Disney’s Gargoyles and the wild Xanatos Gambit trope, explained

David Xanatos is the antagonist in the animated sci-fi fantasy television series. GargoylesThe unambiguously irrepentant A-hole is.

He is also, to borrow a quote from another famous fictional A-hole, a “genius billionaire playboy philanthropist” and the owner of a multinational corporation that in his own modest estimation is “bigger than many countries you could name.” That immense wealth and scope of influence is tied up in a vast web of investments scattered across the disparate yet intersecting fields of robotics, genetic engineering, cutting-edge weapons research, and mass entertainment. Oh, did I mention he’s a member of the Illuminati?

If that weren’t enough, David Xanatos ranks as one of the most well-written villains to ever grace the annals of children’s animated television, a character whose aptitude for Machiavellian deceit, strategic guile, and flair for the dramatic are so well known, he has a damn trope named after him: the Xanatos Gambit.

The Xanatos Gambit refers to any plan for which all foreseeable, mutually exclusive outcomes benefit the person behind it all — even those that would otherwise appear to be a failure on the surface. Every possible scenario is covered by the mastermind. A Xanatos Gambit doesn’t depend on several desired outcomes co-existing, it is a strategy that considers each individual outcome a success.

A man in a dark suit with a goatee and ponytail sits behind a desk underneath an overhead lamp with his fingers steepled, eyes narrowed, and a grin across his face.

“We didn’t call it the Xanatos Gambit back in the day,” GargoylesGreg Weisman was co-creator in a lengthy interview that he gave to Polygon 2020. “We called them Xanatos tags, because it was always a tag at the end of an episode. It tickles me beyond belief that the trope is named after us.”

Of course, the trope itself does not originate with David Xanatos alone, but rather is believed to have originated from a sixth-century Chinese essay on military strategy attributed to General Wáng Jìngzé and often erroneously credited to Sun Tzu. David Xanatos, however, is the best fictional character that has ever exemplified the trope.

“I have no idea whether we created it,” Weisman told Polygon. “There must be somebody before us who did it — but we definitely honed it.”

A man with a brown goatee and ponytail wearing a black coat and gloves kneels next to a stone gargoyle covered in ivy plants

David Xanatos demonstrates Xanatos Gambit several times during the course of the show. Gargoyles. In the five-part series premiere, “Awakening,” Xanatos fabricates an assault on his own skyscraper stronghold in order to earn the trust of Goliath and his clan. Xanatos gains trust from Goliath and convinces him to conduct a coordinated counterassault at three compound owned by a different corporation, in an attempt to steal classified technology. When Xanatos’ deceit is uncovered, he deploys a troupe of robotic gargoyles modeled after Goliath’s clan in order to defeat them. When these are defeated, it’s revealed that Goliath’s former lover — a gargoyle by the name of Demona — has been working with Xanatos to manipulate Goliath’s clan this whole time. Enraged, Goliath attempts to kill Xanatos before being stopped by Elisa Maza, a police detective who met Goliath while investigating the prior assault on Xanatos’ skyscraper. Xanatos remains unharmed and is quickly arrested for possessing stolen property. Later, he gets his freedom from prison by using his existing network of influence.

That’s just one of Many, manyExamples of Xanatos winning because of his ability to see ahead are numerous. The pièce de résistance when it comes to demonstrating Xanatos’ almost supernatural aptitude for concocting plans, however, may not technically qualify as a Xanatos Gambit, but is nonetheless a mind-boggling feat of five-dimensional-chess mastery.

In the eighth episode of the second season, “Vows,” Xanatos asks Goliath — the leader of the Gargoyles, who at this point is his sworn enemy — to be the best man at his wedding to Fox, the onetime leader of the mercenary martial artists known as the Pack and daughter of Halcyon Renard, one of Xanatos’ most embittered business rivals. At first, Goliath balks at the request until Xanatos tells him that Demona, his former lover turned enemy, will be in attendance at the ceremony and “on her best behavior.” Joining the wedding party is Xanatos’ father, Petros, a fisherman from Bar Harbor, Maine, who disapproves of his son’s ostentatious lifestyle and believes that he did not earn his fortune, as it began with a 10th-century coin worth $20,000 that was bequeathed to him by a mysterious benefactor.

A close-up shot of a man with a brown goatee and hair in a dark coat against a dark pink and purple sky.

Turns out, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Goliath and Demona were merely pawns in an elaborate plot by Xanatos to travel back in time a thousand years to Castle Wyvern, the ancestral home of Goliath’s clan. Shortly after, Xanatos comes to the rescue of Princess Elena, who is betrothed to Wyvern Castle’s future king, Malcolm, and her companion, an emissary of the Illuminati. Upon recognizing Xanatos to be an Illuminati member through the distinctive badge that he wore on his lapel, Xanatos along with company escort Princess Elena from Castle Wyvern. Malcolm then rewards Xanatos by giving him a bag filled with coins. Petros later witnesses Xanatos give the Illuminati emissary a sealed package before the latter rides away on horseback.

Xanatos answers when asked about the contents of the envelope. It contains two smaller envelopes as well as instructions for Illuminati. The second envelope contains the coin that King Malcolm gave him. It will be given to his younger self in 1975. The second envelope will be sent to Xanatos twenty years later than the original (one week prior the current-day episodes). It contains a more detailed description of what happened. WhoYou sent the coin How How the coin was obtained and how to make sure it is delivered. All of this, Xanatos explains to Petros, is incontrovertible proof of what he has been trying to convince his father for over two decades: David Xanatos is, in fact, a “self-made man.” Now, if you want to know how they get back to the present day, you’ll just have to watch the episode to find out!

A close-up shot of a man with a brown goatee and ponytail in a red and gold robe holding his fist in front of his hand and speaking.

Over the course of the series’ first two seasons (and even the series’ third and final season, which Weisman considers non-canonical), David Xanatos achieves several extraordinary feats respective to his status as a mere human rivaled only by the likes of similar characters such as Batman and Lex Luthor. His stepfather in law Oberon invades his skyscraper fortress and builds him a flying exosuit. This Oberon, it’s a long story), and even comes a hair’s breadth away from reaching his ultimate goal of achieving immortality — twice. He ordered Owen, his assistant to buy Castle Wyvern from Scotland and then have it airlifted brick-by- brick to his New York headquarters. When warned of what the venture might cost, Xanatos cooly replies, “You know the answer to that, Owen — pay a man enough and he’ll walk barefoot into hell.”

I mean, say what you want about the man’s questionable moral fiber, but damn: That’s some Big Dick Energy. It is rare for well-behaved characters to make it into history. And if there’s one thing that David Xanatos would agree on beyond a shadow of doubt, it’s that it is far better to reign in hell than it is to serve in heaven.

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