Worlds Without End, Part II

The Joes stranded in the alternate Washington face Cobra's empire in pieces. Lady Jaye, Clutch and Footloose are caught in a red energy net by Destro's Parasite Matrix, while Flint, Airtight and Barbecue escape the Dreadnok police only to be handed over for interrogation. Steeler, delirious from an insect sting, runs into the swamp, and Grunt finds him beside the bones of the Joes of this world.

Steeler and Grunt are taken to the Baroness, a resistance double agent who thinks Steeler is her lost love, while Lady Jaye and her crew face the Emperor's snake restraints. Once the Joes persuade her they are strangers, she sets Destro against the Emperor, starts a Cobra civil war and leads them to the portal home. As it closes, Steeler, Clutch and Grunt choose to stay behind and rebuild G.I. Joe, and the others return to Duke and Doc.

Voice talents, as credited on this episode's closing titles. The Sunbow credit crawl lists the company of voice actors and does not assign roles, so no role attributions are given here.

Liz Aubrey Jackson Beck Michael Bell Gregg Berger Arthur Burghardt Corey Burton Darlene Carr Francois Chau Peter Cullen Christian Czingland Pat Fraley Barbara Goodson Dave Hall Johnny Haymer Zack Hoffman Kene Holliday Michael Horton John Hostetter Buster Jones Stan Jones Jimmy Keegan Christopher Latta Hap Lawrence Pat Lentz Loren Lester Ketty Lester Mary McDonald Lewis Morgan Lofting Mona Marshall Bill Morey Rob Paulsen Bill Ratner Hal Rayle Neil Ross Dan Roth Will Ryan Marilyn Schreffler John Stephenson B.J. Ward Lee Weaver Frank Welker Michael Yama Keone Young

"Heck of a way to solve unemployment."

"Dreadnoks may be cops in this world, but they're still stupid." -- Airtight

"Why else would we call this weapon the Parasite Matrix?" -- Destro

"But, but that's Clutch's name!"

"Yeah, well, I know I ain't dead." -- Grunt

"Neither side will ever win." -- Steeler

"Face it, Des, Cobra Commander's tired of sharin' the throne with you."

"I've just instigated the first Cobra civil war, and I don't want a ringside seat for my handiwork." -- The Baroness

"It really does matter whether Cobra wins or loses." -- Steeler

"They're someplace where brave men are needed... badly."

Transcribed from the episode's closed-caption subtitle track and converted from capitals to sentence case. Speakers are named only where the track or the picture makes them clear.

What does it take to convince a soldier that the war matters? Part I of "Worlds Without End" threw the Joes into a Washington that Cobra won, and Part II uses that world to answer a question the fever raises in its first few minutes. Steeler, stung by a disease-bearing insect, stumbles off into a swamp muttering that it is hopeless, that neither side will ever win, that he has to quit G.I. Joe. The script plays it as delirium, and Grunt handles him like a sick friend, but it is also the thing a tired soldier thinks in a clear moment, and the rest of the episode is spent proving it wrong.

The proof arrives on a rocky slope at night, in the best scene of the episode. Steeler and Grunt come across skeletons in a hollow, one still in a yellow suit, and somebody starts reading the names off them. Steinberg, L., which is Clutch's name. Graves, R.W., which Grunt has to be told is his own, and his dry reply is that he knows he is not dead. A third name, Pulaski, gets only "It's me." The Joes of this world, Grunt guesses, were caught in one of Cobra's weapons tests, and the scene lands because nobody makes a speech about it: the soldiers simply read their own names.

That discovery is what the ending cashes in. By the time the portal is closing, Steeler says the thing the fever had denied: it really does matter whether Cobra wins or loses. Grunt will not let him hog the glory, Clutch signs up after a pause to think about what happened to the other Clutch, and the three of them stay to rebuild G.I. Joe in a world where nothing is left of it. Choosing to stay behind is the boldest turn in the script, and it belongs to the Joes the episode had spent its first act wearing down.

