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“The Dragon Invasion” is sneakily one of the best episodes of He-Man’s first season, thanks to a strong script by Michael Reaves and (as usual) excellent direction by Gwen Wetzler. A LOT of note happens in this one:
-Don Roberts (the series’ educational consultant) made one of his best contributions, vetoing a messy food fight between four Orkos in favor of a much more constructive scene that had the four working together, leading to an excellent teamwork lesson later on
-Jitsu appears. Obviously shared with #Filmation early on, he’s known as Chopper in the model sheets, and upon seeing the finished episode, Lou Scheimer personally had the character banished due to him being a pretty gross racial stereotype
-Skeletor gets inside Grayskull!
-When the dragons break Skeletor’s barrier around Grayskull, the effects animation of Krypton’s explosion from The New Adventures of Superman is used
-The confrontation between He-Man and Skeletor at the Blood Falls is without a doubt one of the best expressions of He-Man’s unflinching moral code, and is a great example of why this show-and #Filmation in general-was so special
-This episode is possibly the earliest known example of a retake in an American cartoon being ordered after the first airing, a practice that became quite normal in the ‘90s. In the original take, which was seen in the RCA/Columbia video release
that was released prior to the series premiere, the Sorceress first appears before Skeletor as Zoar, who he is specifically not supposed to know is the Sorceress. It was later fixed, and until the German Blu-rays, this fixed version had the Season 2/3 intro, dating the fix to the fall of 1984