The demigod Maui is remembered as the hero with the magic fishhook, but his final trick involved turning himself into a worm to conquer the goddess of death, only to be defeated because a fantail laughed. This episode reconstructs Maui’s biography across the Polynesian Triangle, from New Guinea to New Zealand to Hawaii, showing how one rascal, or kolohe, stayed consistent across millions of square miles of ocean.

We follow the last-born underdog who baits a hook made from his grandmother’s jawbone with his own blood, fishes up the North Island of New Zealand, pushes up the sky, snares the sun with ropes of his own hair, and steals fire from the underworld in Hawaiian, Samoan, and Maori versions. Then we examine why his attempt to reverse birth itself through Hine-nui-te-po ends in death, and how his legacy lives on in Moana and in Tongan earthquake customs.

• Mangarevan origins: Maui the eight-eyed, born from his mother’s navel and armed by his grandfather
• Why the North Island is jagged: his brothers hacked the fish before the rituals were done
• Mana as physical power: why Maui beats the sun with a jawbone instead of commanding it
• Ripping off the earthquake god’s arm in Samoa and Mahuika’s flaming fingernails in the Maori tale
• Stamping the ground in Tonga to wake Maui Motua when the earth trembles