Larry DiTillio

Tom Tataranowicz

Forced by the incompetence of his employees to look further afield for worthy foes of She-Ra, Hordak hires the imposing huntress Huntara from the planet Silax. Having successfully duped the honorable warrior into believing She-Ra is evil, Hordak sets up a one-on-one battle for the ages!

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

Hordak, Shadow Weaver, Imp, Mantenna, Scorpia, Catra, Grizzlor, Leech, Horde Prime (mentioned only)

Huntara, Horde soldiers, various rebels, various villagers (including Innkeeper Garv)

wagon, Silaxian cruiser, Horde trucks, butterfly ship, Scorpiamobile

For a professional team of world destroyers like the Evil Horde, it pays to occasionally go back and review the film. In the throne room of the Fright Zone, having just completed a particularly eye-opening screening session which I can only assume consisted of the forty-four preceding episodes of this first season, Hordak settles in for a lengthy and thorough berating of his crew. Since those assembled - Mantenna, Scorpia, Catra, Grizzlor, and Leech, with the favored Imp and Shadow Weaver looking on - seem incapable of defeating the one woman most responsible for their losses (that would be She-Ra, in case you weren't sure), Hordak announces that he has hired outside help to do the job. The third party in question comes from the planet Silax, and is a member of a race of unparalleled hunters and warriors who aren't aware of just how evil the Evil Horde is. Should she succeed, it will mean major punishments for all of Hordak's less successful employees - a prospect which leaves them less than inspired.

In due time, the Silaxian, whose name is Huntara, swoops in on her sleek spaceship and lands at the Horde spaceport. Not in the mood for any pleasantries, the no-nonsense Huntara immediately demands (in her scratchy, five-packs-a-day bass) that Hordak show her proof that his chosen target is evil. Huntara's people only go hunting for bad guys. The dissembling Hordak assures Huntara that She-Ra is super evil, and that he has video footage that proves it. Accordingly, they withdraw to the throne room viewscreen, which displays a fabricated clip seemingly depicting She-Ra destroying a convoy of medical supplies, then burning down a town. Huntara is convinced: she will battle She-Ra. But the huntress demands that the conflict be between her and She-Ra alone: her sense of honor demands nothing less. She quickly ascertains from Hordak that She-Ra has many friends to whom she is loyal, then strides off to enact a plan that will draw the "evil one" to her.

Having apparently decided that of all She-Ra's friends, the dearest and/or most vulnerable is Glimmer, Huntara stakes out the Crystal Castle. When the pink-haired princess emerges for a joyride in a butterfly ship that we've never seen Glimmer flying before, Huntara strikes! The Silaxian interceptor's lasers damage Glimmer's vessel, which tumbles to the surface of Etheria; and Huntara easily collects the crash's dazed and bewildered survivor. Back at the Whispering Woods, Princess Adora and Bow have been doing some planning for the rebellion and idly wondering why Hordak hasn't tried anything lately, when they're interrupted by a local innkeeper. Garv has come to them because he was given a message for She-Ra - from Huntara.

Bow thinks that they should respect the rules of propriety and get the message to She-Ra without watching it themselves; but Adora for some reason thinks She-Ra won't mind if they just look at it right away. The message is a hologram of Huntara, who imposingly stands over them and explains that she has Glimmer hostage. She-Ra needs to duel Huntara at high noon, at Tomb Rock in the Crimson Waste; if she doesn't, Glimmer will be sent via dimensional transporter to an undisclosed, but very distant, location. Should She-Ra be victorious in battle, Huntara vows to release the hostage. An alarmed Adora, unsure who this new enemy is but concerned for her friend's welfare, rushes off at once to fetch She-Ra.

While She-Ra and Swift Wind are changing places with Adora and Spirit, then heading on over to Tomb Rock, some healthy sedition is underway within the ranks of the Horde. Catra and Scorpia, who naturally have no desire to spend their days scrubbing out trash cans as a consequence of Huntara's success, have put their heads together. Deciding to ambush whoever wins the impending battle, the pair hop into Scorpia's scorpion vehicle and plant themselves near the planned site of the duel. They're therefore in place and observing when the two legendary warriors at last come face to face.

