There can (still) be only one: Highlander at 40 and why its strange, specific myth keeps winning

Background

In 1986, an unlikely cult film fused baroque fantasy with New York grit, stitched it together with a rock-opera soundtrack, and drew a thick underline beneath a single idea: there can be only one. Highlander arrived at the tail end of the first MTV decade, when music videos had taught mainstream audiences to process rapid cuts, bold lighting, and narrative ellipses. Director Russell Mulcahy, himself a veteran of the music-video form, brought that visual grammar to a story about immortals who live among us, dueling with swords across the centuries until a prophesied “Gathering” forces a final showdown for “the Prize.”

Christopher Lambert’s Connor MacLeod, born in the Scottish Highlands in the 1500s, is our on-ramp to this secret world. Trained by the worldly Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez (a deliciously wry Sean Connery), Connor faces the terrifying Kurgan (Clancy Brown), an embodiment of brute survival. The film’s structure alternates between past and present, layering flashbacks like sedimentary rock—each strata revealing what immortality takes from a person and what, paradoxically, it preserves.

Highlander was never a prestige object. It was uneven, loud, camp at times, and powered as much by vibe as by plausibility. Yet it seeded a lasting franchise—multiple sequels, a long-running television series, animation, novels, and comics—and a cultural shorthand. In tech and media circles, the quip “there can be only one” often stands in for winner-take-all dynamics: one default format, one dominant platform, one market gorilla that hoovers up network effects until it becomes the Prize.

Forty years later, the film’s strangeness reads as an asset. It’s myth built from rules, a fantasy world so specific and game-like that it keeps recruiting new fans who want to play with the framework: coder-brained viewers, tabletop storytellers, battle-royale gamers, and anyone who’s ever argued on a forum about whether an Immortal could use a chainsaw. (No: it’s always the sword.)

What happened

• The milestone: In 2026, Highlander turns 40. Anniversaries tend to catalyze reappraisals, restorations, and repertory screenings; the film has already seen multiple remasters over the decades, and its fandom remains active enough to fill midnight showings and drive commentary pieces that re-litigate everything from the Lightning-of-the-Quickening to the precise moral geometry of beheading.

• The franchise gears keep turning: A modern reboot has been percolating for years, with director Chad Stahelski publicly attached and Henry Cavill discussed for the lead. As with many long-gestating projects, timelines shift, but the mere persistence of the reboot speaks to the durability of the core pitch: stylish immortals, sword duels in urban neon, and a ruleset crisp enough to onboard new viewers in a trailer.

• The cultural resonance: The line “there can be only one” still surfaces everywhere from startup keynotes to esports finals. That persistence isn’t only about quotability; it’s about how the film framed competition itself. Highlander externalized a feeling that modern markets and platforms are increasingly zero-sum. Love it or loathe it, the idea sticks.

Why this myth endures

It’s a fantasy world that reads like a spec

Most fantasy lore sprawls. Highlander’s magic is almost minimalistic:

• Immortals do not age and recover from any wound except beheading.
• They sense each other’s presence (a prickling, diegetic radar).
• Fighting on holy ground is forbidden.
• When one beheads another, the victor experiences the Quickening—an electrical storm of energy and, perhaps, some transfer of knowledge.
• Eventually, “the Gathering”: the last of the Immortals converge, fight, and the sole survivor wins the Prize.

This is crisp rule design. Swap “Immortals” for “nodes,” the Quickening for “state transfer,” and the Gathering for “leader election,” and you’ve effectively got a distributed-consensus metaphor. No wonder engineers and designers adore it. The constraints do heavy lifting: they explain why swords matter (precise beheading), why clandestine duels happen at odd hours, and why a centuries-old clan warrior could believably haunt New York pawnshops while speaking fluent antique.

MTV as myth engine

Mulcahy’s background shows. The film’s editing toggles between time periods like a music video switching between verses and chorus. Bold lighting, smoke, expressive neon, and silhouette swordplay build a visual language that can sell huge leaps in logic by making them feel like beats. Queen’s songs—especially “Princes of the Universe” and the aching “Who Wants to Live Forever”—don’t just decorate scenes; they instruct the viewer how to feel about immortality as both curse and fantasy. It’s not realism; it’s emotion mapped onto image and rhythm.

That makes Highlander highly rewatchable in the streaming era. It’s dense with moments more than plot mechanics. You come back for the Silvercup rooftop clash, for a quick cut from a Scottish moor to a Madison Square Garden parking lot, for the way a guitar lick seems to slice the air in tandem with a blade.

The loneliness math

Immortality’s cost is a simple equation: everything you love will end, except you. The film lets humor and pulp butt up against that bleakness. That tonal weave is part of its staying power. The flashbacks are not just “lore drops”—they’re demonstrations of memory’s burden. Immortality becomes a user interface for grief. That theme—living far past your cohort’s horizon—is surprisingly resonant for a generation that watches platforms, tastes, and social graphs churn at unprecedented speeds.

A villain you can hear from space

The Kurgan is not subtle. He is id unzipped, swagger and steel, the loudest person in an otherwise lamenting universe. The film needs him, because he makes the Prize dangerous. If the Prize were only personal transcendence, the stakes would be private. If the Kurgan could win it and then shape the world in his image, the stakes are civilizational. It’s blunt, but it works—and it prefigures later genre stories where power accrues to the last combatant standing.

