There is a very specific kind of nostalgia that happens when you mention something from your childhood and somebody looks at you like you’ve completely lost your mind.

“You remember that?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Because it was absolutely a thing.”

That is Highlander: The Animated Series for me.

Seriously.

Does anybody remember this damn cartoon?

Because I do.

And the more I started looking into it, the more I realized that maybe the reason nobody remembers it is because somebody at the time took the Highlander franchise, threw it into a blender with a post-apocalyptic future, added a children’s-cartoon filter, and said, “Yep. This should work.”

And somehow…

It did.

Sort of.

Yes, There Was a Highlander Cartoon

Let’s get this out of the way first.

Yes. It was real.

I promise I’m not making this up.

Highlander: The Animated Series premiered in 1994 and ran until 1996. It had two seasons and 40 episodes. It aired in the United States through the USA Network and syndication.

And the main character wasn’t Duncan MacLeod.

It wasn’t Connor MacLeod.

It was Quentin MacLeod.

Yes.

Quentin.

The Highlander franchise got a cartoon, and somehow we ended up with a whole new MacLeod.

And it got weird.

Welcome to the 27th Century

The show takes place hundreds of years in the future on a post-apocalyptic Earth.

And when I say post-apocalyptic, I don’t mean there are a few abandoned buildings and everybody’s wearing dirty clothes.

No.

We’re talking about a world where civilization has been pretty much wrecked.

A meteor collision triggered a catastrophe involving nuclear weapons, and civilization was devastated.

Seven centuries later, the world looks very, very different.

And that’s where Quentin comes in.

Quentin MacLeod is the last of the MacLeods, and he’s being mentored by the immortal Ramirez.

Yes.

That Ramirez.

Well… sort of.

Because this show takes the Highlander mythology and goes, “Okay, what if we did basically all of this completely differently?”

And honestly, I kind of respect the commitment.

Because there was one tiny problem.

How exactly do you make a children’s cartoon out of Highlander when the entire premise of the franchise involves immortal people chopping each other’s heads off?

You don’t.

Instead, you get creative.

They Basically Made the Immortals Into Knowledge Keepers

After the apocalypse, most of the Immortals supposedly agreed to stop fighting one another.

They gave up their swords and took an oath to preserve humanity’s knowledge and help rebuild civilization.

They became known as Jettators.

Except for one.

Kortan.

Because apparently there is always that one guy.

Kortan wasn’t interested in preserving humanity or helping rebuild civilization.

Nope.

He wanted the Prize.

And he wanted to rule whatever was left of the world.

So naturally, he became the evil immortal dictator.

Enter Quentin MacLeod.

The new Highlander.

The prophecy says Quentin will eventually be the one who defeats Kortan.

But Quentin doesn’t just need to get stronger.

He needs to learn.

The Jettators possess pieces of humanity’s lost knowledge—science, medicine, agriculture, languages and other things people have forgotten.

And instead of killing them to take their Quickening, Quentin can receive their knowledge through a non-lethal version of the Quickening.

Which means this bizarre children’s cartoon basically turned the Highlander mythology into:

“Go find the immortal who knows how to do the thing and download his brain.”

Honestly?

I kind of love it.

And Yes, Connor MacLeod Is Still Part of This

Here’s where it gets even stranger.

Connor MacLeod—the Highlander most people actually know—exists in this continuity.

But his story doesn’t exactly end well.

Connor challenges Kortan and is defeated and killed.

His death becomes part of the prophecy surrounding Quentin, the next Highlander who will eventually rise against Kortan.

So imagine being a kid in 1994 and turning on a cartoon based on Highlander and discovering that the previous Highlander has been dead for centuries, the planet has basically been destroyed, civilization has collapsed, and the new Highlander is traveling around collecting the knowledge of ancient Immortals so he can eventually overthrow an immortal dictator.

What the hell were we watching?

😂

And we just accepted this shit.

It Wasn’t Just a Highlander Cartoon

Here’s the thing.

Underneath all the weirdness, Highlander: The Animated Series was actually about preserving knowledge.

Humanity had lost so much.

Books.

Technology.

Science.

History.

The Immortals who survived became guardians of that knowledge.

Quentin’s journey wasn’t simply about becoming the strongest warrior.

He was learning.

He was collecting pieces of the world that had been lost and carrying them forward.

For a children’s cartoon based on a franchise famous for sword fights and decapitations, that’s actually a pretty damn interesting idea.

And maybe that’s part of why I find it so fascinating now.

Because underneath all the 1990s cartoon weirdness, there was actually something pretty damn cool going on.

So Why Does Nobody Remember It?

This is the part I genuinely don’t understand.

Because I remember Highlander.

I remember the movies.

I remember Highlander: The Series.

And apparently I remember this weird-ass cartoon that almost everybody else has collectively shoved into some locked vault in their brain.

Maybe it was because there were so many animated shows competing for kids’ attention back then.

Maybe it was because it wasn’t really like the live-action Highlander people already knew.

Maybe the mythology was so different that it didn’t stick.

Or maybe we all watched it, absorbed the fact that there was apparently a post-apocalyptic Highlander named Quentin wandering around the 27th century collecting immortal knowledge, and our brains collectively went:

“Yeah… we’re going to put that one away for later.”

Except later never came.

Until now.

And Apparently I’m Not the Only One Who Forgot

Here’s the funniest part.

When I started digging into this, I honestly expected to find some obscure little cartoon with six episodes that disappeared after one season.

Nope.

Forty episodes.

Two seasons.

A real international production.

A real voice cast.

A real broadcast run.

It even eventually got a complete-series DVD release, and the series was released on Blu-ray in 2025.

So this wasn’t some Saturday-morning fever dream that aired three times before disappearing forever.

It existed.

For two years.

And somehow we’re still sitting here going:

“Wait… you remember the Highlander cartoon too?”

Maybe It Deserves to Be Remembered

I’m not going to sit here and tell you Highlander: The Animated Series was secretly the greatest animated show ever made.

It wasn’t.

It was weird.

It was VERY much a product of the 1990s.

And it took a franchise about immortal warriors chopping off each other’s heads and somehow turned it into a post-apocalyptic educational adventure about preserving human knowledge.

But that’s exactly why I think it deserves another look.

Because sometimes the forgotten stuff is the most interesting stuff.

Not because it was perfect.

Because it was weird enough to be memorable.

And Highlander: The Animated Series was definitely weird enough.

So if you remember Quentin MacLeod, Ramirez, Clyde, Kortan and a post-apocalyptic 27th-century Earth…

Congratulations.

You are not crazy.

The Highlander cartoon was real.

And apparently, somebody finally remembered it.

And that’s what I want NGE to do again.

Talk about the stuff we remember.

Talk about the stuff everybody else forgot.

Dig through the weird corners of pop culture and occasionally pull something out and yell:

“WAIT. DOES ANYBODY ELSE REMEMBER THIS?!?”

Because sometimes the answer is no.

And sometimes…

you weren’t crazy.

The Highlander cartoon was real. 😂