The worst episodes of Highlander: The Series
Ranked by viewer rating, lows first. Lit marks on the season rail place this list across the run. Vote on a placement to back it or contest it.
- 01
When Immortal Katya's adopted daughter is murdered, the courts let the killer-- her husband-- walk free. Now Katya's an avenging angel, determined to see justice done at any cost... but can MacLeod convince her that justice and revenge aren't the same thing?
- 02
Richie meets a beautiful young woman who leads him into the world of haute couture. His youthful jealousy causes him to run afoul of a world-class fashion designer, a deadly Immortal.
- 03
When fatal stabbing fails to kill him, Alfred Cahill becomes convinced that he has been chosen by a higher power to wage a crusade against 'perversion', and cuts a bloody path through Paris, murdering prostitutes and pimps, and endangering an old friend of Tessa's who has become a call girl. MacLeod tries to explain Immortality to Cahill, but he can't get through to him, and finally is forced to take his head.
- 04
Donna, a girl Richie dated briefly several years ago, returns with her 18-month-old son -- who she claims is Richie's! While MacLeod reminds him that it's impossible, that Immortals are unable to have children, Richie sees this as an opportunity to have the family he never had and never will be able to again. When Kern, an evil Immortal, rides into town, MacLeod is reminded of his own foster son, Kahani. Kahani and his Sioux Indian mother, Little Deer, were massacred over a hundred years ago by U.S. soldiers led by Kern, then a mercenary scout. MacLeod is eager to even the score. When Donna finds Richie's sword and demands to know what it's for, Richie is at a loss to tell her. MacLeod advises Richie that it would be safer and kinder to Donna and the baby to leave them. When his new-found family is threatened by Kern, Richie realizes MacLeod is right. While MacLeod rids the world of the evil Kern, Richie lets go of the only family he'll ever have.
- 05
After Midori Koto sees her husband, rich industrialist Michael Kent, murder her lover, she kills Kent and runs to MacLeod for protection. She reminds MacLeod of a vow of protection his ""ancestor"" (actually MacLeod himself) made to her family over 200 years before. Flashbacks tell the story of MacLeod coming to the aid of the samurai Hideo Koto after MacLeod is shipwrecked in Japan. Hideo befriends MacLeod -- even though the penalty for helping a ""barbarian"" in isolationist Japan is death. When Hideo is forced to commit ritual hari kari by his feudal overlord for that crime, MacLeod serves as his second. He vows to Hideo he will always protect the Koto family and is bequeathed the dragon head katana sword he uses to this day. Back in the present, MacLeod discovers that Kent is an Immortal and he's still alive. In order not to further dishonor her family's name, Midori returns to Kent. Kent challenges MacLeod, who fulfills his vow to the Koto family and frees Midori from her loveless mar
- 06
Richie's found a new teacher: an Immortal who preaches a message of peace. An Immortal who believes that all Immortals can lay down their swords and live together as brothers. An Immortal who claims to be the oldest of their kind still alive -- Methos. Will laying down his sword in the name of peace mean Richie will lose his head? And what does this mean for the friend MacLeod already calls Methos?
- 07
Duncan McLeod is roused from his peaceful existence with the love of this life, Tessa Noel, when he is challenged to Immortal combat by Slan Quince, an Evil Immortal. An old friend and Clansman, Connor MacLeod, comes to try and convince Duncan to once more join the fray in the battle of Good versus Evil. This episode also introduces Richie Ryan, a kid from the streets whom Duncan befriends after catching him breaking into his antique store.
- 08
While visiting the courthouse to clear up Tessa's traffic tickets, MacLeod, Tessa, and Richie are among a group that is taken hostage by a band of men bent on freeing their leader, Slade, from imprisonment. When Slade's demands are not met, he chooses a hostage to sacrifice. MacLeod makes sure that hostage is himself, and returns from the dead to hunt down the gunmen one by one, as the police watch helplessly from outside.