A blueprint for “winner-take-most” culture

Strip out the swords and you get a parable for markets organized around aggregation and network effects: search engines, social networks, app stores, even file formats. The lesson is neither prophecy nor prescription; it’s a story-form that helps people talk about concentration of power. “There can be only one” became shorthand in boardrooms and back-end Slack channels because it captures the paradox of abundance yielding to singularity—the way a million choices can collapse into one default.

Craft and technique: the weird tech of Highlander

• The Quickening as analog VFX: The lightning storms, shattered glass, and flaring auras were achieved with a cocktail of practical effects and optical compositing. In the age before ubiquitous CGI, these sequences feel tactile and dangerous—like electricity is misbehaving in the room. That grounded spectacle befits the story’s bodily stakes.

• Sword choreography with character: The duels are not merely about who is better with a blade; they are arguments with sharp edges. Connor’s technique changes across centuries; the Kurgan treats dueling as demolition. The forms express worldview.

• Music-video pacing as narrative compression: By front-loading emotion—through Queen’s crescendos and Mulcahy’s cut-on-movement style—the film compresses exposition. We accept immortal rules because the film buys credibility with rhythm, not with a lore dump.

• Diegetic-concealment design: Trench coats, antiques, and anonymity are not just aesthetic; they are operational security for immortals. Change names, move cities, keep your swords close and your story closer. This diegetic UI of secrecy is catnip for audiences who like systems that make sense from the inside.

What to make of the messy canon

Highlander’s sequels rapidly complicated the original’s elegant premise. Some entries retconned the immortals’ origin; others rebooted tone and backstory. The 1990s television series, led by Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod, rehabilitated the franchise for many fans by treating the rule-set seriously and deepening the community of immortals—friends, mentors, and enemies bound by etiquette as much as enmity.

If you’re new, you can treat the film as a complete, self-contained myth. If you crave more, the series offers a more measured exploration of the rules and their implications, while the later films are best approached as alternate takes. Think of Highlander less as a straight line and more as a multiverse: multiple readings, multiple vibes, one irresistible premise.

Key takeaways

• Simplicity scales: Highlander’s rule-set is compact and coherent, making it easy to teach, remix, and debate.
• Style is substance: Music-video aesthetics deliver emotional credibility that papers over narrative wobble—and that’s a feature, not a bug.
• The myth matches the moment: “There can be only one” dovetails with how people talk about platform dominance and winner-take-all markets.
• Immortality is a UI for grief: The film’s most durable beats are about love and loss stretched across centuries.
• Canon elasticity helps longevity: Imperfect sequels and a TV series kept the premise alive by offering multiple entry points.

What to watch next

• Highlander (4K restoration, if available in your region): The photography and practical effects reward the upgrade; the Silvercup rooftop sequence sings in higher fidelity.
• Highlander: The Series (selected episodes):
  • Season 1: “Band of Brothers” (introduces a code of honor that expands the world)
  • Season 2: “The Darkness” and “Counterfeit” (emotional stakes and moral ambiguity)
  • Season 3: “Methos” (the joy of very old immortals with very new problems)
• Queen’s companion pieces:
  • “Princes of the Universe” music video, shot with film tie-ins, is practically a mini-sequel in attitude.
  • “Who Wants to Live Forever” as an empathy amplifier for the core theme.
• Kindred movies and shows about long lives and their costs:
  • The Old Guard (Netflix): Modern immortal operatives with coherent rules and consequences.
  • Only Lovers Left Alive: Melancholy immortality as mood and music.
  • Interview with the Vampire (any era): The loneliness arithmetic rendered as gothic drama.
  • The Sandman, Episode “The Sound of Her Wings/The Man Who Wasn’t There” (Hob Gadling): A perfect short story about immortality’s changing meaning.
• For tech-minded allegories:
  • The One (Jet Li): Multiverse take on “only one” that literalizes winner-take-all power accumulation.
  • Battle royale games and films: Different genre, same last-avatar-standing tension as narrative engine.

FAQ

Do I need to know the sequels to enjoy the original?

No. The 1986 film stands alone. If you like it, the TV series is the most consistent expansion. The sequels are optional, and often operate like alternate timelines.

What exactly is “the Prize”?

The film leaves it purposefully ambiguous—part power, part heightened awareness, maybe a responsibility to humanity. Its vagueness is a feature: it makes the final duel feel mythic rather than merely transactional.

Why swords in a world with guns?

Because the rules demand decapitation and because clandestine beheading is a melee problem. Swords are quiet, precise, and symbolically resonant—ritual combat mapped onto modern streets.

Is Highlander cyberpunk or fantasy?

It’s urban fantasy with a rock-opera heart. The neon, rain, and decaying infrastructure suggest cyberpunk flavors, but the engine under the hood is myth, not microchips.

What’s the status of the reboot?

A modern reboot has been in development with public attachments like director Chad Stahelski and Henry Cavill, though production timelines have shifted. The persistence of the project underscores how adaptable the premise remains.

Why does “there can be only one” show up in tech conversations?

It’s a memorable stand-in for winner-take-all or winner-take-most dynamics. People use it to describe markets where network effects, switching costs, or standards pressure lead to a dominant default.

The bottom line

Highlander’s longevity isn’t accidental. It’s a function of elegant constraints, maximalist style, and a thematic core that keeps meeting the culture where it lives: at the intersection of competition, grief, and identity. As it turns 40, the film feels less like a throwback and more like a prototype—proof that a tightly specified myth, delivered with music-video bravado, can outlive the fashions that birthed it.

Source & original reading: https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/03/there-can-still-be-only-one-highlander-is-40/