Douglas Booth

Marsh Lamore

Uncle Montork follows the evil wizard Azrog back to Eternia, where Azrog has a date to team up with his partner Spydra and cause trouble for everyone. Montork gets the chance to happily reunite with his nephew - but will Orko's desire to prove himself to his favorite uncle get him into trouble?

Prince Adam (He-Man), Cringer, Teela, Orko

N/A

Azrog, Karg, Montork, Spydra

Wind Raider

It's a lovely day on Trolla, where Uncle Montork has just succeeded in capturing the evil wizard Azrog and his cute little pink dragon friend Karg. But wait! Azrog escapes by teleporting himself to Eternia, where he (rather unwisely) tells Montork he is going to team up with the witch Spydra. Montork pursues the criminal and gets caught up in the beam that is transporting the bad guys. Thus, as these zany things go, Azrog and Karg wind up landing in the dining room of the palace in Eternos, while Montork zaps right into Spydra's study.

In Eternia, Orko recognizes the transport beam and believes he's about to be reunited with his uncle; so he's very disappointed to recognize the evil Azrog. After a short struggle during which Adam makes a very paltry excuse to leave and Teela is incapacitated with a tablecloth, Orko takes revenge by incapacitating Azrog with a tablecloth, and He-Man arrives to find the battle seemingly already over.

But wait! It turns out Karg has the ability to turn into a very large dragon, which gives Azrog the advantage and allows him to fly out of there. Our heroes make a significant mental leap and decide that Montork must be at Spydra's castle; since they apparently know exactly where that is, they all run down to the Wind Raider and go there (Eternia is one of those small-town planets where everyone knows where everyone else lives). Montork, in the meantime, seems to be at the mercy of Spydra, who has trapped him in a spider web; but he easily frees himself and flies out the window, in time to meet the other heroes, and in time to watch Azrog fly in the window of the castle.

While sneaking around the grounds outside, the quartet are rumbled by Karg and must do battle; during the scuffle, Orko wanders into the castle and decides to prove to his uncle that he's a great wizard by rifling through the magic junk in Spydra's study and getting himself trapped in a magic vine. Nice job, Orko. He is discovered by Spydra, whom Azrog has quickly betrayed and put under a mind control spell. Azrog decides it will be fun to mess with Orko, using Orko's desire to prove himself against him.

In a hurry to find Orko, Montork flies back into the castle, leaving He-Man and Teela to crash through the front gate. They encounter Spydra, but quickly trap and disarm her. The bigger trouble is Karg, who comes back and grabs hold of Teela before a leaden-limbed He-Man can react. He brings the creature down after the fact with a grappling hook, the attached line of which he uses to scale the walls of the castle to the roof where Karg has crashed. Fortunately Teela was not smooshed in the landing, and Karg shrinks itself to get out of the entangling rope, giving He-Man a chance to bag the dragon. They bring the creature to Montork, who performs a clumsy sounding spell to keep it from enlarging itself again.

Now the heroes must face Azrog, who has turned Orko into Evil Orko! (You can tell by his eyes that he's evil.) In the subsequent battle, Teela and He-Man take turns trying to beat up or restrain Azrog while Montork movingly attempts to express his love and pride for Orko to stop the darn kid from destroying him. Montork of course eventually succeeds, and the pair embrace. Orko drops Azrog's wand, which Azrog grabs back; but before he can do much with it, Teela strips it away and He-Man destroys it with a quick swipe of the power sword. Montork has to say goodbye and get the magical criminals back to Trolla, but promises to tell everyone back home what a fine magician Orko is.

End with a Joke: So overjoyed is Orko at his uncle's promise to tell everyone back home what a great magician he is, that he literally explodes - turning the entirety of Spydra's castle into a pile of rubble! Ha... ha?

• Prince Adam (to Azrog): How dare you come to Eternia? / Azrog: I go where I please.
• Spydra (to Montork): It is all your fault, Montork. You'll pay for this! / Montork (with insouciant nonchalance, especially considering that he's trapped in a giant spider web): Gladly, Spydra, just put it on my bill.
• Montork (in reference to He-Man's throwing Karg): Now that's what I call "muscle magic."
• Teela: Hickory? Dickory? What kind of magic spell is that? / Montork: It worked, didn't it?