- 09
A deadly herbal drug takes the life of Richie's friend, and MacLeod suspects the source of the drug is another Immortal, Kiem Sun, who has long sought to perfect such a drug and remove its lethal side effects for the betterment of mankind. But a disciple of Kiem Sun's is using the drug for his own gain, and MacLeod and his old friend must track him down. When it becomes clear that Kiem Sun plans to continue his experiments, MacLeod destroys the remaining sample of the drug.
- 10
MacLeod is struck and "killed" by a speeding automobile. When he revives in the hospital, he attracts the attention of a deranged doctor, who kidnaps MacLeod for his research on a miracle cure for trauma. When MacLeod escapes from the doctor, the doctor murders a potential witness and frames MacLeod for it.
- 11
Richie Ryan tries to protect an old girlfriend, Nikki, from a band of drug dealers. This puts them both in jeopardy from an Immortal, Voshin, whom MacLeod knows from an adventure during the Second World War when he was trying to smuggle Jewish refugees out of occupied Eastern Europe. Nikki complicates the story by withholding drug money she has stolen from the gang, thinking she can use it to make a better life for her small daughter. Tessa, meanwhile, becomes enamored of the child, raising issues for her and MacLeod.
- 12
Richie falls for a con man's ploy when he attempts to find out more about his parents, whom he has never known. The con uses Richie for a place to crash and anything else he can get out of him by pretending to be his father. MacLeod also relives his past in the memories of first becoming immortal and being cast out of his clan by his father.
- 13
An Immortal friend of MacLeod's is beheaded in his isolated mountain retreat where he had hoped - like MacLeod - to retire from the fight for a while. A brain-damaged, homeless veteran is charged with the grisly crime, and an attempt is made to link him to the killing of Slan Quince (the villain of episode one, 'The Gathering'), an Evil Immortal whom MacLeod himself had slain in combat. MacLeod must try and clear the innocent man and unravel the mystery of who killed his friend. Here again we get a glimpse of MacLeod's past, in flashbacks set during the American Civil War.
- 14
A beautiful young woman, Felicia Martins, throws herself to her death, only to revive with the realization that she is an Immortal. She seeks out Duncan MacLeod as her mentor, and becomes amorously involved with Richie Ryan. But there is much more to this "ing�nue" than meets the eye. She is in fact a long-time Immortal, engaged in a wily scheme to trap MacLeod and acquire his Quickening. MacLeod must see through her subterfuge in time to protect not only himself, but also Richie.
- 15
When Tessa is taken by a band of Survivalists who live off the land in the vastness of the Pacific Northwest, MacLeod must call on all of his own skills, honed a hundred and fifty years earlier, when he roamed this same mountain fastness. The leader of these modern day mountain men, Caleb (who is revealed to be an Immortal), falls in love with Tessa, and in the end he and MacLeod battle to the death, axe against sword, against the primitive backdrop of the timeless wilderness.
- 16
The Zone is a burned-out urban wasteland, abandoned by the police, who figure it's easier to just 'let the animals kill each other.' Now the Zone is being taken over by Canaan, a charismatic leader who urges his followers to take the material possessions that have been denied to them. Joe Dawson comes to MacLeod for help -- one of his men, who was observing Canaan, has been killed. Charlie accompanies MacLeod down to his old neighborhood in the Zone and introduces him to Asia, a nurse at the local clinic, one of few people who haven't given up on the neighborhood. After MacLeod learns that Canaan is not an Immortal, Dawson is ready to drop it. But MacLeod has seen the misery in the Zone, and is determined to break Canaan's hold. He convinces Asia that it's time to stand up for their rights, and he and Charlie arrange a meeting of neighborhood residents who want to take back their streets. But Asia is involved with Canaan, and she's used as bait to lure Mac to his apparent death. Canaan
- 17
Jimmy Sang, a former student of Charlie's, is an up-and-coming martial arts movie star. His latest movie is filming some scenes in the dojo. When a stuntman is ""accidentally"" killed, MacLeod is the first to realize that Jimmy's life is in danger. It turns out that the movie is based on Jimmy's youthful experiences as an enforcer for a powerful gang, and now his former boss wants to see him dead.
