Rowby Goren

Gwen Wetzler

The circus has come to Eternos, to distract all the little children in the land (such as Orko) from doing their chores. But a jealous Skeletor is determined to make sure the show never goes on!

Orko, Prince Adam (He-Man), Cringer (Battle Cat), Man-at-Arms, Teela

Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, Beast Man

assorted circus staff and performers, Myrtle the three-trunked myrtlephant, Crackers the Clown, cuckoo bird, the Great Orlando, Eternian citizens, weird smaller two-trunked myrtlephant

circus rocket train, various circus-related vehicles

Send in the clowns! Oh, wait - they're already here! The circus is arriving at Eternos, and Orko, Prince Adam, and Cringer are already checking out the grounds where the tents and things are to be set up. Orko is supposed to be cleaning his room to earn the privilege of going, but he'd much rather ditch his home responsibilities and join up with the jugglers and trapeze artists. Overexcited by a poster that's being put up, the Trollan gets stuck in the glue and flings it onto Man-at-Arms (because why not?). The heroes are distracted from these hijinks by the approaching circus train - which is only a train in the sense that it is a long train of cars linked together. It's not on rails, and is instead propelled through the air by a rocket - and the rocket suddenly malfunctions! It's going to crash into Mount Eternia! Adam and Cringer transform into He-Man and Battle Cat to rescue the imperiled performers. Battle Cat leaps from a palace parapet onto the roof of the train, giving He-Man a chance to blow out the fire in the rocket engine and redirect the train to safety.

The circus is saved! But it's about to be endangered once again, as we soon learn; because over in Snake Mountain, an already-crabby Skeletor learns from Evil-Lyn that the circus refused his request for them to visit his fortress and perform there. Even worse, they've snubbed him in favor of a week-long run in Eternos! Feeling irate and vengeful, the bony villain demands that Lyn and Beast Man head over to the palace and ruin the circus before it can even go on.

Over at the fairgrounds, Orko is introduced to the myrtlephant - a tri-trunked, elephantine creature appropriately dubbed Myrtle - and the owner of the circus, Crackers the Clown. Having met new friends and seen some of the other fun things he has to look forward to (including some fireworks being prepared for the show's big finale), the Trollan again reiterates his desire to join the crew and avoid his chores. Prince Adam shows up and tries to crush Orko's dreams, explaining that circus performing takes work and practice just like everything else.

As they watch Myrtle raise the big-top tent, Beast Man interferes by using his animal-controlling powers to make the myrtlephant misbehave. Adam catches sight of the hairy villain and partner, Evil-Lyn (they weren't exactly hiding), so quickly changes to He-Man. He foils Lyn's attempt to magically cage him, using the metal bars of his intended prison to ensnare the minions and send them bouncing away. With Beast Man out of range, Myrtle is restored to normal, but He-Man gives her a rest by putting up all the tents himself. Hearing Orko's occupational aspirations, He-Man convinces Crackers to give the magician a job - explaining that the experience will teach Orko firsthand why it's harder than he thinks it's going to be.

Indeed, Orko has a couple of disappointing realizations - first when he's forced to bathe Myrtle, and next when he finds out that learning to be a trapeze artist like the Great Orlando will take him more than just a day. And in between doing cool tricks, the Great Orlando has to do his own damn laundry! While all this disillusionment has been settling over Orko, a mysterious extra tent has appeared on the circus grounds. To whom could this belong? Well, the giant skull on top should give you a hint. Yes, it's Skeletor, who was fed up with his minions' failure and has decided to take things into his own hands. When a curious Crackers sidles up to the skull tent, Skeletor traps the clown inside and zaps him away to far-off Echo Valley. He then unwisely boasts of what he's done to Prince Adam and company, who have been alerted to the problem by Myrtle. Adam can then turn to He-Man and go and rescue the circus owner. It's a dangerous mission, as the slightest sound in Echo Valley causes rockfalls and avalanches, and it turns out Crackers likes talking to himself. He-Man, Battle Cat, and the clown end up sealed into a tunnel by a shower of rocks.

Meanwhile, Skeletor has closed off the circus to any visitors and is planning to force the staff to give him his own private performance. Teela and Man-at-Arms are stuck outside giving the populace the bad news that the greatest show on Eternia has been cancelled - and Skeletor's floating ghostly head appears to underline the message. While the physical Skeletor is inside the big tent haranguing his hostages, however, the ground shakes and He-Man and Crackers pop out of a hole our hero has dug. Turns out he tunneled his way from Echo Valley to here without making any wrong turns at Albuquerque, and he's ready for a fight! The showdown that follows between He-Man and Skeletor quickly turns into a trapeze act for no particularly good reason, with the assembled circus workers and Eternian citizens (who got inside the tent somehow) witnessing as Skeletor is made to look very foolish. He eventually falls onto the safety net and limps away, attempting an escape on foot. Blundering into a darkened room, he ignores He-Man's warnings and lights up what proves to be the firework display, riding a giant rocket out of the top of the tent.

