Bob Forward

Bob Arkwright

Taking the magical weapons and famed ship of his legendary father, the resurrected Sea Hawk comes into his own as a true hero of the Great Rebellion. Now he just has to rescue the imprisoned Princess Adora, all his men, and defeat the pestiferous Admiral Scurvy! That sounds like something that could be managed in about twenty minutes, right?

Princess Adora (She-Ra), Captain Sea Hawk, Spirit (Swift Wind)

Admiral Scurvy, Squall

Horde soldiers, pirates (including Swen), Davy Jones, the Falcon

Horde dreadnought, clipper ship (Solar Clipper), Horde escape jet

Loyal viewers (or casual website visitors), in case you don't recall what happened in Part 1, a recap, which I will attempt to keep brief (but be warned - as you may have realized by now - brevity is not one of my defining traits): Captain Sea Hawk was sailing along with Princess Adora when he decided to grab some easy loot from a Horde treasure ship. Imagine his surprise when the ship turned out to be a fully armed Horde dreadnought in disguise! The ensuing battle eventually resulted in the explosion of Sea Hawk's beloved flying ship, the Solar Sailor. Thanks to some assistance from She-Ra and Swift Wind, all the crew, Princess Adora, and Spirit got off safely; everyone, that is, except Sea Hawk. To the gathered witnesses, it appeared that the captain went down with his ship! The pirates and Adora soon found themselves surrounded and taken prisoner by the Horde. Meanwhile, Sea Hawk - who did not die - awoke on an island and met a talking mouse (no, he wasn't hallucinating) who led him to a secret cave where he found an old ship and learned of the peril of his crew and girlfriend. Before he could leave to mount a one-man rescue expedition, however, he was stopped by a mysterious stranger who forced him into a duel. Defeated, Hawk was tempted by the stranger to surrender, and offered a golden bribe to give up his quest. When the Hawk refused, the pleased stranger, having confirmed the bravery and selflessness of his opponent, revealed himself as Falcon - the legendary pirate who also happens to be Sea Hawk's father.

Everybody got that? Okay; onward! We open with the captured pirates, who have been strung in a chain gang by the wicked Admiral Scurvy and his Horde robot troopers. The most valuable prisoner, Princess Adora, has been loaded along with her horse onto the dreadnought and will be shipped directly to the Fright Zone and Hordak. The rest are being left on the island for later retrieval. Scurvy departs on the ship, leaving some soldiers to guard the sailors. It's not long before the guards are challenged by a snarky voice which proves to belong to the obnoxious Davy Jones the mouse. This mouse has backup in the form of a cloaked stranger, well prepared to cash the checks that Jones's mouth has been writing. Swen, who mentioned in the previous episode that he sailed for many years with the great Falcon, looks on with wide eyes as the cloaked stranger utilizes some very familiar magic weapons in the impressively one-sided trouncing of the Hordesmen. Seven-league boots? Impact ring? Fancy photon cutlass? A falcon-shaped energy shield? Can it be...? But no! Whipping off his hood after having turned the robots into a pile of scrap metal, the stranger reveals that he is not Falcon, but Falcon Junior: Captain Sea Hawk!

Hawk's men go wild with joy at the sight of their apparently dead leader come back to life. It's also nice to have been rescued. The Hawk leads his men back to his secret cave, where he develops a plan to convert the rickety, seaweed-draped old vessel of the Falcon into a flying, solar-sailed ship like his lost Solar Sailor. The pirates will have to work absurdly fast to make the change, so they can hunt down Scurvy's dreadnought before it reaches the Fright Zone with its lovely cargo. Retiring to an even more secret and smaller cave while his men get to work, Hawk has a chat with his dad, who has chosen not to reveal his continued alive-ness to the others, and - it develops - has no intention of returning to the mainland and resuming his old life. For one, it seems that Falcon is actually very sick, and the only thing that keeps him breathing is the enchanted air of the island he's been stranded on these past twenty years. For another, Falcon believes his legacy and name are better served by no one learning of the decrepit old wreck he's become. Hawk's old man is well satisfied with passing his ship and his magical weapons on to his offspring, to carry on his name and good deeds as a fighter of the Horde. Given no choice in the matter, Sea Hawk must reluctantly agree to his father's wishes and bid him a heartfelt farewell. As one final heirloom, Hawk is handed a magic seashell which he can blow when he's ready to leave the cave.

