Zorro - Episode Guide

Victoria is accused of murdering a guest at her tavern.

Don Alejandro's female pen pal comes to Los Angeles and wedding bells are in the air, much to Diego's chagrin.

Alcalde Ramon tries to monopolize the pueblo's water supply.

The alcalde has the Indian camp ransacked, leaving Zorro's mark, so as to turn the whole pueblo against the 'bandit', finds copper ore on Indian land and has a fake Zorro, a master-swordsman, rob the church's poor box, which convinces most of the villagers. The real one rides to investigate, finds the alcalde's geology report and overhears him plan a fake duel with the impostor. The alcalde confiscates the Indian land but both 'duelists' are defeated by the real Zorro.

Diego's cousin is visiting the hacienda with his fiancee. However, when it becomes apparent that she plans to leave him due to her infatuation with Zorro, he plans to challenge Zorro to a duel.

The de la Vega's are surprised the poor farmer Maceas offers them a free load of beans, because he believes Zeus, a fine stallion he nursed to racing shape after don Esteban ordered it put down, will win him a fortune from a certain señor Herrera. The whole pueblo bets on the race, after don Diego won a friendly challenge accepted by don Alejando, but remarked the stranger held his horse back, the alcalde even wagers 4,000 pesos of taxes collected for the governor.

When Zorro finds a few bandits' spoils, the loot includes a 'bundle of joy' they are glad to be rid of: a baby-girl, which is stolen, as Diego guesses right from the cloths, from Russian immigrants, who are flooding California at the time, and change the alcalde's mind from 'not interested' to 'alcalde's job' by posting a 500 peso reward. Poor Felipe is stuck sitting the cry-baby, so he literally begs Zorro to ride and get more willing help from senorita Victoria Escalante, who proves very maternal.

The alcalde promises the pueblo a direct route to San Pedro, the Ramon highway, but press-gangs 'recruits' to build it. When don Alejandro rides off to complain to the territorial governor in Monterrey, sergeant Mendoza is ordered to stop him. Zorro rides to distract the lancers, but gets shot and falls into a canyon, at first sight dead. When Toronado comes home alone, Felipe follows him and climbs bravely down.

Desperate for a hiding place in the canyon, the wounded Zorro reminisces further how he showed Felipe his set-up in the hacienda's secret escape trough the fire-place to the hide-out cave. The alcalde's arrests of don Alejandro and Victoria Escalante and Mendoza's uttering that nothing scares soldiers more then the unknown inspired don Diego to invent the mysterious black-cloaked and -masked man, named after he cunning fox ('zorro' in Spanish) found in the hide-out by Felipe, who proved an ideal assistant once Diego found out the mute boy is not deaf.

The lancers climb down in the canyon, and find not Zorro's corps but his cloths on a dummy made from branches; Toronado frees and chases their horses, without anyone giving him instructions; Felipe helped Diego stay hidden under water, breeding trough a reed. Diego reminisces how he wanted an unknown horse for Zorro, and Felipe helped him find, catch, name and train the wild black stallion after saving his foal.

Zorro and Felipe bravely made their last stand, but they face only their horses: Toronado even found a way out so they get home. Mendoza returns with nothing but Zorro's costume, still gets the 500 pesos reward, but is taxed on his windfall during military service- at 100%. Diego learns from Dr. Hernandez the news of Zorro's death makes the alcalde even crueler, but is too sick to stand up. Victoria tells him the alcalde resumes the forced labor, invents new taxes, even on income, and prepares a memorial service with a fake Zorro-corps to bury the myth.

A free black man named Jack Holten (played by Philip Michael Thomas) is eating lunch at Victoria's tavern. When two of the alcalde's guards start harassing him because of his race, Jack punches one of them. He is then imprisoned in the town jail for assaulting a soldier of Spain. The alcalde takes Jack's papers that prove he is free and plans to sell him to a U.S. plantation. Don Digeo and Don Alejandro know that the alcalde cannot resist a friendly wager, so they make a bet that if Jack beats the alcalde's best guard in a boxing bout, then he wins his freedom.

Robbers take the garrison's pay; Diego's father, don Alejandro de la Vega, witnesses that and tries to stop them, but gets knocked down, hard; Victoria finds him and brings him to the hacienda, where doctor Hernandez concludes he may never come out of his coma again. Don Diego is heartbroken, feels guilty he may never get a chance to tell his dad about his secret life as Zorro. The alcalde blames the crime on Zorro and the doctor sighs the only medicine that might give Alejandro a fighting chance was stolen with the gold.

