Ryan Gosling Starred In A Shared TV Universe Before His Rise To Fame

Before there was “Young Hercules,” there was “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.” That syndicated genre show arrived in America in the mid-1990s, introducing people to Kevin Sorbo as the fabled hero in a version of ancient Greece that didn’t fully adhere to the previous legends of Hercules. That show ran for six seasons, and was popular enough to spawn two spin-offs: one was “Xena: Warrior Princess,” starring Lucy Lawless as the eponymous heroine, and the other was “Young Hercules,” essentially meant to help audiences fill in the gaps of the title character before he became the grown-up. 

In the end, “Xena: Warrior Princess” actually wound up lasting longer than its forebear, airing until 2001. (“Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” finished its sixth season in 1999.) As those two series aired in syndication, “Young Hercules” was part of the Fox Kids line-up of late-’90s shows, airing for a single season in 1998 and 1999. That single season, though, included 50 episodes with Gosling playing Young Hercules, stepping in for the actor Ian Bohen, who had portrayed the younger version of the hero in four episodes of the Sorbo-led series as well as the pilot movie. (Bohen is perhaps not as big a name as Gosling, but he’s appeared on shows like “Teen Wolf” and “Yellowstone” in recurring roles.)

It is perhaps telling that even a supercut of Gosling’s purported “best moments” on “Young Hercules” is less a detailed montage and more a handy set of a few clips of him in a notably low-budget setting. While Gosling himself is Canadian, and a couple of the titles noted above, like “Goosebumps,” from his early days were shows shot in Vancouver, “Young Hercules” was filmed in New Zealand. Seeing as the series, developed by Robert Tapert and Sam Raimi (you read that right), followed in the footsteps of “Xena” and “Hercules” in its location, you would think it might’ve had a higher budget, considering some of the big-name productions, like Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” franchise, that’ve filmed in New Zealand since. But it was pretty clearly the opposite.

Indeed, the show’s 50 episodes were directed by a combination of just four directors, and they often filmed episodes in chunks to cut down on costs. More notably, while “Xena” and “Hercules” were undeniably successful shows, creating impassioned fanbases online and allowing actors like Lawless to parlay their work into a lifetime of genre success, “Young Hercules” only aired for the one season. It eventually wrapped up in May of 1999, becoming but a footnote in the lifespan of one of our biggest movie stars today.