In the tenth episode of the first season of Gargoyles, COULD EVERYONE JUST LEAVE THE GARGOYLES ALONE, OKAY? If you’re intrigued, then it’s time for Mark to watch Gargoyles.
I want to know what Xanatos’s endgame is, because he is just as perplexing as Macbeth, if more so because his goal isn’t as singular as catching Demona. (What’s up with that alliance, by the way?) He’s an antagonist who likes to pretend that he’s being friendly and supportive, but his true motives prove that he’s slimy and manipulative. More than anything else, I just couldn’t believe that he’d actually have the nerve to tell Goliath that he was the gargoyles’ best friend. You stole their castle and INSTALLED IT ON TOP OF YOUR SKYSCRAPER. You hired a man to kidnap them and imprison them! Everything you do is obvious proof that you aren’t their best friend. So why would he think that this would work?
My guess is that he wanted to purposely exacerbate relations with the gargoyles, all out of this bizarre need to prove to himself that he still had the edge he had before he went to prison for a few months. Knowing the end reveal – that Xanatos himself was in an exo-skeleton suit that’s built to look like Goliath – makes “The Edge” all the more disturbing. That means he stole his own gift to the MoMA so that the city of New York would owe him a debt. Let’s discard the gargoyles plot and just analyze that, because WHAT THE FUCK, Y’ALL. This man is so gross and manipulative! I can’t see him being the best friend of anyone, let alone the people he’s been exploiting this whole time. What is wrong with him???
He thinks only about himself. I wonder, then, if his very public “theft” of the Eye of Odin was a scheme to trick the gargoyles into revealing themselves to the public. Y’all, I’ve been paying attention to every moment where someone else in NYC sees a gargoyle, and we’re now up to THOUSANDS OF FUCKING PEOPLE. Xanatos had to know that any fight with the gargoyles would have drawn a lot of attention; at this point in this series, we were looking at them being more than just a quiet rumor. News of living gargoyles had spread all over town! So, a huge fight in the skies about Manhattan is a bad idea, right?
Well, then how about a fight ON THE STATUE OF LIBERTY? The only reason I’m focusing on this is because of that moment when Xanatos realizes he’s beat. Initially, I assumed that was also a robot, so it had calculated its tactical odds and known it would be destroyed. But that was a human decision. Could Xanatos risk being caught in the wreckage of a fight at the Statue of Liberty? No, but perhaps he could claim ignorance. Perhaps he could rely on the public paranoia over gargoyles – living or robotic – and save himself.
Which he does, y’all. I’m glad that Goliath feels like he’s secured a victory against Xanatos and the Steel Clan, but at the same time, I worry about the unseen implications of this. This isn’t the end, is it?
The video for “The Edge” can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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