The Baroness is the other half of the structure. This world's version is a double agent in the resistance, and the screenplay uses Steeler's resemblance to the man she lost for comedy and for grief. She sits beside him in a pink robe holding his hand, and later she notices the tattoo on the wrong arm and is told, kindly, that her Steeler is probably dead. [1] When she then calls the Emperor to say Destro is moving to unseat him, and tells the Joes she has just instigated the first Cobra civil war and does not want a ringside seat, it is villain-on-villain politics that suits her. It also leaves Destro and the Emperor to fight each other while the Joes slip away, and we enjoyed every minute of it!

The world itself is vivid. A slave-labour camp on the Washington Mall, Dreadnoks in black as the police, and a Cobra Commander in a glass-topped capsule who is addressed as Your Highness are strong images. So are a three-armed spinning disc that its owner calls a centrifugal persuader and a weapon named the Parasite Matrix, which drains the power out of every cannon in a Joe aircraft. Destro gets a sly line when he explains the name.

The weakness is the last two minutes. A serious decision, three men giving up their way home, is delivered in a handful of lines while a portal closes, and Steeler's fever, the thing the episode began with, is barely mentioned again once the medication has been given. [2] The closing deadline is a fine device, but the choice deserved a beat more than the clock allowed. The cut to Duke and Doc greeting Flint and Lady Jaye at the flooded pool leaves a single line to explain where the others went: somewhere brave men are needed, badly.

Taken as the second half of a pair, it settles the argument the first half only raised, and it lets the Joes answer it themselves.

1 ^ The tattoo is on screen at 17:09, and the line at 17:10 puts her Steeler's tattoo on the right arm, "not his left".

2 ^ The medication is mentioned at 12:54, Steeler is still on the sofa with a cloth on his brow at 13:18, and apart from the Baroness's remark about amnesia and the infection at 13:44 no later scene returns to the fever.

1. The grimmest scene comes in a rocky hollow, where Steeler and Grunt find two skeletons and read names off them: "Steinberg, L." ("that's Clutch's name!") and "Graves, R.W." ("That's you, Grunt!"), then a third, "Pulaski," which Steeler says is him. The Joes decide these were the Joe team of this world.
2. The Baroness's mistaken-identity romance has a tell. This world's Steeler had a tattoo on his right arm, and ours has it on the left, which is when she accepts the Joes' story. Steeler appears only in this two-parter among the first-season episodes covered here.
3. Steeler, Clutch and Grunt choose to stay and rebuild G.I. Joe in a world where Cobra has won. The fan guide's grimmer thought is that Copperhead, who it says also fell through, never gets home and does not appear in the second season. See [Worlds Without End, Part I](/cartoons/1985/episodes/worlds-without-end-part-i/) for how it all starts.
4. The alternate Washington flips the usual roles. Dreadnoks are the police (a blond Buzzer is on the force), Zartan is "Chief Zartan," Cobra Commander is an Emperor addressed as "Sire" and "Your Highness," and the Baroness is a resistance double agent. A fan guide notes that Cobra even altered its emblem for its police force.
5. Once the Baroness is on their side she calls the Emperor and tells him that Destro is moving to unseat him, then remarks that she has just "instigated the first Cobra civil war."
6. Destro's gadgets get cute names: the energy net that drains the Joes' laser cannons is the Parasite Matrix, and he explains "Why else would we call this weapon the Parasite Matrix?" Steeler's fever comes from a mutant insect Destro breeds on the Proving Grounds, with a bacterial infection the Baroness's aide Leila calls strain "D."
7. A fan guide says the Kid Rhino VHS release of the two-parter (volume one, paired with Part I) left out the narrated recap at the start, which runs from about 1:21 to the title.
8. A small mystery from a fan guide: a cat- or rabbit-like animal sits on a platform guarded by Cobra troopers at Destro's headquarters and is never explained. The same guide wonders if it is an Alice in Wonderland nod, given that the Joes fell through a rift into a strange world.