Sea Hawk

Sea Hawk is a swashbuckling Etherian pirate captain who sells his services to whoever pays best, the Horde included, until a mate with more nerve than he has talks him round. He captains the flying ship the Solar Sailor, and later inherits his father's old ship, rebuilt into the Solar Clipper. Once he joins the Great Rebellion he stays an ally and, in a running subplot, Adora's romantic interest, without ever learning that Adora and She-Ra are the same person.

He is in only a handful of episodes, and most of them are about him: "The Sea Hawk," "Return of the Sea Hawk," "Treasure of the First Ones" and both halves of "Anchors Aloft," with "The Locket" borrowing him for someone else's story.

Clipped from our own copy of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Anchors Aloft, Part 1 (She-Ra: Princess of Power, 1985), 11:47 to 13:47, 2 minutes. Nothing is added and nothing is sped up. Copyright Mattel.

"The Sea Hawk" opens with him robbing a sea elf storehouse and telling Adora flatly, "I work for no one but myself." He sells supplies to Catra at Horde Harbor and, when she threatens his ship, gives Adora up without much of a fight, managing only "A-arrest her." It is his mate Swen who turns him around, telling him to his face that handing her over was "a pretty cowardly act," and Adora's own line, that no one on the planet will truly be free until the Horde is gone, lands a second time once Swen repeats it back to him. Sea Hawk gives the order to turn the ship around, boards the Horde air cruiser himself, and frees her.

One thing sits oddly. Once Sea Hawk has already turned back and rescued Adora on his own, She-Ra asks him, as payment for a favor she has just done him, to stop helping the Horde and start helping the Rebellion, and he agrees, so a decision he made on his own deck ends up looking bought a second time. The turn itself, driven by Swen and by Adora's line, is the stronger moment, and it is the one that holds up.

The two-part "Anchors Aloft" gives Sea Hawk a father he has spent his life believing dead. Admiral Scurvy wrecks his ship, and Sea Hawk washes up on an island where a masked stranger beats him in a duel, then reveals himself as the Falcon, a legendary pirate who vanished twenty years earlier after giving away Horde plunder to the poor instead of keeping it. The Falcon is too sick to leave the island, and his reason for staying hidden is the sharpest line in either episode: "My legend is strong only because I vanished." He hands his son his sword, his Impact Ring and his old ship, telling him, "You have a legend of your own to create."

In Part 2 Sea Hawk uses his father's sword and ring to free his chained crew from Horde guards, and the crew then spends the rest of the episode converting the Falcon's mossy old Clipper into the flying Solar Clipper. By the end he has his father's weapons and ship and, in effect, his name; Scurvy is handed over for trial before Queen Angella, and Sea Hawk still turns down a literal pile of gold on the way out, telling Adora he's noble but not stupid once Swen produces Scurvy's actual treasure.

"Return of the Sea Hawk" puts the running subplot into words. Adora tells Madame Razz she's afraid Sea Hawk likes She-Ra more than he likes her, and that she can't tell him the two are the same person. Razz's advice is to tell him how she feels; Adora never actually does. On the Horde prison ship, She-Ra walks in on Sea Hawk in a bear hug with Grizzlor and asks if he needs help, and neither of them will admit he's in trouble, in the one stretch where the two sides of Adora get to trade lines with him directly. At the end it's Sea Hawk, not Adora, who says the thing out loud: "She-Ra's fun to fight beside, but I'd much rather spend time with you."

"The Locket" turns the arrangement into a plot device. Sea Hawk gives Adora a magic locket as a parting gift, one half each, that glows to call him when she's in danger. Imp steals it, a child who followed the search party gets captured by the Horde, and the locket's glow is what brings Sea Hawk and the Solar Sailor into the rescue. Shadow Weaver gets her hands on both halves at one point and learns the hard way that the magic "only works for Sea Hawk and me." It's a tidy device for pulling him into a story that otherwise belongs to Adora, Sorrowful and a dragon's patience with Hordak.