Whoo-wee, it's one humdinger of a fight! Huntara has an armory of tricks and traps at her disposal, and she uses them all in an attempt to conquer She-Ra. Avalanches, flash-bangs, phony Huntara dolls, sleep gas, stun swords - She-Ra overcomes every one. Ultimately lured to Glimmer's location, She-Ra evades one last ambush and disarms and knocks down her opponent. Huntara, adhering to Silaxian custom, admits defeat and offers herself as She-Ra's slave; but our heroine, compassionate in victory, finally convinces the misled Huntara that She-Ra is not a deceiving villain - it was Hordak doing the lying all the time. Unfortunately, just as Huntara and She-Ra have made this breakthrough in their relationship and released Glimmer from the transporter tube, Scorpia and Catra attack. A wide-beam blast from Scorpia's Scorpiamobile stuns Glimmer and the two combatants, and all three are bundled off to the Fright Zone.

Brought before Hordak to face judgment, Huntara has further confirmation from Hordak's own mouth that she was playing for the wrong side. The Horde leader consigns her to his dungeon, but the resourceful Silaxian breaks free of her captors, then releases She-Ra and Glimmer from the stasis field that was holding them. A further melee begins, in which the pitiful Horde soldiers are easy targets for our powerful pair. Catra and Scorpia unwittingly defeat each other in their simultaneous mad dash to grab the hated Huntara (making another highlight for the video reel). However, Hordak then sends an entire army of robot troops at the heroes, leading them to conclude that a tactical withdrawal is in order. Returned to her ship near the Whispering Woods, Huntara prepares to return home. She-Ra expresses her wish that Huntara stay and assist the rebels, but Huntara begs off, citing obligations on her own planet. Nevertheless, she assures She-Ra that the next time they meet, it will be as friends and allies. As Swift Wind and She-Ra watch Huntara speed off in her ship, they admire the departing warrior while also reaffirming their own unbreakable bond of friendship.

• Hordak (to his assembled minions): What?! Not one among you has an excuse? / Imp (laughing): What a bunch o' wimps, huh, Boss? / Catra: Rowr, listen to him; I'd like to turn that pig-faced little snoop Imp into a door knocker. / Scorpia: I'd be glad to help ya. / Horak: Silence! Horde science and magic turned you into the greatest force squad ever to destroy a planet. ... And yet, all of you together can't beat a single woman.
• Huntara: I am not here for pretty speeches. You have asked for help; I am here to give you that help. But first you must prove to me that this She-Ra is as evil as you say. / Leech: She-Ra? Evil? / Grizzlor: Uuhh, I thought we were the evil ones.
• Scorpia (to Catra): As much as I hate to agree wid ya - I agree wid ya.
• She-Ra (of Huntara, making a strange association): She's got more tricks than my brother's friend, Orko!
• Huntara: You lied to me, Hordak: She-Ra is not evil. / Hordak: Foolish woman! Your childish sense of fair play has no place here on Etheria.
• She-Ra (of Huntara): She's quite a woman, isn't she, Swifty? / Swift Wind: That she is. But then again (nuzzling his friend), so are you, She-Ra; so are you.

• She-Ra mounts Swift Wind and flies off: Just after transforming

One full

19:51 - Loo-Kee has never waited longer to make his appearance! He can be seen looking away from us and sitting in the high branch of a tree in the upper right corner of the screen, in an establishing shot of the Whispering Woods which opens the final scene of the story. (There will be episodes where Loo-Kee appears even later than he does here; see 67061 or 67076.)
Did I spot him? YES! Just barely.

Loo-Kee promises us that lies - like the ones Hordak told Huntara in today's episode - never work. "Somehow the truth always comes out - and then it's big trouble!" Loo-Kee is clearly a follower of famous philosopher Immanuel Kant, who propounded the belief that lying is always wrong. But what if you want to avoid hurting your friend's feelings by leading them to believe that the hideous cowboy boots they just bought actually look good? What then, Loo-Kee?!?!

Landmark Episode: I just can't help it, okay!? This was a completely rocking episode, with a fabulous new character and no obvious flaws. Like the preceding story, 67044's "The Rock People," it almost but can't quite be considered a "Changing hearts and minds" episode, since, though Huntara is turned into an ally of She-Ra by the end, she does not join Etheria's rebellion, specifically turning down She-Ra's offer to do so.

