And we’ve arrived at last: the darkest episodes of the darkest arc in all of Xena Warrior Princess, which caused plenty of controversy at the time due to its violence, and is still rather difficult to watch today: specifically the murder of two children (though granted, one of them is an evil demon in the guise of a child) and the infamous “Gab Drag”, in which Xena lashes Gabrielle to the back of her horse and gallops off full-tilt, dragging her friend’s body across fields till they reach a cliff-face, over which Xena tries to throw her.
The Rift is the fan-name given to this arc, in which Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship is sorely tested due to their experiences in Britannia, Chin and Illusia, specifically regarding the fates of their children Solan and Hope. The more violent aspects of it were badly received in the nineties; by today’s standards it would have caused an absolute social media meltdown, overshadowing the actual content of the episodes in question (there’s always that one scene in any given show or film that completely dominate people’s memories).
These episodes comprise the conclusion of this arc – for better or worse – so let’s get into it…
Maternal Instincts
Plot: Xena and Gabrielle return to the village where Xena’s son Solan is being raised (unaware of his maternity) by Kaleipus, a wise centaur. A celebration is underway to commemorate a peace treaty, but unbeknownst to everyone present, a little girl called Fayla has accidentally released Callisto from her underground prison.
Using the girl as her messenger, Callisto threatens Xena’s “greatest secret”, which Xena takes to mean her son. Gabrielle begins to suspect that Fayla is actually Hope, but keeps her suspicions to herself even after Kaleipus is found murdered at the same time Xena and Gabrielle were confronting Callisto – which means she can’t have been responsible for his death.
Realizing that Callisto must be working with someone, Xena hides Solan in the Ixion Caves, though Hope manipulates Gabrielle (who confesses that she’s her mother) into sending her there too. When Xena arrives to fetch her son, she finds Solan dead. As Xena leads Callisto into yet another cave-in trap, Gabrielle gives Hope poison and almost drinks it herself before changing her mind.
At the funeral pyres of their children, Xena blames Gabrielle for Solan’s death and walks away into the night.
This was obviously not very easy to watch, and the writers took no prisoners when it came to killing off recurring characters and children. I can see the internal logic of it – Kaleipus had to die because it would have been too cruel to make him live on after his son's death, and Solan had to die in order to kickstart the next phase of the Rift – but still, it was pretty tough going.
The whole point of this episode was to craft a terrible situation in which blame couldn't easily be placed, and it’s difficult to sort out because it’s not really about cause and effect, but motivation and effect. Gabrielle had the absolute best intentions when she saved Hope and tried to prevent Xena from assassinating Ming T’ien, but her actions have dire consequences. Meanwhile, Xena has very bad intentions when she goes to Britannia and Chin, but in each case her actions result in toppling a tyrant bent on conquest and destruction.
So how are you meant to judge a person? By what they are trying to do, or what their actions actually achieve? If we judge solely by intentions, then Xena is the villain here. But if we take the consequences, then Gabrielle is.
So in that sense, you can't find any easy "one size fits all" moral groundwork to try and untangle what was going on here. In fact, what Gabrielle did was very reminiscent of Lao Ma. Both women are mothers, and both defend their child against Xena (who is trying to kill said children) even though both know on some level that their child may bring incredible harm to the world. Which they do.
When you think about it, if Lao Ma had let Xena kill Ming T'ien as a child, peace would have been assured and she herself would have lived. Had Gabrielle let Xena kill Hope, then Solan would have lived, along with dozens of other innocent people. But is it ever right to kill a child? That's the part I have a problem with, even when taking into account that Hope is not a “normal” child by any stretch of the imagination.
And even if you make a convincing argument that killing a child to prevent more evil from happening is in fact a good and justifiable thing, then Xena is really, really, really going about it the wrong way. She KNOWS that Gabrielle is convinced (at least on some level) that Hope might be innocent and can be raised as a good person, and so ranting and raving about how she's a vessel for evil and deserves to die and maybe poison is the best way is... well, about as stupid as Gabrielle thinking that Ming T'ien would handwave Xena's attempted assassination and simply let her go.
And it feels as though on a certain level, Xena is given authorial fiat to act this way. I mean, we the audience know that Hope is pure evil, because we've seen her scheming with Callisto when Gabrielle isn’t around. But can Xena honestly and truly be 100% sure of it? I also think it's a little hypocritical of Xena to get angry at Gabrielle for lying to her when a few episodes ago she left a hairpin in a guy's temple and pretended she was taking the higher road.
