With Christopher Nolan’s The Odysseynow in theaters, earning enthusiastic reactions and making waves at the box office, audiences are once again embracing Homer’s timeless epic. But Nolan’s film isn’t the only modern story to explore the difficult journey home after war. FX series The Old Man hits on classics, both in film and literature, to impress upon viewers a memorable story that far outshines the action/adventure show’s first impression.
Show creator JonathanSteinberg (Black Sails) is no stranger to creating memorable adaptations, and The Old Man comes across as better than the novel. The series converses with classical stories like Homer’s Odyssey and classic films like Apocalypse Now to create an entry in a long list of epics that deal with a personal journey home after wandering deep into unfamiliar territory. The show might initially appear to be another action series for jingoists who want to see someone who killed Soviets in a past life get his due. Still, the series stands out in its genre by resonating with a universal longing to return home.
Dan Chase’s Journey Mirrors Homer’s ‘Odyssey’
The show opens with Dan Chase, played by Jeff Bridges, living a quaint life in upstate New York with two dogs. Of course, we soon learn that he is living off the grid, forced into hiding after crossing the wrong people during the Soviet-Afghan War. He has lost his wife to Huntington’s, and he has rarely seen his daughter. His situation is akin to being stranded, much like the hero Odysseus from The Odyssey on Calypso’s island. Both stories open with a character who found returning from war was a difficult, if not impossible, task.
Collider Exclusive · Universe Personality Quiz Which Iconic Universe Do You Belong in the Most? Star Wars · Lord of the Rings · Harry Potter · Game of Thrones · Star Trek
Five legendary universes. Five completely different visions of what the world could be — or already was. One of them is the world your instincts, your values, and your particular way of existing were built for. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🚀Star Wars
💍Lord of the Rings
🧙Harry Potter
👑Game of Thrones
🖖Star Trek
01
What gives your life its deepest sense of meaning? Every universe is built around a different answer to this question.
02
Which kind of world do you most want to inhabit? The environment shapes who you become. Choose carefully.
03
How do you prefer your conflicts resolved? The shape of a world’s conflicts tells you everything about its soul.
04
Who do you want beside you when things get difficult? Your ideal companions reveal the world you were made for.
05
What is your relationship with power? How you seek, wield, or resist power is the map of who you are.
06
How does your universe treat good and evil? A world’s moral architecture tells you more about it than any map.
07
What role would you naturally fall into? Every universe has archetypes. Which one fits you without trying?
08
What do you ultimately believe about the future? The answer to this is the clearest window into which universe already lives inside you.
Your Universe Has Been Chosen You Belong In…
Your answers point to the iconic universe your values, your instincts, and your particular way of seeing the world were built for. This is where you would find your people — and your purpose.
A Galaxy Far, Far Away
Star Wars
You believe in the cause — in the idea that freedom is worth fighting for even when the odds are impossible and the empire is vast.
You are drawn to the moral clarity of a universe where hope itself is a form of resistance.
You’d find your people in the Rebellion — a ragtag coalition of true believers held together by conviction more than resources.
Star Wars is fundamentally a story about ordinary people choosing to matter in an extraordinary conflict — and that is exactly your kind of story.
The Force may or may not be with you. But the will to use it for something larger than yourself certainly is.
Middle-earth
Lord of the Rings
You understand, in the deepest part of yourself, that the journey matters as much as the destination — and that the world’s beauty is worth protecting even at great cost.
Middle-earth is a world of ancient wonder, deep friendship, and a darkness that only retreats when enough small acts of courage accumulate.
You would thrive here because you value the fellowship more than the glory — the road more than the arrival.
Tolkien’s universe rewards patience, loyalty, and the willingness to carry something heavy across a very long distance.
Those are not burdens to you. They are simply how you move through the world.
The Wizarding World
Harry Potter
You believe that love, loyalty, and doing what’s right are not naive sentiments — they are the most powerful forces in any world, magical or otherwise.
The Wizarding World is a place of wonder hidden in plain sight, where learning is transformative and the bonds you form at school follow you into every battle.
You would flourish here because you take both the magic and the friendships seriously — and you understand that one without the other is incomplete.
Harry Potter’s universe ultimately rewards those who choose to stand for something even when standing is terrifying.
That choice — made quietly, without guarantee — is something you understand completely.
Westeros · The Known World
Game of Thrones
You see the world clearly — its power structures, its hypocrisies, its brutal arithmetic — and you are not paralysed by that clarity. You use it.
Westeros is a world that rewards intelligence, adaptability, and the willingness to understand that every alliance is also a negotiation.
You would survive here — possibly thrive here — because you don’t confuse the world as it is with the world as you’d like it to be.
Game of Thrones is a story about what happens when the idealists and the realists collide. You are sharp enough to know which one lasts longer.
Winter always comes. You are already prepared.
The United Federation of Planets
Star Trek
You believe the future is worth building — that curiosity, cooperation, and the expansion of understanding are not just ideals but the most practical path forward for any civilisation.
Star Trek is a universe where the questions matter as much as the answers, and where encountering something utterly alien is cause for wonder rather than fear.