Just as the pirates are wrapping up their marathon repairs on the newly christened Solar Clipper, word comes from Davy Jones that their race to catch up with the dreadnought will be easier than they imagined: it seems Scurvy has learned his captives on the island broke free, and has turned his boat around to remedy the situation! So the Hawk blows his horn, the cave opens, and his new ship emerges from its grotto ready for battle. In the second contest between the pirates and the Horde, as the two ships blast broadsides at each other, our captain makes a seven-league-booted leap onto the deck of the dreadnought, ready to tear through the ship to find Adora. The Hawk pauses but a moment, to remove Davy Jones from his pocket (why bring the mouse into battle anyway?). He's delayed and distracted by an army of Horde soldiers; but that's okay, because an overjoyed Adora already spotted the Hawk's approach out her prison cell window, and knows her love is alive. She decides now might be a good time to escape, so using her boot and belt, the princess manages to knock her sword of protection away from the prison's weapons rack and pull it within reach. It's She-Ra time! Busting out the bars with Swift Wind by her side (yes, the princess and her horse were imprisoned together), She-Ra takes to the skies to aid in the battle.

Sea Hawk is thrilled to see the heroine again, but Admiral Scurvy is mighty displeased: with a toss of her sword and a few feats of strength, She-Ra destroys all the dreadnought's guns, leaving the ship defenseless. In retaliation, Scurvy whips out his laser eye again and stuns the blonde wonder right out of her saddle! The villain then bundles She-Ra into an escape jet, planning to abandon his ship and at least get one prize prisoner over to Hordak. To distract the Hawk - who's just finished smashing up all the Horde soldiers - from a rescue, Scurvy has the perfect lure (or so he thinks): a gold ingot. Surely the money-loving pirate would rather chase after a gold bar than bother saving Etheria's superpowered protector! Scurvy is in for a surprise, however, for when he tosses the treasure over the side of the ship, Sea Hawk ignores it entirely and uses his impact ring to irreparably smash the villain's getaway vehicle. That takes care of that! And even though the sassy Davy Jones ran afoul of the Horde feline, Squall, the mouse eventually managed to douse the cat in a bucket of water. (As we learned earlier in the episode, getting wet is something Squall - like most cats - particularly hates.)

That just about wraps everything up, right? There's no one else who needed to be defeated or rescued, is there? .... Oh @#$%, Adora! Sea Hawk dashes below to locate his imprisoned girlfriend, and She-Ra takes a quick, discreet alternate route to the prison so she can lock herself back in and transform. Adora's daring captain is thus able to break her out of jail, and the princess gets another pirate-y kiss.

Back on deck, and having narrated the events of the rescue for Adora's benefit (while she desperately pretended to be hearing the story for the first time), Hawk declares that the tied-up Scurvy will face justice with Queen Angella. A pleased Adora remarks that she knew her man would never actually choose treasure over people; but her statement is somewhat undermined when Swen calls up from the water alongside the dreadnought, having fished out the gold bar from where his captain ordered him to fetch it. As the Hawk explains: "Sure, I'm noble; but I'm not stupid!"

• Admiral Scurvy: The sea may have taken the Sea Hawk, but I have Adora, leader of the Rebellion, as my prisoner.
• Swen: There he goes - Admiral Scurvy, the meanest shark in the twelve Etherian seas.
• The Falcon: My legend is strong only because I vanished. How long would stories of the great Falcon continue if the world could see me like this: old, tired, and sick?
• Sea Hawk: Noble? Sure, I'm noble; but I'm not stupid!

• Adora from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: An ending frame from this loop is used to show a newly re-armed Adora, just before she begins her transformation sequence

One full
Variation - This is basically a full transformation, except that Adora's first spoken phrase of her magic words, "For the honor of Grayskull," is spoken while we look at the face of Spirit, who has watched with amazement as his princess retrieved her sword.

5:53 - Loo-Kee gets himself into the most unlikely places. Today we find him at the top of the screen, hanging from the tattered rigging of Falcon's derelict sailing ship, which is itself hidden in a cave on an island. Did Davy Jones the obnoxious mouse snidely inform the elf of which rock to push to get past the secret entrance? Hmm.
Did I spot him? YES!

Seemingly at a loss for finding a pertinent lesson hidden in today's story, Loo-Kee gives up and advises us against cheating. "Cheaters never really win," he claims. Is it cheating to deliver a PSA that has nothing to do with the episode? Hmmm, well I just hope you can live with yourself, Loo-Kee.

