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How many Immortal individuals are there known (shown or mentioned) in the entire Highlander franchise? (including movies, both TV series, and other media such as books etc...)?

Wiki doesn't seem to have a list that's comprehensive.

To respond to one of the comments, if someone is a pre-Immportal (e.g. they would become Immortal when/if they have a violent death) and that fact is explicitly mentioned in the franchise, they can be included, even if they never become Immortal on-screen.

NOTE: As far as Highlander 2: It's included in the scope of the question, but you only count Immortals on Earth. E.g. anyone who's on Zeist without being "beamed" to Earth doesn't count, whether they are immortal on Zeist or not (which is highly unclear in the first place).

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  • 35
    There can be only one.
    – OghmaOsiris
    Jun 29, 2012 at 18:48
  • 9
    There's always at least one more.
    – Jeff
    Dec 17, 2012 at 20:39

2 Answers 2

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I think the answer depends on 2 factors but in both cases I think the number is indeterminable. If you count the second movie, in it there seems to be an entire planet of Immortals. If you ignore that movie then it would be based on whether or not Immortals were born that way, if it's something that happens to them that changes them or if more are just created to maintain a balance and constant struggle.

From what I have seen at the end of the first movie, McCloud was supposed to be the last one but ignoring movie 2 it's discovered he was mistaken and that there were more. Including the second movie, I figure they just send more Immortals from their planet to Earth so the struggle would continue.

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  • The question specifically asks about "known (shown or mentioned)". Since the franchise is at this point stationary (no new work is being produced), if someone is not known to be an Immmortal (real or potential), they simply don't matter to the question
    – DVK-on-Ahch-To
    Nov 16, 2012 at 11:30
  • 7
    What second movie? What planet of immortals? You seem to be mistaken, my friend.
    – Andres F.
    Jan 16, 2013 at 3:00
  • 2
    I too am only aware of one movie and a television series, what are these "other movies" you speak of?
    – Monty129
    Feb 14, 2013 at 15:26
  • His name is McLeod / MacLeod. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clan_MacLeod
    – user135774
    Jan 9, 2021 at 15:26
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It's hard to know how many Immortals there actually are, as they are never numbered and there always seems to be one more. But we can at least get a minimum count:

According to this exhaustive list, a total of 160 Immortals appeared or were referenced during Highlander: The Series with another 7 in Endgame. There are three additional Immortals from the first movie that never appeared in the series (Ramirez, Kastagir, and Iman Fasil; the Kurgan appeared in a vision in Season 2). So if we're going by the series continuity (i.e. excluding 2 and 3 with broad strokes on 1), there have been 170 Immortals seen or referenced, with Immortals having said that they've killed more.

In Endgame, it's stated that the Watcher database has recorded Duncan taking 262 heads and Connor taking 174 (the former gets 4 more between Endgame and Source) with Jacob Kell taking 681. This list of Duncan's beheadings (which include books) shows that Duncan has been seen to behead 81 Immortals, 15 of which were in the books. So there were 74 Immortals in the show that were not beheaded by Duncan. If we add all that together (minus two since The Kurgan and Iman Fasil are included in the Watchers' count for Connor), we arrive at a grand total of 1208 Immortals that were either beheaded by those three characters and/or were at least mentioned in the show.

I suppose we could figure out a maximum count by taking the human population of all time and subtracting the number of individuals confirmed to not have died via decapitation or faked their deaths, but that'd still give you a number in the billions, which is much, much more than the rarity they are implied to have.

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  • You made a mistake. Duncan MacLeod did not take 262 heads nor did Connor MacLeod take only 172 heads. You got the numbers mixed up. It was Connor who took 262 heads while Duncan took 174 heads. Remember, Connor was fifty years older than Duncan and has more experience. Jacob Kell took 665 heads when he faced Duncan MacLeod, not 681 heads.
    – Michael
    Jun 7, 2021 at 14:54
  • On the subject of immortal rarity. I'd estimate 1 immortal per 100,000 regular people at any given point or maybe 1 per 10 million births would be large enough for them to run into a fellow immortal occasionally.
    – lucasbachmann
    Jun 7, 2021 at 23:45

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