TV Database Gargoyles (1994)

The show lives again! For a second season! With FIFTY-TWO episodes! Phew.

And in the season premiere, Xanatos shows that he's basically a shark trapped in a small guppy pond because he just screws around with Saturday morning cartoon plots for the lulz (also for testing out his Doombot), practically calling the plot of the episode itself (with its revenge theme) a cliche.

Meanwhile, the Gargoyles team retains some nice little details that showcase their character development, like Lexinton's rage at The Pack or Broadway's immediate destruction of the enemy's gun. Just these easily missed small little details that show how fleshed out and complex these characters are in a Saturday morning cartoon.

This will be a fun ride, I'm sure, just trying to pick out the little details on the show obviously meant for an older audience.

If you've seen "Spectacular Spider-Man" (or have ever picked up a Spider-Man comic like me), this episode should be familiar to you by now. You can see traces of Greg Weisman's Norman Osborn and Max Dillon in Xanatos and Derek's character arcs, respectively, not to mention the mutates' tragic origins making them essentially The Sinister Six. The man is like Xanatos himself, planning Spectacular's storyline long before the show was released.

Human trafficking as a theme though, damn. This was definitely Disney's Batman: TAS, tapping into mature allegories under an animated guise. And at 52 episodes? That's a lot of greatness to be consumed...

Basically, Greg Weisman's "Othello" but as a Saturday morning cartoon. Whether it's heavy mature themes of human trafficking or riffs on Shakespearean plays, this series continues to surprise at every turn. I also enjoy the creative use of technology with the Gargoyles' magic and the supernatural element of souls.

Most of my knowledge about King Arthur comes from Fate/Stay Night, so. lol

This was a neat episode though that focuses on illiteracy through the character of Hudson and his newfound companionship in Jeffrey Robbins, a blind author who's well-read and will probably be giving Hudson reading lessons. It's a pretty heartfelt episode that explores the beauty of literature without being preachy, basically the strength of most Gargoyles "message" episodes.

Basically a "be careful what you wish for" episode with the amusing Puck from Midsummer Night (though the only Puck I know of came from Berserk and the only Oberon I know of came from SMT lol).

It's a fun little episode where Eliza gets to experienced the life of a Gargoyle, along with the rest of New York. Eliza and Goliath's interspecies romance also comes to the forefront for the first time because of it. It's cute, the two of them together.

Demona though got more than she bargained for. Sure, she could walk in the day now, but the tradeoff is becoming one of those inferior humans she despises so much. Oof. That's some Shakespearean poetic justice there.

My headcanon is that Matt Bluestone is just animated Fox Mulder working a secret mission to expose The Illuminati instead of aliens this time and got partnered up with Elisa Maza. lol You could totally imagine his "I Want to Believe" posters at his home.

Of course, what seems like a red herring episode that's merely an excuse to have the naive and adorable Broadway partner up with Elisa in a buddy cop episode turned out to left behind more than just a generic gangster name, but more on that in future episodes to come, it seems.

It's a pretty decent Broadway episode though, even if it has that Saturday morning cartoon vibe where the senior character has to put up with the goofball tagging along. To be fair to Broadway, he is at least competent enough to justify tagging along instead of just completely screwing up the case.

PEAK. GARGOYLES. EPISODE.

Just had to get that out of the way. But let's go more into the why.

So, finally, we get to learn that Xanatos has a heart after all, not just a cold and calculative magnificent bastard whose only goal is his endless schemes. This episode is the culmination of every single Xanatos development, period, doing something few Saturday morning cartoons had ever done: evolving its villain into an anti-villain. Initially, I was skeptical about Xanatos' supposed love for Fox when Goliath first learned of it, but by the end of the episode, I'm convinced too that this is genuine affection this time, after all the signs that pointed at his mask falling apart: secretly expressing anxiety away from Owen's gaze when he learned Fox might die for one thing, and giving up the Eye of Odin to Goliath for another (as opposed to pulling a Xanatos trick again to retrieve the Eye in a final scene or something). Even Owen all but confirmed it with his final line this episode: "Actually, Mr. Xanatos, I believe (Goliath)'s right - you've never looked more heroic." And instead of dismissing it as "all part of the plan," Xanatos this time instead said, "A momentary lapse."

But the amazing character development didn't stop with the antagonist either. Goliath has become wise to Xanatos' act (a mere six episodes after the season began) and had anticipated Xanatos' manipulation. WHAT?! You mean he didn't just get used again like a tool until the end of the season? That's insane. Clever writing on a kids cartoon, ladies and gents, and it gets better because both Goliath and Elisa literally called out on the Xanatos Gambit trope, knowing that there's always a Plan D, E and F if Plan C fails. That's some unbelievable self-awareness on an animated series in the '90s on the level of Batman: TAS (stay bitter, Bruce Timm).

