r/legendaryjourneys

The movies are definitely important... without them, we wouldn't HAVE a show. But there are some rough edges that hadn't been smoothed out yet, and these things don't always gel with how the characters were written in the show.

So, do you feel that the movies and the show are canon to each other, "in the same universe," as it were? Sure, some things (like the Hydra) get mentioned and shown during the show, but is everything canon?

Here are some differences that bugged me. Feel free to share any others you remember or notice:

• Hercules being very misogynistic in "Hercules and the Amazon Women"... hard to believe he'd be that way
• Iolaus having a wife who is never mentioned again.... I think if Iolaus had a wife, he'd stay with her. He may love the ladies, but loyalty is his defining trait

Iolaus gets struck by lightning and can see the future. He and Hercules agree to help a band of rebels bring down an unjust king. Hercules begins to fall in love with the rebel leader, but the budding romance comes to a halt when she discovers that her husband is still alive.

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I somehow made it through the entire 1990s without ever watching a full episode of either Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Xena: Warrior Princess, even though both always seemed like shows I probably would have liked. I was in college for a lot of their run and was busy, but what’s really bizarre is thar I briefly long distance dated an older woman who looked a decent bit like Xena and owned a Xena costume, and …I still didn’t watch the show. No idea how that happened, but it did.

Now twenty-five years disappeared in that horrifying way it can and Xena still is just something I knew almost entirely through nerd osmosis.

Now I’ve been sick for about a week, I’m exhausted, and I need television that asks almost nothing of me beyond lying under a blanket and occasionally remaining conscious.

That got me thinking about an idea I’ve wanted to try for a while: speedrunning television shows. The idea is not to watch the ten highest-rated episodes (because the highest-rated episode of a six-season show is often the one where four years of storylines finally pay off and would be nearly meaningless to somebody who has no idea who half the people are).

Instead I wanted to find the ten episodes of Hercules and ten episodes of Xena I should watch if (as very well might be the case) these are going to literally be the only episodes of either show I would ever see. (not guaranteed! I could fall in love with it, but there’s a hell of a lot of other TV shows to watch so it’s possible!)

I went through fan rankings, episode ratings, old discussions of favorite episodes, and especially threads where people were recommending episodes to complete newcomers.

This is the order I’m going with:
01 Hercules S02E01 - The King of Thieves

02 Hercules S01E12 - The Gauntlet

03 Xena S01E03 - Dreamworker

04 Hercules S02E07 - The Mother of All Monsters

05 Xena S01E10 - Hooves & Harlots

06 Hercules S02E08 - The Other Side

07 Xena S01E22 - Callisto

08 Hercules S02E17 - The Apple

09 Xena S02E12 - Destiny

10 Hercules S03E01 - Mercenary

11 Xena S03E02 - Been There, Done That

12 Hercules S03E03 - Love Takes a Holiday

13 Xena S03E13 - One Against an Army

14 Hercules S03E12 - Surprise

15 Xena S03E18 - Fins, Femmes and Gems

16 Hercules S05E19 - Once Upon a Future King

17 Xena S04E08 - Crusader

18 Hercules S04E15 - Yes, Virginia, There Is a Hercules

19 Xena S04E21 - The Ides of March

20 Xena S06E18 - When Fates Collide

I’m about to start and I’m gonna be really curious how this works out. Can I watch 10 episodes of two series each with 100 episodes or more and actually get what people really love about them? Or do all the filler episodes make the great episodes great?

I have zero nostalgia here and if you think I missed anything that I really should include, let me know. No promises that I’ll throw it on, but I’ll see how I feel after this TV speed run!

Hi, I have been told there are comics that happened after FIN ? Is this true? Are they good and worth getting?

Hercules and Iolaus join the Argonauts’ reunion, but the Golden Fleece gets stolen by what Jason calls ‘his demon’. Jason and all the argonauts set out on a quest to bring the fleece back and secure Jason’s throne.

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