How Hercules and Xena Led to an Irish Power Rangers

Having been raised Irish-Catholic, Hughes proposed they adapt Celtic myths instead. As he remembers explaining at the time, “the Celtic warriors are even more interesting, more dramatic than the Greco-Roman heroes. Instead of Hercules you’ve got Cú Chulainn, you’ve got Finn McCool. You’be got these great heroes with fantastic powers that are like Hercules, half human, half god type characters.”

Hughes was given the go ahead to develop a pitch for the series, which came to be called Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. The series followed four knights: Rohan, who searches for his destiny, Deidre, a warrior princess, Angus, a reformed thief, and Ivar, a prince from a distant land, who transformed using powerful ancient weapons to fight against the forces of the evil Queen Maeve. True to Hughes’ initial idea, the show loosely drew elements from Irish and Celtic mythology. The title of the series was drawn from an otherworldly location in several Celtic tales, Tír na nÓg. The fairy king Fin Varra who aided the Mystic Knights was drawn from the legendary Finvarra fairy, who interacted with humans for good and ill.

The show also drew some influence from Power Rangers, the armor very much evocative of the Ranger suits. Thanks in part to the head of Fox Kids, Margaret Loesch, being a huge fan of all things Irish, the series was put into production and even ended up premiering on the same day as Young Hercules in September 1998. 

With its Celtic roots, Mystic Knights was able to stand out from not only the Hercules TV franchise at the time but also Saban’s other big shows, shooting 100% of its own footage instead of the method of splicing in stock action footage from Japan that was popularized by Saban’s Power Rangers. Mystic Knights ran for one season and 50 episodes, the exact same length as Young Hercules.