The Highlander

MacLeod is an Immortal. There are quite a few of them out there, looking as ordinary as you or I. But they live for hundreds or thousands of years and are difficult (but not impossible) to kill.

An Immortal doesn't even know he's immortal until he dies. His first clue that something is different about him is that, well, he doesn't die. Once he or she receives the wound that would be mortal to anyone else, the Immortal wakes up and the immortal part of live begins. From this point on, they don't age. So Immortals can appear to be anything from elderly to children.

The whys and hows of Immortality are a bit murky, but in terms of plot it's just a great gimmick. Immortals have all the advantages of vampires without the avoiding sunlight, drinking blood, and being evil drawbacks.

There Can Be Only One

There is a fly in the ointment, however. When one Immortal meets another, the odds are excellent that they're going to fight to the death. With swords. The only way to kill an Immmortal is to behead him, and the beheader absorbs the beheaded's power. Driving the urge for head gathering is a firm conviction among Immortals that at some date in the future "in the end, there can be only one". Every Immortal wants to be that one.

Like mortals, Immortals come in good and bad varieties, and MacLeod is one of the good guys. Helping people, both mortal and Immortal, is what he does. When a young thief breaks into his place, he recognizes an incipient Immortal, and becomes a mentor for Richie Ryan (Stan Kirsch). He frequently crosses paths with a very old thief, Amanda (Elizabeth Gracen), an Immortal who is an on-and-off love interest whom Duncan continually tries to reform.

The Highlander Show History

The Highlander premiered in first-run syndication in 1992 and ran until 1998. An unusual feature of the show was that it was a joint Canadian-French production, and half of each season was filmed in Canada and the other half in France. Which made for some really great location shooting.

Centuries to Play In

In every episode, we are presented flashbacks to earlier points in MacLeod's life. The flashbacks fill in Duncan's backstory, and explain his connection to the guest star of the week or why he is determined to take the action he takes in the present. With four centuries to choose from, there's plenty of history to cover. The flashbacks are quite well done in filling in the MacLeod story; in the earlier flashbacks, he is basically an illiterate young lout, and he accrues education, culture, and a moral sense as his Immortality continues.

Watchers Among Us

Third season introduced a new complication, the Watchers. This is a secret society of mortals who know about Immortals and who, well - they watch them. Their mission is to 'observe and record, but never interfere'. Just why they're recording all this information about Immortals is never quite clear, but Duncan figures out that Joe Dawson (Jim Byrnes) is his assigned Watcher.

Immortals are not supposed to know about the Watchers and Watchers are definitely not supposed to befriend their watchee, but Joe and Duncan team up to handle a new problem, corruption within the Watchers. There is a group within the Watchers (yes, a secret society within a secret society) who believe the Immortals are pure evil and it is their job to exterminate them. And as members of the Watchers, they know how to do it.

A later addition to the cast is Methos (Peter Wingfield), the legendary Oldest Immortal whom most Immortals believe to be a myth. Methos is over 5000 years old and in prehistoric times was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, vicious marauders who preyed on the helpless. When Duncan finds him, the legendary Methos turns out to be a scholarly looking young man, hiding out among the Watchers under the name Adam Pierson, apparently doing research to find Methos.

Based on the Movie of the Same Name

The series is often referred to as Highlander: The Series to distinguish it from The Highlander movie that was the basis for the series.