Welcome back! We’ve come off a dramatic finish to Skeletor’s best-laid plans which ended with him being thwarted once again by the Masters and leading to possible dissension within his own ranks now that Evil-Lyn knows that Skeletor himself was behind her capture and imprisonment that took place over the last few episodes.
We got a lot of good content out of what was really a three episode arc and it almost feels as if we’re now getting a fresh start with all the new angles that have formed from it. King Randor pledges to assemble a new council to aid in advising strategies for all the villages, the Snake Men are making a play for Skeletor’s underlings in an attempt to free their fellow humanoid reptilians while Skeletor can’t see the forest for the trees and is acting as if it’s business as usual.
With this season being only 13 episodes, there isn’t a lot of time to slow play these things and part of me is wondering if the conclusion will yield a satisfying payoff. I really don’t know if this chapter was meant to be just those 13 episodes all along or if the writing team was prepared and/or planning to go to 26 as they had in Season 1. Regardless, today’s episode gives me a renewed start feeling as the “season premier” that we watched yesterday was really just a closing of the Season 1 finale.
Now that we’ve gotten all the pleasantries out of the way, let’s continue our trek through the Eternian mythos.
S02E02: To Walk With Dragons
Original Air Date: October 25, 2003
Screen Cap Analysis: Stay away from the Hungarian Horntail, Harry!
We open in a factory where weapons and vehicles are being produced. Man-At-Arms is supervising the process and is laser-focused and getting this done before King Randor’s new council convenes for the first time in the next day. Skeletor, obviously, doesn’t like the idea of Randor having more allies and is looking for a way to ensure this council doesn’t come to fruition and has Tri-Klops send a Doomseeker drone to scope it out.
Skelly concludes that a ground attack would be virtually impossible due to the vast number of dignitaries arriving en masse, but an air attack could be successful. Beast Man volunteer Serpenators – a kind of flying eel-snake hybrid creatures as a possibility, but apparently they attract attacks from dragons. To be rid of the dragons, Stinkor heads through the forest because dragons absolutely disdain what a smelly fuck he is.
The Masters become aware of Skelly’s plot and seeing as how Serpenators’ only natural enemy is dragons, Adam pitches the idea of Duncan building robotic dragons as a defense tool. Apparently, the Eternian weapons factory is the most efficient workplace ever, because this fleet of robotic flying vehicle dragons is ready in like an hour.
The vehicle dragons serve their purpose, but the Serpenators regroup and come back with even more of their friends. Duncan wonders what it would take to bring back the real dragons and Stratos says, “nothing short of a magician.” Shit, now we’re going to have to see more of Orko. Stratos grabs the jester and they ahead out to locate the dragons and see if they can guide them back to the forest.
Wow, there is really just not a lot happening here. We’ve had this before where an episode feels like the women’s match before the main event of a WWE show and that seems to be where we are again. The council is meeting, Skeletor is annoyed and we have this silly dragons versus serpenators thing happening.
Stratos and Orko do eventually return with the real dragons and they chase off the majority of the serpenators easily. There’s still a matter of a couple that made their way to the palace, but He-Man catches up to them and nullifies their threat by blowing up the power cell in his robot dragon to blind the serpenators. OK, great.
Randor is apologetic toward the council for feeling like he let them down when he promised security for their meeting, but the other members disagree because He-Man is the best kind of security. Seems like this council thing is going to work out after all.
PSA: Don’t play with matches or your kitchen will look like a dragon.
Final Thoughts:
This was a really big letdown episode. We’ve had so much wild shit going on for the past few days that this was just here to let you catch your breath before bringing you back up in the next episode.
The popcorn match, as we say on the streets.
I was hoping they’d keep the foot on the accelerator with this being such a short season, but they did not. As a singular episode, it’s fine, but as part of the growing narrative, it’s a disappointment. Not really all that much more to say about it. Just hope we get something with more substance and stakes tomorrow.
Until next time.
Joe
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