So in this whole situation, I tend to veer more sympathetically toward Gabrielle, even though Xena is technically "the right one" in regards to what she wants to do and how she goes about doing it. That said, there is no easy answer and everyone loses something here.
But there's plenty of good drama to go with it! Callisto had a pretty spectacular episode here, especially in teaming up with Hope. You were never quite sure which of the two had the upper hand until the very end, and Callisto's glee turning to ashes when she realizes that killing Solan hasn't brought her the peace she wanted was a pretty amazing scene – as was her monologue to Xena afterwards.
It's actually going to be pretty interesting to see what the writers might do with her next, as the character has been fundamentally altered. Resetting her characterization would be a huge cop-out, but for all intents and purposes, her motivation is completely gone. I'm not sure how she could possibly function as a character much less a villain after this.
Ephiny was nicely used; first as a sounding board to Gabrielle and then as a protector of the Amazon/centaur children. In fact, the episode really needed her (and her son) as a reminder that not everything was doom and gloom, and I really liked the moment when Xena yells "get out!" only to see Xenon at the door.
This was a different actor playing Kaleipus, right? I'll admit, I actually liked this one better and was sad to see him go. And as devastating as her son's death was for Xena, I can't say I'll miss that kid's acting. Okay, that's mean – I did actually really like the scene he had with Xena in which he begs her to take him with her, though genre savvy viewers probably realized he was a goner the moment Xena agreed to it.
Meanwhile, all of the Hope/Gabrielle scenes were pretty amazing too. It would have been interesting if the writers had chosen to hide Hope's blatant evil from the audience for a bit, though I suppose it would have insulted our intelligence what with all the talk of Callisto being in league with someone.
It did make me wonder though – what was Hope's childhood like? Didn't her foster parents get suspicious when she grew up so fast? Or didn't she have any at all? Does that mean she just fending for herself? How self-conscious was she as a baby? Did she really remember what Gabrielle did to her? And how did she know that Xena had a son or where Callisto was buried? Orders from Daddy, I assume, but I feel that Hope could be a really compelling character on her own terms, if we were just given a little bit more information about her. As it is, she’s only interesting in relation to Gabrielle, her purpose in life, and the moral quandary ("should you kill a child to save the world?") that she raises.
But the little actress playing her was really good at channelling unadulterated malevolence (especially that scene where she and Solan are just looking at each other in the hut) and Renee O’Connor was fantastic when she finally twigs as to who Hope really is.
Finally, I question the ethics of cremating Solan's body right next to the body of the demon-child that murdered him, even as I understand the symbolism of it. Two women standing before their children's funeral pyres – that's incredibly dark for a show that was just last week throwing fish and squid around the place.
The Bitter Suite
Plot: Xena enacts her revenge upon Gabrielle for the death of her son, though just before she makes the killing blow, the two of them topple into the ocean. They awaken in the realm of Illusia, where the personifications of Tarot cards and a variety of musical numbers force them to work through their grievances. Yeah, it’s a weird one.
First of all, the notorious Gab Drag. I actually watched this way back when it first aired on NZ television, and oddly enough, I can't remember what my reaction was. At that age I wouldn’t have grasped the wider issues surrounding the existence of such a violent scene between what was essentially a w/w couple, but watching it now I can see why people were so upset.
It's not simply that Xena commits such an act of extreme cruelty toward Gabrielle, but that the depiction of it is so needlessly brutal. She's not just dragged behind a horse for miles, but through fire pits and a river, crashing through wooden structures before she’s finally lifted above Xena’s head and flung off a cliff into the ocean. If this show had any semblance of realism, Gabrielle would have been dead by the time they reached that cliff-top.
But the story starts for real once they reach Illusia, where everyone breaks into song a full three years before Buffy the Vampire Slayer did it. The thing is: I’m not sure I buy it. First of all, that clearly wasn't Renee singing. It didn't sound like her even a little bit, and it threw me out of the moment every time. Second of all, there was something awkward and stilted about characters just bursting into song like that, and at times it slowed the pacing right down (Xena in front of the waterfall seemed to go on forever).
