Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Season 3
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Season 2
SPOILERS TOTAL. You've been warned.
301: Mercenary 1996 October 12
(First watched 2025-08-19) Last season we had a Terminator episode, now half of this episode was essentially Tremors. It's kind of amazing what they can shoehorn into this setting.
Rare gray area for this show. Usually it's just... Hercules Good, Bad Guy Bad, yada yada, justice! But here we have a man who was hired to kill as vigilante justice for other deaths, facing a sham trial of his own. They try to add to it by making the man who was killed a friend of Hercules, but he seems to have hundreds of offscreen friends so it doesn't mean much to us.
302: Doomsday 1996 October 19
(First watched 2025-08-24) This franchise playing loosey-goosey with time does allow them a lot of freedom to do whatever they want around old material. Adaptation of a specific myth? Sure. A followup story taking place the next year? That's what we've got here. Daedalus, in a bad place thanks to the death of Icarus, is designing weapons being used by a bad king. Including some... battle suits. If this were fifteen years later I'd say they were taking inspiration from Iron Man, but he wasn't very influential in the 90s. A viewer at the time might compare these "megoliths" to the lifting mech thingy Ripley uses in Aliens?
Daedalus's other notable invention? A "silly, nutty" substance that definitely wasn't the trademarked Silly Putty.
Hercules's sidekick for the story was a nosy reporter. Didn't we just see this character type in last season's finale? A mere two episodes ago?
303: Love Takes a Holiday 1996 October 26
(First watched 2025-08-25) Not just a Hercules-lite episode, but a Hercules-not-at-all episode. Just an Iolaus adventure beginning to end.
Last episode we saw Hercules fighting big machines, and we see something not dissimilar here. Not large mechs, but suits of armor designed by a god and animated by godly forces. And as a guy with no godly powers, Iolaus does a fair job of putting a stop to them.
The basic premise was pretty interesting. A town unfrozen after 50 years, everyone still just realizing what's happened. As soon as Iolaus said his father was from this area I had a pretty good idea where it was going, I'm just glad he was able to figure things out before he did something stupid like fall in love with his grandmother.
So Hephaestus and Aphrodite say they haven't seen each other for hundreds of years, but Aphrodite also refers to Hercules as her big brother. He's no hundreds of years old, though. Is this just the way she phrases things due to him _appearing_ older with his human-like aging?
Enjoyed Iolaus's callback of "Bitchin'", which Aphrodite introduced him to in her first appearance on the show.
304: Mummy Dearest 1996 November 2
(First watched 2025-08-29) They set it up with shots of things like the pyramids, so I was wondering just how far Hercules had traveled this time. But no, instead some Egyptians traveling close to him. And of course, Salmoneus there to get caught up in things by buying a cursed mummy for his House of Horrors.
Apart from the unusual Egyptian influence, kind of a middle-of-the-road episode. I was kind of hoping for the Egyptian stuff to go a bit farther. Like, how does the Egyptian pantheon of gods work with the reality of the Greek gods we see appearing on the show? Are they another group, or would we see familiar gods working there under a different name?
305: Not Fade Away 1996 November 9
(First watched 2025-09-01) Hercules sure finds a way to cheat death a lot for his friends. Except, y'know, his wife and kids. Didn't Iolaus end up "dead" when turned to stone by the she-demon too? He's becoming a regular guest down there.
How to follow up your Terminator ripoff story? By making a story where the previous antagonist joins good to face off against an even stronger terminator enforcer. Not Terminator-y, but the new fire enforcer is noted martial arts actress Cynthia Rothrock.
The first enforcer episode, I didn't buy the way he finally won. This time... I don't buy the way he finally won. So she gets stabbed, and flames start spewing out. Then he blocks the spewing flames with a shield, and once pressed right up against her, she explodes. But wouldn't that just put the situation back to how it was before she was stabbed?
Part that made me laugh: Hercules suggests his mom and Jason will be safe hiding in a cave, and immediately upon entering the cave they find themselves cornered by the bad enforcer.
306: Monster Child in the Promised Land 1996 November 16
(First watched 2025-09-06) On the subject of wife and kids, Iolaus said "You know? I have got a great life, but, uh--
sometimes-- I can't help thinking I'm missing out on something." This makes it sound less like his dead wife and alive son have been retconned from existence, than that the MIB have erased his memories of them.
Another "Yep, this is Hercules TLJ" character name: Klepto.
That baby was one ugly monster, but so were its siblings.
307: The Green-Eyed Monster 1996 November 23
308: Prince Hercules 1996 November 30
309: A Star to Guide Them 1996 December 21
310: The Lady and the Dragon 1997 January 25
311: Long Live the King 1997 February 1
312: Surprise 1997 February 8
313: Encounter 1997 February 15
314: When a Man Loves a Woman 1997 February 22
315: Judgment Day 1997 March 2
316: The Lost City 1997 March 8
317: Les Contemptibles 1997 April 19
318: Reign of Terror 1997 April 26
319: The End of the Beginning 1997 May 3
321: A Rock and a Hard Place 1997 May 17