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I am Methos. You live to serve me. Never forget that.
~ Methos
Not many people can claim to have been on the same stage as both Julius Caesar and The Rolling Stones.
~ Methos

Methos is an Immortal in the TV series Highlander. He is an ally, friend, and sometimes mentor to the hero Duncan MacLeod. He has a cynical, practical air in the idealistic atmosphere of the very honorable, and occasionally naive, younger of the two Highlanders.

He was portrayed by Peter Wingfield, who also played Alex in Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge and Marcus Becker in Smallville.

Background[]

At over 5000 years old, he is likely the oldest living Immortal, and has seen much of known Human history unfold. He was said to recall nothing of his life before taking his first head. Many Watchers consider him strictly a legend, though Joe Dawson knows who he is.

As far as most Watchers are concerned, he is in fact one of their own, a low-level researcher employed to find evidence of Methos himself, which they consider to be a wild-goose chase and no path to higher office. This suits Methos just fine, as it not only allows him to keep his own confirmed existence a secret, but also keeps him aware of the locations and activities of other Immortals, this to keep clear of their path.

Methos tired of the Game long ago, and in times past, befriended the Watcher meant to observe him, eventually joining to serve his purpose of a quiet life. Without this, he rightly fears that, like master gunslingers in the American Old West, he would face a never-ending string of challengers, one of whom was bound to get lucky.

History[]

Pursued by Kalas[]

His presence in the series began when an Immortal named Kalas, an old and bitter foe of Duncan MacLeod's, began a campaign to destroy those he cared about as a way of punishing him for destroying his once-beautiful singing voice, though in fair combat. Kalas was killing mortal rivals and former lovers with abandon, and had once abused Holy Ground itself to gain power. At some point, Kalas decided to pursue the legend of the oldest Immortal, capturing and torturing the Watcher assigned to him when the man slipped up and got noticed. Through him, Kalas found out about a Watcher researcher named Adam Pierson (Adam being a personal joke of Methos, and often used it in his assumed names) who would have any real information of Methos' possible whereabouts. Since Immortals could sense one another, Methos knew it was only a matter of time before Kalas found him and figured out his ruse. Taking a gamble, he revealed himself deliberately to Duncan MacLeod. When Methos then nearly lost a duel to Kalas, he managed to escape and picked a fight with MacLeod, thinking that the two of them together could take Kalas, Duncan refused to take the oldest Immortal's head. Since Kalas had committed several real crimes during his pursuit of the two Immortals, Methos then simply called the police and him arrested, which placed the cautious Kalas in a bind, and in prison while he figured out a way to free himself without drawing more attention. Methos, for his part vanished entirely, something he was very good at.

When Kalas was then helped to escape prison, he lucked into a project Methos had been working on with a fellow Watcher, a data disc containing vast amounts of data on Immortals and their Watchers, something forbidden by Watcher policy, since an interactive database was more accessible than compartmentalized libraries. With the existence of Immortals set to be exposed, and the accompanying chaos that would follow, Methos reemerged to help. Joe Dawson was made privy to his secret and did not reveal it to the Watchers.

Eventually MacLeod overcame Kalas atop the Eiffel Tower during a lightning storm, that combined with the massive Quickening, created an overload that blacked out much of the area and destroyed the disc and the computer it was in as well.

A few months later, Methos, arrived at MacLeod's dojo in the US to warn him about a former lover who had once tried to kill him. She was going to be setting up a branch of her modeling agency in MacLeod's town, and since he was too honorable and chivalrous to do anything about it, he thought to play back up. When, as expected, MacLeod failed to kill Kristin Gilles, he shed his hesitant masquerade and finished her off himself, because 'someone had to do it.'

The two also joined forces to save Joe Dawson from judgment by the Watchers Council for revealing their existence to and aiding MacLeod, dismissing what Kalas and James Horton did to bring this about.

