Hump Day edition of the rewatch is here! We keep moving along as we near completion of this series and, honestly, I’m going to be a sad little panda when we finally get to that point. We’ve shared some really good moments along the way in the past month-plus and with only a couple of weeks to go, it’ll be bittersweet to put this show in the rearview mirror.
Yesterday was a bust with the only thing worth mentioning being the formation of a new council of good guys from all ends of Eternia agreeing to pool resources in protection of the land in defense of Skeletor and the forces of evil. An easy episode to skip, but we’re completists over here and I’m going to recap it all.
Obviously, I think we can expect a bit more substance today and, even though the episode title of “Out of the Past” can literally mean anything, I’m hoping we get some good advancement on the past arcs that were teased coming out of Monday’s episode.
With that all said, let’s hit play and carry on!
S02E03: Out of the Past
Original Air Date: November 1, 2003
Screen Cap Analysis: Beware the gaseous fart monsters.
We open smack dab in the middle of a one-on-one fight between Skeletor and He-Man. Skeletor appears to be beaten, but, of course, summons his battle wagon which crunches He-Man – sending him hard into a rockpile – and gives Skeletor time to escape. Teela and Sy-Klone arrive on the scene and He-Man tells them that he will catch up to a convoy to make sure they have safe passage. Sy and Teela are to head back to the palace, but Teela is struck by a vision of a nearby village and peels off the route telling Sy-Klone that she will rejoin him at the palace later.
I hit pause for a moment here because I just want to share a hypothesis of Teela’s vision. We haven’t really had much follow-up on her connection to the Sorceress since Episode 9 where it’s revealed that Teela is the daughter of Sorceress and that a life-saving blood transfusion has know given Teela some telepathic abilities. While Evil-Lyn was able to recognize and use that power against Teela and the Masters at the time, no mention has been made since. Perhaps this is going to delve into that. OK…press play.
Teela crashes her sky sled and is knocked unconscious. We leave her with some suspicious looking characters staring over her.
Skeletor is angry about the convoy getting away as he needs to break up the council before it can gain any traction. A council with a full plan of defense and attack would completely nullify any attempt at a takeover of Eternia. He summons three walking skeletons through a portal and then has them jump in a slime pit because as we’ve all been taught in basic biology classes throughout our scholastic careers: covering things in slime make them indestructible. Duh.
Teela awakens in a type of teepee in a village that is inhabited by friendly-looking…um…things. They’re kinda like small bear-trolls with Yoda ears. Just picture fat, discolored Yodas. That’s the ticket. The head bear-troll tells Teela that they haven’t forgotten her and know that she hasn’t forgotten them. Teela, ever polite from all her years of palace manners training is all, “Money, I haven’t the bluest idea who the fuck any of ya’ll are.”
It’s actually Stinkor’s home village that Teela is in. Skeletor is looking for a town to set forth his slime-crusted skeleton warriors on and Stinkor is like, “Yo! Send them on my town of Pelleezeea because those cats have it coming!” Skelly basically shrugs and says, “Sure…Pelleezeea, why not?”
Back in Pelleezeea, the bear-troll is showing Teela a carving of the woman who saved this village 17 years ago. Teela acknowledges there’s a resemblance, but is only 16 years-old so it can’t possibly be here. Bear-troll says a sorceress can appear as any age she pleases. The mere sound of this apparently wakes up the actual Sorceress who summons Duncan to Grayskull immediately because she can’t have Teela finding this shit out.
Sorceress tells Duncan of how 17 years ago she left Grayskull because she had cabin fever and ended up in Pelleezeea where she was welcomed by the villagers. While there, Pelleezeea was attacked by an evil warlord and the Sorceress was forced into action to save her new friends and their home. We also get some background on Stinkor here as he is shown as a young Pelleezeean – then named Odiphus – who snitched out everything about the town to the warlord because he wanted to join up with him.
OK, this thing is getting fucking good now. Listen to this shit.
So that warlord guy was run out of Pelleezeea, but pulled the same shit at all the neighboring villages, a time Duncan refers to as “The Great Unrest.” At one point, a wounded soldier is brought from one of these battles to Pelleezeea and the Sorceress nurses him back to health, but because of his injuries, he has no memory of anything including his name. You following this? Can you guess where it’s going? Because I am fired the fuck up.
Sorceress falls in love with the nameless soldier whom she calls her husband in her retelling. She doesn’t say who or what became of her husband right then, but that Teela is in that village and Duncan must find her before she finds out too much about her past. God, please let there be more lurid young Sorceress sex stories like this is fucking LitErotica.
Duncan grabs He-Man to head to Pelleezeea, but Skeletor’s already beaten them there and he starts dropping his Slime Skeletons to do some damage. Teela’s basically no match for them because these things can SHOOT SLIME FROM THEIR HANDS!
Lucky for her, He-Man shows up in the nick of time, but the monsters aren’t an easy out. They have to get creative and set them on fire so they turn to glass and can then be destroyed. Exactly like we learned in science class. Slime obviously turns to glass when heated. Duh.
The Pelleezeeans are thankful for Teela saving them again and she tells a confused He-Man that they think she’s someone else. Man-At-Arms comes upon the stone carving of the Sorceress and she communicates with him knowing he has questions about her husband. She hypothesizes that he one day regained his memory and left to rejoin his squad in battle, but that after weeks of waiting for his return, she could wait no more and had to return to Grayskull. But, however, the soldier had left with her a gift. A child. Teela. Man-At-Arms’ daughter. Duncan corrects the Sorceress to say that Teela is his adopted child, but the Sorceress says no more. Fucking juicy shit right there. Good for Duncan, because the Sorceress was a damn dime before all this war and shit started.
PSA: Don’t lose your memory.
Final Thoughts:
Tough one to grade, if I’m being honest. I do like the background into Teela and the reveal about Duncan being her biological father, but I don’t really know how much more this will come into play in the final ten episodes we have left. We still haven’t seeing any cracks in the relationship between Skeletor and Evil-Lyn that should exist, nothing further from the Snakes and even Randor’s council has been much ado for something that has only been shown to exist without much of anything else.
This is another episode where – on its own – I’d have enjoyed very much. It’s really good! It’s just the placement in the arc that bothers me because I’m waiting for all this other impactful stuff to happen.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the writers just wanted me to be able to close out a blog week super strong 16 years after the fact. That’s probably what it is. They’re just looking out for me. So we’ll see what happens tomorrow then.
Until next time.
Joe
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