In the thirty-sixth episode of the second season of Gargoyles, the team travels to Norway to deal with the Eye of Odin. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Gargoyles.Â
I just love this show so much because… well, there have been lots of reasons. I’ve written about them. But let’s just talk about how ridiculous this is, and yet it works within the context of Gargoyles as a whole. The story of “Eye of the Storm” is fantastical in nature, and it’s one of the rare few where science and fantasy don’t intersect. In a general sense, it’s a continuation of the logic that if gargoyles are real, then why can’t a ton of other myths and legends and possibilities be real, too? So fuck it, Odin is now a real god, and the Eye of Odin is EXACTLY WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. Goliath was carrying around the dude’s eye THE ENTIRE TIME.
So when Odin – who I thought was some random warlock at first – approaches Goliath and offers to trade a coat for a priceless magical artifact, I assumed the worst. I mean, how could I not? It seemed like such a shady, one-sided proposal. In hindsight, however… y’all, HE WAS GENUINELY OFFERING A COAT TO ELISA SO THAT HE COULD GET HIS EYE BACK. He wasn’t trying to cheat them! Of course, Goliath’s ethical refusal – responsibility means doing things that you may hate doing!!! – sets off Odin, and… seriously, this episode feels so different once you know the ending. It’s less about a power struggle and more about these people poorly communicating with one another and then escalating things to an almost irreparable point.
It’s also about power, though, and I don’t want to ignore that. I got the sense that Odin wanted his eye back because of how careless other people had been with it. Look how much destruction was wrought by Fox and the Archmage! Goliath’s refusal to hand it over must have looked familiar to Odin, and I’m guessing he had had it. So he brought his full wrath down on Goliath, and Goliath believed that he wouldn’t be susceptible to the infectious nature of the Eye of Odin.
Oh, Goliath. You can tell that he meant well, and in the early stages after his transformation, he does do well. He protects Gunter and Gunter’s father, the Norwegian humans that Eliza befriends in this episode. He finds them a safe place to hide from Odin’s retribution EXCEPT HE DOESN’T. I can’t even talk about that, y’all, without acknowledging that Goliath started controlling these people way earlier than I had realized at the time. He was using his power to create the very storms he said he was protecting these people from. IT’S SO MESSED UP! But that’s how power affected him; he abandoned his gargoyle morals in order to feel superior to those he was “protecting.” It’s a really scary transformation to watch happen to someone the audience is meant to like a lot, but I thought it was a great idea to show that even the hero can do flawed things with perfectly good intentions.
Also: talk to your villains. Like, really talk to them. They might not actually be villains in the first place.
The video for “Eye of the Storm” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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