- 18
MacLeod's old friend Tommy Sullivan is a scrappy little Irishman, a one-time boxer turned trainer, who can charm anyone into anything. He charms MacLeod into backing his current boxer and charms Charlie into playing Cyrano to help him woo a shy waitress. But when a rival manager who was trying to steal Sully's fighter turns up dead, MacLeod's opinion of his old friend begins to be altered forever.
- 19
Charlie and MacLeod come to the aid of Sara Lightfoot, an Indian woman on the run with a baby. She tells them Avery Hoskins is trying to steal her baby. Hoskins and his brothers come after them, and they are forced to flee overland. After a rugged flight through a mountain canyon, MacLeod learns that the baby is in fact Hoskins' son, taken by Sara in retribution for her own child, killed by runoff from Hoskins' mines.
- 20
To save his own hide, petty hoodlum Benny Carbassa, the Nathan Detroit of Immortality, turns MacLeod over to an aging gangster determined to see MacLeod dead before he dies. In the midst of this, Anne returns, having convinced herself that MacLeod will open up in his own time and determined not to push him too hard. In flashback, we see MacLeod's first meeting with Benny, in 1938 at the Coconut Lounge, a club operated by two young brothers who are rivals for the same torch singer.
- 21
Seeking revenge for the apparent death of her lover, Walter Reinhardt, Rebecca Lord toys with MacLeod before she attempts to kill him with Reinhardt's sword. Rebecca knows nothing of Immortals or their combat, and she believes MacLeod murdered Reinhardt. Unbeknownst to her, Reinhardt is still alive, and is using Rebecca in a cat and mouse game to draw out MacLeod for their final confrontation.
- 22
Tessa witnesses the murder of a painter, Anne Wheeler, but the absence of a body leads everyone but MacLeod to doubt her story. MacLeod supports Tessa in her quest to obtain justice for Anne. It develops that Anne was killed by her Immortal ex-lover, to keep her from revealing his secret. After Tessa is taken to a police safe house, MacLeod realizes that the killer is in fact the Chief of Detectives, and he must rescue Tessa and bring justice to Anne's killer.
- 23
Warning comes from MacLeod's old friend Darius, a monk over 2000 years old, that Grayson, Darius' one-time protege, is now stalking Darius' other students -- among them, possibly, MacLeod. Grayson, disillusioned that his former comrade-in-arms has become a man of peace, is killing Darius' mortal students in order to draw the monk off holy ground and into combat. MacLeod must protect peace activist Victor Paulus, another of Darius' students, from Grayson's plot to assassinate him. Later he joins Richie and Tessa in France where they will live while Tessa takes up her new job as curator of a traveling collection.
- 24
A serial killer dubbed The Scalper' is attacking blonde women, including a friend of Tessa's. MacLeod recognizes the pattern of an Immortal who, betrayed by the woman he loved, became a killer. To end the carnage, MacLeod was forced to confront and kill him, back in 1925. Now the killings have started again, the modern day killer mimicking the 70-year-old M.O., killing in the same locations as the previous murders. It falls to MacLeod and Tessa to stop this madman.
- 25
An Evil Immortal, Kuyler, has hired himself out down through time as an assassin -- the most successful killer in all of history. He strikes again in modern day Paris using his signature disguise as a mime. A French Police Detective, LeBrun, suspects that Duncan MacLeod is connected to Kuyler, but of course he cannot imagine that Kuyler once killed an eighteenth-century baron under MacLeod's protection. When LeBrun is wounded protecting Tessa from Kuyler's men, MacLeod confronts the Immortal assassin and puts an end to his centuries-old reign of terror.
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