Methos
From Highlander Wiki
| Highlander character | |
| |
| Methos | |
|---|---|
| Known alias | Adam Pierson, Benjamin Adams, Death, Remus, Caratarix, Haribu, Et-Maru, Metopholus |
| Race | Human, Immortal |
| Gender | Male |
| Hair color | Dark Brown |
| Eye color | Hazel-Green |
| Age | Approx. 5000 years (he was 603 during his first Quickening) old |
| Affiliation | Watchers, Duncan MacLeod, Amanda |
| Previous affiliations | The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Poet Society, Doctoral Association, Egyptian Kings, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid |
| Teacher | Unknown; possibly Pharaoh Djer |
| Teacher of | Unknown |
| Current status | Alive |
| Portrayed by | Peter Wingfield |
| First appareance | Methos |
Methos is a character from the fictional universe of the Highlander movies and Highlander: The Series, portrayed by the Welsh actor Peter Wingfield.
Contents |
Introduction
What started as a one-shot part, when he was introduced to the series in an episode called "Methos", turned into four years of regular appearances in which Methos became one of the most popular characters in the series. It was initially intended that he would be killed at the end of season 3 in the episode "Finale", but the writers saw potential in the popular character and kept him on for the next season. The audience liked the perspective of a cynical five-thousand-year-old man combined with the complexity of the character's dual roles.
Mild-Mannered Watcher
Under the guise of Watcher Adam Pierson, Methos hid his secret. He had seen the rise and fall of many civilizations, including the Egyptian, Roman, and modern eras. Methos was one of the Watcher Organisations' greatest mysteries. His existence was doubted and questioned for many centuries. During his time at a University in Paris, Methos as Adam Pierson "uncovered" the "Methos Chronicles" which documented with varied accuracy much of his life. In order to prevent the discovery of his true existence, he voluntereed to study the Chronicles. In so doing he was able to prevent discovery of the true Methos, and keep tabs on other Immortals that he preferred to avoid.
Just like Superman who has his own alter-ego of mild mannered reporter, Clark Kent, Methos tried to be unseen by pretending to study the Chronicles of Methos, and became somewhat of an off-field agent for the Watchers. Therefore, nobody would suspect that he was actually the legend.
That changed when two Watchers died at the hand of Kalas, an evil immortal. Joe Dawson realized that Kalas (played by David Robb) was looking for Methos, the mythical "oldest Immortal." Duncan MacLeod knew that with Methos' Quickening, Kalas would finally be strong enough to defeat him. Kalas and MacLeod raced to be the first to find Methos. Duncan's search led him to seek out "Adam Pierson". Duncan immediately sensed that Adam was an immortal and guessed correctly that he was actually Methos himself. MacLeod challenged Kalas, nearly defeating him when the police arrived to send Kalas to prison for the deaths of the Watchers. But Methos also vanished, at least for a while.
Return
Methos returned in the episodes "Finale: Part 1" and "Finale Part: 2". This marked him as one of the regular characters in the series, a role that eventualy added some of the most important background to the series.
Kalas ended up breaking out of prison because of Amanda. She wanted to take his head, but he escaped instead. A widow named Christine wanted to reveal the secrets of the Immortals and the Watchers to the press, because her husband who was a Watcher, was murdered by Kalas. Methos and Joe Dawson tried to talk her out of it, but she refused. In a desperate attempt, Joe tried to kill her, but accidentally "killed" Duncan instead. Methos wisely reminded Joe that Duncan didn't try to save Christine, but he wanted to protect Joe.
Ironically, Christine was killed by Kalas. He took the disc containing the information about The Watchers and the existence of the immortals.
Duncan fought Kalas on top of the Eiffel Tower, where he defeated the evil immortal. The tower, being a giant lightning rod, amplified the Quickening and shut down the power all around Paris, as well as destroying Kalas' computer and the disc containg all the information. The secret of the immortals and the Watchers were safe, and Methos secured himself as Duncan MacLeod's friend.
Origins
Methos claimed that he was about 5000 years old, and said "everything before that is a little fuzzy". His birth date and place are lost, because he couldn't remember the exact details. However it seems that Methos was born either in ancient Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt in around 3000 BC. When he was approximately 28 years old he died when a sandstorm trapped him and his family. By the time he was an estimated 603 years old, he took his first Quickening. He then realized that there were many immortals besides him, and he started to learn about the Game.
