More than anything else, race and xenophobia were themes on the forefront of the series. Craftily woven throughout the series, tolerance, courage, and integrity were taught simultaneously through the story of humans’ relationship with the Gargoyles, and more subtly through Elisa and Goliath themselves: the pair who you wanted so bad to become lovers, but they couldn’t, they wouldn’t – this is children’s TV, they could never – you knew in your heart they would never be. Until they were. Until they did. Until Gargoyles went there in the mid-nineties with two black leads and zero gliding fucks. Salli Richardson-Whitfield was the voice of Elisa Maza, and she was perfect in every way. My first crush, Elisa had a Black mother and Native American father, and was one of the best Black female leads you could find in the decade. She was smart, charming, loyal, tough, funny – she was a dynamic character who stood out as the moral compass of the show, even when we thought that job belonged to Goliath. She is, to this day, as close a mold of the perfectly written character as I can image. And she was a Black woman.