The traveling Frenchman Foucard impresses the pueblo, even ever-skeptic Don Diego, as magician and pickpocket, then romances Victoria and performs various science-based services to various villagers. Sergeant Mendoza must command the protection of a gold shipment, but as earlier near San Francisco, it is robbed by someone who uses a fireball. Even Zorro was too late and finds Foucard asleep, from a distance. Diego shows Felipe the chemical properties of pyrosulphate solve two of Foucard's mysteries: how the magician 'revived' an apparently dead dove

Spanish royal army Colonel Mefisto Palomarez, the dreaded butcher of the Yucatan campaign, soon looses the alcalde's admiration when he announces he has come to eliminate Zorro but does so by drawing lots to execute daily one inhabitant of the pueblo until Zorro hangs, even though nobody knows his identity, and exempting nobody- the first victim is Sergeant Mendoza! Zorro makes a nocturnal visit offering the colonel a fair duel instead, but is arrested. Naturally he came prepared, and even the alcalde smiles when the sadist is duly humiliated at Mendoza's execution

Sebastian Moreno, an author from Spain, arrives in the pueblo to write the story of Zorro and his true identity. He soon witnesses the hero saving Victoria and some guests from two robbers; he ignores how close he is while he is Don Alejandro's guest at the de la Vega hacienda, but accidentally triggers the secret mechanism of the fireplace door, luckily seen by Diego in time to stop him entering. The alcalde makes sergeant Mendoza follow Moreno everywhere for weeks, to no avail.

The alcalde is delighted to hear Leonardo Montez, who hid the jewel he stole from the Guadelupe mission sanctuary in Santa Barbara, has escaped in the pueblo's direction and probably comes to retrieve it. Felipe just sign-gestured Diego's painting 'Mona Lisa of the Puebla' resembles señorita Escalante, when Victoria enters in the flesh to report the alcalde just arrested Leonardo. Zorro rides to prevent the ecclesiastical treasure changing hands between both greedy criminals and frees Leonardo under the nose of the alcalde and some lancers

Toronado is lost, limping in the desert, to Diego's despair. A small boy finds and 'adopts' the normally indomitable stallion

Diego looked forward to the arrival of the new mission padre Benitez, whom he knows from correspondence on ornithology. The priest who greets don Alejandro proves a brute who claims to take orders only from the cardinal; he makes all caballeros triple their contributions, for unnecessary renovations, and has his servant Carlos falsely arrested for stealing the church silver. Diego notices the handwriting is different- Zorro rides at night and hears him haggle the alcalde's share. In the morning Carlos is to be whipped, but Zorro brings the silver

Don Diego and Felipe were puzzling which ancient creature's bones are preserved in natural tar when don Alejandro reports the heir to the Portillo hacienda is none other then- sergeant Jaime Mendoza, an orphan but distantly related. Inliving houseman Torres tells Mendoza the legend of the builder, conquistador Portillo, who hanged himself for a fatal love and according to legend haunts the estate; the pueblo's other gentlemen tell the new don not to worry and accept invitations to his first banquet.

Diego's photographic experiment after Joseph Eeps is a bright failure, twice. Señor Casey Hawkes' gold transport worth 6000 pesos for the Spanish colonies to the north, where Russians must be kept away, is raided by Indians; although Diego remarks their arrows are unknown, a bounty is awarded on every Indian's head. When Zorro saves some innocent local Indians, Hawkes' men attempt to apprehend him, only to be delivered to jail themselves; the alcalde quickly releases them. With Victoria's help, Zorro searches Hawkes' room at her inn and follows him to his gang

Don Diego and Victoria suspect that the female medium Miyarana, who claims to speaks to deceased loved ones of people in the pueblo, mainly of the rich, and her travel companion Ricardo Quintano, who sells the poor 'magic' stones, are frauds. Zorro finds out they pay the alcalde 20% for insight in his official records, so they can dazzle their dupes with private facts. After don Alejandro finds them fakes, he is threatened; don Diego comes to his defense and is made to duel Ricardo

The alcalde is delighted with an invitation for a birthday party at the inn with the nobility, but Mendoza got one too, while don Diego and don Alejandro doubt if the alcalde really throws a birthday party for Mendoza. Yet they all go and are, with Victoria, knocked down and tied up with a lighted fuse to a powder keg by Ricardo Quintana, who spent eight months in prison where his partner in crime (see the previous episode "The Unhappy Medium") Myatana died.

