Douglas Booth

Ed Friedman

Adam and Teela accidentally get mixed up in a romantic squabble for the centuries, as the evil Lady Valtira wakes from a long sleep to find her lover, Lord Tyrin, gone - and an ugly wrinkled magician messing with her. Can He-Man teach Valtira and Tyrin to change their evil ways of enslaving people and killing trees - without sparking too much jealousy in the process?

Prince Adam (He-Man), Teela, Orko and Cringer (PSA only)

N/A

Lord Tyrin, Lady Valtira, Sago, winged horses, spider pet (unnamed), giant snake

N/A (unless you count the horses)

Adam and Teela have ventured out in the middle of the night to try to ride some winged horses, which happen to live near a spooky, ruined castle. Teela tells the legend of the castle with an accompanying flashback: the evil rulers, Lord Tyrin and Lady Valtira, destroyed trees to obtain the power to work their magic. They destroyed so many trees that they decided to go to sleep for two centuries and wait for the plants to grow back. The animated sequence that follows also shows Valtira's little pet dragon, Sago, being turned to stone by Tyrin just before he lies back in his coffin.

Adam expresses the hope that the evil couple (who actually ought to be awakening about now) pick some other night to come back, even if they just take the life out of trees and not people, and requests (jokingly) that Teela protect him. His attempts to ride a winged horse succeed well past his desire, with the terrified beast he lassoes carrying him off and eventually flinging him into a pile of fallen foliage. In the meantime, a mysterious supernatural figure mutters his hope that the winged horses will awake Lady Valtira. His hopes are realized: the moonlight coming through the window of the crumbling castle restores Sago to life, and the sound of the horses wakens Valtira, who finds Tyrin's matching coffin empty and goes looking for him.

She instead finds Adam, is enchanted by his ability to ride horses, and freezes him, declaring that he is now her slave. Meanwhile, the evil-looking fellow from before - okay, let's face it, it's Tyrin and we all know it's Tyrin, even the most naive young viewer must have realized this by now - is jealous that Valtira is lavishing attention on the pink-and-purple princeling and decides to have his giant spider pet grab Sago. Adam offers assistance if Valtira will just release him from her freezing spell; when she does, he runs off into the woods to turn into He-Man. He-Man rescues Sago by making a dashing rope swing. Tyrin nabs Valtira, and is greatly dismayed when she fails to recognize him. He-Man then flings himself through the air to reach the lady and cut her loose from Tyrin's spider's confining webs. They run off to hide in the castle, which Valtira enters by way of a secret entrance. Tyrin, spying from nearby, rages in jealousy and vows to find his own way in.

Valtira, still convinced that destroying trees for power is the best way (though she's decided not to enslave He-Man since Sago likes him so much), magically cleans up her throne room and tries to impress her muscular new friend. Instead, she's attacked by a giant snake that's taken residence under the floor, and He-Man has to rescue her. Meanwhile, Teela has been spending all this time flying around outside, trying to find her wayward prince; she finally admits to herself that he might have gone into the scary castle, and ventures in. Her calling alerts Tyrin, who webs her up. Valtira and He-Man then overhear Teela's cries for help and come to assist. In the ensuing confrontation, the other shoe drops at last and Valtira realizes that the "ugly" guy who's been following her around is actually her lover, Tyrin, who couldn't get her to wake up and spent the years that she overslept overusing his power, leaving him pale, wrinkled, and zombie-ish.

In a final attempt at revenge, Tyrin sucks the energy from a load-bearing tree and causes the entire castle to begin collapsing around them all. With the help of some real talk from Valtira (and assurances that she still likes him), he realizes the error of his ways, and gladly accepts He-Man's help in freeing Sago from a fallen block of stone. He-Man runs further into the castle to rescue the giant snake he trapped earlier, and appears to be crushed in the rubble. The redeemed Tyrin and Valtira renounce their evil powers, smashing the amulets that apparently bestowed them, and are restored to their youthful good looks. Prince Adam reappears, assuring a worried Teela that He-Man is "um, all right," and telling a story about another wild horse ride. Tyrin and Valtira then happily mount up on their own horses and ride off into the... moonset, I guess.

End with a Joke: Teela vows that some day she will make a hero out of silly Prince Adam; just like (sighs with romantic fervor) He-Man. Adam: "Ah, maybe some day, Teela. Maybe. Some day." (winks)

• Lord Tyrin: We will sleep, Valtira, while the energy in the trees grows strong, and the world forgets how wicked we were.
• Adam: You've frozen me with your spell, Valtira; why? / Lady Valtira: You are to be my slave.
• He-Man (about to launch himself using a rope and bent tree): Well Sago, here goes: the human... catapuuuuuuuuult!!
• He-Man: Be careful, Valtira: power doesn't create beauty anymore than slavery creates friends. / Valtira: Oh, what nonsense you speak!
• Valtira: Oh, it's the ugly one again! / Tyrin: Ugly, indeed! If I am ugly to your sight, it is because each time throughout the lonely years I have called upon the power to rebuild our kingdom, my lady, the power itself has warped me and made me what I am!

• Adam smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: Talking to Teela, both at the beginning and end of the episode
• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands after rescuing Valtira

One partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence)

Brought to you by Orko and Cringer
Orko, floating above his bed in his bedroom, advises us that though we can't and shouldn't sleep for two centuries like the main characters of today's episode, good sleep is still important and is aided by not overeating before bedtime, keeping consistent hours, and not getting overexcited in the evening. Cringer conveys his lesson by demonstrating healthy sleeping practices.