And speaking of our favorite mixed blood police officer... Aside from spitting truth bombs this episode, Elisa also gets a pretty cool romantic subplot this episode as she dances with Goliath in what can only be conceived as a Belle costume from Beauty and the Beast as part of the Halloween block party, when Goliath and the other gargoyles are free to roam as themselves. Disney's being coy about this homage, but it fits perfectly for the couple.

I like the Beauty and Beast theme too that parallels the two couples this episode, especially with Fox going werewolf here thanks to the Eye of Odin that Xanatos gifted her. Guess she's more of a Wolf than a Fox now. Hah! And it never ceases to amaze me the level of mythology this series could expand to, whether it's riffs on Shakespeare, the Illuminati being an actual threat, fairies being actual beings, and now, we've got werewolves on top of it all, damn!

And that werewolf is well-animated too because you could feel the strength and ferocity of the beast, not just cartoon-level monster. She easily burst through the door and easily ripped apart the elevator doors like it's paper in a single second, that momentum feeling like a high budget live action movie than a cartoon. That beastly screech at the end as she turns back to Fox is disturbingly chilling too, sounding like a real animal in pain and, again, sounding like an actual movie monster instead of having a cheesy cartoon sound effect.

Overall, if I'm to convince anyone Gargoyles is must-see TV, I'll be tempted to point them to this episode, but it's just not the same without the build-up and the prior knowledge of past episodes because this episode subverts A LOT of preexisting knowledge you have about Xanatos and Goliath, significantly developing them. It's a masterclass in serialized animation that Greg Weisman will expand tenfold in The Spectacular Spider-Man later on, but Gargoyles is just as mind-blowing so far the level of quality it has no reason to have. I'm constantly amazed episode after episode that this was a Disney cartoon because I've never seen a Disney cartoon with this level of sophistication.

Like a comic book, after the conclusion to the previous story arc, the series begins setting up for the next one, The City of Stone arc. Unfortunately, this requires shifting a number of moving parts, including introducing the Illuminati as an actual organization rather than an ambiguous existence; David Xanatos' father, Petros, paying him a visit; and finally, a tricky time travel bootstrap paradox that involved both Xanatos and Demona altering their past in one form or another.

Time travel's always tricky to write because of all the rules in quantum physics. However, while the bootstrap paradox (looping one event's cause of occurrence with the occurrence itself, à la David sending himself the ancient coin from the past) is somewhat of a cheat (à la Deus Ex Machina), because it's Xanatos, the main with a thousand backup plans, I think it's convincing that it's a foolproof plan, one that ensures Xanatos will get that coin no matter what. Furthermore, you have to remember: the man has the Illuminati's assistance. The Illuminati. Brilliant organization said to manipulate from the shadows for centuries? It's little surprise Xanatos' plan worked, at all.

As for the Demona paradox? I don't think it's so much as fatalism and more like free will; she chose to remain that way despite her memories of how horrible her future self's genocidal attitude looked like to her in 975 A.D. It just makes her arc that much more tragic when you see it that way, and I don't think it's a coincidence either, with how convoluted Greg loves his writing, for better or worse.

The way Goliath kinda just shuffles away to his lonesome, thinking that nothing has changed for Demona despite his attempt, it's just pretty depressing. At least if it had been fatalism, he could have blamed it on some omniscient deity. But it's not, and I think Goliath knows this, as you don't exactly need a PhD on quantum physics or fatalism vs. free will to realize that Demona chose to remain that way.

There is perhaps one aspect of fatalism, however, or perhaps, determinism even: David, despite having concocted an entire time travel scheme spanning decades of his life just to impress his father that he's a self-made man, was still rejected by Petros by the end as Petros saw character, not wealth, as a far more valuable trait, tossing him an ordinary American penny since "it's all you seem to care about." Brutal.

We get to learn more of Demona's past in what's essentially a take on the real King Macbeth, not the Shakespearean revisionism. I have zero knowledge on both the historical figure and the play itself, so this reads more like Lion King to me. lol

Some pretty interesting setups for the four-parter as roles are reversed once again for the Gargoyles and humans. I get the feeling that this arc will either be Demona's redemption arc or at least make her more sympathetic. You could easily see here why the series of misunderstandings led to her hatred of humans, but at the same time, it's also kinda her fault what happened to the Gargoyles, something she's unwilling to admit.