The stage coach brings two visitors to Los Angeles. Firstly there is Victoria's brother, colonial army Lieutenant Francisco Escalante, who concludes after a meal with Mendoza that the garrison is in no condition to resist a U.S. annexation attempt; the alcalde promises him a post- if he captures Zorro. Furthermore a woman claims to be the mother of Jose del Reynoso- Felipe?! Don Diego recalls how he adopted the boy after finding the orphan, probably mute from that very trauma, at the August revolution battlefield, under the cart where his real father lay dead;

The hated colonel Mefisto Palomarez returns waving a royal re-grant of all lands in the territory- to him, so he takes residence at the de la Vega hacienda, but accepts don Alejandro's suggestion to have the document authenticated by an impartial non-land owner: sergeant Mendoza. Thanks to ever loyal Felipe, Diego learns the colonel plans to sell the pueblo to the Britton Bickel. Zorro manages to look at the parchment and finds it a brilliant forgery, but gets scarred by Palomarez with a mysterious deadly poison

The peddler and inventor Doctor Henry Wayne presents the pueblo varied unusual products, such as a vacuum-cleaner. The alcalde has only one commission for him: a trap to catch Zorro. Diego, whose failed Montgolfier-balloon amuses Felipe, pretends to help but doesn't, so Wayne sets his traps with the alcalde, who provides the right bate: the supposed execution of senorita Victoria Escalante. When Zorro manages to catch them in their own trap, the alcalde gives Wayne a last change, finding the fox's hide-out

When Diego's fencing teacher at Madrid university, Sir Edmond Kendall, arrives by stagecoach in Los Angeles and refuses as British knight to pay the travelers tax, he fights the lancers and is appalled Diego fakes being unable to win, rather paying for him. The alcalde orders Mendoza to finds out about him; don Alejandro knows him since 30 years, but releases nothing useful. At the hacienda, sir Edmund and Diego, who were training together, are shot at by two men; he recognizes them as Sanchez and Figueroa

While the De la Vega's are off to a cattle auction, pirate captain Henry Stark of the Golden Lion, who lost half his crew, raids Los Angeles for pressed laborers, the alcalde's horse, even Victoria and Felipe, passing the De la Vega's on their way out; don Alejandro rides to the garrison, Diego pretends just to lay a trail but actually is caught himself while he frees Felipe, who rides to the hacienda, saddles Toronado and next morning brings Diego, who already loosened his ropes, the Zorro costume and saber

Señorita Amanda Herrera, a surveyor's daughter who is the guest of the De la Vega's, captures Sergeant Jaime Mendoza's heart a first sight, for once more attractive then Victoria's food, but private Pedro Sanchez gets her to dance, so he pesters the poor soldier, even with latrine duty, hoping to make him demand a transfer. Diego and Alejandro coach his courting, an even heavier duty. Alas she has still another, higher-ranking suitor, the alcalde, and falls for none. Zorro rode against the same two bandits the alcalde sent his love rivals searching for

Sir Miles Thackery, Europe's most famous fencer, arrives at Los Angeles, asks who's the best with the blade in the pueblo and immediately challenges and defeats unsuspectingly self-declared sergeant Mendoza, next the alcalde. As victorious champion he decrees that during his stay everyone is at his service, the alcalde even as valet. Don Alejandro is cheated out off a good part of his prize bull's auction price, everyone gets offended and abused, even Victoria, so Diego duels Miles, but as he can't betray himself being Zorro pretends to have hurt his ankle. Zorro ...

On the governor's order, each pueblo in the territory is given a printing press to start its own newspaper, supposedly to promote free speech. Don Diego volunteers as editor of the 'Los Angeles Guardian'. Felipe reports outlaws attack farmers in the northern valley- Zorro rides to ambitious José Rivas's rescue. Helped by don Alejandro at the press and Felipe, Diego exposes the alcalde's abuses, while Victoria starts a hearts column 'donna Corazon' and Mendoza a culinary one 'Señor Estomago'.

After singlehandedly chasing off five robbers, Zorro is bitten by a rattlesnake, and collapses at the farm of robber chief Alisio Turron, whose life he just spared in a recklessly engaged fencing duel; his wife Magdalena nurses the fox, resisting her initial temptation to collect the alcalde's fat cash reward on his head, but Alisio, whose Z-marked shirt she was about to mend, finds them, cowardly attacks Zorro who must fence left-handed, loses and rides to the alcalde, whose burning desire to get the fox proves too ardent once he and the lancers reach the Turron farm...

Zorro rides to expose the alcalde's gross tinkering with the market weights, but this time an Indian scout, Grey Wing, is waiting to follow his trail and thus earn the horse he admires as no other, and he is really good. Diego and Felipe drive sheep over the plaza, but the scout picks up the rail, so Diego sends Felipe to lay a false trail riding Toronado, while he offers his services to point out the dangerous new quicksands on the De la Vega estate. The Indian reads every sign brilliantly, till poor Felipe, who can't ride as fast, sees no other way out then hiding ...

