David Wise

Steve Clark

Stratos, leader of Avion, is accused of sabotaging his city's defense grid and ends up banished by his own citizens! Something smells fishy in this town of bird people... who is the real saboteur, and will Skeletor manage to steal the precious Egg that gives all citizens of Avion the ability to fly?

Stratos, Prince Adam (He-Man), Orko, Sorceress

Skeletor, Tri-Klops, Trap Jaw, Beast Man, Whiplash

Hawke, Avion citizens, carrock, Kraal, snake, other assorted imprisoned creatures, golden horned dragon

Evil sky sleds, Wind Raider

Avion has had so many days without an act of sabotage, that they don't even bother counting anymore! An unsuspecting Stratos flies over to the machinery for the city's force field and finds the female bird person, Hawke, already heading there. Discovering they are both on the same errand, Stratos happily leaves her to it and goes to the security station. The guy manning the desk there says everything is quiet - just before all heck breaks loose! Skeletor and his assorted goons are making an aerial attack by sky sled - and the force field has stopped working! Stratos flies off to check on their defense grid, while other bird people fend off the attack using tarps and smoke screens. The force field, it turns out, has been wrecked, and as Stratos is working frantically to try to repair it, Hawke shows up to accuse him of sabotage. Even though he strenuously denies it, Hawke repeats her accusations in front of the assembled citizens of the town. They all buy it, and go right along when Hawke pronounces Stratos's sentence - banishment! Stratos incidentally explains (for those of us who were not aware - which would be everyone watching) that it's particularly terrible to be banished when you're a bird person, since they all get the power of flight by living near the giant golden Egg of Avion, which sits perched atop the highest tower of their city. Just a little while away from the Egg and he'll have to walk places like all the other Eternian shmoes. But his people are adamant, and poor Stratos is forced to leave.

Our despondent hero flies off into territory unfamiliar to him, and ends up accidentally landing amid the nest of a carrock - a giant bird, who happens to be rather territorial and quite miffed at the intrusion. As he's being chased away, the commotion attracts the attention of Prince Adam and Orko, who happen to be having a picnic or some such in the woods nearby. Adam resorts at once to his trusty alter ego, He-Man, and eventually stops the angry carrock (who after all is only attacking Stratos due to his trespassing) by bribing it with fresh fruit. The mollified bird stops its fight and actually becomes quite friendly.

Stratos explains to He-Man and Orko the very hard day he's been having, and He-Man thinks they need to head right back to Avion to clear up what is obviously a big misunderstanding. Without a strong leader in town, the Egg of Avion is also incredibly vulnerable to another foray from Skeletor - as everyone soon discovers. When the good guys show up, it's to find Skeletor having just managed to successfully steal the Egg, since the force field was not yet repaired and this time even the defensive weapons of the bird people failed to function. Our heroes need to get that Egg back; they should head directly to Snake Mountain, right? No! He-Man realizes that the wily Skeletor wouldn't take the precious object to such an obvious place, and their best bet is to check with the Sorceress first.

At Grayskull, the Sorceress informs our heroes that Skeletor must have dropped the Egg off at the Demon Zone, a very scary place in the Mountains of Doom where the villain Whiplash resides. Not only will they face many dangers if they go inside; the heroes will also have to be very careful to close the doors behind them when they go in, because not only were they not raised in a barn, if they leave the doors open all manner of demons could get out!

Taking the Sorceress's advice to heart, when they arrive at the gate to the Demon Zone (which is a big pair of stone doors set into the ground), He-Man very carefully props the door open and scoots inside, followed by Stratos. Orko tries to join them, but the log propping open the door cracks and the Trollan is shut out. He opts to "guard the Wind Raider... or something" while his manly friends take care of business within. Meanwhile, Whiplash is informed of the invaders in his zone by Kraal, King of Demons (who calls him up by flame-phone). Kraal reminds Whiplash to be careful using the door, since the demons are only allowed to open it twice a year; but Whiplash recklessly opts to use one opening so that he can send a snake out to get Orko. Orko does his best tangling with the giant serpent, but things don't go well, and the creature wraps its coils around him. Fortunately, the carrock they befriended earlier shows up to rescue the magician, plucking the snake off him and dropping it in a river at the bottom of a canyon.

In the Demon Zone, He-Man and Stratos face some flame jets, which the blonde wonder easily blows out, and then Whiplash himself. Between the two of them, the Heroic Warriors manage to tie the lizard man's tail to a column of rock. Leaving the villain in this unenviable position, they travel onto Whiplash's menagerie, from whence the snake was dispatched and where Whiplash keeps a variety of (presumably) evil pets. There they also spot Hawke, who has been caged along with the other pets! Though she at first denies any wrongdoing, He-Man has cleverly deduced that Hawke was the real saboteur (which, given that she was the only one who could possibly have done it, didn't really require any great mental gymnastics), and when he accuses her she confesses. She explains that Skeletor promised her riches if she let the villains in, but she was double-crossed and ended up in Whiplash's menagerie. Stratos declares that her being stuck in a cage is a just reward for her treachery (even though it's just about the worst thing you can do to a bird person - that and banishing, I guess), but He-Man wants to free her. He declares that "Everyone deserves a second chance," and when Hawke promises to help them in any way she can, and afterwards face whatever just punishment Stratos metes out for her crime, the bird man grudgingly agrees to let her out.