I actually think it might have been a better decision for all the cast except Gabrielle and Xena to sing, having them wandering confusedly through the big musical numbers trying to glean what the hell was going on without joining in. I guess it was a chance to show off Lucy's singing talent, but I think it would have worked better had these two characters simply talked through their issues whilst the rest of the cast goes crazy around them.
Because I'm not really entirely convinced that they did get through their issues. I guess the moral of the story was that they realized hate was tearing them apart and that they just had to let it go? Mm, okay – but that's really simplifying what went down. An innocent child is dead because of the choices these two women made, but apparently a hug in the Underworld not only solves that problem but also the horrific Gab Drag that just took place?
(I had to smile wryly at the fact that Gabrielle's wounds had completely disappeared in that final scene – I guess it's hard to frolic in the waves with your best friend when you're covered in fatal injuries).
But I'll talk about the good stuff. The first big musical number with Gabrielle in her home village and Xena among Ares's warriors was fantastic. The lyrics, the choreography, the costumes – the style and saturated colours was a great way of removing them both from the “real world” and emphasizing the symbolic nature of Illusia. I especially liked that even though these were depictions of where each woman "belonged", it's clear that they don't really belong there anymore, partly because of their ensuing friendship with each other.
The echo chamber was another nice conceit in which their arguing drowned out each other's voices. I wonder if the fandom took this imagery aboard when it came to discussing the episode, as ultimately I think the writers knew the dilemma they'd created for their characters was getting rather convoluted and wanted to demonstrate that throwing blame around wasn't going to get them anywhere. Like I said, I would have preferred it if they'd talked honestly and each taken responsibility for what they'd done (which is very different from assigning blame) but as a narrative shortcut, it’s sneaky enough to work.
I was impressed at the continuity of the final scene in which Xena/Gabrielle face off against the embodiments of hate: Callisto, Ares, Caesar and Khrafstar (kudos to Karl Urban and Marton Csokas for turning up just for that one scene) and their evil selves were very effective. Also nice to see Lila and Solan again.
But I was a little disappointed with the resolution of the Ming T'ien character. Here's the thing. Both Xena and Gabrielle told a lie that damaged their friendship. Gabrielle lied about saving Hope, and Xena lied about killing Ming T'ien. You could argue that one of these lies was morally worse than the other, but in terms of the narrative, I felt that Gabrielle was "punished" far, far more for her failings than Xena was. She is made to feel responsible for Solan's death, forced to kill her own child, and is dragged behind a horse across the countryside by her best friend. She was also given a lot of grief for betraying Xena in Chin, and Xena actually goes through with "killing" her in Illusia. Geez, give the girl a break!
In comparison, even though Xena has suffered the most with Solan's death, Xena's "big crime" (the murder of Ming T'ien) was treated as an afterthought. Again, you could argue that killing Ming T'ieu was a good thing, but the show (at least in my opinion) never presented it as that. I was under the impression that his assassination and Xena’s lie to Gabrielle about it was a Very Bad Thing. And yet, Xena suffers no consequences for it. Heck, Gabrielle doesn't even KNOW about it until the moment Ming T'ieu takes off his hood. There was actually a good dichotomy in that Gabrielle lied in order to save a life, while Xena lied in order to get away with taking one, but the episode left no room for exploring that comparison.
But not everyone agrees. I was scrolling TV Tropes and I found this review of the episode:
In this musical episode, Xena and Gabrielle confront one another and they find redemption through song. The idea, conceptualization, music and production values were all excellent, so what could I have a problem with? The hypocrisy.
I thought this episode would be about Xena learning to deal with her hate and anger – long-term issues for her – and to forgive Gabrielle. Or maybe about both learning to deal with their inner pain. But Gabrielle has to deal with her hate for Xena? Why? What for? For taking her to Britannia – which Gabrielle chose to go to of her own free will – and then not babysitting her while she goes off with people they both trusted somewhere both thought was safe?
So it's Xena's fault for everything with Dahak? Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. I concede blame where blame is due, but making Gabrielle blame Xena for not only her own past mistakes but having to deal with the consequences of those mistakes just stinks of hypocrisy and petulant whining. I was pretty thoroughly disgusted. Gabrielle's petulant 2-D hatred and accusations being put on the same level as Xena's just trivialised Xena's own deep-seated suffering and hatred, making what has been a real issue for her seem as stupid and silly as Gabrielle's.
