Gone But Not Forgotten: Gargoyles – An animated gem of the ’90s

After-school cartoons were never cooler than they were in the nineties. Batman: The Animated Series set the tone for how a cartoon could aim higher than just being kiddie fare. But, in the mid-nighties, Disney made an incredible animated series of their own, Gargoyles, which told a highly serialized story about nocturnal creatures which come alive at night and turn to stone by day. To this day, fans of the series continue to beg Disney for a revival series on Disney+. Unfortunately, the House of Mouse has yet to grant the request, but if the passion remains, we could see another Gargoyles series down the road.

Gargoyles had the following synopsis: In the Dark Ages, there was a race of heroic warrior monsters known as Gargoyles. These creatures existed as stone during the day, but become flesh and blood at night. One Scottish clan made an alliance with humans to help protect a castle by night if the humans would protect their stone forms by day. The uneasy alliance was shattered when human prejudice provoked a betrayal that allowed the castle to be sacked and most of the resident clan destroyed, leaving only six adult survivors and a rookery of unhatched eggs. A further misunderstanding during the clan’s retaliation on the invaders and rescue of their hostages left the clan frozen in stone by a magic spell that would only be broken when the “castle rises above the clouds.” For a thousand years, the castle laid abandoned and the clan condemned by this curse. In 1994, a wealthy multibillionare named David Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes) bought the castle and transported the whole structure to Manhattan, where he placed it on top of the Eyrie building which he owned. It is high enough to be above the clouds, thus the conditions of the spell were met and the Gargoyles were revived. Now, this clan must adjust to this new age and gain friends, like Detective Elisa Maza (Salli Richardson-Whitfield), who reveals that Xanatos revived them to exploit them for his unscrupulous ends. This is coupled by the fact that another Gargoyle comrade, Demona (Marina Sirtis), is alive from their age, and is now an insane renegade bent on the extermination of humanity. Rebelling against them, the clan abandon the castle and pledge to protect New York City like they protected the castle in the past.

Led by an incredible voice cast that included Keith David, Ed Asner, and many Star Trek: The Next Generation actors like Jonathan Frakes and Marina Sirtis, Gargoyles only ran two seasons but had a cult following to this day.

In this episode of Gone But Not Forgotten, written and edited by David Arroyo and narrated by Jesse Shade, we dig into why this show holds up more than twenty-five years later.