Road to Eostia

“Join Stewie, Brian and friends in the ultimate Family Guy adventure like you've never seen before!”―TaglineRoad to Eostia is the Season 18 premiere of Family Guy and the 330th episode overall, which aired on the Fox program in the United States on September 29, 2019. A four-parter spanning the length of one-and-a-half hour, it was first broadcast as a made-for-television movie, which celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the show. Directed by Greg Colton who also directed previous Road to episodes, and co-written by Kevin Biggins and Danny Smith, it is the ninth installment of Family Guy's Road to... series of episodes and the first to introduce an original setting created for this show.
The TV movie follows Brian, Stewie, Peter, Quagmire, Joe and Cleveland, who escape prison after having been framed for murder by the Mysterious Mr. Enter, who apparently holds a personal vendetta against all of them. Afterwards, they cross through an inter-dimensional portal called the "Crossgate" and venture into the unfamiliar world of Eostia, where they would discover some nasty secrets, including those involving Mr. Enter.
The special received mostly positive reviews upon release and was viewed by 10.17 million viewers in its original airing, the highest the show's reached since Road to the Multiverse, another Road to... episode and season premiere from Season 8. This special's events would be directly followed up by another four-part special and the season finale, Road to La Gias.
== Plot ==
The special begins with a mysterious masked, caped and armored figure in a silhouette excavating a massive halo-shaped cross-like portal from underground and activating it.
Two weeks later, the entire world has made fantastic discoveries about the portal which the US military and the United Nations codenamed as the "Crossgate". News spread quickly worldwide about the unknown portal's discovery. Meanwhile, in Quahog, Peter, Brian and Stewie watch the news about it and are amazed.
One night, Peter, Quagmire, Joe and Cleveland, along with Brian and Stewie who walk in thinking something suspicious is happening, find a series of directions which lead to a "restaurant that has everything", only to come across a dead body with a knife. They pick up the knife only to be caught on the spot by Mr. Enter and his sister Ms. Escape who then accuse them of murdering their "father". They are then arrested by the police and brought to prison.
After days of being stuck in jail, the gang decides to break out of it, eventually succeeding when they disguise themselves as trash bags and are transported out via the garbage truck. Only a day after their escape, they are branded as fugitives and hide in a cemetery before proposing that they go to the airport and ride in the airplane that Mr. Enter will be taking, the plane that would fly through the Crossgate and enter into the mystical world of Eostia.
Peter and the others find themselves in Eostia and blend within the crowd who are celebrating the gathering of the world leaders between Earth and Eostia. Brian stresses that since Mr. Enter hates them, he is out of question for asking, so they decide to convince the world leaders that they are innocent.
The gang takes false guises to fool Mr. Enter into complying to their requests, with Brian and Stewie, disguised as a senior driver and acting as a diversion, while Peter, Joe, Cleveland and Quagmire break into Enter's hotel room to find evidence against him and use them to clear their names. After a close call, they meet at the High Goddess' castle in Thorn, frustrated that they could not answer the questions on why Enter chose to become Enetron Enterprises' representative in the meeting with the Eostian leaders and more importantly, why he hates the gang.
To make matters more complicated, Mr. Enter joins a group of mercenaries called the Black Dogs, led by Volt, who seceded from the Seven Shields Alliance and began conspiring against them while they handle their battle against the dark elves in the northern wastelands. Brian and Stewie then expose Enter's motives to the Alliance and the Earth representatives, which outraged them. Enter is branded as a traitor for his motivations and goes into hiding to be more active with the Black Dogs.
== Characters ==
=== Main Characters ===
* Brian Griffin - The Griffins' family dog and voice of reason. Second only to his best friend Stewie, he is the most moral and intelligent person in the family despite coming off as pretentious many times. A liberal centrist atheist, he often claims to be both a very charming romantic and an excellent writer (even though he sucks at both).
* Stewie Griffin - The one-year-old super-genius baby with a "British" accent and a somewhat flamboyant demeanor despite being serious a lot of times and even sadistic to an extent sometimes. He is Brian's best and closest friend, and the same can be said vice versa.
* Peter Griffin - The fat head of the Griffin family and town drunkard.
* Glenn Quagmire - Peter's big-chinned best friend who craves sex and perverted stuff all the time.