Sea Hawk episode
Love is in the air
Hordak-less episodes in Season 1

• Today's writer, naturally enough, is the same one who wrote Part 1 of this story. The director, however (I usually don't talk about the directors, do I?), is an unusual one. Bob Arkwright previously directed only one single episode of MOTU, the memorable MU025's "Evilseed." This will be his only directing credit for POP. According to IMDb, Arkwright is credited as the storyboard artist or supervisor on many cartoons of the 80s and 90s, including BraveStarr, Adventures of the Gummi Bears, and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
• After the usual episode opening and title screens, we're treated to a succinct and well-told summary of Part One of this only two-part POP story.
• According to Swen's hyperbolically negative claim about Admiral Scurvy (see memorable lines), Etheria has twelve seas. Take note, geography buffs!
• I had to go back and adjust a few of the early comments in my entry, because the opening battle in this episode really fooled me. All evidence pointed to the cloaked stranger confidently destroying all those Horde soldiers being the Falcon; I was utterly flummoxed when it ended up being Sea Hawk instead. In addition to wielding all the same magical weapons his father did at the end of the previous episode (67059), the Hawk also shows off a falcon- (or hawk- ?) shaped energy shield, which is a great piece of branding.
• Hawk introduces himself to his men as "the new Sea Hawk," and with all his new accessories, that seems a fair description. It seems our writer is keen to redefine the pirate as his own brand of superhero, perhaps in an attempt to make him look better next to She-Ra. It's worth noting that this will be the first Sea Hawk episode in which he doesn't get disarmed during a sword fight. That's some self-improvement for you!
• Contrary to the very dynamic impression he made at the end of yesterday's episode, Falcon reveals in today's story that he's actually very sick, and only the magic air of his enchanted island keeps him alive. This helps explain why he's remained in seclusion for as long as he has - I guess. (See commentary.)
• Swen is feeling particularly salty today and uses a few memorable seagoing expressions, such as "scrub my scuppers." I don't really want to scrub your scuppers, Swen. Admiral Scurvy also gives us "blistering barnacles."
• We discover that Admiral Scurvy's mechanical eye, in addition to being a deadly laser, also gives him cool high-tech telescopic vision, with a computerized overlay.
• I have another thing to congratulate Admiral Scurvy on, and that's his foresight in actually disarming Princess Adora - something not every Horde villain has managed to do. One of several irritating plot holes in the recent 67057's "Jungle Fever" revolved around Adora somehow retaining her sword of protection even after being imprisoned.
• In the previous episode, Scurvy's cannons simply punched holes in the Solar Sailor. In this episode, the admiral has conveniently switched over to freeze rays, merely icing up the sails of the revamped Solar Clipper, and presumably not doing any lasting damage.
• "We'll turn Scurvy over to Queen Angella for trial," says Sea Hawk. Oh... really? Is this a thing we do now? Actually imprison and punish our enemies, instead of just sending them back home with a slap on the wrist? How nice. (I hope you detected my sarcasm there.)
• You might think this episode signals the start of a whole new age of Sea Hawk, with many new swashbuckling and Adora-smooching adventures over the horizon; but in fact, after a quick cameo in the Christmas Special, our handsome pirate will grace the screen for only one more episode: 67082's "The Locket." We'll also find that by that episode everyone on the writing staff will have apparently forgotten that Hawk should be equipped with new weapons and be flying in a new ship.

