Count Marzo

Most of the villains in the 1983 He-Man series came out of Mattel's toy boxes, and the ones Filmation drew up for a single script were usually gone by the closing message. Count Marzo is one of the rare exceptions. Filmation created him for "The Once and Future Duke" in 1983 and brought him back twice in the second season, in "The Eternia Flower" and "Search for a Son," each time with his henchman Chimera doing the heavy lifting. John Erwin, the voice of He-Man and Prince Adam, voiced Marzo in all three, so the hero and the villain trading threats in those episodes are the same actor.

He wears a puffed gold doublet and a red cape, with long black hair and a pointed beard. Set his three stories side by side and they share one habit: every plan he makes in the Filmation series goes through a child, beginning with his own nephew.

Phyllis and Robert White wrote Marzo's debut, which aired on November 30, 1983. He-Man pulls a boy out of a hunger lily in the Vine Jungle, and Teela recognizes him as David of Abra, the friend she and Adam played with when they were eight, who should be a grown man by now. The Sorceress explains why he is not. David's people kept the Ring of Remembrance, and just as David came of age to become Duke of Abra, "his evil uncle, Count Marzo," cast a spell that turned him back into a child with no memory of who he was. The spell holds until the ring is recovered, and Man-At-Arms tracks it to the Lake of the Lost.^[1]

Marzo works through other hands for most of the episode. He sends Chimera to block He-Man, Teela and Battle Cat in the pass at Crystal Mountain, then comes to the palace himself to collect "my darling nephew" while Orko is playing hide and seek with the boy. His cleverest trick is the Well of Forgetfulness: he sends its water into the Lake of the Lost, so that anyone who swims for the ring will forget what they were swimming for. Orko flies out to warn the others, tumbles into the lake, and comes out asking "Who are you?"

The ending turns Marzo's own trick on him. In his castle, with Teela, Orko and David caught, He-Man lifts the Sword of Power above Marzo's freezing fog to catch the sun, Marzo runs for it, and he falls into his own Well of Forgetfulness. He comes up greeting the heroes with "How nice... guests!", and the verdict on him is "He's forgotten to be evil." David gets his ring and his years back and takes his place as the rightful Duke of Abra.^[2]

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, The Once and Future Duke (1983), 6:32 to 8:29, 1 minute 57 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

Barbara Chain's "The Eternia Flower" (November 13, 1984) is Filmation's warning about drugs, with Marzo as the dealer. He grows a black flower on the planet Eronia, sells it to Eternia's children under the name the Eternia Flower, and picks a boy named Jahno to spread it, making him leader of the local children and sending him to bring the others in. "You do want the flower, do you not?" is his whole pitch. Orko asks his Uncle Montork about it and learns that on Trolla, Orko's home planet, the flower is called the Black Nightmare, and that Marzo once ran a flower farm there. He-Man and Teela follow the trail to Eronia, where Teela brings Marzo down herself and he and Chimera are packed off to a prison planet.

Drew Lawrence's "Search for a Son" (November 27, 1984) gives him a colder plan. Years earlier, a storm on Dragon Mountain broke Mekaneck's neck and separated him from his young son, Philip; Marzo found the boy and raised him, and taught him a flute tune that hypnotizes shopkeepers. His price for returning Philip is the throne itself: "Just deliver the king and queen to me, and then I will deliver your son to you." Marzo never sees himself as a kidnapper. "When I found you, you were wandering, lost. I saved you, and this is the thanks I get?" he tells Philip, and the episode closes with the boy back in his father's arms.^[3]

Everything after Filmation is additional material outside the classic canon on this site. The 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series rebuilt Marzo from scratch and set him against Mekaneck once again. In "Mekaneck's Lament" (2002) he is a sorcerer the Elders locked into an old man's body after the army of Captain Miro, Adam's grandfather, defeated him, with his amulet hidden in the Sands of Fire. He talks Mekaneck into fetching it, gets his power back and gasses the royal palace, until Mekaneck's stretching neck brings him down. He fights for Skeletor at Castle Grayskull in "The Last Stand" (2003) and loses his amulet there, and in "History" (2004) he is a hooded pickpocket pushed into Evil-Lyn's plan to free Hordak, until he turns on her. Michael Donovan voices him in that series. The Count Marzo (200x) entry covers that version.

Mattel never made a Count Marzo in the 1980s, since he was a cartoon creation rather than a toy. His first figure arrived in 2010, a Masters of the Universe Classics release sold through the MattyCollector subscription, and it follows his 2002 look, with a soft plastic cape and loincloth and a clear red amulet, rather than his Filmation design. It is long retired, and BigBadToyStore has no Count Marzo figure on sale now.^[4]

Neither live-action film uses him. He is not in the 1987 movie, and no Count Marzo has been announced for the 2026 film. He is also absent from the credited cast of Masters of the Universe: Revelation.