It’s up to David Xanatos to save himself and Fox, who’s now a statue, from becoming charcoal in a chopper crash. But his troubles are just beginning: Demona’s spell turned (almost) the entire population of New York City to stone. The gargoyles are in the same boat, with Elisa turned to stone. They find help from an unlikely source. Meanwhile, Demona roams through the city, blasting people to dust with her laser rifle. Macbeth is also on the hunt. He’s remembering how this all began for him and how it ended for the Hunter. This is only part 2 of 4, so the action is just heating up! Xanatos and Demona will face off, as will Demona and Macbeth. To make things even more interesting, three fae are nudging events to benefit themselves.
Lost? You better read City of Stone part 1’s episode review
Spoilers are in the 20/20 moments. Info from Ask Greg is in the According to Greg bits.
Season 2, Episode 10: City of Stone, part 2
Reason(s) for existence: To continue the histories of Demona and Macbeth. To show that Xanatos can play the hero well when he wants to. To introduce a truce between Xanatos and Goliath to prove they can work together. To pit Demona and Macbeth against each other. To reveal more about the Weird Sisters’ plot. To explore the theme of vengeance and its horrible consequences.
Main antagonist(s): Demona, The Hunter, Duncan
Time(s): November 10th-11th, 1995; 1032AD
Location(s): New York City, New York; Castle Moray, Edinburgh Castle, unnamed locations in Scotland
Pull Up!
We open on House Xanatos’s predicament: pilot Fox turned to stone at the controls. David uses his own mad chopper piloting skillz to stick a tense but perfect landing.
He remarks, “Any landing you can walk away from.” It’s a nod to Launchpad Mcquack from Ducktales. Brooklyn says it back in Her Brother’s Keeper when they crash Hyena and Jackal’s chopper. I like to think Xanatos knew he was quoting Launchpad. It makes things more amusing. Then he points out the silver lining – that Fox isn’t chipped.
It’s all fun and games until he hops out and looks around. The sidewalks are filled with statues. The streets are filled with wrecks after people turned to stone at the wheel. Not much surprises Xanatos. His fiancé turning into a werefox was a bit startling, but he was suspecting that. He’s apparently NOT suspecting this. Now he’s flat out gaping with shock.
This makes me wonder if he thought just Fox and maybe Owen (he doesn’t know Owen’s stone) were affected in Demona’s betrayal. Why would she do that to them, he’s probably wondering. Sure, he knows she hates humans, but he’s different. This kind of stuff only happens to other people, right?
Recovering quickly, as you’d expect him to, and notes that he and Demona “need to have a little talk,” and that there’s no use hailing a cab. No use stealing one, either, with the streets a mess. So he matter-of-factly grabs his heavy-duty laser rifle, the same one he used to shoot at the Pack’s heli, from the chopper and sets off across town. I think I would have tried to grab a bike from a statue.
At the moment, he doesn’t have the time nor the interest to think about how his bid to extend his life cost others theirs – and he doesn’t even get an extra minute of life out of it! Demona is at fault, not him, in his mind. She tricked him. He wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. Had he known this was how things would turn out, he’d never have done it. He’s sure not going to admit just yet that maaaaybe it was a huge, giant, megalithic mistake to trust Demona with enough power to cast a spell over the entire city.
See No Evil
Meanwhile, the gargoyles are discussing the statue of Elisa. They don’t know what it is, but something’s fishy. Broadway and Bronx stay to guard it just in case. Everyone else flies to Jeffrey Robbins’s house. They comment at how quiet things are. No horns or traffic…
Okay, slow down. The clock tower is in a busy part of town. How do you get all the way from there to Robbins’s without seeing statues and noticing that NO cars are moving? They notice the statues once they land. I guess the order of events/discoveries flows better for the story this way.
Robbins and Gilly meet the others and welcome Hudson. Hudson puts a hand on Jeff’s back. Surely the man has to know Hudson isn’t human? Or maybe he thinks he’s just deformed? Robbins takes the circular route to mention the Demona broadcast. Remember, Jeff is blind, so he can’t see the statues or Demona.
As soon as Goliath sees it, he has Lex mute it. No need to guess why people are stone. Oh, now it’s on!
Hudson explains on the flight back to the city that magic only affects those who see AND hear it. He doesn’t say it, but this sets it apart from fae magic, which just works.
Side note: Gilly saw and heard the broadcast. I’d say only people who understand the words can be affected by it, but not many people understand Latin. So I guess only humans are affected by this spell? What about the gargs? Would it touch them?
Smash and Blast
Speaking of Demona, she’s having a blast, a smashing-good time. Literally. She’s blasting the human statues with her laser rifle between smashing them with a mace. Um, that means they die. Whoa, S&P, I know that this isn’t exactly something kids can replicate, but…we’re seeing innocent bystanders who are completely helpless be murdered by a maniac.
It really shows how far down the rabbit hole of vengeance Demona has gone. She’s become the exact thing she hated: a traitor who destroys helpless lives. She’s laughing and joking, too.
It’s disturbing. It gets worse when she blasts the arms off one statue. Will this one stay stone in the AM? Will she turn to dust? Or will she turn to flesh…sans arms? And what about the human-rubble? Does it stay stone like the gargoyles at the Wyvern massacre? I hope so, otherwise there’s gonna be a lot of hamburger on the street come sunup.