You would belong here because you are fundamentally optimistic about what intelligence and decency can achieve — while being honest about how hard that achievement is.
The Federation is the universe’s most ambitious thought experiment: what if we actually got better?
You don’t just hope that’s possible. You think it’s the only thing worth working toward.
If you are unfamiliar, Odysseus is saved by some kindness from Zeus, who practically forces Calypso to free him. Still, he is waylaid by Poseidon as soon as he sets sail from the island, with a storm that blows him off his expected path home. Similarly, we see Chase get unstranded. He starts reconnecting with his daughter over the phone. He also goes to the doctor to take precautionary steps to prevent mental decline. Still, he is brutally reminded that he has not yet come back from war, at least not fully, when an assassin breaks into his home, forcing him to begin the long journey back to a semblance of a life he can call home.
With The Old Man, we get to see an epic unfold before our eyes and see Chase’s return home from Afghanistan through flashbacks. This evokes The Odyssey again, which largely comprises Odysseus’ narrative of how he got from Troy to Calypso’s island and the story of his final return by way of the Phaeacians. Chase’s stopover with Zoe McDonald is close in shape to Odysseus’ stop with the Phaeacians. Initially, Chase hides his true identity from Zoe, and she takes her to him and offers help. When she eventually learns his true identity, like Alcinous to Odysseus, she still wants to help him. This episode also serves the dual purpose of showing what it is Chase longs for by giving him a fleeting moment of a stable, suburban lifestyle.
You also learn that Chase’s daughter, Emily, is secretly FBI Agent Angela Adams (AliaShawkat), one of the agents tasked with tracking down Chase. Firmly implanting her with the people who thought her father was dead and are now plotting his demise places Emily/Adams parallel to Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, who must thwart the suitors who have taken over his father’s home.
‘The Old Man’ Season 2 Deepens Its Story About Homecoming
Jeff Bridges as Dan Chase in a doorway with a gun in Season 2 of The Old ManImage via FX
Season 2 expands the series’ central journey by taking Chase and Harold Harper directly into Afghanistan as they search for Emily, whose complicated identity becomes even more central to the story. While the first season focuses on Chase being pulled out of hiding and forced to reckon with his past, the second and final season confronts him with the people, relationships, and consequences he left behind.
The journey home is no longer just about Chase finding safety or returning to the life he once knew. Like Odysseus, Chase discovers that reaching home does not necessarily mean his wandering is over. Across its completed two-season run, The Old Man continually asks whether someone shaped by war can ever truly return to the person they were before it.
‘The Old Man’ Also Draws From ‘Apocalypse Now’
The Old Man also has some similarities with the film classic Apocalypse Now, itself an Odyssean journey. In Apocalypse Now‘s opening, we see Martin Sheen‘s character of Captain Willard struggling with flashbacks and hallucinations in his hotel bedroom. We get similar insight into Dan Chase. The Old Man opens with scenes of Chase struggling to sleep, grappling with hallucinatory visions of his dead wife. Both scenes evoke a lost feeling. Both Willard and Chase know that they are not where they want to be in life, but neither knows if returning from war is even possible.
One telling moment in Apocalypse Now comes as Willard is thinking about his crew’s longing for home, and he states, “Trouble is, I’d been back there, and I knew that it just didn’t exist anymore.” Just like Willard longs for the jungle, it seems that Chase cannot put his past behind him. He still keeps two highly trained dogs and a cache of arms with him in his idyllic, upstate New York life. He cannot imagine going back to a situation that resembles his life before getting involved in the Soviet-Afghan War.
Through flashbacks, we also see that Chase served as a Colonel Kurtz-type character, portrayed by MarlonBrando. Colonel Kurtz was the man Captain Willard is tasked with assassinating for having gone rogue during the war to fight the Viet Cong with his cadre of warriors. Chase apparently also took a path of his choosing during the Soviet-Afghan War, choosing to back a militant rebel leader and funnel intelligence assets his way in the name of killing Soviet soldiers.
It is almost an alternate ending where Kurtz survives well into adulthood with Willard, his assassin, lurking behind closed doors. In this way, FBI Agent Harold Harper (John Lithgow), who was the Chief of Station during the war and is tasked with hunting down Chase, serves as a Captain Willard-type character. Just as Willard doubts whether there is any sense in killing Kurtz, Harold is unsure that his orders surrounding Chase during the war were just. As the two characters in Apocalypse Now serve as mirrors to one another, so do The Old Man‘s Agent Harper and Dan Chase.
‘The Old Man’ Is a Modern Epic Worth Revisiting
The way The Old Man delves into the depths of the incitement to journey and the universal aching for home sets it apart from other entries in the retired-veteran-that-still-kicks-butt genre. This television series transformed a decent novel with catchy characteristics into a wonderful piece of television. Across its two seasons, The Old Man created an entertaining, sometimes pulpy epic that used espionage and action to explore the lasting consequences of war. Now that Nolan’s The Odyssey has brought Homer’s story back to theaters, The Old Man deserves to be revisited as another ambitious adaptation of the themes that have made the ancient epic endure: war, wandering, family, and the painful search for home.