• Our second script in a row from the go-to Filmation writer, Larry DiTillio.
• In his introductory scene, we see Hordak making use of his giant viewscreen (last seen in 67027) and his throne's rotating feature (67041). Though we don't see what the screen was showing, it seems that, like any good professional sports team, the Horde likes to review their past performances on video. How they get that video is a whole other question; does Grizzlor wear a body cam?
• Hordak's not-particularly-inspiring words to his assembled no-good-doers are very interesting. As you can see in the memorable lines section, he mentions that "Horde science and magic" have made his soldiers what they are. This is similar to a comment he made in 67017 about having given Shadow Weaver her magic. Intriguing to think that possibly all his minions were simply regular humans before they joined the Horde and got "improved" through mutations or surgery. This is not an impression we were ever given about Skeletor's lackeys - the assumption there was they were all like that when he found them. It certainly makes sense in Hordak's case, since he himself has clearly had some work done to enable his array of physical transformations.
• Just like yesterday (67044), it's a very high Horde count today, with eight villains crowding the throne room. There are some recurring Horde members missing (the Snake Men Rattlor and Tung Lashor come to mind), but the one most blatant in his absence is Modulok - if only because he tends to cause episode sequencing discrepancies when he appears. Where is our favorite multi-limbed Horde cook/scientist?
• In what is now his sixth consecutive appearance, Imp cements his position as Hordak's favorite - and everyone else's least favorite. "Why can't you be more like Imp, here?" Hordak taunts, while his soldiers mutter invective about the Horde spy.
• Hordak also brings up both Horde Prime and Horde World, a pairing we haven't heard referenced since Shadow Weaver plotted to send Orko to them in 67033 (another DiTillio script). According to Hordak, all these Etherian failures have Horde Prime "displeased" - not surprising, since way back in 67013's "King Miro's Journey," we were already hearing that the Horde overlord was fed up with Hordak's failure to quell his planet's rebellion.
• A new planet is introduced in Silax, which (as Weaver points out) is not part of the Horde empire, and is apparently ignorant of their wickedness. It's home to a race of great warriors and hunters - and the title character of today's episode.
• I strongly suspect that our animators used singer, model, and actress Grace Jones as their inspiration for Huntara. Jones was particularly in vogue just when this episode aired, having enjoyed starring roles in Conan the Destroyer (1984) and A View to a Kill (1985). Her Conan role in particular fits well with this character!
• Hordak's faked video of the Horde convoy uses the same shot of trucks driving down a hill and towards a crossroads that we've seen two times previously, in 67011 and 67042.
• The butterfly ship we see Glimmer tooling around in is identical to the ship Castaspella used to fly to Beast Island in 67012's "The Prisoners of Beast Island." I thought it belonged specifically to Casta so I'm surprised to see it being reused in this context! Maybe it's a loaner. You would think, given the Horde's proclivity to put people in ships shaped like their heads or bodies (see Hordak's Hordak-faced ship, Scorpia's Scorpiamobile, or Mantenna's Mantenna-headed flyer from 67036), that the most likely owner of this butterfly vehicle would be Flutterina - but then again, she can fly without any vehicular assistance.
• Showing herself to have gleaned a surprising knowledge of Etheria's geography during her short visit, Huntara sets her meeting with She-Ra "at Tomb Rock in the Crimson Waste," giving us some new locations. Well, let's say new names of locations; when She-Ra arrives there, we find that the Crimson Waste looks identical to what 67037's "Anxious Apprentice," Ariel, called the Forbidden Zone when she went there with her stolen book of magic. (Confusingly, a later visit in that same episode to the "real" Forbidden Zone showed a very different-looking place.)
• In another callback to 67037, we return to Scorpia's lair, the interior of which first showed up in that episode. I don't think we've seen the exterior before, however; as you can see in the screen included above, it looks exactly like you'd expect it to look.
• Continuing in its echoing of 67037, this episode also gives us another chance to see Scorpia's scorpion-shaped vehicle in action. This time, we actually hear the thing given a name, as Catra calls it Scorpia's "crawler." However, I refuse to stop calling it the Scorpiamobile, as I feel that's a much better and less confusing name. In the typical trend of poor Horde vehicle naming, there was already an entirely different "Crawler" in 67029's "The Price of Freedom."
• Swiss army sword: It's another "sword to rope!" day, with the blade changing to a sword-shaped pile of line. The rope proves strong enough to grab hold of the glowing blades of Huntara's "stun swords" (read: light sabers) without breaking.

