Hordak (Revolution)

Hordak's first scene comes near the end of "Even for Kings," written by Kevin Smith. Skeletor, rebuilt as a cyborg, has just sworn himself to Motherboard, and in a chamber of red neon she reports to the figure on the throne that Skeletor "serves only us" and is now "a worthy Acolyte of the Horde." Hordak praises her for succeeding where everyone else failed him and promises that the skies above Grayskull will soon teem with the Horde Army.

Diya Mishra's "More Things in Heaven and Eternia" opens on another world. A champion who has watched his people taken hostage challenges Hordak to single combat, and Hordak explains that every conquered planet produces one of these heroes and every one of them learns the same lesson: "I never do my own fighting." A snarling brute takes the champion down, and Hordak laughs: "I hire well."^[2] The episode ends with Grayskull in his hands, and when Skeletor bows and says "At your service," Hordak cuts him off. "I wasn't talking to you." The praise is for Motherboard.

Keith David voices him. Showrunner Kevin Smith announced the casting at Netflix's San Diego Comic-Con panel in July 2023.

In between, Skeletor has learned the truth about himself. Motherboard's rewiring has opened a door in his mind, and Keldor, Randor's banished brother, speaks to him from behind it: "Hordak bamboozled you into believing a lie is the truth." Tim Sheridan's "The Dogs of War" is where Skeletor acts on it. Skeletor comes to Hordak's chamber with a gift and a speech of thanks, because Hordak raised him out of a life as "Keldor, king of nothing," and gave him someone to fight against. "Acolyte, you work for me," Hordak says. "So did she," Skeletor answers; he has already turned on Motherboard.

Their duel cuts between the present and flashbacks of a hooded, blue-skinned young Keldor training under Hordak. "Everything you know, I taught you, Acolyte," Hordak tells him, and in the past he teaches the creed Revolution gives him throughout: "Magic is a cheat," and "he who masters technology masters the universe." It is Hordak, too, who pressed the Havoc Staff on Keldor years before.

That creed is what beats him. Skeletor answers that technology is only half the battle on Eternia, and that Hordak hates magic because he does not understand it, which is why he always needed an acolyte to wield it for him. "I should have left you to die on that filthy island, Keldor," Hordak says. "My name is... Skeletor!" Purple energy swallows him, and Evil-Lyn later brings the news to Adam and Teela: Hordak is dead, and Skeletor killed him.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, A Talent for Trouble (She-Ra: Princess of Power, 1985), 8:23 to 10:17, 1 minute 54 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

In "The Scepter and the Sword," the season's last episode, Skeletor tells a crowd of Eternians that Hordak sought to rule the universe while he means to remake it. Then the episode leaves Eternia for a Horde chamber, where Hordak hangs in a tank with the wound from that fight still in his chest. A masked figure tells him to rest. "Horde Prime will make you whole again," she says, and when he has healed they will return to Eternia to destroy Skeletor, and He-Man with him.^[3]