Kobra Khan (200x)

Steven Melching's "Snake Pit," first shown on March 29, 2003, opens with an alarm in the palace prison and Kobra Khan already out of his cell. He goes straight to Snake Mountain and asks Skeletor to take him on, citing his "revenge against all Eternia for holding me prisoner," and Skeletor, who knows the name, is glad to have him: "Your reputation precedes you." Khan pays for his welcome with a tip about an unguarded entry into the palace Banquet Hall, and then goes where he really wants to be, down a stairway he had been told was "none of your business."

What waits at the bottom is the Void, the prison deep inside the mountain where the Elders and Zodak sealed King Hiss and his army long ago. Zodak comes to Snake Mountain alone and demands that Skeletor hand Khan over, but by the time he reaches the Void it is open and General Rattlor is out. He-Man and Zodak have to fight the Snake Men back together and seal it again.

The episode's best joke is at Khan's expense. With the Snake Men pouring out under his own mountain, Skeletor thanks him, with heavy sarcasm, for "recruiting an entire army of Snake Men to help me conquer Eternia," and the spy who has just been found out can only stammer "Ye... Yes!"

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Disappearing Dragons (1984), 5:17 to 7:17, 2 minutes. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

He is not finished with Snake Mountain. At the end of Dean Stefan's "The Last Stand," in October 2003, the Masters work out that Khan freed Skeletor's warriors from the Eternian prison, and the last scene shows why: he has come to collect from Evil-Lyn. "When I freed you from the Eternian prison, you said I could name my price." She turns him down out of loyalty to Skeletor, so he uses the mountain itself to show her Skeletor calling the capture of his warriors, her among them, "a small price to pay," and she agrees to help King Hiss.^[2]

It earns him very little. In "Rise of the Snake Men Part 2" he greets his freed king with "I, Kobra Khan, am your humble servant," and when one of the Snake Men asks why he grovels, the answer is that "Khan is but a puny descendant of the true Snake Men. He has never tasted real battle or blood." In "Rattle of the Snake" he has the power of Webstor's ambrosia in him and boasts of it to General Rattlor, who has not forgiven him for leaving him in prison. In Larry DiTillio's "History," which aired on January 3, 2004, Hiss sends him to the surface as a diversion, and Khan comes back with news of Evil-Lyn's plan to free Hordak, "information that even your brilliant Generals failed to provide." His reward is to end up tied in vines beside Tung Lashor.

Neither Revelation nor Revolution has a Kobra Khan in its credits.

This design got a figure of its own in 2004, from the toy line Mattel made alongside the series, and the later ones have gone back to the vintage look, among them a Masters of the Universe Classics Kobra Khan in 2012 and the Origins figure, which is the one in stock.