mutate

In the fictional universe of the Disney animated television series Gargoyles, the Mutates are a group of humans that were transformed into winged felinoids by Anton Sevarius.

After his gargoyle robots, the Steel Clan, were shown to be inferior to the original Manhattan Clan, David Xanatos had been exploring other methods of creating his own loyal gargoyle clan to do his bidding. To this end, he hired the brilliant geneticist, Anton Sevarius, to create gargoyles through the recombinant DNA of other animals.

Sevarius worked with big cats for strength and agility, bats to emulate wing structure and electric eels to provide the energy needed to fly without duplicating gargoyle stone sleep. However, rather than create new beings, he performed a sort of gene therapy on kidnapped and coerced humans that transformed them into Mutates. These Mutates exceeded Xanatos's expectations, having not only the powers of the gargoyles, but also the ability to fly under their own power instead of merely glide, as well as the ability to fire bursts of electricity from their hands.

Though the Mutates were originally glad to help Xanatos, whom they believed was their only chance for a cure, they eventually learned of Xanatos's involvement with Sevarius and rebelled against him. They went to live in the sewers beneath New York City, in an area known as the Labyrinth, in which Sevarius's original research had taken place.

They have since become allies of sorts with the Manhattan Clan of gargoyles, and protect the homeless that seek refuge in the Labyrinth, much as the Manhattan Clan does in the world above the streets.

Talon (Derek Maza)

Talon, the generally-accepted leader of the Mutates, is modelled after a humanoid panther, and has the most fully developed history. He appeared as Derek Maza during the show's first season. Like his father and his older sister Elisa before him, Derek had gone into the police force, becoming a police chopper pilot, but he was dissatisfied with this expectation to follow in his family's footsteps. When David Xanatos offered him a well-paid job as Xanatos's personal helicopter pilot and bodyguard, Derek saw it as an opportunity to break free, and did so on the advice of his mother. Elisa, who knew that Xanatos was ruthless because of her dealings with him and the Manhattan Clan of gargoyles, tried to convince him that Xanatos was up to something but Derek refused to listen.

Derek was the last of the four Mutates to be created, having accompanied his then boss David Xanatos to "inspect" the research that Sevarius had been conducting. In fact, the entire situation was staged by Xanatos to make Derek trust him. When Xanatos seemed shocked by the idea that Sevarius had performed experiments on humans, he demanded that the project be shut down, and Sevarius retaliated by firing a dart full of mutagen at Xanatos, which hit Derek when he pushed Xanatos out of the way (although in fact Sevarius had been aiming at Derek all along).

Derek began to call himself Talon, and naturally adopted a leadership role among the Mutates, although it took him some time before he was willing to call himself such. He trusted Xanatos implicitly at first, and was willing to believe that Sevarius had been working with the gargoyles, specifically Goliath, which made him a fierce enemy. When he eventually discovered the truth, his sense of betrayal quickly made him just as fierce an ally.

He would later house Demona when the Manhattan Clan captured her. This turned out to be a trick, allowing her to be around the gargoyles long enough to obtain DNA from the group for Sevarius to create a new clan for her and Thailog. (Not to mention giving her time to bond with her daughter, Angela.)

When Thailog was defeated, Talon gave the clones a home in the Labryinth, promising them safety.

It should be noted that Talon and the other mutates looked different from their first appearance and subsequent ones thereafter. Derek had a much more lion-like appearance and all of the mutates were shown to have tails, but when they later appeared in the episode "The Cage" they no longer had tails and Talon become more panther-like. According to Greg, they were still mutating into more stable forms. The reason for the change was at the request of the production team.

Talon was voiced by Rocky Carroll

Maggie the Cat (Maggie Reed)

Maggie Reed (also called Maggie the Cat, in reference to the female lead in the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams), was an innocent mutate. She was a homeless runaway from Ohio who was coerced into being experimented on by Sevarius. She has long desired a cure for her condition, but Talon's efforts largely helped her accept her new life. At her first appearance, Brooklyn developed a crush on her, though she did not acknowledge it and eventually began a relationship with Talon. Her feline DNA was from a lion, and she was voiced by Kath Soucie.

Claw

Claw was a strong-but-silent mutate resembling a tiger. The transformation process rendered him a mute, probably through the psychological trauma of the change, though this is not known for certain. Maggie simply put it as "He hasn't spoken since he was changed." His past is the most mysterious of the Mutates, as his background was not explained by the end of the show's run.

Fang

Fang, voiced by James Belushi, was a brazen mutate who enjoyed his newfound power and abilities. He attempted to take control of the Labyrinth, having bullied Claw into joining him, but was defeated by Talon, Maggie and Brooklyn of the Manhattan Clan. He was later imprisoned in the Labyrinth. Creator Greg Weisman has said that Fang was based on either a cougar or a mountain lion (though technically the same animal).

A future, unrealised story would have had Fang escaping his imprisonment and being press-ganged into joining the "Bad Guys," a vigilante organisation based in Paris and set up to counter the Illuminati. Edit: Not unreleased anymore with the "Bad Guys" Comics coming out.

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