Cast
Regular voices were provided by Tara Charendoff, Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano, and Billy West. Guest voices were Victor Brandt, Mary Jo Catlett, Sherman Howard, and Martin Jarvis.
Plot
Construction workers are restoring the Sons of Erin Society Building. The foreman, Mr. O'Malley, sends a worker named Murphy to clean out a back office before a party on Monday, which Murphy guesses is for St. Patrick's Day. While moving a box, Murphy finds a small rack of pipes; picking one up opens a secret passage in the bookshelf. Sunlight falls on a stone circle inside. Murphy accidentally knocks over one of the stones, and a leprechaun escapes. The creature knows Murphy by name and demands to know where "it" is. When Murphy has no idea, the leprechaun animates a bull figurine with his shillelagh, blasts Murphy, and traps him in a small pot. A plaque names the club's four founding officers: McShane, McTavish, O'Toole, and Murphy. The Murphy plate glows green.
Atop a condo, Mr. O'Toole receives an envelope of burnt toast in the mail and does not understand its meaning. The Extreme Ghostbusters investigate the secret room at the Sons of Erin building. Egon Spengler examines the stones while Roland Jackson takes notes and Kylie Griffin sweeps with her P.K.E. Meter. Kylie recognizes the layout from her books on Celtic folklore as a mystic circle used to imprison supernatural creatures. Eduardo Rivera takes readings, and O'Malley describes seeing a "little guy," which Kylie pegs as a leprechaun. Egon determines one stone is a fragment of the Blarney Stone, reputed to grant the gift of gab and good luck. Garrett scoffs at the idea of luck and pockets the fragment. Janine Melnitz radios in an emergency call.
At O'Toole's condo, police think the man is trying to jump, but he is fleeing a giant serpent. The Ghostbusters open fire to no effect; Kylie reads it as a Class 4 emanation, merely ecto-animated. A shot ceiling light crushes the serpent, which crumbles to dust. The leprechaun then blasts O'Toole into the pot, and the O'Toole plate glows. He warns the team to stay out of his way or be cursed with bad luck. Garrett dares him to try, and the leprechaun blasts Garrett before teleporting away. As the team loads up, a brick falls toward Garrett and Roland shoves him clear.
Back in the lab, Egon confirms the mailed toast is charred whole wheat bread. Kylie reads in a book on Celtic myth that burnt toast or mistletoe were given to sacrificial victims. Egon says he may have isolated a component of the Blarney Stone that could counteract the leprechaun's abilities, with psychokinetic properties that affect the causality specific to the creature. Garrett's mounting misfortune (a collapsing table, a sandwich Slimer snatches) marks him as cursed.
The leprechaun strikes again at McTavish Boxing, where he traps Mr. McTavish in the pot after taunting him about a knock with no one at the door. Egon, citing stiff joints, splits off to return to the Sons of Erin building rather than ride along. At the gym the Ghostbusters confront the leprechaun: Kylie nearly secures the pot using the Blarney Stone fragment, but he blasts the fragment, tosses the team aside, and escapes after Garrett loses control of his thrower and nearly hits Roland and Eduardo.
At the Sons of Erin building, Egon gathers background on the leprechaun: he was inadvertently brought over from Ireland at the start of the 20th century, and unlike an ordinary mischievous leprechaun this one was pure evil, terrorizing the Irish community until the Sons of Erin Society trapped him in a mystic circle sealed with a Blarney Stone fragment. The society used his gold to feed hungry immigrant children. He is now hunting the descendants of the men who imprisoned him. A chemical treatment reveals the fourth, worn plaque name: McShane. Kylie connects it to the current mayor, and Janine's records confirm Mayor McShane's great-great-grandfather was a founding member.
The team stops McShane's limo at Gracie Mansion, but he and his aide Jensen dismiss the warning; McShane is set to ride the lead float in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The Ghostbusters mount a stakeout in Ecto-1. Garrett, still cursed, returns to the lab a wreck and begs Egon for help. Egon finishes his anti-leprechaun formula, though most of it spills, leaving barely enough for one thrower. To get Garrett out of the basement, Egon gives him a placebo "byproduct," really grape soda, and the suggestion cures Garrett's bad luck.
In the morning a coach pulls up to Gracie Mansion. McShane assumes it is a parade gimmick, but the driver is the leprechaun; the horse transforms and McShane is pulled into the Death Coach. The team gives chase. At the parade, the leprechaun hurls a float at Ecto-1 and animates a statue, which the Ghostbusters melt. He fights them directly, teleporting whenever they blink, until Garrett, loaded with Egon's formula, blasts him in the back. A float rams the leprechaun and buries him in spilled gold, and the team blasts and traps him. The Death Coach dissipates and the three captured victims are freed. McShane spins the whole event to reporters as a staged prank by his aides that he heroically stopped, to Garrett's disbelief.
