A spin-off of the Madagascar franchise on Netflix. This computer-animated cartoon features King Julien XIII, chronicling his life on Madagascar prior to the events of the films. Also returning are Maurice and Mort, as well as a new female lemur character named Clover.
The show debuted in December 2014 with five episodes. It is the second spinoff to circulate from Madagascar, after The Penguins of Madagascar which premiered on Nickelodeon. It is also the second film by DreamWorks Animation, after Turbo, to be given a spinoff by Netflix.
Following the events of the 4th season finale, a Sequel Series, All Hail King Julien: Exiled, premiered on May 12, 2017 taking a dramatic shift from episodic comedy to highly serialized dramatic comedy in the form of a 13 part story.
The sixth and final season overall premiered in December 1, 2017 as the 5th season of All Hail King Julien.
As of November 2023, the show is no longer available on Netflix as per the contract between Dreamworks and Netflix to run their exclusives for only 6 years after the end of a show's run.
This show provides examples of:
- 65-Episode Cartoon: The main series had 65 episodes across 5 season, running for three years. Exiled, which Netflix considers a separate series, only has 13 episodes.
- Action Girl: Clover, King Julien's special-ops expert and bodyguard. She's one of the only characters who can directly fight against threats.
- Actor Allusion: "Jungle Games" one of the sports is "Competitive Water Skiing and Shark Jump". Uncle Julien (Henry Winkler) steps up to task.Uncle Julien: Hey babe, I got this one. Heck, I invented it.
- Adipose Rex: Kings Julien I, XII, and King Julien the Terrible are all rather paunchy. Julien XIII himself manages to avoid being totally overweight, but still has a noticeable amount of gut compared to most other lemurs.
- Affectionate Nickname: Julien addresses Maurice as "Mo-mo" occasionally. And has started using "Clo-clo" the same way for Clover.
- Ambiguous Time Period: Given that the films aren't quite sure if they are set in the 80s or the modern day, it's a given that there isn't any clear indication of when this show is set. A few references to Y2K early on in the show seem to suggest at the very least the show is happening around the late 90s or early aughts. Even the relatively low level of technology starts to drift more modern as the series progresses, with "King Julien is Watching You" featuring security cameras that are hooked up to what appears to be a tablet computer.
- Animal Religion: The Sky Gods of the lemurs are given a lot of focus here, revealing much of their pantheon such as Sky God Frank, Volcano God Larry, and Rain God Kevin. Meanwhile, it turns out that the Aye-Aye worship a pantheon of ancient living bells.Ted: Sentient bells? Koo-koo crazy town!
Maurice: Uh, we believe in Sky Gods, Ted?
Ted: Well sure, but the Sky Gods are real! - Art Evolution: Compared to The Penguins of Madagascar, the animation is more detailed, notably in the fact that the animals have more detailed fur.
- Art Shift: A 2D art style is reserved for imagination sequences such as Clover's stories.
- Bamboo Technology: Anything that isn't just repurposed human technology is this, such as a pair of headphones made out of watermelons and vines.
- Black Comedy: Julien's uncle sacrificing a scary number of his pack to the gods, evidenced by a large collection of their spooky skulls.
- Bob Ross Rib: In "The King Julien Show", Mort has a show where he paints pictures of King Julien's feet while wearing an afro.
- Body Horror: Mort claims to have swapped out most of his internal organs years ago.
- Book Ends: "I Like to Move it" is featured as a song in both "King Me" and "The End is Here", the latter of which it is also used as the end credits song.
- Brainless Beauty: A gender inverted example - Sage Moondancer is an extremely muscular lemur with soft blond hair who gets Clover Distracted by the Sexy even after she found out that they aren't compatible. However, he is also a complete Cloud Cuckoolander who goes around saying random non sequiturs.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall:
- In "The End is Near", there are quite a few references to the timeframes in a tv show.
- Maurice mentions 5 seasons of romantic tension between Clover and Sage.
- King Julien talking to his army:Julien: We had planned an obstacle course for today's training, but because of budget and time constraints, we're just gonna show the highlight reel. Hit it.
Cut to a series of clips showing the characters completing their obstacle course. - King Julien setting up a war game that is "like a battle, but it's fake, and it doesn't take a whole season."
- Also in "The End is Near", Horst looks at the camera and proclaims that he is leaving the army as he is a lover. He doesn't seem to be talking to anyone.
- Xixi in "The End is Here":I haven't seen a lot of these faces in multiple seasons.