• The supposed reason that only Adora and Spirit are loaded onto the dreadnought is that there is no room to fit anyone else in the prison. You're telling me a gigantic Horde ship like that has a brig that's only big enough to fit one woman and her horse? What are they using all the rest of the belowdecks space for? It surely can't be a galley, since none of the robot sailors need to eat. ... Or do they? We've certainly seen robot soldiers carousing in local Etherian inns (67006), so maybe they do.
• Our villain Admiral Squall gets a lovely bad-guy moment right off the bat today, when he uses his laser eye to disintegrate a Horde driver who accidentally drenches his cat. Heh.
• The Horde dreadnought may be a horrible vehicle of war and oppression, fashioned with evil intent, but it sure looks lovely when it's lit up at night.
• Watching the Hawk take out all those Horde soldiers was tons of fun. It's nice to have an arsenal of magic weapons bequeathed to you by your father!
• Falcon's illness to a certain extent explains why he's been dead to the world for the past twenty years; but it also does a couple of other things. For one, it makes his easy victory over his son in 67059 that much more shameful for Sea Hawk - you got trounced by a deathly ill old man, bro! Even if Falcon was cheating a bit with all that sweet epic gear, it's still pretty embarrassing. The contrivance of the illness also continues a long trend in both the MOTU and POP universes, of deadbeat dads. King Randor, at least, was around in most episodes of Adam's series; but he didn't have a lot of respect for his son, and he didn't spend a lot of time with the kid or give him a lot of advice, leaving the father-figure stuff largely to Man-at-Arms. Randor's father, Miro, famously (in my own mind if no one else's) ditched his family immediately after being reunited with them in MU098's "Search for the Past." Something very similar happened right after King Micah was finally reunited with his family, at the end of 67046's "Micah of Bright Moon." Now we find the sick Falcon refusing to show up for his boy. Have you even tried finding a cure for your so-called "disease," you shmoe? It's also pretty freaking lame that Falcon doesn't reveal himself to poor Swen, who I'm sure would be happy to know that his old captain was still alive and kicking.
• There are some particularly unusual and/or nasty-looking weapons hanging on the rack next to Adora's confiscated sword, including a pair of tongs (for torturing prisoners??), a flail, and a spiked mace. There is also, for some reason, a bright yellow helmet decorated with a red star, which looks like it was taken from Evel Knievel. The helmet proves integral to Adora's daring prison break.
• I love how the stun guns on Hawk's new ship have a recoil, just like old-fashioned cannons would on an old-fashioned sailing ship.
• How did I not see it coming?! Davy Jones is a mouse; Admiral Scurvy has a cat. Of course these two were fated to meet! Also note how neatly the cat's eventual dunking connects to the earlier scene that established Squall's hatred of water (a trait common to most cats, as any cat owner will know). As a cat owner myself, however, I have to register my dislike at the show following the stereotype, evinced by many cartoons over the years, that cats are inherently evil.
• It's pretty hilarious how She-Ra has to break herself back into jail so that Sea Hawk can rescue Adora. It also neatly mimics the similar scene in the previous episode. Note that she really didn't have to do this: there have been plenty of times when She-Ra has just assured someone that Adora is "safe" or has already been rescued, and left it at that. I suspect she let Sea Hawk do the rescue so that Adora could get her second smooch in two episodes.
• It seems confusing to describe Sea Hawk's multiple refusals to be seduced by gold as him "finally" choosing to join the rebellion. He already agreed to help the rebels at the end of his first episode (67007) - didn't he? Scurvy's attempted bribe in this episode's final minute is also pretty anticlimactic and paltry, considering that we already saw the Hawk toss away an entire chest of gold at the end of 67059. The audience should be well aware by this point that a single gold bar is hardly sufficient inducement for him to give up She-Ra to Hordak, so it's silly to try to put any kind of suspense into that scene.
• Still, I have to reiterate that I was very impressed by the villainous Admiral Scurvy, who I think is a lovely addition to She-Ra's rogues' gallery. His character design isn't going to win any awards, but you can't deny that he's a much more effective enemy than almost any other member of the Horde. Keep in mind that he single-handedly defeated Sea Hawk and She-Ra in the last episode, then zapped She-Ra into unconsciousness in this episode and was this close (holds fingers a smidgen apart) to delivering her to Hordak. Not bad!
• If you think about it, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about our old sick dad, the Falcon. If Swen sailed with him, how did the sailor not also end up stranded in the grotto with his captain? In fact, given the otherwise deserted state of the island, it seems no one was on Falcon's last voyage with him, except perhaps Davy (though if he was, it seems talking mice live much longer than regular mice). I can totally buy Falcon pulling the same kind of "down with the ship" maneuver that got Sea Hawk into trouble in 67059, in order to end up where he is; the question is, how? Falcon has a multi-masted sailing ship, a vessel which I think we can all agree can't be handled by one man - or one man and a mouse. Did Falcon actually arrive on the island with a skeleton crew, and then the rest of his men subsequently perished? (If so, no wonder they chose not to cover this point in the episode!) And what brought Falcon to the island in the first place? Did he land there by chance after a storm or battle, or did he go there on purpose to try to cure his unidentified disease? We easily have another full episode here, just covering Falcon's back story. The only problem is, there's no way it could feature She-Ra; so I guess we'll just have to settle for speculating.
• A couple of other amusing moments from the story: on his first trip up into the sky in the retooled clipper, Davy Jones gets airsick. When the captured Admiral Scurvy is shown tied up at the end of the episode, we see that Squall the cat has been laid by his master, tied in matching restraints.
• I'm also impressed that this episode - which was actually relatively light on plot, considering it was really just Sea Hawk rescuing people - never gives the sense of having been padded out to meet the runtime. There are no obviously drawn-out panning shots or introductory flourishes; the dialogue and battle scenes simply expand to meet the requirements.
• These two episodes were a ton of fun: taken together, they were a great adventure tale with plenty of interesting characters, magic weapons, exciting vehicles, and - of course - thrilling romance (count them: two smooches!). Well done once again, Mr. Forward! Having peeked ahead a little with regard to our writing talent, I'm very aware that as we approach the end of Season 1, we are also approaching the last of the scripts by the series' best writers and co-creators, J. Michael Straczynski and (more's the pity) Larry DiTillio. Fortunately, Forward will continue to contribute scripts into the second season, so we'll at least have one dependable guy in the writers bullpen.