The Bounty Hunter Returns

At Hawk Haven, Hotwing brings in the last of the arrest reports and asks Stargazer who, outside of Mon*Star, was the most dangerous criminal he ever put away. The Bounty Hunter, says Stargazer, and plays a criminal records tape: he absorbs energy from almost any source, whatever hits him makes him stronger, and he once drained the SilverHawks one by one and held them in his electro-racks until Stargazer put him down with the solar bazooka. On Penal Planet 10, a guard mentions Stargazer's name at the Bounty Hunter's cell. The prisoner wakes, swears revenge, drains the energy out of the door and then out of the guards, and breaks out to go after the man who put him there.

Stargazer finds the bazooka and goes alone; Quicksilver wants to back him up, but the others argue one good shot is all the commander needs. Stargazer tells the Bounty Hunter he has put him away twice before and will again, and has Tally-Hawk X-ray the place. The Bounty Hunter draws him underground, and the watching team realise too late that there is no light down there, and without it the solar bazooka is powerless. The Bounty Hunter takes Stargazer and taunts the SilverHawks: if they want their commander back, they had better come for him.

The Mirage sets course for Hanging Rock, and the pods release. Stargazer, on an electro-rack, tells the Bounty Hunter to save his breath. Seeing five electro-racks left, the team realise the Bounty Hunter does not know about Hotwing. The others keep him busy while Hotwing takes the tunnel entrance, and with a little magic he finds the bazooka in the maze. As the Bounty Hunter says goodbye to the SilverHawks and to law and order in Limbo, Hotwing introduces himself, picks a volunteer and fires. The Bounty Hunter goes down, and the team head home to have him locked in a stronger cell.

The Bounty Hunter breaks free and sets up a base called Hanging Rock on an asteroid, preparing to attack once more.

Hotwing: "Hotwing's the name. Magic's my game."

The Bounty Hunter: "Go ahead, Stargazer! Pull the trigger!"

Hotwing: "Shucks. All I did was aim the bazooka. It did the trick."

Steve Perry's sequel opens on Hotwing, carrying in the last of the arrest reports, asking Stargazer who was the most dangerous criminal he ever put away.[1] The answer comes with a criminal records tape that retells The Bounty Hunter for the benefit of the one SilverHawk who was not there, and Stargazer says so plainly: "You weren't around when the Bounty Hunter used that power to nail the SilverHawks." It is a recap, but it also tells us about the solar bazooka and the electro-racks before the plot needs them.

The Bounty Hunter plans for the SilverHawks he beat last time, and misses Hotwing. It only takes a guard on Penal Planet 10 saying Stargazer's name at his cell to wake him, and he drains the door and then the guards on his way out. He swears revenge on the man who put him away,[2] and he draws Stargazer underground because he remembers the solar bazooka and knows that without sunlight it is powerless. "Go ahead, Stargazer! Pull the trigger!" he jeers. Then he sets his electro-racks for the team he knows, and the SilverHawks, counting them, see the gap: "That means the Bounty Hunter doesn't know about Hotwing."

The Bounty Hunter's design is a strong one. He has a blue-grey face with black markings, pointed ears and gold studs on his shoulders, and whenever he feeds, a jagged red crackle rings his head. The best frames in the episode are of him swallowing a lick of red energy while the squadron stands useless around him, because anything they fire at him makes him stronger! The Hanging Rock backgrounds are all purple and rust.

The standout is Hotwing's finale. Having found the bazooka in the maze with a little magic, he walks in as the Bounty Hunter says goodbye to the SilverHawks and introduces himself: "Hotwing's the name. Magic's my game." Then comes the patter, "For my next trick, I need a volunteer.", and the choice: "Yes, you. The one with the sparks between the ears." In The Illusionist the same showman's routine was turned on his friends; here he uses it on the Bounty Hunter!

The weakness is Stargazer's walk into the dark. The script has him refuse backup,[3] trust one good shot from a weapon that needs light, and follow the Bounty Hunter underground while the team, watching on the screen, work out the danger a moment too late. The likely reason is that the story needs the commander on a rack before the rescue can begin, and a twenty-two minute sequel has little time to get him there any other way. The episode also reuses the electro-racks, Hanging Rock and the bazooka from the original.

At the end someone asks "How did you do it, Houdini?" and Hotwing will not take the credit: "Shucks. All I did was aim the bazooka. It did the trick." The Bounty Hunter was beaten by the one SilverHawk he did not know about. This is Hotwing's episode.

1 ^ Hotwing asks at the start about the most dangerous felon "outside of Mon*Star the Planet Master", a title Mon*Star is also given in The Illusionist.

2 ^ Stargazer tells the Bounty Hunter he has put him away twice before, and the Bounty Hunter, with Stargazer in his power, says he has waited 200 years for the moment.

3 ^ The argument over whether to back Stargazer up has one of the team calling Bluegrass "Tex", in the course of agreeing that the solar bazooka is the only thing that will stop him.

1. A sequel to The Bounty Hunter: the criminal records tape recaps how he drained the SilverHawks in turn and hung them in his electro-racks and how Stargazer stopped him with the solar bazooka.
2. Stargazer says he has put the Bounty Hunter away twice before.
3. The Bounty Hunter breaks out of Penal Planet 10 by draining the energy from his cell door, then from two guards.
4. The Bounty Hunter draws Stargazer underground because the solar bazooka is powerless without sunlight.
5. Stargazer orders Tally-Hawk to X-ray the place before he goes in.
6. The SilverHawks work out that the Bounty Hunter does not know about Hotwing from the number of electro-racks he has left empty: five.
7. Hotwing is called Houdini at the end, after his escape act in The Illusionist.
8. The closing quiz covers supernovae, pulsars and black holes; the Copper Kidd gets every answer right and finishes on twenty points.

Appearance lists compiled from the episode articles on the ThunderCats wiki, checked against this site's encyclopedia. Names we have no entry for are shown without a link rather than left out.