When he was a slave back in Egypt, an Egyptian immortal Pharaoh named Pharaoh Djer took him under his wing but apparently the ruthless pharaoh killed his nomad wife, so Methos buried him alive inside a sarcophagus within a deep tomb and claimed his throne as a Pharaoh of Egypt. His journey after that was unknown.
He kept many journals, almost since the Sumerians invented writing in approximately 3300 BC. He learned how to write in hieroglyphic, Hyksos, cuneiform, Phoenician and Ancient Greek writing systems.
He claimed he got to know Helen of Troy, Socrates, Caesar and Cleopatra; the English poets Lord Byron and Percy Shelley along with his wife Mary Shelley (author of The Modern Prometheus, better known as Frankenstein), and he rode with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He also claim that he knew Alexander the Great and sarcastically mentioned that Alexander wasn't that great.
He got married 68 times, never to an Immortal however, because according to him, it would be too much of a commitment. He fell in love with a mortal named Alexa, a waitress who worked in Joe's bar who was sick. Methos had knowledge about The Methuselah Stone, rumored to be able to make a person immortal, and tried to steal it (with help from Amanda) to cure Alexa. Methos failed to retrieve the stone and Alexa died of sickness, becoming one of the true lost loves of his life.
He had been many things in life. One of his aliases was "Benjamin Adams", or rather, "the good Dr. Adams", as he was known in the 19th century. He majored in medicine in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1453.
Methos used the name "Adam" in most of his aliases as an inside joke, because he was amused that people referred to him as the oldest man. He didn't care whether he was the oldest one, as long as people were not looking for him. Even when a fake Methos called The Messenger (played by Ron Perlman) appeared, he was rather surprised that someone else was using his name. He thought it was flattering and was happy to let someone else be hunted for awhile.
One of his favorite drinks was beer, maybe because the Mesopotamians invented the drink.
Being the oldest in the gang, he could be very witty and had a great sense of humor and an extremely sharp mind, which sometimes could be annoying according to Duncan and Joe. In some ways, he was pretty manipulative towards his friends and foes. The only person that could match him, in his manipulative ways, was Amanda. Methos and Amanda sometimes could be very cunning, especially to Duncan MacLeod. Fans noted that their relationship was more like siblings or good friends. She seemed to know Methos from earlier times. But he held a very dark and mysterious past, a past that he would like to have buried forever.
The Four Horsemen
Methos had ridden with The Four Horsemen, who plundered and raped villages on two continents back in the Bronze Age. Kronos (played by Valentine Pelka), the leader of the Horsemen, tracked down Methos in order to get to Duncan MacLeod. Methos decided to flee but Duncan caught him leaving, then asked whether Cassandra's accusations were true. Duncan learned the shocking secret that his best friend had an unjustifiably evil past. Methos knew that Duncan's moral conscience couldn't stomach this revelation, though he tried to make Duncan understand.
In that famous confrontation, Methos finally admitted that his past was evil. He told Duncan MacLeod as much, in a chilling monologue:
- "I killed. But I didn't just kill fifty, I didn't kill a hundred. I killed a thousand. I killed TEN thousand! And I was good at it. And it wasn't for vengeance. It wasn't for greed. It was because — I liked it. Cassandra was nothing. Her village was nothing. Do you know who I was? I was Death. Death — Death on a horse. When mothers warned their children that the monster would get them, that monster was me. I was the nightmare that kept them awake at night. Is that what you want to hear? The answer is yes, oh yes."
And in that moment, Duncan decided to put an end of their friendship. Methos decided to put the band together again, and both he and Kronos tracked the remaining members. Silas (played by Richard Ridings), the brutal but naive one, and Caspian (played by Marcus Testory), the insane one. Kronos had a plan to rule the world once again.
In the end, during the episode Revelation 6:8, Methos joined Duncan MacLeod to destroy the Horsemen. The two defeated the Horsemen together, resulting in a powerful "Double Quickening". Duncan killed Kronos, while Methos had to kill Silas, the only member of the Horsemen that he really liked. But it was too late to repair the friendship between himself and Duncan.
Grey World
Although Methos' friendship with Duncan was officially over, it didn't prevent the two from interacting where Methos would talk to Duncan about life. Amanda begged Methos to do something, because Duncan's outlook on life had been shattered by another immortal named Steven Keane. He shared Duncan MacLeod's black and white point of view, and it affected him in dealing with The Game.
