King Hiss (200x)

King Hiss is the ancient ruler of the Snake Men, sealed inside a timeless prison called the Void deep within Snake Mountain by the Elders and the mystic Zodak long before the 2002 series begins. He is barely glimpsed in "Snake Pit," the first-season episode where Kobra Khan cracks the prison open, and does not become a speaking, scheming presence until the second season's "Rise of the Snake Men," after which he pushes Skeletor out of the villain's chair for most of a season.

What the writers come back to across that run, more than any single scheme, is how certain he is. He tells He-Man outright, in "Rattle of the Snake," that he knew King Grayskull and fought King Grayskull, and that He-Man is no King Grayskull. He sizes up every enemy against people he has already outlasted, and He-Man, so far, comes up short.

"Rise of the Snake Men" is the two-parter where King Hiss stops being a rumor and becomes the season's actual threat. Evil-Lyn secretly helps the Snake Men take the key Zodak used to seal the Void, and when Skeletor's own warriors accuse her of treachery, she turns the accusation back on them in front of him, convincing Skeletor to drive off the Masters himself rather than suspect her. The Snake Men free their king in a full roll call, Tung Lashor, Sssqueeze and Snake Face named and welcomed home one at a time, and King Hiss gets the entrance the build-up promises: arms spread, gold hood flared, roaring back into a throne room Skeletor is still convinced is his.

The second half gives him his biggest scene in the whole arc. With Skeletor beaten and the Snake Men marching on Castle Grayskull, King Hiss fights his way down the Sorceress's own cracked staircase, sneers "snake versus bird," and turns into a giant fanged snake head mid-duel. The show does not linger on the blow itself; it cuts to white feathers in the shadow of the hall and the Sorceress in tears, and leaves the cost to register on its own. Zodak, who has spent both episodes refusing every offer of help while hunting the king who killed his brother, finally brings King Hiss down, and the recap that follows calls it plainly: King Hiss is no more.

That ending does not hold. Soon after, "Second Skin" opens with Lord Dactys bringing King Randor a shed snake skin as proof King Hiss survived, and the king spends the episode turning a whole village and several of the Masters, Man-At-Arms among them, into Snake Men with a recovered Serpent's Ring. "Rattle of the Snake" has him digging into his own Temple of Serpos for the Medallion of the Mighty and Terrible Serpos, content to duel He-Man there and walk away once he has what he came for. "History" puts him in an odd position for a villain: racing to stop Evil-Lyn and Count Marzo from freeing Hordak before his own plans are ready, and ending the episode plainly pleased that He-Man did the job for him without meaning to.

He stays as confident as he was the first time. He is never shown doubting that he will get what he wants; each episode only asks how much it will cost the people around him before he does.

"Awaken the Serpent," the last episode the series produced, is King Hiss's biggest gambit: he wakes Serpos, a three-headed Snake God who is the living, true form of Snake Mountain itself, and sends it to level the Eternian capital and then devour the power sealed inside Castle Grayskull. He-Man fights Serpos directly and turns it back to stone, and the episode ends there, with a small closing lesson rather than a final confrontation between the two kings who have been measuring each other since "Snake Pit."

The series ended after its second season, before a third could give that confrontation its payoff, so King Hiss's story stops mid-arc.