- In "The End is Near", there are quite a few references to the timeframes in a tv show.
- Brown Note: In the first episode, Julien defeats the "foosa" by using a boom box with heavy bass to knock some rocks loose.
- Chekhov's Gun: "Enter the Fanaloka" opens with a Franksgiving day celebration, where every lemur writes their wish to the gods on a rock that are then all flown to the skies on a hot-air balloon. by the end of the episode Karl has everyone cornered with no hope of escape when the balloon abruptly crushes him, granting King Julien's wish of "Surprise me".
- Cloudcuckoolander: Julien. And of course, the entire kingdom tends to suffer for it, especially Maurice.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Julien would not be nearly as successful as King if he did not have Maurice trying to keep him under control and Clover to help clean up the messes he does make, a fact that Julien himself is well aware of.
- Companion Cube: Amelia, the skeletal remains of the pilot of the crashed plane. Julien often talks to her for advice, particularly regarding things he can't talk to anyone else about. Even Maurice talks to her in one episode.
- Continuity Creep: While the show uses a healthy amount of Continuity Nods and Call-Backs, the end of the 4th season features an actual story arc that built up to a cliffhanger so big, its resolution was in the form of an entirely new show; All Hail King Julien: Exiled.
- Continuity Snarl:
- Several flashbacks throughout the series depict events that don't seem like they should have been possible if they were happening during Uncle King Julien's rule.
- In the third Madagascar film, Maurice smiles when Julien falls to his apparent death and is disappointed to see him survive, which is inconsistent with the bosom friendship they have in the series. That said, it is likely that their relationship worsened over time, after the events of the show.
- Couch Gag:
- The song that plays over the end credits is different in every episode.
- Exiled: At the end of every recap intro theme besides the first, Julien also makes a non-sequitur joke about something that happened in the previous episode, which causes a response from the character the joke is about.
- Exiled: After each recap intro theme, Julien states the episode number in a different language each episode.
- Curse Cut Short: "We are all just ventriloquist dummies and fate is a cruel puppet master sticking his unwashed hands up our..."
- Curb-Stomp Battle: On multiple occasions the lemurs rally together with The Power of Friendship to try and fight back against a threat to save the day, but because they are lemurs and none of them know how to fight, they immediately get defeated.
- Create Your Own Villain: From personally leading his own rebellion, standing up his bodyguard's equally powerful twin sister at the alter, or training a fossa to expand its intelligence, Julien kind of has a bad habit of having a personal hand in creating a lot of his own rogues gallery.
- Darker and Edgier: Exiled shifts from episodic comedy straight into serialized dramedy, which in turns makes Season 5 Lighter and Softer than the events immediately preceding it.
- Deus ex Machina: The Sky Gods seem to favor Julien, as whenever things become bad with no apparent solution, something will suddenly happen to save the day.
- Doomed by Canon: No matter how close Julien and Clover are, they will never leave Madagascar together.
- Double Entendre:
- Pretty much any time Mort takes a break from his naive idiot persona, he swings into innuendo, e.g. "You don't have to poke ME with a stick... unless you want to" complete with eyebrow wiggle and hands on hips.
- "Bring to me the low-hanging fruit of your loins." He actually means babies.
- "Maurice, get back inside me right now!" Context isn't much better - Maurice just emerged from a pantomime-horse-esque fossa costume, in which Julien's behind was crammed up against Maurice's face.
- Enemy Mine: By the end of Exiled Julien, Karl, Uncle Julien and Mary-Ann have all teamed up to take down Koto.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The personalities and relationships of the minor characters isn't fully fleshed out until the second season. In the first season, a lot of them are used as extras, leading to scenes like the baby kissing ceremony where the mothers consist of multiple copies of Dorothy and Becca, none of them paired with their actual husbands or seen to have any children after this.
- End-of-Series Awareness: The latter half of Season 5 starts cleaning up loose ends leading up to the final episodes literally being called "The End is Near" and "The End is Here".
- Evil Counterpart: Karl is the self-proclaimed Evil Counterpart to Julien.
- Evil Genius: Karl.
- Evil Uncle: Julien's uncle, King Julien XII. In the pilot, he passes the crown to his nephew because the king was predicted to be sacrificed to the fossa. He returns in the fifth episode to take back his reign, sending Julien to be unwittingly eaten by the fossa, and removes all the fun things his nephew did for the kingdom.