Comes A Horseman[]

But it was when Methos was teaching at a Seacouver-area college that MacLeod finally learned that his friend was more than just an over-worldly, jaded cynic. He had in fact once been one of the greatest killers in all of Human history, a barbarian who delighted killing. When the Immortal Duncan knew as Old West outlaw Melvin Koren showed up while stalking Duncan's friend Cassandra, MacLeod learned from her of a group that called themselves The Four Horsemen, possibly the inspiration for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Christian Bible's Book of Revelation. Led by Koren, who called himself Kronos, they rode for centuries over Ancient Eurasia, killing and destroying as they pleased. Kronos was Pestilence, the brutish Silas War, and the insane, perhaps cannibalistic Caspian was Famine. Cassandra's village had been slaughtered by the Horsemen, and she herself kept as a personal slave by the one called Death, who fooled her into believing that he had made her Immortal and could also take that away. A devotion developed as Cassandra saw a better man inside the monster, but this was broken when she was handed off to Kronos, so Death could prove that she meant nothing to him, and thereby protect himself and her. She fought off Kronos and escaped the Horsemen entirely, with Methos watching her but allowing her to leave, "She escaped across the wilderness, and she must have died a dozen times from heat and thirst before she found a village that would take her in. And I bet it was worth it just to get away from us." Realizing at some point after her escape, Death's deception regarding her Immortality, and the fact that he had enslaved her, Cassandra swore revenge.

In the present day, when Duncan sought Methos' advice concerning all this, Cassandra confirmed that Methos had been Death of The Horsemen. At first blatantly lying about ever having known Cassandra, Methos fled and was found by Kronos, who demanded his head for leaving the group - sometime between the death of Julius Caesar and the birth of Christ. But Methos proved why he had survived all that time when he made Kronos a counter-offer: he revealed Caspian and Silas were alive, he would guide Kronos to them, and Kronos said simply that he got to live.

Told to kill Duncan by Kronos in exchange for killing Cassandra, Methos instead had a confrontation with the Highlander, who demanded to know the truth of his past. Angered, Methos finally revealed his past to MacLeod, laughing as he did so; "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 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? " MacLeod walked away and declared their friendship done with. Methos, his allegiances unknown, went with Kronos to reunite The Four Horsemen.

They found Caspian in a madhouse in Romania, controllable only by Kronos. Silas was found in a remote Eastern European forest, brutish but oddly gentle, preferring the company of animals who never mocked or belittled him. Theirs was still a fractious alliance, but a combination of Kronos' resources and Methos' planning united them in a plot to start their reign of terror anew by unleashing a deadly biological agent Kronos had developed in the heart of Bourdeaux, France. Either seeking to stop Kronos or merely hedging his bets, Methos left clues for Duncan and Cassandra to find, although again, it has been argued that he was only seeking to control and track their movements by doing this.

As the pair drew close, Cassandra was captured and MacLeod forced to do battle with both Caspian and Silas, beheading the former and barely escaping from the latter. When MacLeod found the abandoned submarine dock the Horsemen used as their base, he battled Kronos while Methos fought Silas. Methos bitterly regretted killing Silas, the only member of the group he actually liked, while almost hissing at Kronos that they were not 'brothers'. A ferocious twin quickening began as a result of two of the oldest Immortals being defeated, which left both Methos and Duncan too weak to move. Cassandra had to be persuaded by MacLeod not to use that moment to avenge herself on a weeping Methos. He later told to MacLeod that Cassandra was one of his thousand regrets.

Later in the series[]

The next several months saw Methos facing threats from his own past, inclufing the Immortal who had once been the poet Byron. In that adventure, it was revealed how Methos had been in a Swiss chalet, weathering the grim and eventful summer which, among other things, inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein, based partly on witnessing an Immortal duel. He also aided Joe Dawson in rescuing Joe's daughter Amy Brennan-Thomas from another vengeanful Morgan Walker, as well as falling in love with a mortal woman named Alexa Bond who was suffering from terminal illness. His search for the legendary Methuselah Stone turned out to be not to make himself invincible, but to save his lover's life.

But he watched with concern, both before and after Kronos, as the sanity and well-being of Duncan MacLeod came under repeated attack, as much by the weariness of an Immortal life as by foes. One foe, perhaps older than any Immortal, would nearly undo the man Methos admired so much.

