Savage He-Man

In Revelation's second part, Skeletor holds the Sword of Power and Evil-Lyn is bound to Castle Grayskull as its new Sorceress. At the royal palace Skeletor taunts the swordless Adam that he is no longer He-Man, and barely a man, and Adam starts to laugh. "See, the sword is just the conduit," he says. "But the spark? That was always me." He wonders aloud what secret powers might show themselves if he said the words without the sword, and then he says them.

What stands up on the dais in the last shot of "Cleaved in Twain," written by Eric Carrasco and Kevin Smith, is a hulking, bare-chested figure in a fur loincloth with a mane of blond hair, closer to a barbarian of the wilds than to the He-Man of the palace.^[1]

Tim Sheridan's "Reason and Blood" picks up in the throne room, where Savage He-Man wades through Skeletor's Skelcons, swings an axe at Skeletor himself and catches his blade bare-handed. He never says a word. Dee Bradley Baker plays him entirely in snarls and roars, and it falls to Teela, Andra and Cringer to get him out of the palace before the fighting destroys the whole city; Teela, who insists she is not the Sorceress, chants them all away to the Mystic Mountains.^[2]

Skeletor has the sword and cannot understand why the power answered anyone else. He orders Adam kept alive until he has learned the trick for himself, then goes down to the dungeon to get it out of Man-At-Arms. Duncan gives him an answer he cannot use: Adam had all the power in the universe at his fingertips and only called it down when someone else needed it. "He gave it away! That's what made him a hero!"

The explanation for the savage form comes in a forest, beside the remains of a Manticore he has torn apart: this is what happens when the power is not tempered by the sword. "It's all rage, no reason." Teela tries to reach him anyway, telling him they are a family and that she has always believed in him, and he lashes out at her the moment she mentions his father.

The chase ends at Point Dread, King Randor's hidden camp, where the Royal Guards bring him down with spears and chains. Randor, who had believed his only son dead, steps up to him and apologizes for years of seeing only the man he thought Adam should be. "Because it takes incredible strength to wield power," he says. "Yet it takes even more might... to let the power return." He tells Adam he loves him and is proud of him, a burst of rainbow light breaks over the chained giant, and father and son are left holding each other in the dirt.

The savage form does not return in Revelation. What lingers is the question he raised, and it passes to the villains: Skeletor wants the secret of calling down the power with no sword, and the episode closes on Evil-Lyn alone at a mirror, asking to see every time the power has been given up, willingly or not.