Who was the true love of Duncan's life?

[Darth Reaper]

I think one thing that might prevent Amanda from being one of Duncan’s great loves is that he can’t completely trust her. She’s always getting into trouble and she often drags Duncan into it. On one hand she cares about him, but on the other hand she manipulates him to suit her interests. And, for all the time that Mac has known her he keeps on falling for it, and she keeps on taking advantage of that. That doesn’t seem like a very healthy relationship, and it will probably always stand in the way of Amanda being anything more than the bad habit that Mac described her as.

[I]Maybe it wasn't easy, but he left Tessa at the start of the series and went to that place, to the memory of Little Deer, fully planning to move on from his life with Tessa after twelve years. Had it not been for Connor, Tessa may never have found Duncan again.

It’s also possible that Duncan’s relationship with Little Deer had an impact on how he dealt with the loss of Tessa. By the time he got to Tessa he had resigned himself more to the fact that any relationship he has with a mortal is going to end with death, one way or another. So, it was that much easier for him to move forward after Tessa was killed. That doesn’t mean that their time together was less significant than Mac’s time with Little Deer, it juston the means that Mac was in a different headspace during those times.

It’s also possible that the reason Duncan reacted so strongly to his later encounter with Kern is because up until then Duncan hadn’t been able to avenge Little Deer’s death. He wasn’t able to hold Kern accountable for his crimes. I’ll bet that festered in Duncan’s heart. With Tessa, on the other hand, Duncan was able to confront her killer fairly quickly by comparison. So he was able to resolve the issue sooner. Plus, it turned out that Tessa’s killer was a very different person than Kern. Kern was a monster, and that probably added to the the level of hatred that Mac felt towards him.


And I don’t recall anything that suggested that Duncan might not have returned to Tessa after the end of the pilot episode. I always figured that he fully intended to continue their relationship. He just needed some time to himself first.

[dubiousbystander]

Tessa of course!!!! She was the one woman he wanted more than life itself!
JB

Well... as the series goes, he pretty much wanted every woman he loved more than life itself. I really like RainbowRaven's logic.

[johnnybear]

Tessa of course!!!! She was the one woman he wanted more than life itself!
JB

[dubiousbystander]

I tried looking up an article on marriage lines. Apparently you have to be a REAL psychic to tell that Duncan would never marry. Though, assuming she is a real psychic (which was the point of the episode), she should have seen a sign that he was already married. Otherwise it's a lot of "If you are married already then it means... if you are not married yet then it means..."

Mind, the present Doctor Who has shown us how to overcome decades of "It's never come up before." Just keep repeating the possibility or hinting at it, almost every episode of every season, do it with some other people, and then when you do it with the main character, many people will be ready to crow, "I knew that was going to happen!"

[Wilusa]

Carmen said he "would never marry"...we can interpret that as referring only to his future. She wasn't trying to "see" his past!

[dubiousbystander]

Apparently she's the only one he had years with!

[Tootsie Bee]

At least for the period between "The Gathering" and The Source, i.e. the time we know Duncan best, it was Tessa. Her death informs much of his behavior throughout the rest of his modern-day character arc. Not only did TPTB bring her back for "To Be" and "Not to Be," but they even gave her a mention in the final movie. Tessa may not be the only loved one he's ever lost, but for the main storyline, she's easily the most significant.

[RainbowRaven]

I've just finished binge watching the series on Hulu. Thank goodness it was still on Hulu as it was removed from Netflix while I was in the middle of season one a while ago. I had not watched any of the other Highlander movies but the first one so I watched Endgame, The Source, and Final Dimension. I still haven't seen Highlander 2. Now I'm back at the start of the series. I forgot how much I loved this show when I was in junior high and high school.

You notice things you didn't the first time around. Yes, we see Tessa for all of season one and part of season two and are told they've been together for twelve years.

Yet it seems to me that Little Deer was the love of Duncan Macleod's life. Little Deer is to Duncan what Heather was to Connor.

Remember something: Connor called on the memory of what happened to Little Deer and Kahani as proof of the impossibility of Duncan being able to leave The Game. Duncan tells him it was never about The Game. So then why was Duncan with Little Deer? Of all the cultures to go with during the late 1800s, a time where Native Americans are on the run or under seige, why did he immerse himself in the Lakota and become part of a family?

Duncan said he had become sickened by the white world's bigotry, hatred, wars and empires and so he left it all behind. I don't think he was avoiding conflict with this choice, knowing what was happening in the U.S. at the time, but maybe there was no way he could have foreseen native peoples being nearly wiped out.

I believe for the first and maybe only time Duncan found spiritual peace alongside love. He found a life that resonated with the core of who he was and grounded him.

He found a people that were not dissimilar from his people in Scotland.

Duncan didn't choose to leave his clan, that life was stripped from him by his father. I love the fans that compile timelines. From at least one of these it shows Duncan's first long term departure from Scotland wasn't until 10 years after his first death. He hovered nearby and even sought to avenge his father's death while outcast.

Duncan cried to Connor that Little Deer had known all the names of the grasses, the wildflowers and the stories of where her people had come from and what they believed in. The unspoken bit as he devolved into sobs was that now all of that was gone. Why did this hit him so hard when it doesn't seem he was with Little Deer for as long as he was with Tessa? He'd already been alive for 250 years and had experienced loss before. Yet it was Little Deer's death that caused him to retreat from the world for several years.

Perhaps Duncan was mourning the loss of a way of life he had known in Scotland and with the Lakota that the world was intent on destroying. Connor asks Duncan if he ever thought they had lived as a tribe with a common language and name for each thing, belonging to a particular time and place. The answer is an obvious yes and shows the difference between Connor's and Duncan's connections to the world.