End with a Joke: This episode ends with a few. The conclusion of the story proper has Skeletor as the butt of a joke, when his unwise escape by firework leaves his skull sticking through a wooden wall, making him look like the head of an ostrich-like beast on a poster. The stinger at the end has an appreciative Eternian crowd enjoying an unimpeded circus performance, with Teela, Man-at-Arms, Orko, and Adam sitting in the front row. Duncan and Adam ask Orko why he isn't performing himself, given his recent interest in joining the circus; but the Trollan admits that he's learned his lesson about that. He might not like doing his chores at home, but they're not as difficult as bathing Myrtle. The "myrtlephant" then gives Orko a double-trunk kiss, to everyone's amusement.

• Cringer (complaining): We saved the day yesterday, and the day before that. Every day we save the day - gee whiz!
• Skeletor: Enjoyment! I don't want anyone to have any enjoyment - except for me!
• Orko: Adam, I'd give anything to be in the circus. / Adam: I believe it! But remember last week you wanted to be a firefighter? And last month you were set on being a musician?
• Skeletor (to an assembled crowd of Eternians): Stop complaining! Go home! The only person who's going to enjoy this circus - is me! (laughs)

• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: Just after transforming for the first time
• Skeletor leans in close to the viewer: To emphasize his instructions to his lackeys about ruining the circus
• Adam laughs, head back: At Crackers' spring-loaded cuckoo bird; and again later, as Orko gives Myrtle a bath
• He-Man smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: Talking with Crackers about getting Orko a job
• He-Man laughs, head back: Also enjoying Crackers' spring-loaded cuckoo bird
• He-Man from above, runs to mid-screen and pauses, battle-ready: Chasing Skeletor into the fireworks room
• Adam smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: Giving us the PSA lesson

One full, one partial
Variation - Adam's second transformation is greatly abbreviated. We see his silhouette raise the power sword and hear the first line of his magic words, then a little show of magic energy; then cut to He-Man.

Brought to you by Orko and Prince Adam
Orko is in the palace courtyard learning to juggle for the circus and finding it's more difficult than he expected. Adam comes along to reinforce today's lesson: if you want to get good at something, it's going to take some practice and hard work. Sorry kids - there's no free lunch and joining the circus means you have to wash myrtlephants. This is real life!! Deal with it!

N/A: Let's be glad there aren't any other episodes like this one!

• You can tell right away this is going to be a whimsical and silly episode, from the calliope-style music accompanying the title cards!
• Cringer reminds us that he gets "nervous around butterflies," which is canonically accurate, as seen in the bookend scenes in MU084's "Fraidy Cat" (among others).
• We get another reference to Mount Eternia, a landmark most recently mentioned (in passing) by King Tamusk in MU097. This time the circus train almost crashes into it.
• He-Man uses his super breath ability to blow out the flames on the circus train. We last saw He-Man blowing hard in MU089.
• Skeletor complains that he has to do "all the work around here" - work that seems to consist of pouring liquids between two flasks.
• Things that go into Orko: disturbingly, when Myrtle is intrusively searching Orko's person for peanuts, her trunk goes into the hatch in his hat and clean through his body, exiting out the bottom of his robe. Blech...
• Myrtle is apparently a "myrtlephant," not an elephant. She has more trunks than an Earth elephant, and her ears point up instead of flapping down, but she otherwise seems pretty comparable. For other Eternian-style elephants, see the elodons of MU129.
• Adam mentions that Orko has expressed interest in becoming a firefighter. But Adam! There is no royal fire department! (See MU071.)
• The animation of He-Man pulling a rope hand over hand to raise the circus tents is reused from his rope-pulling at the beginning of MU056's "Quest for the Sword."
• My He-Man transformations count for this episode only lists two, as we only get a glimpse of that many; however Adam changes to He-Man three times in this episode. The third, which is required after Adam learns of the banishing of Crackers, happens entirely off-screen.
• Crackers finds himself in "Echo Valley," a new and well-named Eternian location where the slightest sound produces reverberations that trigger rockfalls and avalanches. Valleys are dangerous places in the He-Man universe; our heroes had a tough time with a Ro in the Valley of Power (MU038), and Negator was hiding in the Valley of the Desert in MU054; in the upcoming "The Toy Maker" (MU124) we'll be introduced to the spooky Valley of Echoes, which is confusingly similar in name to this one but has different characteristics. The Secret of the Sword will introduce us to the Valley of the Lost.
• Things that come out of Orko: A third hand, this one on three bolted and swinging metal sections; it seems to be the cause of his juggling going awry.