Methos wisely told a reluctant Duncan that life was not as simple as good and evil. There were always two sides of the same coin, and also a grey area in between. Methos claimed that he was not a perfect immortal, and there was no such thing as being perfect. An Immortal should just accept his life, and decide what was best for himself. Immortals also made mistakes, because they are just human beings, and mistakes could be forgiven. And as immortals, they had their duty to play in the Game.
Duncan's reluctance to compete in the Game affected him in many ways. He accidentally killed his own protege, Richie Ryan, because he thought he saw an evil being called Ahriman posing as other people. He became more brooding, and tried to defeat Ahriman. In the end, he did defeat the evil being. But Methos had already disappeared again; not even Joe Dawson could find him.
Being Old and Wise
When Methos returned again, the following year in the episode of "Indiscretion", he found himself being chased by an obssesive immortal named Morgan Walker, who hated him for having an affair with his slave back 200 years ago. Methos had no other choice but to hide for the time being and look for some information from The Watcher's computer database. Joe Dawson was angry when he found out that Methos was back, only to try to save his own life by trying to hack into Joe's file, instead of explaining his whereabouts a year ago.
Methos, in his own clever and manipulative way reminded Joe about his Watcher's oath, and that Joe had broken his own vows to help Duncan MacLeod, but not to Methos. That offended Joe and damaged their already shaky friendship. But Joe couldn't stay mad at Methos any longer, because he needed his help. Apparently a rookie Watcher named Amy Thomas was kidnapped by Morgan Walker, and apparently she was Joe Dawson's illegitimate daughter. Both Joe and Methos had to escape Morgan Walker's henchmen and try to save Amy. In the end, Methos bonded with Joe and defeated the evil immortal. Joe patched things up with his daughter, and also patched up his friendship with Methos. In this particular episode, fans thought there would be a spinoff based on this storyline; presumably a "Methos and Joe Show" kind of series, but the idea of a spinoff never occured, so it was just a speculation.
The Alternative Version
Once when Duncan MacLeod was killed temporarily, he was thrown into another reality where Amanda was evil and got killed, Tessa was alive but unhappy, Fitz had died a long time ago, Joe was a bitter old man, Richie and Kronos were alive as evil immortals, the Watchers were killing the immortals, and Methos was just being evil.
Alternate Methos had a lover named Jillian who was killed by the Watchers. It made alternate Methos swear revenge to all the Watchers. He gathered back the Four Horsemen and Richie, but the Watchers killed the members. He killed Richie who couldn't kill Joe Dawson, who was a member of the Watchers. Duncan MacLeod saw this and tried to stop all of it. He fought alternate Methos, and killed him. But seconds after Duncan killed alternate Methos, he returned to his original reality where Methos tried to wake him up.
In the end, it was the wisdom of Methos that put Duncan MacLeod back again to The Game. Methos said that life was about changes, and about accepting who you are, good or bad.
In 2005 Peter Wingfield recreated the role of Methos in the first installment of a trilogy of films. Highlander: The Source, which is due for release in 2006, will follow the exploits of Duncan MacLeod, Methos and other immortals and mortals as they search for the origins of immortality. .
Quotes
-"Live, Highlander. Grow stronger. Fight another day."
-"What do you expect? Einstein? Freud? Buddha? Sorry Joe, I'm just a guy."
-" I was born before the age of chivalry."
-"Grab a beer. There's a cold one in the fridge."
-"Just because I don't like to fight, doesn't mean that I can't. "
-"Don't go, MacLeod. It's a trap, MacLeod. MacLeod, your pants are on fire."
-"Because the alternative is unthinkable."
-"If I'm going to die, you're going to pay me for it."
-"I'm too old for this."
-"That's okay, sometimes I don't like myself."
-"Whatever you need: lawyer, doctor, indian chief. I've got the paperwork to cover it all."
See also
- The 2001 The Methos Chronicles, was an animated internet Flash series based on Methos, a character drawn from the television series. Peter Wingfield was the voice actor for the main character of the short series, which lasted only one eight-episode season. The animation quality was considered by most to be poor, but it has found a cult following.
- Fonzie Syndrome
External links
- Methos:Chronicles – includes Methos' timeline and history
- Mild-mannered Watcher - profile of "Adam Pierson"
- Methos - a detailed timeline of Methos's life