Have we ever been shown the inside of the cabin Duncan built after Little Deer and Kahani died? A place on holy ground near where he had lived with them. A shrine to them. A sacred place. His island. A place he's retreated to to meditate during the series more than once. A place of peace for him.

Maybe it wasn't easy, but he left Tessa at the start of the series and went to that place, to the memory of Little Deer, fully planning to move on from his life with Tessa after twelve years. Had it not been for Connor, Tessa may never have found Duncan again.

When Kern showed up, Duncan transformed. He fought Kern right into a church. Not the usual calm, aware, fights with a smile highlander. He starts training with a staff and spear. He begins wearing that Lakota amulet. Then with blood drawn on his face, speaking in the language of the people he had become a part of, he kills Kern with a spear. Not a sword.

With the exception of an immortal falling on a train track or getting decapitated by a boat propeller or something, have we ever seen Duncan take a head in the series without a sword before or after this?

There's significance to all of this. All of these things point to a deep underground river of emotion around his life with Little Deer, Kahani and the Lakota.

We might not have seen Duncan's life with Little Deer on screen as we did with Tessa and we're presented with Duncan as a character that seeks life in spite of death vs a brooding man consumed by the past, but the series drops clues here and there.

[Wilusa]

I know he "loves" Amanda, in a certain way. But they're different enough that they can't be together for more than a few weeks at a time. And it's a kind of relationship in which neither of them expects sexual fidelity. (I've actually come to think Amanda is bisexual.)

I want to think of Mac as always remembering Tessa as the great love of his life - for the romance of it! She was the first mortal lover he told of his Immortality, the only lover (as I see it) he's ever lived with, or will live with, longer than a year.

[dubiousbystander]

Anna actually walked out on him because he couldn't impregnate her.

Oh, that was the writers' decision. Or something. For one thing, if she just wanted to get pregnant, she could have taken up with anyone. But NO, she's mystically compelled to want a baby with Duncan, because she's the ... one who will guide them to the Source. Traditional method of getting little things like characterization and development out of the way. It's DESTINY! She's the one! Blah blah.

[golddragon71]

I gotta go with Amanda on this one
"She made me smile at times when I didn't have a lot to smile about"
That to me is what keeps her in Mac's heart time after time after time.

[~mj~]

I agree...I think he couldn`t commit to her because of her being immortal, but she was always in his heart.

Geeze I sound sappy...

[Midnight Rambler]

Amanda, deep down she is his one true love, the one constant in his life.

[Aleander]

I think for him, Amanda will always be what we first saw him say about her: "She's a bad habit". He loves her, though, but she could never be more than fuck buddy (sorry, but that's true).

I have to agree about Tessa... even if he did seem to "get over" her pretty fast (and I don't mean the immediately following episode, which also doesn't help his case, either). And I have a hard time calling any of his movie love interests are true loves... He didn't let Kate learn that he's an Immortal, let alone herself, and Anna actually walked out on him because he couldn't impregnate her.

[Elskidor]

In this case I don't think there can be only one. And that's ok. He's gone through many different phases and lifes within his span and different people were perfect for him during different times.

[Coolwater]

Obviously himself

You beat me to it, Nicky.
A four hundred year old person wouldn't have just one love of his life. Some one to grow old with is a mortal's conception of life. Or to put it another way, there certainly would be more than one.

[dubiousbystander]

Little Deer should be on the list. A lot of these qualify as "if, then". If Duncan had been mortal, Debra might have been the love of his life. He did not read as really in love with Kate to me, either. Infatuated, yes, but she was suddenly introduced to us in the movie, after the HUGE deal they made in the episodes killing Tessa. Why this also fails for me is IF Duncan had killed Kate to activate her Immortality, with the result that she fled him into the night... he would not have been the rather light-hearted fellow he was presented as post that time. That time being, what, 1715? Carmen in 1848 read his palm and said he would never marry. The palm, if this is "true" would have shown that he was, in fact, married once. Hah. As for marrying Anna, that seems like it would have happened no earlier than 2020. *snix* So perhaps the sheer length of time made the marriage line too far out. Hah!

[Hatter76]

Would be better if they just brought the show back the way they did Dallas a few years back, pick up 2 decades after the original series ended

[Hatter76]

seriously, pull a Dallas with The Source "It was just a dream"

[Andrew NDB]

For me, I vote Tessa. But here's the thing... we got to see a whole season and some change (the early most season 2 eps plus subsequent flashbacks) of them being super in love and on the day to day. We don't really ever see that with him and anyone else. We see that to a limited extent with him and Amanda, but never to the extent of what it was with Tessa. Now, if we'd had seasons -1, -2, -3, -4, -5 of the show, featuring Duncan's relationship with Kate leading to his marriage, or a season 7, 8, and 9 worth of episodes where he romances and falls in love and marries Anna... if we'd had those things, would we still vote the same?

We didn't get those things, of course, but my point is that Duncan could have had a Tessa's worth of love and equivalent memories with any one of a number of ladies. As a viewer of what we've seen and know? Tessa was the love of his life. He's in love with Amanda but he gets with her only when it works for them (though the series finale gave me hope that they'd give things an earnest try).

You forgot to add Deborah Campbell to the list.

No way anybody thinks that was the love of his life. Maybe his first love.

[Colleengael]

You forgot to add Deborah Campbell to the list.

[David McMurdo]

Tessa, I think. Amanda is more like one of those friends with benefits that comes and goes between relationships, and he knew Anne for two seconds. There's no reason that Kate or Anna couldn't be his great love, plot wise, but I definitely didn't buy either of them as that on screen.

[Nicholas Ward]

Obviously himself

[Andrew NDB]

Let's take it to the polls!