Hawke then leads the pair to the Egg, which is being guarded by an appropriately colored golden dragon. They nab the Egg and make a run for it, the dragon close at their heels. Whiplash, who has managed to free himself, shows up with a rocket launcher (!), but He-Man just throws the rocket into a wall, causing a rockfall that blocks off the lizard man. Whiplash is about to start clearing rocks, but Kraal calls him up again to recommend that they let He-Man go: the demon king knows that the only way for He-Man to escape is to break open those doors, leaving Eternia open to a demon invasion. Our hero, too, realizes that he's going to have to do that thing the Sorceress told him not to do. Uh-oh... Well, there's nothing for it, so He-Man leaps through the doors, and the dragon flies out behind them. Luckily, Orko's savior the carrock is still hanging around outside, and obliges its new friends with another act of kindness: tossing the dragon back through the gate. He-Man then creates a pinpoint-accurate avalanche that neatly blocks up the doorway, keeping all those nasty demons and all their pets inside.

Back at Avion, the Egg safely returned (and with a new guardian in the form of the carrock), Hawke admits in front of the assembled citizens that she was the real criminal who caused all the trouble. Those mean bird people are ready to enact some harsh vengeance and have themselves another banishin', but Stratos and He-Man both preach forgiveness, and commute Hawke's sentence to demotion and probation.

End with a Joke: Well - a light moment, let us say. To wrap up the town meeting, Stratos suggests that everyone give thanks to their best friend, He-Man, and Orko magically appears to cheer on the happy but embarrassed hero.

• Hawke: Bird people! There can be only one punishment for such treachery: banish him! Take him far, far away.
• Stratos: After a few days away from the Egg of Avion, I will lose the power of flight.
• Stratos: My only hope of saving my wings is to find the real culprit and restore my good name.
• Kraal, King of Demons: Beware, Whiplash - we only have the power to open the door to the world above us twice each year.
• Stratos: As a bird man, I've got a thing about cages.

• A look through widespread legs: He-Man lands in the seat of the Wind Raider
• Skeletor laughs, head back: Because nothing can stop him now!
• He-Man juggles his sword: The unsheathing part of the animation is used to show him preparing to face the golden dragon

One partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence)

Brought to you by He-Man and Orko
He-Man explains that today Stratos learned the true value of forgiveness, when he, He-Man, taught the bird king to forgive his wayward citizen Hawke. It's a lesson we viewers can apply to our real lives - though hopefully we don't know anyone who sabotaged our security system and then framed us for it. Orko appropriately shows up to agree with He-Man, since the Trollan is someone who requires a whole lot of forgiveness.

Everybody deserves a second chance: A no-brainer, given that He-Man essentially pronounces the name of the category when explaining why he wants to free Hawke.

• We return to Avion, Stratos's home! We haven't been here since MU065.
• We've seen two different kinds of bird people portrayed in the series. In MU016, when we first visited Avion for Stratos's ceremony with an important staff, the gathered citizens all wore gray clothing with black-lensed goggles, like Stratos. In MU065, when the Keeper came calling in his fish blimp, the Avion citizens had clear goggles and very little gray clothing (preferring the color blue, and to bare lots of very pink skin). In this episode, the animators cleverly retcon both types as valid by showing characters dressed either way.
• The bird people's weapons in this episode seem to focus on obfuscation: first they drop a big tarp over Beast Man's head, then they fire off smoke-screen guns.
• By the way, you might think just dropping a cloth over someone is a silly method of attack; but it was also the best trick that the evil wizard Azrog could think up to stop Teela in MU023.
• We learn that the flying ability of Stratos (and presumably all other bird people) is granted by his proximity to the Egg of Avion, a big golden job that perches at the top of a tall tower in the center of the city. I suppose this helps explain why Stratos doesn't appear in all that many episodes (this episode makes his fourteenth - and he will only appear in one more)! That Egg must make him a bit of a homebody.
• The "carrock" into whose nest Stratos accidentally drops is just the Ro bird from MU038's "Valley of Power."
• The Evil Warriors come riding into Avion twice on the backs of their Evil sky sleds. Skeletor demonstrates that the ray fired from the gun in the front can act as a tractor beam, as he uses it to grab Avion's precious Egg.
• The Sorceress introduces us to the "Demon Zone," the lair of Whiplash - appearing now in his fifth consecutive MOTU episode (he is on such a roll!). The Zone is reached through the very Tolkien-sounding Mountains of Doom.
• Just as he did in the last episode, MU077, Whiplash has a prized "pet" that he sets on Orko, and it's another wormlike one. Last time it was the scarg, a centipedal Trollan pest. This time it's just a big snake. Actually he has a bunch of other caged pets nearby, though we don't get a good look at them, and one guarding the Egg as well; so in this episode he's portrayed as a sort of beast... man. Hmm.
• He-Man uses his super breath - again - to blow out some flame jets in the Demon Zone. We've been seeing the writers make plenty of use of this ability lately, most recently in MU076.
• He-Man's befriending of the carrock with fruit, which later pays dividends for a snake-squeezed Orko and for the heroes in general, recalls the very appreciative takdryl He-Man rescued back in MU064's "The Remedy."
• This is the last MOTU script by writer David Wise, who gave us such memorable episodes as MU036's "The Search," MU052's "Teela's Trial," and MU068's "Day of the Machines." Thank you for your service, sir!