- Extreme Omnisexual: Julien disguises himself as a fossa and is rather thrilled when one falls in love with him and proposes, even when Julien himself isn't really sure what gender the other one is.
- Julien: I'm going to be a bride! Or a groom, what- either works! Fossa I do!
- Fortune Teller: Masikura the chameleon.
- Four Lines, All Waiting: Until everyone unites at the end, every episode of Exiled gives equal attention to the adventures of Julien, Mort and Clover's individual groups.
- Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Julien (the optimist), Maurice (the realist), Clover (the cynic) and Mort (the apathetic)
- Furry Female Mane: Averted, which only serves to make the Wig, Dress, Accent used by male characters Disguised in Drag stand out more.
- Gasshole: The aye-ayes, as a defense mechanism. Maurice eventually as well.
- Glove Snap:
- In "Empty is the Head" Mort puts up a rubber glove on his head to give suspicious lemurs a security search. Later when a group of lemurs starts to ask too much questions he snaps his glove again and winks at them suggesting they should shut up.
- At the ending of "Julien 2.0", when everyone believes that King Julien has died, Mort puts on some gloves and decides to stay with his body but is dragged away.
- G-Rated Drug: Exhaustion, apparently; after partying too long, Julien starts to act drunk, complete with hangover.
- Coffee in the tenth episode.
- Xi Xi has been known to start acting very drunk, complete with unwanted sexual advances, without imbibing anything on-screen.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: Mort is mortified by the previous King Julian's filthy, unkempt feet, which we're given a nice, long shot of. He is also repulsed by the sight of Pancho's gross feet.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Julien attempts this in the first episode to save his people from the fossa.
- Home Base: As shown in Madagascar, the crashed plane functions as this for Julien, essentially being the "castle" from which royal business is conducted.
- Humanlike Animal Aging: As is the case with the films, generally averted, with Hector acknowledged as one of the older lemurs and implied to be in his 20s, which is a decent age for a lemur that averages a 30 year lifespan. The notable exception of Mort is frequently remarked upon by other characters as being unusual when he drops hints that suggest his age could exceed even 50 years.
- Husky Russkie: Stanislaus the space chimp. Julien finds an ARMY of space chimps kicked out of Russia after the Cold War during his search for an army in Exiled.
- Immediate Sequel: Becomes an immediate prequel as the final shot of the show is Alex washing up on the shores of Madagascar leading directly into the events of the movies.
- Improbable Weapon User: Subverted in the first episode: Julien tries to defeat the "foosa" with a rubber ball on a paddle, but the foosa eats the ball and smashes the wooden paddle.
- Informed Judaism: While the lemurs have their own religion, Jewish traditions frequently come up in off-hand dialogue.
- It's All About Me: Julien. To the point where a 99% approval rating is the worst thing to ever happen to him because it means there is one lemur that doesn't like him.
- I Kiss Your Foot: Mort loves his king's feet a little too much.
- Keet: Mort is a small, cute and hyperactive lemur. Julien counts too, through to a lesser extent.
- Jerkass: Exiled's dolphins, to contrast the amiable "nerd sharks". Name-dropped by Julien.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Julien is slightly nicer in this show. He is still an arrogant jerk, but when his kingdom is in danger, he tries his best to help others.
- The Killjoy: Hector, a lemur who hates everybody.
- King Bob the Nth: As it turns out, there have in fact been 13 Kings Julien. King Julien XIII and King Julien XII are major characters, while past Kings Julien are generally referred to by a title (such as King Julien the Terrible).
- Large Ham: The protagonist himself. There's also Dr. S, who practices medicine OUT OF A CAVE!! (Dramatic Thunder)
- Letter Motif: It seems all Aye-Ayes are given names that start with R but with a B added on; Brodney, Brhonda Brosalind, Broger, Brachel, Bricky.
- This is disproven in Blackboard Jungle when one student is named Bbrandon. Emphasis is even placed on this weird name in the episode. In their world, however, this might be excused because the name itself starts with Br.
- Line-of-Sight Name: Julien tries to pass himself as "Chairlemurtable" when in disguise once.
- Living Is More than Surviving: What Julien believes, and is the backbone of his rule. Even after his first royal party attracts a fossa attack, he insists that they keep partying and enjoying themselves instead of spending their entire lives just hiding in fear doing nothing.Julien: If there may not be a tomorrow, then we've got to live extra big today!
- Logo Joke: Starting partway into season 3: In 2D animation, Julien sits in a straw moon sitting over the jungle in place of the fishing boy, he fishes up Mort who promptly gets eaten by a shark. Julien laughs to himself as Mort calls out "I'm okay!"