• He-Man laughs, head back: At the incredible destruction Orko has wrought

One partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence)

Brought to you by Orko
"Boy, I sure got myself in trouble today," says Orko - something he could say at the end of almost every episode in which he takes the main part. In this case, he advises us not to play around with unfamiliar stuff we might be curious about, like pills or berries in a bush. If Orko would just take his own advice to heart, half of the remaining episodes of He-Man would never take place.

Orko-specific lore
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1

• Before Adam transforms into He-Man, he says: "I think it's about time Azrog met a good friend of mine." Again, suggesting that he and He-Man are two different people.
• In the episode where we first visit Trolla (MU020), the implication seems to be that it's pretty hard to travel between there and Eternia; however, in each subsequent episode, it seems to get easier and easier. At the end of MU027, Montork is forced to return to Trolla because the spell that brought him to Eternia is wearing off; at the end of this episode, it sounds as if Montork is just going to go back to Trolla under his own power, like it's no trouble at all.
• Spydra is clearly voiced by Linda Gary, the same woman who voices Evil-Lyn; because she sounds exactly like Evil-Lyn after she gargled saltwater.
• In a related note, the globe held in a talon which Orko oh-so-cleverly picks up in Spydra's study, which turns out to be Spydra's magic wand, looks very similar to Evil-Lyn's scepter. In later scenes it is drawn looking much less like a talon. I guess they mass produce these models, because Azrog's wand looks identical.
• There are some very clear similarities between this episode and its twin, "Orko's Favorite Uncle" (MU027). Both feature evil wizard schemes causing Montork to end up in Eternia; both feature Montork and another creature traveling different routes to land on Eternia and resulting in confusion; and both feature a Trollan being mind controlled by an evil sorcerer, necessitating the power of uncle/nephew love to break the spell. My theory? Writer Douglas Booth wrote two drafts of a Montork story, and the powers-that-be at Filmation unexpectedly approved both, and decided to present one as a sequel to the other.
• Even though we see Cringer in the beginning of this episode, he is chased off by thunder before anything starts happening. Adam for some reason does not hunt him down to force him to transform into Battle Cat, and he does not take part in the episode's adventures. Once again we do not see the king or queen, or even Duncan, and this is yet another episode without Skeletor, making me question my decision to log every Skeletor-less episode in the Connected episodes category.

• Spydra's castle actually looks like a big spider, which is very cool and thoughtful of her; I just hope it isn't a "secret" hideout, since the shape is a bit of a giveaway. It probably isn't, since Orko knows exactly how to get there.
• The evil wizard Azrog defeats Teela by... throwing a tablecloth over her? What?
• Surely Adam's worst excuse for leaving to turn into He-Man: in the middle of a battle with an evil wizard, he says "I just remembered, I have an appointment. Nice meeting you Azrog!"
• The first hint I had that this episode might have been short on runtime and slightly padded out: as I watched He-Man very slowly lower his butt into the seat of the Wind Raider.
• Continuity error: He-Man and friends spend some time spying on Spydra's castle and sneaking up to it in the bushes; but in a later scene where Karg the dragon flies overhead and spots them, they are all standing back where they started at the parked Wind Raider.
• Big Karg is a cool dragon, and Evil Orko is more threatening looking than Evil Montork was in MU027.
• IMO, this is not a great episode. It feels very low on content, and what content is there feels very much like an inferior retread of MU027 - though there is still the question of which episode came first. Certainly by air dates and based on the titles, this one seems to be the second of the two; but based on episode codes, it was put into production first.
• Probably it's a result of the padded-out story, but He-Man seems very slow to react to things in this episode. He seems to just stand there and look worried while Teela gets snatched up by Karg; and later when Orko is holding Uncle Montork at wand-point, Teela (who is standing next to He-Man) cries, "He-Man! Do something!" and He-Man just stands there blinking, the big lug, and says and does nothing. True, a second or so later Montork assures them both that he can handle things; but it doesn't look like He-Man was about to spring into action.
• Based on what we learned about Orko's Trollan reputation in MU020 (in which he did in fact seem to be known as "Orko the Great"), it doesn't make any sense that he would have a huge desire to prove himself to Montork, or that it would matter so much to him that he would explode with joy when Montork promised to tell the folks back home how great he was.
• It is, however, absolutely hilarious that Orko does explode with joy, and takes the castle with him. I did not see that coming at all, and it gave me a big belly laugh, just as it did to He-Man. I also appreciate the way He-Man does see the explosion coming and wordlessly stands in front of Teela to shield her from the blast.