• I really enjoyed the opening sequence with Hordak scolding his people. It has some interesting lore about how the Horde seems to train and develop its soldiers; the interplay with Imp and the others is amusing; and I also liked the way Imp parrots his boss's harangue, which - rather than annoy Hordak - actually seems to endear the little spy to him further. The interesting subtlety in the scene is that Hordak is not including Shadow Weaver in his dressing-down; she stands at his right hand, prompting him to further abuse of the others. I noted early in the series that the sorceress seemed to almost be on a peer level with the Horde dictator, though in later episodes (particularly 67017) he definitely made it clear who was wearing the pants in their relationship. Today, Mom and Dad seem to have made up and are back on good terms.
• Hordak's threat to his people, like many of his managerial decisions, has its own downfall built into it. He explicitly tells them that if Huntara succeeds, they'll all be experiencing some very dreary punishment. So it's clearly in their best interest to make sure she fails! You're not exactly team-building here, Bone Face. (Just noting that I wrote this comment before getting to the scene where Catra and Scorpia collude together - called it!)
• A couple of early scenes make an excessive use of light and shadow in the animation - much more than is usually attempted in a Filmation show. In the first rebel scene at the Whispering Woods, we see Adora tending a fire which casts smudgy, flickering shadows over all the characters. In the scene immediately following, and in curious contrast, the light cast by Huntara's descending ship smears a distracting glow over everything. The glow in particular is rather clumsily and messily layered over the usual animation, and doesn't really add anything to the scene.
• Animation error: In the scene where Hordak is explaining to Weaver how he's going to prove She-Ra is evil, a scratchy flaw on the animation flickers in and out of existence in the upper left corner of the screen. It's possible this error made me more attuned to spotting flaws, as I noted a lot of little flecks of dirt and other artifacts dotting the rest of the episode. In particular, one late shot of Huntara's pink skin shows a field of blemishes, as if she's developed acne.
• I was greatly amused by the side conversations between Leech and Grizzlor, revealing they are entirely unable to understand that Hordak is making up lies about She-Ra, and instead seem to think they just don't remember that time when she burned down a village.
• Huntara's spaceship, which I've identified as a "Silaxian cruiser" in my vehicles listing, is totally bad ass. And it has a butt gun!
• Perhaps I'm just projecting my own prejudices, but I made an assumption early on that the people of Silax, though renowned for their hunting skills, were fairly primitive technologically. After all, if they were worth the trouble, why wouldn't they have been absorbed into the Horde empire by now? (Unless maybe they are too good a bunch of fighters for Horde Prime to risk battling them.) Clearly, however, unless Huntara borrowed it from Hordak, Silax's people have the know-how to produce "dimensional transporters," which suggests a pretty advanced species.
• It's amusing that Huntara has a plethora of devices and tools at her disposal, which all get pulled from the very same spot among the folds of her tiny little huntress skirt. Admittedly, there aren't a huge amount of places she could be hiding stuff in that outfit.
• Whoever provided Huntara's gruff, gravelly voice (Wiki Grayskull says it was Erika Scheimer, which if true shows some impressive versatility on the part of the executive producer's daughter) must have had to drink a lot of tea with lemon in between takes!
• I thought Huntara was an awesome new character. It's always great when DiTillio can give us an admirable person who starts out as an enemy of She-Ra, showing us that in real life, misunderstandings can lead two good people to opposite sides of a conflict. Huntara has a winning sense of honor, a sweet vehicle, a uniquely husky voice, and an impractical yet strangely compelling wardrobe. She is also incredibly crafty and clever during her epic one-on-one battle against She-Ra, a landmark set piece for the episode and the series. Really I loved pretty much everything about this episode - this is my man Larry at his best.