The Dark Side Of Duncan MacLeod[]

Duncan attempted to save a friend, Coltec, an immortal who had undergone a Dark Quickening. It's not too much of a stretch to say, had Methos been there, he would have urged MacLeod to abandon hopes of saving Coltec long before he did. Ultimately, this is what happened anyway, with the consequence of MacLeod turning completely evil. In this new mindset, he attempted to kill his protege, Richie Ryan, destroyed the lives of some innocents for sport, finally luring in and killing an Immortal who tried to aid him. At great risk, Methos talked Joe Dawson out of killing MacLeod in order to stop the spread of his madness. Facing death at the hands of the newly maniacal MacLeod, even when on Holy Ground, Methos found what little was left of his friend and urged him to seek out a sacred spring he knew of. There, MacLeod confronted and purged himself of the evil that was not his own and began to recover. This incident offered a cryptic look into the unknown past of the Oldest - Methos never answered how he knew of this spring, though it was perhaps implied that he himself had once used it.

One day, MacLeod asked both Methos and Joe about the existence of  demons, a concept they both dismissed soundly as unreal for the most part and likely involving Immortals where there was truth. Yet suddenly MacLeod was jumping at shadows, seeing dead foes walking, most especially James Horton of the Hunters and the recently-dispatched Kronos. MacLeod learned he was perhaps a fated Champion Of Light meant to struggle with and defeat the millennial demon Ahriman. Needless to say, these claims did nothing to disabuse his friends of the idea that he was losing his grip. The worst came when the entity/demon also started using the form of Richie Ryan, and in a nightmarish sequence, Duncan faced Richie, Kronos, and Horton, each with swords drawn, taunting as they circled him. Perhaps the naivete Methos often bemoaned in MacLeod had been passed to his student, because, despite two prior instances of facing a disturbed MacLeod, and knowing his mentor's current state, Richie approached Duncam, who took him for the demon and beheaded him. In despair and agony, MacLeod, asked the arriving Joe and Methos to behead him, an offer Methos absolutely refused.

In time, MacLeod prevailed over the demon and fulfilled that part of his destiny, but it was well over a year before he saw Methos again. In the series' finale, a spiritually exhausted MacLeod was prepared to give up his life in order to gain the release of his remaining friends from yet another long-term revenge seeker. Even when Methos escaped and pointed out the foolishness and probable futility of this gesture, nothing could dissuade the broken hero, tired of the repetitious nature of this sort of thing and the cost involved. But when MacLeod was shot and killed (temporarily), he found himself gaining a new perspective not only on himself, but on Methos as well.

Methos Goes To Pottersville[]

In a vision, MacLeod saw his late friend Hugh Fitzcairn, now claiming to be an angel. "Fitz" also poo-poohed Duncan's feelings of worthlessness, and showed him a world where he had never been born. His non-existence impacted several friends, and Methos was very much among them.

In this altered world, two great forces of evil walked without fear or restraint: James Horton and Kronos. It can be speculated that Kalas met his end in this world at the hands of Horton's followers, but that would be no comfort to the Oldest. Absent a champion to turn to and confide the Watchers' secrets in (Connor MacLeod's fate in this world is never even broached), Joe Dawson was isolated, kicked out of the Watchers, and put out on the streets, a bitter shell of a man. The Watchers were now merely Hunters, and Methos felt increasingly paranoid with good reason. Also absent an admired hero, the Oldest stopped trying to right the situation and hid in his identity as Adam Pierson. His mortal lover, Jillian O'Hara, naively believing Horton's assurances, revealed his existence, quickly leading to her death and almost Methos' as well. At the last second, Kronos rescued him, and the Horsemen were reborn. Still worse, the two took on a protege, a Richie Ryan to replace Silas and Caspain who had been killed by the Watcher/Hunters. Richie, a petty thug, was trained as their protege. At first he did whatever he was told, but ultimately proved himself less than ruthless when he refused to kill Joe Dawson and was beheaded. While partly needing Joe' s information about The Watchers, Methos, who had once again become the coldly ruthless Death tortured his other-world friend. Able to emerge into this alternate universe, though Fitz declared it pointless, Duncan dueled and was about to kill Methos, ending the vision rather than producing a Quickening. Fitz also implied that the war between Kronos and Horton could easily consume the entire world. Thanking his fallen friend, a re-energized MacLeod awoke and joined with Methos to save their friends, Methos dispatching henchmen while Duncan dealt with his old foe, Liam O'Rourke. His friends, including Methos, made no bones about how good it was to have him back in the game, both literally and figuratively.

