TV Review – Masters of the Universe 200X – Episode 07: “Lessons”

Posted on September 21, 2022 in Reviews, TV

Original Air Date: 11th October 2002
Writer: Larry DiTillio
Director: Gary Hartle

This latest episode initially features Orko at his most annoying, causing his trademark brand of chaos by derailing Man-at-Arms’ attempts to repair the castle (which was destroyed by the jacked-up sea monster in the previous episode – again, continuity is king with this show) before then deciding that it’d be better for everyone if he simply went back to Trolla.

However, a mysterious old man (i.e. the Sorceress in disguise) in the Grayskull library helps him realise his true worth by showing him some of the key moments from his time on Eternia – including his first meeting with Prince Adam, which is a neat touch.

Elsewhere, Evil-Lyn digs into her own past by paying a visit to The Faceless One to retrieve a powerful artefact, the Ram Stone, to assist Skeletor in his renewed quest to discover the secrets of Grayskull.

It’s a solid episode, but your mileage will definitely vary depending on your personal tolerance for Orko. To be fair, he does show some guts in standing up to Skeletor – which I’m guessing is the main purpose of the episode – but rather than elevating him as a character it actually feels like it diminishes Skeletor instead with how easily he’s outsmarted by the court jester. Sure, dumb and incompetent Skeletor was always something of a mainstay of the Filmation era, but he has been presented as a fairly formidable threat thus far in the MYP series, so this definitely feels like a bit of a fall from grace for ol’ bone face.

Rounding things off, Evil-Lyn returns the Ram Stone to The Faceless One, with him confirming that she’s his daughter, which was definitely a pretty cool wrinkle at the time. It’s always nice to see characters’ backstories being fleshed out like this, and even if we don’t fully lean into the father/daughter dynamic for quite some time (he would only appear in one other episode as far as I recall), it’s still a fun addition to the sneering, sarcastic Evil-Lyn’s character.

From a lore perspective this is a fairly interesting episode, but it’s also, in my opinion, at least, the weakest offering of the series so far. I’m sure hardcore Orko fans (that’s a thing, right?) will get a lot more out of it than I did, but with the exception of The Faceless One subplot, this definitely feels the most like a classic Filmation episode than anything we’ve seen so far.

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