Evil power couple awakens
Everybody deserves a second chance: MU011, "Masks of Power," shares several plot characteristics with this episode. Both dealt with a male-female pair of evil sorcerers who lie dormant for many years; both involve a crumbling ancient castle or city; and both involve a pair who decide to turn from evil to good - though in MU011 it was the young people who wore the titular masks having the change of heart, rather than the original evil couple. Both, it also happens, were written by Douglas Booth. This makes both episodes perfect candidates for this pair of categories.
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 1

• This episode could be considered under the sub-category of "I thought it was only a legend!" seen in episodes such as MU002, MU007, MU011, and MU031 (in the latter case it was said of He-Man). In this case the legend that comes true is of course that of Tyrin and Valtira.
• The now regularly used animation of He-Man swinging and tossing a grappling hook, seen in MU023, MU028, and MU030, is repurposed here when Adam throws his lasso at the winged horse - and again twice more in the episode, when He-Man throws a grappling hook. Heh.
• Here we have another set of Filmation characters that seem tailormade for cool toys - the evil Lord Tyrin with his freaky giant spider sidekick, and the Lady Valtira and her cute little dragon pal, Sago. Mattel missed a trick here, because the toys were never made!
• Interesting that the important decision that is the crux of MU034 involved saving the life of a tree, and this next episode also dwells on the evils of killing trees.
• This episode is missing Cringer/Battle Cat (except for Cringer's somnolent appearance in the PSA), but if you think about it, there's a more logical explanation for his absence than my usual one of "he was taking a nap." Surely a large tiger would have scared off the winged horses Teela and Adam were trying to tame and ride!
• Note that, though Sago is a very faithful pet, he doesn't seem to share the evil motivations of his mistress, and is downright tearful as she plots her return to tree-killing and despotism.
• Another glimpse of Orko's bedroom is had during the PSA. Orko's room was also the site of MU002's PSA.

• I love the look of this episode: the spooky castle, the vampirelike characters, their baroque coffins, and their creepy minions. It makes me think of classic horror comics or Marvel's Tomb of Dracula. And, yes, countless episodes of Scooby-Doo.
• Valtira complains that "my long sleep has not restored my beauty," but as far as I can tell, she looks about the same as the young version of herself in the wall portrait behind the couple's tombs - just with slightly more arched eyebrows and slightly more defined cheekbones.
• The subtitle track of the DVD and other wiki sources agree that the male villain's name is spelled "Tyrin," but the way most of the characters say it, it seems like it should be written "Tirran" (with the emphasis on the "ran").
• When I saw Lord Tyrin's spider pet, I had an immediate and very tactile memory of a toy from my childhood. Not the toy of this actual character, since (as I say above) they were never made, but another toy line from the 80s. I did some searching and (may the Eternian elders bless the internet) found it: Ideal's 1985 line "Rocks & Bugs & Things," which featured scary looking bugs - and, for some reason, rocks with threatening faces - with simple motion mechanics built into them. I vividly remember gripping the rubbery backside of "Terrorantula," a spider-like creature who would open its fang-filled plastic mouth and (I think) extend some kind of red object when you squeezed the abdomen.
• I see why they didn't go for realism and have it come out of the butt, but I question the animators' decision to have the spider's webbing shoot out of its triangular nose. (Another strange choice: its head is basically a jack-o-lantern.)
• Valtira freezes big, beefy Adam and declares that he is her slave. I'm thinking of two letters and one of them is an S...
• Left to himself for much of the adventure (i.e., without a comedic partner), He-Man seems desperate to lighten the general mood by pronouncing all kinds of supposedly humorous one-liners to himself. ("It's curtains for this character," as he drops a curtain on a snake. *cringe*)
• I'm so tickled by the fact that He-Man goes back into the collapsing castle to rescue the snake he tied up in a curtain. He's a big softie and I love him for it.
• There are some intriguing missing pieces in the back story of Tyrin and Valtira that leave me wondering. Why has Tyrin been awake all this time, and why did Valtira stay asleep? Tyrin spends one line explaining how he was using his magic "throughout the lonely years" to try to "rebuild" their kingdom, and that's what wrinkled and deformed him. The idea, I suppose, is that he woke up on time, based on their original plan, but couldn't restore the castle without the added powers of his lady - and her sleeping spell worked too well. Years went by, during which trees broke their way through the castle, growing beyond what the couple had ever planned, in a kind of just revenge. The idea is very romantic and tragic, and I rather wish they'd had time to put in a little flashback sequence about it.
• We also have to infer, by the way, that Tyrin met his spider minion at some point during the "lonely years" while Valtira was asleep; otherwise, she would have recognized his pet when he webs up Sago in their first encounter.
• This episode feels a bit like someone's unrelated vampire love story, into which He-Man blunders entirely by accident. Tyrin and Valtira are surely vampires, whose blood-sucking has been replaced with tree-sucking to protect the tender sensibilities of 80s children.
• The other charmingly un-vampirelike part of the story is when Tyrin and Valtira renounce their evil powers and thereby regain their youth and good looks, instead of aging even further and turning into bony piles of dust.
• Does Teela really believe Adam's story that he was "helping He-Man rescue a giant snake"? This is another in a long line of very flimsy attempts to cover the secret identity.