- Making a Spectacle of Yourself: A pair of bright pink sparkly shades seem to be the only pair in the kingdom because if someone's wearing shades, it's those.
- Matryoshka Object: Often when Julien is struck with inspiration, his crown pops open to reveal a visualization of this, often featuring one or more smaller copies of himself in the process. At one point this happens so that Julien can engage in inner monologue with himself, which leads to the tiny Julien in his crown coming up with an idea represented by his crown popping over to reveal another tiny Julien to express the idea.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Although there is occasionally some doubt, the show seems to lean on the Sky Gods being real more so than any other entry in the franchise, seemingly providing a few Deus ex Machina.
- Misplaced Wildlife: Xixi the toucan, a species native to South America and not Madagascar.
- My Life Flashed Before My Eyes: "...It was awesome!"
- Obfuscating Stupidity : It's implied that Mort isn't really as stupid as he appears to be. This doesn't mean that he is completely normal neither, through, as he tends to be quite psychotic. In Exiled, he deliberately used his reputation as a moron several times.
- Older Than They Look: Notably the first entry in the Madagascar franchise to explicitly state this is the case for Mort when it had been simply a
Word of God fact until now.Julien: It's Mort! I mean, come on, he could be my father!
Mort: (Annoyed) I'm really not that much older... - Only Sane Man: Maurice and Hector.
- Only Six Faces: Downplayed. Some of the adult lemurs have unique models for their characters and, if not, are given a quirk about them to separate them from the pack (Such as different eye color or specific clothing). Played straight with the baby lemurs though since they're depicted in the show as Palette Swaps of Mort.
- Opposites Attract: Played with for Clover at Sage. At first it seems like their extreme opposite personalities render them completely incompatible with one another, but Character Development in "Exiled" shows that their personalities are both too extreme and to grow they need to become more balanced, more like each other. They complete each other and ultimately get married.
- Origins Episode: The first episode, explaining how Julien became king of the lemurs and how he made partying the norm.
- Out of Focus: Exiled focuses primarily on three parties led by Julien, Clover and Mort all trying to find their own way to free the kingdom from Koto's control. As a result, the regular lemur citizens besides Pancho (who also leaves partway in) and Ted lose focus after Mort's plotline takes him out of the kingdom.
- Overreacting Airport Security: In "Empty is the Head" Clover puts up a security checkpoint in front of King Julian's air plane and searches everyone. Anyone even remotely suspicious gets an intense security examination by Mort who puts up a rubber glove up his head. Even lemurs that are just passing by are getting searched.
- Paper-Thin Disguise:
- Julien successfully disguises himself as a commoner simply by carrying a banana around with him, as everyone in the kingdom knows Julien wouldn't be caught dead with a banana.
- The characters also have a habit of using what looks like a curly piece of grass on a stick to provide a fake mustache with no other changes. This doesn't always work, but sometimes...
- The Paranoiac: Clover is so paranoid that she attacks people who so much as approach her and sometimes talks as if she's using a radio earpiece. This is Played for Laughs.
- Parental Abandonment: The mortality rate for lemurs before the events of the series is said to be extremely high, so it's no surprise that very few characters seem to have any living parents at all. The only main character to have confirmed living parents is Julien, who abandoned him anyway to live a life of luxury.
- Parental Bonus:
- In the first episode, Julien asks Clover to help him repopulate.
- Mort's sexy dance for the foosa as he monologues in a bedroom voice about how juicy his meat is.
- And then there's the matter of Mort's very unsubtle foot fetish.
- Previously on…: Exiled eschews the regular opening theme for Julien singing a recap of the episode prior.
- Prophecy Twist: The King of the Lemurs does get eaten by the Fossa, just not entirely. A small piece of Julien's rear is bitten off by a fossa (although the wound isn't shown).
- Psychic Powers: Masikura.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Several characters supposedly eaten by fossa turn out to have been alive the entire time. It's likely that death by fossa is so common that it's the first conclusion everyone jumps to when someone's gone missing.
- Retcon: Julien is specifically noted to be a self-proclaimed King of the Lemurs in the first Movie. His royal title is shown to be far more legitimate here.
- Wild Mass Guessing does have it that the "self-proclaimed" part might refer to something else, though the idea that the lemurs require a female ruler is undermined by the presence of Julien XII.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Mort, who else?
