Gary and His Demons is a Canadian-American adult-oriented animated Black Comedy series from Mondo Media and Blue Ant Media. It was created by Canadian comedian Mark Little, who voices the title character.
The series concerns Gary, an aging demon hunter working for the Demon Ministry, a government agency dedicated to protecting humanity from the threat of demons. For over 30 years, Gary has slain and defeated all kinds of supernatural horrors, but now at the age of 45, he's jaded, burnt out, and desperate to retire. The problem is that Gary is The Chosen One — he can never retire until the Demon Ministry finds a new "Chosen One". And for Gary, who never even wanted the job in the first place, It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: he was forced to drop out of high school, his fiancee was murdered by demons, and his family doesn't seem to understand or appreciate his line of work. Now, little more than a bitter, lonely, and miserable wreck of a man, Gary struggles against not just the endless plague of horrific fiends and monstrosities that attack innocent people every day, but his own self-loathing and general cynicism.
The show premiered on the VRV streaming service in August 2018 for a single season of 16 episodes. It was also shown on CBC's streaming service CBC Gem, Syfy in the United States starting 2019, Comedy Central in the UK, and ABC Comedy in Australia.
The series was picked up by Amazon Prime for a second season, which debuted in Canada on October 2022, with the States seeing it released in July 2023 on Freevee. A third season has been announced as well.
This show provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: The mugger who gives Gary relationship advice in "Gary & His Love Life."
- Always a Bigger Fish: Grundleman likes to talk up how great a monster he is, but Bloody Mary outclasses him by leagues.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Averted. Although most of the demons we see are evil, it's because Gary's job is to fight evil demons. It's shown that there are demons who are able to live peacefully with humans and Gary's even friends/acquaintances with some of them.
- Asshole Victim: In both of his major appearances, something extremely bad happens to Steve, usually as a result of a mistake on Gary's end. However Steve can be such an annoying Jerkass Big Brother Bully to Gary that it comes across as more of a karmic punishment.
- Grundleman likes murdering pre-teen girls, so it's rather satisfying when Bloody Mary kills him, especially after talking down about her.
- Bittersweet Ending: Season 2 ends with humanity victorious against the demons and Gary getting to be happy with Fleshler Jr, but Tucker dies as a result of being possessed by Ryndok.
- Black Comedy: A show about a depressed demon hunter dealing with awkward personal situations.
- Double-Meaning Title: The demons of the title may refer to either the unholy monsters that Gary has to kill or his figurative demons and inner suffering.
- Downer Ending: Gary was ready to accept his retirement from demon-hunting, but then he got the new chosen one drunk, causing him to walk off a cliff and get paralyzed and comatose. Gary is forced to return to the chosen one position, and the season ends with Gary crying and bemoaning his fate.
- Faux Affably Evil: Of all the show's demons, Fleshler stands out as the best example of this.
- Humongous Mecha: "The Door" reveals that Marito can turn the entire Demon Ministry building into this.
- Imaginary Friend: In this world, imaginary friends are demons that are normally only visible to children. Adults can see them under some conditions (using LSD or goggles made out of the eyes of a child).
- It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: The chosen one 'must' fight evil. They can't do anything 'but' fight evil and can't stop fighting evil until a new chosen one is found. The moment Gary was found to be the chosen one he was forced to abandon whatever plans he had for his future to work at the demon ministry. The job has cost him the lives of everybody he cares about and while it guarantees Ultimate Job Security in that he can't be fired no matter how badly he screws up or acts out, he also can't retire until a new chosen one comes along.
- The Lost Lenore: Janine, who was killed right after accepting Gary's marriage proposal.
- Pet the Dog: Gary is a depressed, cynical and all-around bitter person who doesn't much care about other people, but even he has his moments of kindness.
- In episode 6, when Leslie is feeling terribly depressed over her family life, Gary tries to make her feel better (in his own way), by giving her his sword to hit a nearby tree to release her pent-up anger, letting her take a drink from his flask and even helping Leslie egg her ex-husband's house. At the end of the episode, Gary even states that, despite finding her annoying at times, does not truly hate her and in fact regards her as a friend.
- In episode 14, after causing Sakura to try and run away after scaring her with tales about the hellish experiences he's had as a demon hunter, he goes out to find her and only becomes more adamant when it turns out a demon had come around. When Sakura confesses that she's absolutely terrified about being a demon hunter and doesn't think she can do it, Gary offers her some encouraging (sort of) words and tells her not to listen to him, as he's a sad man.
- The Power of Friendship: Gary and a bunch of other chosen demon slayers form together to form some kind of Voltron-like robot, but they don't know how to work it so they just all fall.
- Quarter Hour Short: Every episode is about 11 minutes long.
- Shout-Out:
- At one point, Gary mentions having killed a creepy ghost girl that came out of TVs.
- While riding a car, Mike and Gary both confess to be fans of RuPaul's Drag Race.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Hanley and Leslie are basically the closest things Gary has to friends despite treating them like dirt.