* Joe Swanson - Peter's neighbor next door and a paraplegic police officer who always travels with his wheelchair.
* Cleveland Brown - The calm and reserved black neighbor of the Griffins.
* Chris Griffin - Stewie's idiotic 14-year-old brother who likes to jerk off everyday. He plays a major role in the third act of the special when he helps Brian and Stewie defeat Mr. Enter's Judecca while piloting the G-3 robot, with Stewie and Brian controlling the G-1 and G-2 robots respectively.
=== Antagonists ===
==== ??? / "The Empire" ====
* The Mysterious Mr. Enter - The special's primary antagonist. He is a mysterious man with a very Nietzsche-esque nihilistic views on the world, who holds a grudge with the people of Quahog, as well as a personal vendetta against Brian for some reason. He also joins the Black Dogs Mercenary Army for reasons only known to him and his sister Ms. Escape. He is the wire-puller and mastermind behind everything that went down in the movie's events, from sending Brian and his friends to jail, to manipulating the Black Dogs as a means to rebuild and upgrade his Judecca.
** Judecca - The machine is said to be a powerful flagship machine of "the Empire". A black-colored Judecca is used by Mr. Enter to link itself with Crossgate so that he could control all of causality and warp time and space to his will.
* The Malignant Ms. Escape - She is Mr. Enter's younger sister, a bratty gunner who cares more about her brother and/or her own amusement and less about the damage that her actions cause.
* Septuagint - The true form of Meteor X, designed as a superweapon from "the Empire" to destroy an entire solar system. It takes form of an abominable monstrosity that is composed almost entirely of purple crystals. It is triggered when the Judecca was destroyed and Mr. Enter uses this as a last resort to destroy both Earth and Eostia.
==== Black Dogs ====
The Black Dogs are a large mercenary army composed of 650 members and the leading antagonistic force in Eostia.
* Volt - The founder and leader of the Black Dogs mercenary group who was given immense power to rule over the lands of Eostia.
=== Others ===
* Lois Griffin - Peter's understanding yet always nagging wife.
* Ida Davis - Quagmire's father who was surgically changed into a woman.
* Bonnie Swanson - Joe's wife who often resents her husband's handicap.
* Donna Tubbs-Brown - Cleveland's second wife.
* Tom Tucker - Anchor reporter from Quahog's Channel 5 News.
* Joyce Kinney - Tom's co-anchor.
* Dr. Hartman - The skilled and incompetent-at-the-same-time doctor from Quahog's hospital.
* Carter Pewterschmidt - Lois' father and a multibillionaire.
* Seamus Levine - A pirate with no limbs, all replaced by peg legs and arms.
* Bruce - A gentle-speaker part-timer in many jobs.
== Development and Production ==
Production of this special began shortly after Season 17 of Family Guy ended. Production, which includes animation and voice acting, took a total of four months.
== References ==
The character of the Mysterious Mr. Enter is based on the life experiences and perspectives of 19th-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, including his complete lack of love from his own family, total social ineptitude, asexuality, agnostic atheism and most importantly, his nihilistic world views and philosophical concept of the Übermensch. A dialogue from Enter while activating the Judecca, “God is dead, and I killed him!” is directly taken from Nietzsche's quote.
In the climatic battle against Mr. Enter and his Judecca, Stewie launches the G-1, G-2 and G-3, three combat robots which are made in homage to the mecha genre in anime. In fact, Stewie stated that he watched Power Rangers as a direct reference when building the three robots, including the part where they combine into a more gigantic robot. When Brian asks why Stewie didn't just launch the robots to begin with since he built them prior to this episode's events, the latter replied that it's the logic of Power Rangers "not to escalate a fight unless the enemy forces them to". The annoyed Brian retorts by saying that the logic of the show is "just on par with Freddy Got Fingered", which was also mentioned in a past episode.
== Reception ==
== Gallery ==
== Trivia ==
* This episode marks as the first TV movie in Family Guy, as well as the first episode to exceed two parts/44 minutes and the second movie in the series after the 2005 direct-to-video film Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.
* The "empire" that Mr. Enter refers to won't actually be revealed until Road to Balmar, where it becomes the primary threat.
== Other Pages ==
* Road to La Gias (season finale)
* Road to Balmar (Season 19 finale)
* Road to the End of the Galaxy (Season 20 and series finale)
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