Fisto

Fisto is the Heroic Warriors' hand-to-hand combat specialist, his right hand replaced with an oversized metal fist. The 1984 Mattel figure built the giant-fist sculpt as a literal play feature for punching other figures, but Filmation did not introduce him as a hero at all. "Fisto's Forest" makes him the episode's villain: years earlier, he used magic granted by Skeletor to redirect a village's river and imprison the local Elf Lord, ruling the surrounding forest as a bully backed by his monstrous spider, Arakna.

The turn comes when his own trap, meant to drown his pursuers, pins him under a fallen log instead. It is Raina, the granddaughter of the village elder he had captured, who chooses to risk freeing him before anyone has reason to trust he deserves it. Fisto repays that trust: he helps He-Man break Skeletor's hold over the forest, free the imprisoned Elf Lord, and undo the spell that gave him his stolen power in the first place, and King Randor pardons him once the river and forest are restored.

Filmation never explains on screen how he came by the fist itself; he simply has it from his first appearance onward. By "To Save Skeletor," he is a fully established ally, willing to work alongside Skeletor himself against the demon Sh'Gora when Grayskull's defenses are the greater stake.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Fisto's Forest (1984), 15:49 to 17:48, 2 minutes. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

Unlike most Heroic Warriors, Fisto has no single account of how he got his trademark weapon. The Filmation cartoon, as above, never addresses it at all. The 2002 series gives it the fullest treatment: "Web of Evil" is his debut in that continuity, where Man-At-Arms initially dismisses him as a deserter from the Great Unrest before the two recognize each other as brothers, and his flesh hand is shattered punching through a cave-in to free the others. The following episode, "Rattle of the Snake," opens with him waking in Man-At-Arms' armory to a much bigger mechanical replacement, and the brothers' old argument over the Great Unrest resurfaces unresolved by the episode's end.

The Masterverse comic continuity tells a third story again: Malcolm, having bonded with a "mystic Iron Fist," emerges as Fisto and tracks Skeletor across New Eternia in search of revenge for his severed hand, per Mattel's own packaging copy for the figure. Making him Man-At-Arms' long-lost brother starts with the 2002 series. The name Malcolm came later, from the bio for his 2012 Masters of the Universe Classics figure, which spells it Malcom and makes him Duncan's older brother. One piece of toy trivia from the same era: the 2002 action figure was sold as Battle Fist for trademark reasons, even though the cartoon kept the name Fisto for the character himself.

Masters of the Universe: Revelation does not spare him. In the Part 2 premiere, "Cleaved in Twain," Fisto and Clamp-Champ arrive at the royal palace in Eternos only to be met by Skeletor's Army of the Dead; the two get a brisk, joking introduction before both are dead and their souls claimed within a few scenes. It is a blunt fate for a character the Filmation show spent a whole episode redeeming decades earlier.

One line survives the moment as trivia rather than tragedy. Kevin Smith expected a double-entendre joke about Skeletor to be cut from Fisto's dialogue before the script stage, but had his podcast collaborator and the character's voice actor, Ralph Garman, record it anyway, and it stayed in the finished episode, a nod to the internet jokes the name Fisto has long attracted.