Post-Series[]

Methos was the star of his own Wingfield-voiced Flash series, and a few novels and audio plays. He was mentioned but never seen in Amanda's spin-off, Highlander : The Raven. He and Joe made an extended cameo in the feature film Highlander : Endgame first offering information and then rescue when Duncan's quest to find lost kinsman Connor MacLeod hit several roadblocks. They also advised that he not try and confront the monstrous Jacob Kell, advice that Duncan as expected did not follow.

The canonical status of the film Highlander: The Source is in dispute, both because of contradictions to series' canon, and for the film's universally-poor reception. In it, Methos joins with MacLeod in a post-apocalyptic quest to find the power that created their kind, and, after their immortality fades away, seemingly sacrifices himself to allow MacLeod to complete their journey. The events of this are mostly thought of as occurring in some kind of AU, and are not highly regarded.

Appearances in other media[]

Big Finish Highlander Audio Series

  • Brothers
  • All the King's Horses
  • The Pain Eater
  • The Promise

Movies

  • Highlander: Endgame
  • Highlander: The Source

Comic Books

  • Highlander Volume 3: Armageddon

Books

  • An Evening at Joe's
  • The Captive Soul
  • Zealot

Other

  • Highlander: Reunion
  • Highlander: The Game
  • The Watcher's Chronicles CD-ROM

Quotes[]

  • "Not many people can claim to have been on the same stage as both Julius Caesar and The Rolling Stones"
  • "It's not just a matter of who's the best fighter. It is about passion and hate."
  • "Live, Highlander. Grow stronger. Fight another day."
  • "A man who was born long before the age of chivalry."
  • "Do you think it takes courage to do what you do? Face another immortal with a sword knowing only one of you will live? You try being her!! You try living one year knowing that your time is running out. Knowing that when it comes to the final fight, however much you train, whatever tricks you still have, you still lose."
  • "That's the way it is for them. So little time for them to see anything or do anything."
  • "What do you expect? Einstein? Freud?...Buddha? Sorry, Joe. I'm just a guy."
  • "Because the alternative is unthinkable."
  • "I've known a lot of immortals in five thousands years, MacLeod. Of them all, you were the best I've seen."
  • "I'm too old for this."
  • "I'm five thousand years old, I don't know who I am anymore."
  • "One of a thousand regrets, MacLeod. One of a thousand regrets."
  • "It's good to be a myth."
  • "Just because I don't like to fight, doesn't mean I can't."
  • "We lived violent lives, MacLeod. Some of that's bound to stay with us."
  • "I saw Christ. I saw him preach and perform miracles. You, Giovanni, you self-centered son of a bitch, are no Christian!"
  • "Duncan MacLeod. Mi casa es su casa. Have a beer."

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • Methos/Adam Pierson was written to be a one-shot character for the episode Methos, he was intended to be killed off during the second part of Finale. Massive viewer popularity for the character convinced the producers to add him to more episodes.
  • Many fans had hoped that the season six episode "Indiscretions" was a back door pilot for a spin-off series featuring Methos and Joe. There were plans to develop such a spin-off back in early 2000, but the show never materialized.
  • Methos claims to have known Helen of Troy, Socrates, Julius Caesar, Jesus, and Cleopatra. He rode with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as well as claiming to have once shared 'the stage' with the Rolling Stones.
  • Methos has a penchant for beer, while not ever remembering a hangover.

Navigation[]

           Highlander-movie-logo Villains

Films
The Kurgan | General Katana | Kane | Marcus Octavius | Kyala

TV Series
Xavier St. Cloud | Ahriman | Kronos | Antonius Kalas | Methos | Arthur Drake | Julian Heller | Felicia Martins | James Horton | Horsemen of the Apocalypse | The Hunters | Morgan Walker | Vladimir Rankov | Ivan Kristov | Ernst Daimler

Comics
Tasya Desny | Idima Nahru | John Hooke

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