Queen Marlena

Queen Marlena is the human queen of Eternia and King Randor's wife, but she was not born there. Before the crash that stranded her, she was Captain Marlena Glenn, flying for an Earth space program. "The Rainbow Warrior" shows Randor finding her visiting the Rainbow Explorer, the NASA spacecraft she piloted before it crash-landed on Eternia years earlier, and the two reminisce about her choosing to stay and marry him rather than try to get home, even though she sometimes misses her old life among the stars.

"Visitors from Earth" confirms her former rank and name on screen a different way: an Earth rescue ship crosses into Eternia's galaxy through a rainbow vortex, and its crew includes Major Andrea Steele, who immediately recognizes Marlena as her old commanding officer. The two backstories, the crash and the former command, sit together across these two episodes rather than in one tidy flashback.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, The Rainbow Warrior (1984), 19:59 to 21:55, 1 minute 56 seconds. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

Filmation gave Marlena one episode built entirely around her, and it puts her back in the cockpit. Frustrated by failed attacks on Castle Grayskull, Skeletor decides to strike the palace directly, hoping to capture the Royal Guard's leadership and press their soldiers into his service. He ambushes a beach picnic party that includes Randor, Adam, Teela, Man-At-Arms and Orko, catching them all in a freeze ray that keeps Adam from reaching his sword to transform.

With the palace's leaders captured and Skeletor demanding surrender, Marlena draws on her old tactical training and argues their best chance is to meet his forces head-on rather than sit through a siege. She personally suits up and leads the counterattack herself in the Rainbow Explorer, catching Skeletor's armada by surprise outside Snake Mountain and freeing Adam first, which lets him transform into He-Man and turn the tide. She then personally out-flies Skeletor and drives him off using the Immelman turn, an old Earth flying maneuver she had tried to teach Teela earlier in the episode and that Teela had brushed off after losing a practice joust.

Back at the palace, Teela starts practicing the maneuver Marlena taught her, while Adam wonders aloud why his mother chose to free him first back at Snake Mountain. Marlena's only answer is that a mother always knows her own son, and that she has always been proud of him, a line the episode lets stand without spelling out exactly how much she has worked out.

The Filmation universe treats Marlena as the mother of both He-Man and She-Ra, and the clearest on-screen confirmation comes from the She-Ra side of the franchise rather than He-Man's own show. In the crossover episode "Reunions," the Sorceress tells He-Man and She-Ra, through the Sword of Protection, that they are twins: Hordak took baby Adora from Eternia years earlier, with Skeletor at his side, and the kingdom was spelled to forget her. Only the king, the queen, Man-At-Arms and the Sorceress herself ever knew that secret, which means Marlena had spent years knowing she had lost a daughter without any indication the girl was alive, let alone a Horde officer turned Rebellion fighter on Etheria.

Adam brings Adora home, and Marlena's reaction is immediate: "My daughter!" Man-At-Arms has to explain to a confused bystander that Adora is Adam's twin sister, and Randor closes the scene vowing that nothing will separate the family again. Adora does not stay. In the following episode, "Battle for Bright Moon," she tells her parents directly, "I love you all, but Etheria is my world. I can't just leave it in the hands of the Horde," and Randor lets her go rather than forbid it, telling her he understands even though he wishes she could stay. Her parting words as she leaves are "Tell Mother and Father I love them."