Don Carlos loses heavily at poker from foreign gambler Bishop whom he believes to cheat; Zorro intervenes, but the coward shoots at him, and Victoria catches the bullet meant for him. Dr. Hernandez isn't sure how bad it is. Diego intends to let Zorro die if she does. Dying after a pistol duel against Bishop, Carlos implores don Alejandro to see that his land goes to his farm - and domestic men, but Bishop gets his claim validated by the alcalde, for a 50% 'transfer tax', and challenges Alejandro to a duel; only Felipe notices him riding in the morning and the missing ...

Mendoza was looking forward to the alcalde being away in Santa Barbara for two days, leaving a curfew meanwhile, but the tyrant rides in town early - as a changed man, charming and courteous to everyone, even 'courting' Victoria, till he suddenly is his old wicked self again, then sweet Luis himself suddenly smells a rat from his past, called Vincente Ramon, and finds him a problem which gets surprisingly solved by Zorro...

When the alcalde sabotages Victoria's plan to bring the Indians survival supplies by forbidding all citizens to enter the Indian land, the Yankee Joshua Barnes steps in to drive her cart. Zorro prevents a lancer shooting Joshua. Barnes buys some De la Vega land to become a farmer, but the alcalde has that annulled because he's a foreigner and has him arrested for refusing to prove his loyalty to the crown by catching Zorro. Then the three Harper brothers arrive, hoping to revenge their father Jake's dead on Joshua. The alcalde offers them to release Barnes if they ...

The alcalde and his troops run off an Indian tribe from the land surrounding Los Angeles, but a young Indian girl named Kinona is left behind. She is rescued by Zorro and taken in by the de la Vegas. Kinona and Felipe fall in love, but the alcalde has other plans for the girl. To make matters worse, Kinona is already betrothed to a warrior named Black Feather, who now sees Felipe as an enemy.

The Falcon, a felon with such bird of prey and two accomplices, considers Los Angeles an ideal prey because of its corrupt alcalde, provided he can set a suitable trap for Zorro. The alcalde's new taxes, to pay for extravagant 400 pesos boots, allow the Falcon to spark a revolution by distributing silver coins, which don Diego chemically traces to the bank robbery in Guadalajara. When don Alejandro warns the people against revolt, he is kidnapped as bate to a fatal trap in the mountains. Zorro rides to deal with both thieving fiends...

It's Christmas and Don Diego is depressed, less because of his bad cold then dad's sneers that he should at least have been there protesting while Zorro singlehandedly saved innocent villager Friez from flogging by the alcalde. He decides to give the party at Victoria's a miss, and wonders if Zorro's endless crime fighting really matters, since he never gets closer to his true love or gets any credit for his feats as the masked mystery man he created. Then appears magically don Fernando, apparently an angle of fate, who shows Diego how disastrously worse everyone's

Out fishing, Felipe finds Carillo and three other fiends who plan a raid on Los Angeles and the alcalde's murder for revenge, is caught, believed deaf, left bound. Diego finds and liberates Felipe, but the alcalde sneers the 'minion' invented the story to 'save his skin' and continues preparing for the ringing of the new mission bell in front of distinguished guests, when the garrison will attend unarmed. Zorro rides to deal singlehandedly with the robbers' sniper and crossbow, disguised as monks, then with vindictive Carillo who escaped from the plaza...

Zorro chases and captures the LA bank robbery suspect Enrique Vargas. Wondering why the alcalde seemed uninterested, Diego decides to defend Enrique in the alcalde's court against prosecutor Mendoza, who is absolutely confident he will avoid the noose by escape- indeed a giant literally breaks the jail: Nestor Vargas comes for his kid brother 'Ricky', but they are persuaded to stay for a fair trial rather then remain fugitives for life, trusting on Nestor's iron bars-bending fists' persuading power to overrule any objection from Mendoza against Diego's intelligent ...

Judge Bernardo de la Paz is threatened because he is about to condemn violent criminal Vincente Torres's brother to death, so he sends his teenage son Carlos de la Paz for safekeeping to the De la Vega hacienda, where Felipe finds his 'playmate' is a reckless rascal. Diego was testing a glue for false beards for a boys Easter play, so the two adolescents test it. The brat ruins a vase and runs to the pueblo, disguised as a strange 'man', riding one of the hacienda's best horses and wearing don Alejandro's ceremonial sword, just when "the governor's son" enlists the

When Zorro deals with stage coach-robbers, Lopez admits he was released from jail by the alcalde just to prevent the arrival of his fat, extremely rude, bitchy cousin, famous seamstress Hermelinda. She now has to walk the last part with her fellow passengers, botanist Andres Bolanos and concert pianist Honorio Aragon, who is eagerly awaited in the humble pueblo. Aragon stays with Victoria but will play the De la Vega piano. At night, the hacienda is robbed and don Alejandro knocked down by a masked, Beethoven whistling art connoisseur, whose next victims are Victoria ...

