy from the Dark One, she refuses to throw it back at her opponent in revenge, truly proving herself one in a million. It's a fantastic moment for She-Ra, and a set of actions so pure and righteous that Hordak can hardly comprehend them. This sequence makes for some of the most character-defining moments in She-Ra's history. And it ultimately leads to Hordak's unexpectedly pacific choice at the end of the episode, leaving the door open for what would be an amazing change of heart - though it would take more episodes than POP got to effect such a 180!
• Having won her freedom from the Dark One and about to go back home, She-Ra pauses to thank the monster. But is that really what she should be doing? This guy has apparently spent a thousand years ensuring that any trespassers on his world face endless slavery at his hands. Shouldn't she at least suggest that he stop doing that before heading off?
• In my first watch-through of this episode, and before we returned to Etheria, I'd spared a thought for what could be going on back home with She-Ra and Hordak apparently disintegrated. What I pictured was a messy and catastrophic Horde power struggle in the wake of their leader's disappearance. I was OK with the different-time-stream solution Straczynski pulled to avoid any need to recap another storyline; what I don't get is how Scorpia could possibly think the rebels caused Hordak's vanishing. Weren't Weaver and Catra right there and watching when they zapped their fearless leader into nothingness? Are they just keeping mum and hoping nobody realizes it was their fault?
• This is a classic story that easily belongs in anyone's top ten list of POP episodes, and I think is better than the weighty 67029's "The Price of Freedom." The only thing bringing it down is that weird speed problem on everyone's voices. I wonder whether there's a fan-produced version of the episode that solves this issue? It would certainly make for a more pleasant viewing experience!