Demona is off to see Xanatos at Pack Media Studios, but she takes a moment to shoot Margot and Brendan. What’s that, Greg? Those weren’t them? Oh, sure. Just call it an animation error, mate.
Somewhere in the sky, Macbeth is in his cool VTOL craft. His computer has tracked down the source of the broadcast. It’s PMS. Oops. Better hope the cops don’t have that same tracking ability. But Xanatos Enterprises will just say somebody snuck in and misused the override equipment. Then again, I wonder how legal it is to have that capability in the first place? I’m sure there’s a law against it on the books.
Macbeth is wearing the Hunter’s hood. “Soon, Demona, soon,” he promises.
1032 AD
Flashback!
Demona and the Hunter are fighting. Disney XD edited out the punch the Hunter lands. I’m not sure how Macbeth is remembering this, since he wasn’t there. Maybe he heard about it second hand?
Next we visit Castle Moray. Macbeth is now a strapping young man. He’s trying to talk Bodhe into letting him and Gruoch get married as they’d always planned. But turns out Duncan has ordered her to marry Gillecomgain. Yes, this comes because Duncan is a murderer and a jerk, but it’s also because in real history, Bodhe and Gruoch’s ancestor was Kenneth III (997-1005). Duncan’s grandfather, Malcolm II (1005-1034) betrayed and overthrew him. If Macbeth married her, this would strengthen his claim to the throne. Better to marry her to Gillecomgain. Also, it pisses Macbeth off. Serves him right for surviving, thinks Duncan.
Macbeth threatens to elope with Gruoch, but Bodhe convinces him not to – for Gruoch’s sake. It would be treason anyway.
Macbeth has the agonizing task of telling her to marry Gill. When she calls him on his oath to run away with her, he says she’s “not worth the trouble.” He’s doing the old, “Go! Get!” trick that’s in all the dog and horse movies where the kid is trying to get the animal to leave after he can’t keep it.
This takes a lot of fortitude on his part. He’s thinking of her, thinking in his male way that this will be better for her. But…in his own clumsy way, he’s trying to make it as easy for her as possible.
Next we’re at Gillecomgain and Gruoch’s wedding. She looks resigned, even defeated. The guests look less than thrilled too.
Three of the brides’ maids are…say it with me, identical except for hair color. They comment how their “hero” Macbeth doesn’t look so happy.
According to Garg Wiki: John Rhys Davies, Macbeth’s voice actor, wasn’t happy about the changes to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Then he learned that the Gargoyles version is closer to what happened in history. Turns out the king at the time Shakespeare wrote the play was a descendant of Duncan. It’s not wise to make the monarch’s ancestors look bad by telling the truth.
At the wedding, Duncan is showing off his son, Canmore. That’s actually Prince Malcolm, but Greg wanted to put distance from the play and his version. Canmore means “big head,” by the way.
That night, Gillecomgain, aka the Hunter, and Duncan are discussing the Macbeth situation over a goblet of wine. Duncan wants the Hunter to take out Macbeth, but Gillecomgain refuses. Or rather, he points out how if Macbeth died, questions might arise about the death of Lord Findlaech, Mac’s dad. Gillecomgain is essentially blackmailing Duncan. It’s quite clear when he says Duncan shouldn’t risk his “defiance.” Looks like Gill, not Canmore, has the big head now. And rightly so. After marrying Gruoch, he’s got some claim to the throne, or at least some royalty. Not bad for the scarred son of a farmer.
Halftime!
Since we’re coming up on the middle of the four eps, more complications are cropping up. We won’t see resolution till at least the end of ep 3 for some of these threads.
Overall, it’s keeping my interest in the story quite well. That’s sometimes hard with a 4-parter. The characters are in motion, and momentum is building.
We’re wondering now how this marriage reversal is going to affect Macbeth and help make him the man he is today. We’re also still wondering how in the heck he and Demona are still alive after 1000 years.
What’s up with the three fae? What’s Macbeth planning? How do we break the spell? Why does the rest of the world not realize something’s gone very, very wrong in NYC?
Next week we’ll find out some of the answers. We’ll also see Xanatos and Demona face off, then watch Demona take Macbeth on a flying tour of NYC. Tune in Friday for the conclusion!
I love yor reviews! By the way, I always thought that the flashback parts were just that, flashbaks, I never read them as Mac’s memory…
Aaaand
*****SPOILER FOR THE COMICS*******
Given that Gill is actually the son of Findleach’s (evil)
stepbrother, do you think that fact strengthened his claim to the throne,too, (together with the marriage with Gruoch, of course)?
Why thank you! And thanks for reading!
I interpret them as his memories and her memories, given that the screen does that water effect and shifts to that character’s history. Your comment just made me think of something: what if they’re unreliable narrators? It doesn’t change the story that much, but it leaves room for a sort of an X Files “Bad Blood” type of scenario, where each person has their own story.
Is that the SLG comics? Dang, I only have 3 of those issues! So Gill was a pseudo-relative of Mac and Findlaech. That’s just messed up. That would give him more reason to be willing to kill Find, though, since Gill was probably jealous.
As they say, it’s better to be the bastard son of a noble than the legitimate son of a peasant. So I think any advantage he could scrounge up would help his claim to the throne.