• It's humorous that even such a prosaic device as the elevated platform the sign guy is using to paste the circus poster to the wall has a glowing piston and looks fantastically sci-fi.
• Look, He-Man is a cartoon, and cartoonish things do happen in it sometimes; but nothing - until now - quite on the scale of He-Man redirecting a clown-faced train by squeezing its giant nose, making the face squinch up. (More on this childishly fantastical subject matter later.)
• Once again we see Orko being equated to a child, having been given the task to clean his room and wanting to join the circus. Adam also references other professions Orko has been interested in having - presumably when he "grows up." But Orko already is a grown Trollan, with a fiancee (Dree Elle) and a job (court magician)! (Though I've complained that Orko's childishness has been more stressed in Season 2, it's worth noting that Man-at-Arms and He-Man have been ragging on the Trollan to clean his room since back in MU003 and MU025.)
• This episode focuses on a cultural relic of the 80s with which contemporary audiences may be largely unfamiliar: the circus. Circuses still exist, I suppose, but they have largely morphed in the present day into artsy displays of human acrobatics. Certainly the Earth corollary to the central animal in the Eternian circus, the elephant, has long been phased out of zoos and similar places of entertainment, mostly for humane reasons. The presence of this classic circus, along the lines of the one seen in Dumbo, lends this episode an unintended air of retro-futurism when viewed today. (I was surprised to find after writing this that, as of late 2024, the Baltimore Zoo still keeps elephants - hopefully humanely!)
• By the way, though I am guessing we're to assume the circus has plenty of animals to exhibit, we only ever see Myrtle and one other strange-looking animal that appears in a crowd scene. It's a sort of smaller, boar-sized elephant (or myrtlephant), with stubby ears and a two-pronged trunk. Any other hypothetical circus animals are seen only on posters. Is Crackers cheating his audience?!
• Interesting choice to make Crackers the Clown the owner of the circus. Does he balance their books too? Do hiring and firing? I feel like it would be particularly demeaning to be laid off by a clown who sounds like Mickey Mouse.
• So I know that He-Man is a children's show, so we shouldn't be surprised when its stories address childlike themes and subjects; but this episode seems tuned to an even younger audience than usual. Look at the goofy anthropomorphic circus vehicles, parroting cuckoo birds, springy methods used for disposing of bad guys - and the crux of the plot itself, wherein we are asked to believe that Skeletor would want to have a circus perform at his rocky fortress, and would be so annoyed at their refusal that his dastardly scheme for the episode would hinge on ruining the circus for everyone else. What about taking over Eternia, Skeletor? What about the secrets of Grayskull? No, we just want to conquer the circus. Also there is the possibly even more childish Plot B, in which the immature Orko doesn't want to clean his room and needs to learn that joining the circus isn't all fun and games.
• Animation error: In the scene where Duncan and Teela are sadly explaining to the assembled citizens of Eternia that the circus has been cancelled, most of the citizens we can see in the background are smiling and happy, though by any measure they should be disappointed and sad. Who wouldn't be, if the circus was cancelled?
• Continuity error: He-Man, Battle Cat, and Crackers go into the tunnel at Echo Valley; but on the other end, only He-Man and Crackers come out again. Where is Battle Cat? The tiger did have a chance to contribute a little to the action in this episode, but his being omitted at the story's conclusion is another case of many in this season, of the character being sidelined by the show writers.
• I thought the crowning absurdity of the episode was He-Man and Skeletor's trapeze act (just - why? why?); but no, it's Skeletor being an absolute dumb-ass and setting off a roomful of fireworks during an attempted escape, even after He-Man has warned him not to. This from a sorcerer who has, with great regularity, time and again, escaped not on foot, but by teleportation. (Indeed, Skeletor's many magical escape methods are one of the sub-categories explored in this database.) Why did he not just zap himself out of there instead of blundering into the fireworks room? Did the embarrassing trapeze act leave him drained of magical power?
• While I would argue that MU082's "Attack from Below" is another strong contender, it's not a stretch to say that "The Greatest Show on Eternia" has a good shot at the title of "The Stupidest Episode of MOTU." Compared with MU082, this story at least has some fun things to look at - circus performers and colorful tents and posters, things that aren't bland mole people or boring fields of corn. It also (unlike MU082, where he appeared only in a speechless flashback) has the advantage of featuring Skeletor, who still manages to be amusing in this dud of a story, thanks to the work of Alan Oppenheimer. Even considering all that - watching this episode is a challenge that should be tackled only by the completist or rabid fan. Ye hath been warned!