The Leprechaun
The episode's antagonist is classified in Spengler's Spirit Guide as a malignant leprechaun. Standard leprechauns are benign Class 2 magnitude apparitions; malignant variants can range from Class 4 to Class 9. This one is approximately two feet tall, wears an emerald cobbler's outfit, and carries a shillelagh that fires magic beams capable of enchanting objects or imprisoning victims inside a small pot. The enchanted objects are ecto-animated rather than ecto-based and register as Class 4 Emanations on a P.K.E. Meter. The leprechaun can also curse targets with persistent bad luck, and teleports whenever an observer blinks.
Egon's solution is to isolate an ionic particle from the Blarney Stone fragment with psychokinetic properties that adversely affect the leprechaun's causality matrix. Loaded into a proton canister, the modified proton stream effectively reverses the creature's luck manipulation and makes him vulnerable enough to trap.
The leprechaun makes later appearances in IDW Publishing comics. He turns up as a non-canon cameo on page five of Ghostbusters Volume 2, Issue 14 (as a "Shillelagh Mint Mocha" advertisement inside Pequod's Coffee), and appears on the IDW convention variant cover of Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary: Extreme Ghostbusters. Leprechauns also appear as regular enemies in the Extreme Ghostbusters Video Game and Extreme Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Invasion.
Production notes
The episode draws on Irish folklore throughout. The leprechaun quotes the poem "The Faeries" by Irish poet William Allingham. Kylie's enthusiasm for Celtic myth includes an implicit reference to the Lucky Charms cereal mascot. Internal dialogue places the episode on March 16-17, 1997: Murphy is told the restoration must be finished by Monday for a party he guesses is for St. Patrick's Day, and the parade confrontation occurs on March 17.
The shooting episode differs from earlier drafts. In the outline, the story opened with workmen disassembling a vast castle-like building imported from Ireland at the turn of the century and preparing to ship it to an amusement park in Florida.2 McTavish fought an emanation of Cuchullin, a giant of Irish folklore, rather than the generic boxer emanation seen in the finished episode.3 The outline also included additional targets: William McCoomb, a magician whose stage swan transforms into a demon, and Colleen Goldberg (formerly Colleen O'Bryan) of the Goldberg Department Stores, who is taken by the Death Coach from her parade float.4567 In the outline the leprechaun sent giant Irish shoes, oversized shillelaghs, a huge pipe, and a three-story leprechaun float after the team,8 and Garrett cooked an Irish stew at the end that Slimer ate.9 The first draft had Kylie admit she had an Irish aunt,10 and Garrett reference the Tooth Fairy.11
The foreman O'Malley shares a surname with Deputy Chief O'Malley from The Real Ghostbusters episode "The Scaring of the Green," another leprechaun-themed story. In that episode, Deputy Chief O'Malley reveals that one of his ancestors stole a pot of gold from a leprechaun and was cursed in return. The Fandom wiki has speculated that both stories may reference the same creature, though this is not stated in either episode. Eduardo scanning and poking O'Malley with a P.K.E. Meter echoes Egon's gag with a bystander in the first Ghostbusters film. During the parade scene, two background spectators reuse character designs from earlier episodes: one of the thieves from "The Crawler" and the second victim of Duophanes from "Be Careful What You Wish For."
The previous episode was "Seeds of Destruction" and the next was "The Ghostmakers."
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
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eBay listing, "Extreme Ghostbusters '97 Production SIGNED Frank Squillace Hand Drawn Model Cel," retrieved March 3, 2023. Note reads: "Art Direction Note/Sketch From Me Ext. GB's show #114."
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 1. Line reads: "Workmen are disassembling a vast castle-like building, imported from Ireland at the turn of the century, to transport it to an amusement park in Florida."
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 5. Line reads: "Inside the gym they find McTavish doing some fancy footwork, trying to evade the attacks of Cuchullin, a giant of Irish folklore."
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 5. Line reads: "Lyceum Theatre - a small off-broadway house - William McCoomb, a magician."
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 8. Line reads: "On stage, McCoomb produces a white swan - it transforms into a demon, thrusts at McCoomb. heaved into air, collected by Leprechaun."
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 8. Line reads: "Kylie, using a lap-top, has located the final victim, -- a Mrs. Goldberg."
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 9. Kylie says: "The former Colleen O'Bryan -- now Mrs. Colleen Goldberg of the Goldberg Department Store Goldbergs."
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 10.
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (Outline 1997), outline p. 11.
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (First Draft 1997), script p. 6. Kylie says: "I had an Irish Aunt, okay?!"
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Wachtel, Brooks (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters, "The Luck of the Irish" (First Draft 1997), script p. 13. Garrett says: "What's next -- the tooth fairy gonna give me cavities?"