• Sounds like some last-minute subbing-in of voice recording was done for the Avionite manning the security screen at the beginning of the episode. "It's as quiet as can be out there," he says; and with amusing predictability, an alarm immediately sounds. "No, wait!" he cries - in a completely different voice.
• In a similar set of circumstances to what I just described (though without the voice discrepancies), later in the episode He-Man seriously jinxes himself and his companion Stratos by wondering why they call it the Demon Zone: "I haven't seen any demons; it's been nothing but smooth sailing so far." Immediately and as if on cue, demonic stuff starts to go down.
• We get some cool new backgrounds and interiors for this episode, showing the security control room and force field generator in Avion. In contrast, the Demon Zone makes use of the generic "cave" background seen in many previous episodes.
• Odd that Stratos's sister Delora, who was such a staunch supporter of his in MU016, does not show up here to contradict the naysayers during his banishment. Maybe she married a bird man from some other town and moved away! For which we would have to assume there are other towns of bird people with other golden, flight-granting eggs. (Regardless, it would have been awfully confusing to have her around in this story, given that her character design is entirely identical to that of Hawke!)
• The obvious assumption, knowing that Skeletor has taken the Egg of Avion, is that it's in Snake Mountain. That's where he keeps all his stuff! In most other episodes this would lead our heroes to yet another act of home invasion. But somehow He-Man knows right away that Skeletor has hidden the Egg somewhere else. In fact, this doesn't really make much sense, given that when Skeletor first obtains the egg, he boasts about soon being able to get wings. Obviously he will never learn how to fly if he keeps the Egg in the Demon Zone all the time, and never goes to visit it. Was he planning to keep the thing tucked away until the heat died down?
• The Sorceress knows the Egg is in the Demon Zone because she detected a lot of energy coming from there. It certainly follows that she should have some way to sense energy fluctuations throughout Eternia, given that she spends most of her time sitting around in a castle but can still nag He-Man when there's danger elsewhere.
• It seems to me that we've definitely seen Orko vanish from one place and reappear somewhere else. So why doesn't he do this to get past the stone gate into the Demon Zone? I suppose it's fair to assume that it's a special door that won't allow you to teleport through it. Perhaps Duncan should consider making the palace's doors out of that stone, so Evil Warriors aren't constantly teleporting into his lab!
• Kraal, King of Demons, is a pretty bad-ass looking demon guy with a very impressive, deep voice. We'll meet a very similar villain (though not similar looking) in MU125's Angast, king of the Realm of Evil.
• So as Kraal explains, Whiplash can only open the door to the Demon Zone twice a year. Even though he knows He-Man and Stratos have already gotten inside, and the only hero outside is Orko, Whiplash wastes half their annual allotment of deviltry attacking the Trollan screw-up. He's shown himself to be an ambitious villain, but Whiplash is clearly not Skeletor-level material - not with thinking like that!
• Another issue with Whiplash only being able to open that door twice a year... even if we look at episodes based on air date and not by episode code, Whiplash has already been out of the Demon Zone once very recently (MU077). You'd think that would be during the calendar year, and that he would naturally have to open the door to get out and cause the trouble that he caused in Trolla. And wouldn't he also have to open it to get back in again? Basically this whole thing with Whiplash being in the zone seems to have been written in a complete vacuum, as if we'd never encountered Whiplash before and his back story were being created from the ground up. Who knows? Maybe this Whiplash is the twin brother of the other Whiplash that we've seen in all the other episodes, and they were named by very unimaginative parents. (George Foreman named all his sons George!)
• In fact... wouldn't the doors to the Demon Zone have had to open to let the Egg in in the first place, and wouldn't that count as one - therefore making the attack on Orko number two, thus using up the year's door-openings? And what if you're a demon and you just have to run out to get some milk? Basically it sucks to live in the Demon Zone, man.
• I think animating anything turning or spiralling, like the movements of the snake that attacks Orko, is a challenging feat, so I'm impressed with the very smooth way the creature coils around things and people in this episode.