“ | I must become the monster, and then we'll make it home! | „ |
~ Odysseus slipping into evil at the end of Act 1 |
“ | Suitor #1: We're empty-handed. Up against an archer. Our only chance is to strike him in the darkness. Suitor #2: We know these halls! The odds can be tilted! Odysseus: You don't think I know my own palace? I BUILT IT! |
„ |
~ Odysseus mocking the suitors for their arrogance as he slaughters them |
Odysseus is the main protagonist of the 2022 ongoing musical series, EPIC: The Musical, by Jorge Rivera-Herrans that serves as an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey. The King of Ithaca and the Captain of the Greek Army, upon 10 years of war against the Trojans that ended in victory, Odysseus leads his fleet of 600 men back home to Ithaca to reunite with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus. However, due to a chain reaction of events stemming from an encounter with the cyclops Polyphemus, Odysseus' journey was delayed for another 10 years that sees him progressively get more ruthless as time goes on.
He is voiced by Jorge Rivera-Herrans himself.
What Makes Him Magnificent?[]
- As a teenager, had great will power to defeat Athena's supernatural boar and then trick Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom, into revealing herself to him, impressing her enough to take him as her student and make him her Warrior of the Mind.
- Took 600 men with him for the Greeks' war against the Trojans, and his strategies were effective in leaving no casualties at all even with the vicious war.
- Organizes the siege of Troy by concocting the Trojan horse strategy to sneak in Greek soldiers into the city and then decimate its defenses and take the city by surprise.
- Even with Odysseus' ruthless introduction, he is willing to defy the gods, at least initially, when he was ordered to kill Prince Hector's infant son, only relenting because Zeus threatened to make him grow up to be his family's killer if he refuses.
- When Odysseus begin hunting for food to feed the fleet, he is the only person who remained somewhat cautious, such as noting how he sees fire but no smoke when Polites discovers the island where the Winions live, and then when they enter the cave filled with sheep with the crew having shot down one, Odysseus is the only one to acknowledge the eeriness of how the cave has so many sheep yet the Winions ignored it, which proved warranted as it was the cave of the cyclops, Polyphemus.
- Having anticipated Polyphemus will refuse to honor his end of the bargain and let the soldiers live, had laced the wine he gave to him with lotus to weaken Polyphemus, and rally the remaining soldiers to move from the deaths of several soldiers to finally defeat Polyphemus.
- When Poseidon massacres all but one single boat of Odysseus' fleet and prepare to destroy that one too, Odysseus opens the bag containing Poseidon's storm, catching the fierce god off guard, and escapes from him.
- Even with the amount of years he spent separated from his wife due to war and the other obstacles in his journey back home, he still remains loyal to his wife Penelope that he resists Circe's temptations as he refuses to cheat on his wife, which earns her respect enough to help Odysseus.
- Upon noticing an empty ship and taking it as a sign of sirens, Odysseus has the crew and himself cover their ears with beeswax to protect them from the sirens' spells, while reading the leaders' lips while she was disguised as Penelope so that she will unknowingly give him the way to bypass Poseidon's storms that block Ithaca, and to capture all the sirens before dropping the act and capture her too.
- For all of Odysseus' faults as leader such as Odysseus' pride and selfishness, when Eurylochus takes over upon leading a mutiny against him, it shows how that the crew were still able to go somewhere when Odysseus was leading them while Eurylochus easily broke under pressure and ended up nowhere, and even foolishly killed Helios the Sun God's cows which lead to Zeus arriving to inflict divine intervention upon the crew that they easily folded back to Odysseus' command.
- Upon being inspired by Hermes to regain his willpower, Odysseus is able to defeat several monsters for days on end while sailing through uncharted waters, even outsmarting the dangerous monster, Charybdis, by avoiding it and forcing it to endlessly swallow water that it is forced to let Odysseus go, and was able to reach Ithaca's waters.
- When Poseidon arrives and nearly drowns Odysseus to death, Odysseus takes advantage of the wind bag provided by Hermes to instead escape near certain death and overpower the God of the Sea, and when Poseidon proceeds to taunt him on how doing so released storms that blocked Odysseus' path home, Odysseus manages to take Poseidon's own trident and break Poseidon's philosophy on ruthlessness, throwing back all his cruel words that he levied against Odysseus and make him do the unthinkable and not only begin for mercy, but cow to his demands to call off the storm.
- Upon hearing the suitors' plot to kill his son Telemachus and rape his wife, Odysseus traps them in the palace, while blowing out all the torches to keep them all in the dark as he effortlessly slaughters majority of the 108 of them. While Telemachus too killed his share of the suitors, he was overpowered by the load sent fighting against him while Odysseus manages to effortlessly slaughter the rest of them and save Telemachus without even the slightest of issue.
- One very cool moment is when a group of cowering suitors decide to strike him in the darkness due to knowing the halls, to which Odysseus snaps back on how he knows the halls too as he built the palace.
- Within the final confrontation, to show how much of a different league Odysseus is from the suitors, he was actually labelled as the final boss.
- Ultimately, while Odysseus had many stumbling blocks, from arrogantly revealing his name to the cyclops, his paranoia and desperation which drove his crew to turn against him, or his hopelessness having him nearly commit suicide when trapped at Calypso's island, at the end not only does Odysseus bounce back masterfully with how he is able to make the God of the Seas cow to his demands or easily dispatch the suitors, but ultimately, for all his insecurities and worries, he was able to get his happy ending reuniting with both his son and wife, who are just glad he's back than horrified by what he had to do to get back home, as the musical ends with him just professing his love for Penelope.
What Makes Him a Baddie?[]
- Ultimately leads the final sacking of Troy to kill sleeping Trojans.
- When it came to choosing the lives of his family or Prince Hector's infant son, he ultimately chose to kill the latter instead and by the end of Act 1, declares that if he needs to drop another infant from a wall if it can help him get home, he will do it.
- In general becomes much more ruthless and merciless by the second act where his brutal dispatching of the sirens by cutting off their tails then drown them is starkly overkill even with how they earlier tried to kill him. Even more deserved acts of brutality like torturing Poseidon or slaughtering the suitors, also depict Odysseus as someone stooping into their levels to do so.
- Sacrifices 6 men to get free passage from Scylla. When Zeus makes Odysseus choose between giving up his life or the rest of his crew, Odysseus chooses to sacrifice them for the chance to see his family again.
Trivia[]
- He and Circe are the only 2 characters in EPIC to count as Magnificent Baddies.
External Links[]
- Odysseus at the Heroes wiki
- Odysseus at the Inconsistently Admirable wiki
- Odysseus at the EPIC: The Musical wiki