Deputy Governor Frasquez is a day early, while the alcalde isn't back yet, carrying the order to capture Zorro. He decides Mendoza is unfit as acting alcalde, and appoints don Alejandro, demanding Zorro's capture by Saturday or he'll be carried in chains himself and the De la Vega hacienda taxed to bankruptcy. Tailor Miguel Martinez finds his brother was falsely accused of cattle theft and shot, so he heads for L.A. to take terminal revenge on 'the alcalde', ignoring the interim; Victoria allows him poor man's rate, free 'left over' soup and tells Alejandro is in ...

At night, royal troops bring a jeweled sword, believed to have belonged to Charlemagne which the alcalde must secretly hide a while. Next the theater troop of don Alfonso Bautista Alvarado de Figueroa, a dwarf, arrives in L.A. When the alcalde insists on an excessive amusement tax of 50 pesos, Alfonso inquires about the premium of 600 on Zorro's head and learns that money is in his office, so he sneaks, steals it and pretends to find it where he buried it. Felipe lip-reads he's after the sword. Alfonso hypnotizes the alcalde, but Zorro also attends the performance in ...

When protestant Daniel Nielson, fleeing religious persecution with his wife Esther and son Aaron, is the first-ever client of alcalde Ramon's land office in years actually to claim a piece of Los Angeles, he accepts, despite Diego and Victoria's warning it's a barren wilderness, 40 acres in the rocky Mesa de las Piedras. Helped by the De la Vegas, they get a self-sufficient farm going thanks to nitrates fertilizer. When don Alejandro has another malaria attack in Dr. Hernandez' absence, Esther helps him. Diego sends Felipe for Zorro's costume, seeing the superstitious...

A grandfather shows his girl Laura the hide-out cave, and finds there Diego De la Vega's diary about the Devil's fortress, which was used as a feared political prison. Victoria showed a letter, allegedly from her father Alfonso's cell mate, if true he didn't die in the Mexican revolution but is seriously ill. Diego volunteers to go there to speak to the commandant, actually Zorro comes in his saddle bag after promising Victoria his help. The alcalde orders Mendoza to accompany him on a week's trip to the fortress, he wanted an excuse since years, so they go plead ...

Don Diego, who uses the alias Salvador Gilarranz, is arrested but escapes before Rosalinda's coach reaches the fortress. Zorro rides on and finds Victoria's youngest brother Ramon lurking around, together they climb in. Inside the alcalde and Victoria plead in vain for her father, so she goes to liberate the prisoners herself, overpowering Rosalinda, is helped by Mendoza, Zorro deals with the troops. Meanwhile the alcalde has his own secret agenda, which turns out crucial for the grandfather in the present too...

[This double-length episode is often aired in two parts] [PART 1] Now the alcalde is away for three months, Diego makes a journey to Beaumartin, near Bordeaux (France) and tells Felipe there's no need to pack his Zorro costume but finds it in his luggage anyway. Diego hoped for a quiet country vacation, but lands immediately in an inn brawl, then in the feud between vicomte (viscount) Jussac, the aristocratic royalist garrison commander who behaves rather too much like a certain Californian alcalde, and Porthos, great-great-grandson of one of the original Three ...

Once the Three Musketeers are assembled, Diego helps them form a plan to regain their ancestors' castle. Later, Zorro helps them execute the plan and establish themselves as the protectors of their town.

This is the original unaired pilot. While studying in Spain, Don Antonio de la Cruz (Patrick James) is asked to return to his native California by his ailing father. Upon his arrival, he discovers the Alcalde (Valentin de Vargas) is ruling the province as a tyrant and his soldiers murder anyone who dares to challenge his authority. The people's only hope is the legendary hero, Zorro AKA Don Diego de la Vega, whom Don Antonio finds mortally wounded after rescuing innocent men from the Alcalde's firing squad. Zorro/Don Diego urges Don Antonio to assume his secret identity and rally the Californians to fight the iron-fisted rule of the government. Don Antonio is also bethrothed to the wealthy señorita, Doña Maria Costanza Arellaga (Patrice Martinez), in which they do not get along but their romance is hinted when Don Antonio assumes the role of Zorro.