- Royal Inbreeding:
- Timo says he can "smell the inbreeding" of King Julien.
- In one episode, a character who thinks that Mort is King Julien asks Mort if there was a lot of inbreeding in his family after he shows her a drawing of a foot that has feet instead of toes.
- Running Gag: Even the slightest sign of a problem will cause the lemurs to erupt into a panic, prompting Willie to cry out "We're all gonna die!".
- Also: "Wait, Clover has an accent?" or words to that effect.
- In season 5, picking on Willie and his response, "What the heck, man?!!"
- And Dr. S want you to remember that he practices medicine OUT OF A CAVE!!! (Dramatic Thunder)
- Saved by Canon: No matter what happens in the show you know Julien, Mort and Maurice are going to be ok.
- Sequel Series: The fifth season is listed as a separate show in Netflix's catalog, "All Hail King Julien: Exiled", which will become something of a Midquel Series instead as the sixth overall season is set to premiere as Season 5 of "All Hail King Julien".
- Ship Tease: Julien seems to want Clover. Then again, Julien isn't picky.
- Shout-Out: Episode 5 of Exiled features talking sharks. They aren't the first to complain about stupid dolphins. These dolphins show notably more jerkass tendencies though.
- Somebody Doesn't Love Raymond: Julien finds out that his approval rating is only 99%, which means that one citizen doesn't like him. His efforts to find out who this person is results in nearly everyone hating him. Saving a baby (and a mango) gets his popularity back to where it was at the start and he decides to compensate for the one guy who doesn't like him by loving himself twice as much. It turns out that one guy who doesn't like him is Mort, because he actually loves him.
- Supervillain Lair: "Club Moist" a skull shaped cave that Rob's mad scientist doctor works out of. Parodied when Julien tries to open an actual Club Moist nightclub there which he eventually converts into a hospital.
- Theme Music Powerup: "I Like to Move It" playing on full blast makes Julien party so hard he single-handedly defeats all of the fossa while simultaneously rescuing all of his subjects.
- Thermometer Gag: When King Julien is convinced he's dying in 'King Juli-END?', Mort chases Julien around the bedroom trying to give him a sponge bath and then announces he will be back later to take Julien's temperature. Julien immediately claps a hand over his rectum.
- Too Dumb to Live: In general, none of the lemurs are all that bright.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Compare this Julien to his counterpart in The Penguins of Madagascar. While still retaining his ego, his concern for others is more apparent in this series.
- Tree Top Town: Most of the lemurs in Julien's kingdom live in treehouses.
- Tropical Island Adventure: As you'd expect, the series takes place on the tropical island of Madagascar.
- Twisting the Prophecy: Attempting this kicks off the entire series, in the first episode "King Me" King Julien XII is given a prophecy by Masikura that the king of the lemurs will be eaten by the Fossa at sundown tomorrow. Realising the prophecy only states the "one who wears the crown" will be eaten, he decides to make his nephew Julien king so he'll die instead, then afterwards he'll just take his kingdom back. It backfires on him as Julien survives with Fossa only succeeding in taking a small bite out of him, as the prophecy never stated the king would die.
- Villain Decay: The fossa. Besides receiving a Lighter and Softer redesign relative to the movies, Clover can defeat armies of them by herself to the point where they avoid attacking out of fear of her, while the kingdom seems helpless against them in the movie.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Violently projectile vomiting becomes something of a running gag for Mort throughout the series, but other characters get in on the action from time to time as well.
- Wham Shot: If the Season 4 finale didn't indicate the show was going to take a turn in tone, Julien's empty throne and the fact that "King" in the show's title is faded out in the promotional art for Season 5
really drives it home. - What's Up, King Dude?: Julien tends to be very amicable and accessible to his people, especially during parties, though this varies based on Clover's mood, where she might attack you just for looking at Julien.
- William Telling: In a series of extremely dangerous stunts, King Julien has Ted try to shoot a fruit off of his head with a harpoon gun the guy can barely even hold steady.
- Women Are Wiser: Zig Zagged with Clover, on one hand she does function as a more level headed counter to Julien and Mort’s craziness, but on the other hand she is paranoid, easily angered, and tends to punch people who so much as look at her funny.
- You All Look Familiar: Just about every species of animal has a generic model that you'll see over and over with differing eye colors. As mentioned in Early-Installment Weirdness, this is initially applied to nearly every minor design, but once they became associated with well defined characters, their models became unique to them leaving the common brown lemur the only copied and pasted model.
