Highlander-When did they decide to make Richie immortal?

[broberfett]

I was watching the episode called Family Tree, which guest starred Peter Deluise, and there were several lines that seemed to suggest that Richie is known to be immortal, at least to Duncan. He knows Jack Ryan isn't Richie's dad right away and later on he says that after centuries you get over not knowing who your parents were and Richie will too. So when did they definitely decide that Richie was immortal?

 

[God Magnus]

My personal take on it is that he was meant to be Immortal all along. At the end of "The Gathering" Duncan and Connor have a quick conversation after Duncan rescues Connor where Duncan says he'll watch after "the boy". When I first saw it, I thought it meant they were going to be sure he isn't going to spill the beans about Immortals, but the more I thought about it the more I wondered if Connor and Duncan had a "sense" that Richie was going to be an Immie and decided to watch over him because of that.

 

[FreezeC77]

I remember reading an interview with one of the producers on the show and I think the gist of it was that they put that line in the first episode as a hint of Richie being an immortal, but that they were never really sure if they were going to have him become an immortal or not until later on. So they never really thought "ok at the end of this season we plan to make him an immortal" it was something they considered possibly doing and obviously did.