Season Two in some ways feels like "more of the same, but different". The familiar bits are all there, but these episodes have a noticeably different flavor than their predecessors. The conflict between the rebellion and the Horde, for instance, plays as more of a rivalry than the struggle for liberation that it clearly was in the first season. There's a less pervasive sense of oppression, even though the Horde still picks on poor farming villages from time to time.

It's also easy to see the influence of external pressures on the show to engage viewers my age at the time. For one thing, we see He-Man several times throughout this season. There's even one episode ("Shades of Orko") in which Man-at-Arms and Orko appear, without He-Man, which is interesting and actually a more fun crossover dynamic. In He-Man's final appearance, "Assault on the Hive", we're also introduced to the Dinosorbs in what is one of the clumsiest product spotlight bits I've seen - and that's in a TV show that was essentially conceived as a massive toy commercial!

The most satisfying episode is "Sweet Bee's Home", in which Frosta unsuccessfully tries to catch He-Man's eye...while he, in turn, gets nowhere with Sweet Bee. The humor is well handled, particularly one bit in which Frosta, her back to him, mocks the flirting He-Man. She mouths his words and shifts her head all snotty, and it's hilarious. Even though the awkwardness of unrequited attraction is a fairly thin gag to stretch over an entire story, it works here I think in large part because they really didn't do much in the way of romance stories on the show.

In that way, it's a reminder how focused the rest of the series was on avoiding those cliches about stories about lead female characters. To that end, I have to say I was both pleased and disappointed by the final appearance of She-Ra's love interest, Sea Hawk, in "The Locket". The relationship between Adora/She-Ra and Sea Hawk plays as much more platonic this time, which does work to reflect a sort of growth on their part, but just the same it feels as though in the effort to keep all the mushy stuff out of the show, they quashed what had been an interesting dynamic to the character.

Moreover, though, there's a great moment in that episode when Adora is about to turn into She-Ra, but the Horde robots actually get the drop on her and shoot her sword right out of her hand! It caught me by surprise, but then no one bats an eye that she's carrying She-Ra's sword. She even claims it as her own! She later brandishes the sword openly as Adora in the penultimate episode, "The Bibbet Story". Bow is probably qualified to work at the Daily Planet.

Thematically, Season Two emphasized being part of a family/team/group and accepting others for themselves, both usually tempered with a lesson in humility. There's more of a conservative bent, though, than the more liberal first season. The first episode on the set, "One to Count On", feels incongruous with the rest of the series. It's a message about self-reliance, in which She-Ra tries to break Bow and the others from constantly expecting her to rush to their aid...which, of course, she does anyway because that's the nature of the character and the show. Not a bad lesson, but poorly handled and undermined by the rest of the series by every time someone remarks how they knew She-Ra would show up. Similarly, two of the final episodes feature pacifist guest characters who are being taught that sometimes they have to fight. At least in the second, "The Bibbet Story", She-Ra defends the right of people to choose not to fight.

The other unfortunate blemish is that there are two people of color in this season; Netossa, a naive young woman who joins the rebellion (she's cool), but the other is one of Horde Prime's underlings, Inspector Darkney. Yes, "Darkney". I don't know who thought up that name and character design, but I just kinda stared when he came into the show: