Daedalus is a recurring character from the Disney animated series Hercules. He is Icarus' father, known as a great inventor and is also the shop teacher at Prometheus Academy.
Role in the series[]
Daedalus plays a recurring role in the series. Although he shares a close relationship with his son, his enormous ego and eccentric behavior causes him to get along poorly with others, especially his son's friend Hercules, due to his clumsy and poor performance when it comes to building things. He is amicably divorced from Icarus' mother, and later in the series remarries to the school's Drama teacher Miss Thespius.
Prior to the start of the series, Daedalus constructed a pair of flight-capable wings out of wax and seagull feathers, which his son Icarus tested. Icarus unfortunately carelessly flew too close to the Sun, which both nonfatally immolated him and caused the wings to melt, causing him to crash and rendering his son unhinged.
In "Hercules and the River Styx", Hercules, after failing several times in Shop Class, becomes fed up and quits, calling it useless and thus insulting Icarus by proxy. Meanwhile, Hades forms an alliance with his brother Poseidon to move the River Styx (the edge of Hades' domain) to include Greece. All the heroes are punished by Hades with what they hate most - for Hercules, Shop Class. Now, with Hades ruling Greece, the Underworld and the Seas, Hercules must take back his comments about Shop and use Daedalus' teachings to stop Hades.
In "Hercules and the Minotaur", fed up with the school's underappreciation of his genius, Daedalus accepts an offer by King Minos to relocate to the Island of Crete to construct a wonder of the world. Unknown to Daedalus, this grand plan to construct a labyrinth is a bigger part of the demented King Minos' plans to torture an Athenian Youth, who turns out to be Hercules, by trapping him in an endless maze along with a dangerous Minotaur. After discovering Minos' treachery, Daedaulus and Icarus manage to rescue Hercules and escape the Island, while leaving Minos at the mercy of the Minotaur. A depressed Daedalus is then overjoyed to discover his shop class constructed a hot air balloon, a plan the school had rejected in favor of building birdhouses, in his absence, convincing him to return to the Prometheus Academy.
Gallery[]
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Trivia[]
- In Greek mythology, Daedalus is the creator of the Labyrinth. Which was worked into an episode of the show.
- In the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan, he is depicted as being a demigod son of Athena.
- Due to the rewritten structure of Greek mythology for the series, the specific circumstances of Daedalus and his wax wings are unknown, as in Greek myth he constructed them to help both Icarus and himself escape from King Minos' labyrinth.
