Why is the go to with new people watching Xena “oh the historical timeline isn’t accurate 😒”
YES, it’s a FANTASY show where the woman leaps 20 feet off the ground screaming for her wife, dies, becomes and archangel, becomes a demon, takes over hell, launches an attack on heaven, comes back to life, kills giants, dies and comes back to life, fights an army to save her dying wife, dies and comes back to life, has 3 exact look alikes, uses shaman mysticism to retrieve the soul of her baby, dies…
i wish i could telepathically communicate to all the young gays that watching Xena is worth it even with our much higher standards today for lgbt characters in media. the cast crew writers and showrunners never panicked when they discovered that their characters were driven by romantic love and were pulled back only by the network to prevent it from becoming textual. by season 4 they established them as souls in love reincarnated together forever and never tried in earnest to pair them with men. by the end of season 5 they stopped that altogether. by season 6, it is as explicit as they were able to make it given the restraints at the time, and they did so much to signal to queer audiences that Xena and Gabrielle were one of us. like Xena presenting Gabrielle, a lover of written word, with a poem by Sappho as a gift (and becoming adorably shy and blushing as she reads it).
there is so much joy in seeing just how effectively they were able to convey the romantic nature of their love and companionship despite the opposition. physical attraction is clear in the s6 episodes “Who’s Gurkhan” and “When Fates Collide”. “When Fates Collide” and “Return of the Valkyrie” are so dizzyingly and overtly romantic that i still can’t believe they pulled it off. when viewed in its full context it is really an epic and beautiful love story. :)