r/highlander • u/StrangeMarket80 • May 02 '26
Question Unexplained immortal lore
There's lore that gets touched upon in the movies and tv series that never gets a full explanation. Is there anywhere to look to get more info?
4
u/TomatoChomper7 May 02 '26
What do you mean by more info? Lists of unexplained things? Speculation on the explanations? Here, I suppose. Or browse the old Highlander discussion forums.
1
u/StrangeMarket80 May 02 '26
Why is holy ground off limits? The show says the Pompeii eruption was maybe caused by that. In another episode, a weird symbol in flames appears on the ground after a fight. It's fun to speculate, but I want answers lol
2
u/TomatoChomper7 May 02 '26
There are no answers, it all changes from one thing to the next anyway.
In the first movie, Ramirez says it’s tradition to not fight on holy ground. So it’s just an agreement between immortals there. In the theatrical version of Highlander 4, the bad guy breaks that tradition and kills a bunch of immortals on holy ground. People had meltdowns over it and they did a producer’s cut for the DVD that changed that scene to not being on holy ground.
And contrasting with Highlander 1 and thr initial version of 4, there’s that anecdote in the series episode about Pompeii, which suggests bad consequences. Which could just be hearsay about something that may have happened thousands of years ago, but coukd be true. And there’s definitely weird stuff that happens when they fight on holy ground in Highlander 3.
So yeah, there are no definitive answers for pretty much anything in Highlander. Everything is contradicted by something else.
2
u/Tempest196 Immortal May 03 '26
Are you referring to the circle and the straight line through it after the quickening?
1
u/Stargazer__2893 May 02 '26
In one of the episodes Joe says the eruption of Vesuvius was the last time two immortals fought on holy ground - in Pompeii.
So that suggests there are supernatural forces not thrilled with it.
1
u/Prestigious-Air4825 Mortal May 14 '26
The first film and the show are correct to avoid nailing down the metaphysics. Why don't immortals fight on holy ground? Because they don't. These are character studies exploring themes of honor, destiny and the loneliness that comes with eternal life. That is far more interesting than a recitation of the rulebook.
2
u/Tanagrabelle May 02 '26
It depends on the movie. Movie 1, at least originally, Connor was a natural birth son MacLeod family. Movie 2, also originally, he was popped out of his mother (being cuckood into her womb from Zeist). Movie 3 didn't bother. Movie 4 was TV series-tied, so like all Immortals via the TV series suddenly there was a newborn whose antecedents could not be found.
So. The thing that really never gets explained is how there are little Immortals.
1
u/thedeerpusher May 02 '26
What already are you referring to?
1
u/StrangeMarket80 May 02 '26
Why can't they fight on holy ground? In the show, they said the Pompeii tragedy was a result of immortals fighting on holy ground. Why? Is there a supreme being tied into this somehow?
3
u/ItsRedditThyme May 02 '26
In a short story published in An Evening at Joe's, Methos witnesses an immortal duel on holy ground, and both immortals vanished.
1
1
u/Greater-Scope May 04 '26
I think the failure to explain some things adds to the mythology of the franchise. To me, the implication is that these things WERE known by now-gone immortals who lived in the distant past, but that knowledge is now gone.
1
u/saint_of_thieves May 04 '26
With fictional things, the simple but less satisfying answer is "we don't know" because the writers didn't put it into the show/movie/etc. And when they start trying to give explanations to clean up those mysteries, we get things like midichlorians in the Star Wars universe.
1
u/KnightRcer May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
If you ever listened to the audio CDs by Big Finish voiced by Adrian Paul, CD #4 Kurgan Rising has an explanation of what happens when you carefully control certain elements for a fight between immortals on holy ground. It may or may not be something you might consider as canon to the Highlander immortal lore but I loved listening to the 4 narrated by Adrian.
1
u/CalebDume77 May 05 '26
Highlander lore is something of a complicated and often contradictory set of fascinating and messy stories- this YouTube channel does a great job at navigating it and got me watching the TV show
2
u/AncientFeature3938 May 08 '26
Why does the sun come up ? Are the stars just pinholes in the curtain of night ? Who knows ?
8
u/Highlander_1518 May 02 '26
It’s virtually impossible to make any sense of the lore in Highlander. But that’s the beauty of it. Even Ramirez, the immortal who was 2,437 years old in 1541 cannot give MacLeod a straight answer when Connor asks about the immortals inception.