Instead of a deep diatribe on the complex issues of hate, Gabrielle's own laughable blaming of Xena and the writers' handling of it made the entire episode seem childish and utterly idiotic. Oh yes, don't work through your issues by listening to each others' grievances and talking them out, just sing that you forgive without any acknowledgement of the guilt or discussion of the issues.
What should have been a touching reconciliation basically looks like the writers ran out of ideas. I more sympathised with Xena after the prior episode, but I still thought that what Gabrielle went through was horrendous... now my sympathy for her is gone completely and I'm seriously wishing Xena would go dark side and behead her just to shut her up.
The fact that XENA of all people sung the "yes, I lied, please forgive me" song had me screaming in anger and vivid hatred at the episode writers. Not ONCE did I hear Gabrielle offer any apology for what she did to Xena and XENA is the one who is apologizing. Well, in one episode I went to hating at the very least the episode writers, which is just wonderfully ironic.
It’s not like this person doesn’t raise some valid points, but I think it’s unnecessarily harsh to Gabrielle. I don’t hold Xena responsible for Gabrielle’s pregnancy (after all, Gabrielle did choose to go to Britannia) but ironically, I think Xena got off lightly in the wake of Ming T’ieu’s assassination.
I think it would have been more effective if Gabrielle had found out that Xena killed Ming T'ieu BEFORE this episode, and been suitably furious at Xena's hypocrisy. At the very start of this episode, when the vision of Callisto is telling Gabby that Xena's hate took them to Britannia, they could have had her say something along the lines of: "she expected you to kill your own daughter, but she's allowed to wander the world, killing whoever she likes – that's not fair." As it is, the Ming T’ieu revelation seems tacked on, and more than a little irrelevant.
Basically, I liked The Bitter Suite. I wish I had a bit more information about all the tarot cards that were involved in creating these images, as I felt that there was a ton of symbolism and imagery that went over my head, but I give it full points for creativity and originality.
And kudos to Ephiny and Joxer for trying to defend Gabrielle against Xena’s onslaught (even though they didn't stand a chance).
One Against An Army
Plot: Gabrielle is struck by a poisoned arrow, leaving Xena to prepare for and repel a Persian invasion all by herself. Assisted by a Spartan deserter who turns out to be a Persian spy, and with Gabrielle slowly succumbing to the poison in her system, Xena tests the very limits of her ingenuity to fend off the attackers.
I really liked this one, simply because it mingled the nuances of a strong relationship with another moral quandary, but this time it let friendship win.
But perhaps it came a little too soon on the heels of Maternal Instincts and The Bitter Suite. There should have been some residual degree of tension between the women, or perhaps an episode in which they took some time away from each other only to find that they missed each other. Shouldn't they still be grieving for their children?
As it is, this episode felt like it belonged post-The Debt, but pre-Maternal Instincts, as I found it a little odd that Gabrielle was apologising for what happened in Chin and not what happened to Solan.
The setup was pretty good, with the Persian army advancing on Greece, and Xena finding herself in a strategic position to fend them all off. There was a cute nod to Marathon and the 300 Spartans mixed in, but then it was all down to Xena and her impressive array of skills to save the day.
The idea of her taking on an entire army and winning was typical goofy fun, but I actually love these "tiny armies take on giant forces and win through cunning and strategy" storylines, so this setup was always going to go down well with me. And despite the ridiculousness of the premise, the situation was infused with so much emotion and had so much at stake that it heightened what was going on and somehow forced you to take it seriously.
An episode that dealt with the One-Man Army trope arguably could have worked just as well with Xena and Gabrielle both fighting off the Persians, but by taking Gabby out of commission, Xena has the added burden of weighing up her friend's life against the safety of all of Greece. This is another of my much-loved tropes, especially when a hero looks at a particular cause and goes "screw it" in favour of the person they love.
It was very interesting to see the way Xena's priorities in life have definitively changed: she states explicitly that she's no longer looking for redemption, she just wants to keep her friend alive. That she's prepared to put Gabrielle's life above all of Greece AND her own desire for redemption is saying quite a lot.
As for Gabrielle, it was equally heart-breaking to see her try and face death with dignity and assure Xena that she doesn't regret their time together. It touches on plenty of themes that have been strewn throughout the entire show: of the bigger picture, of the nature of their friendship and the effect they have on each other, of Gabrielle's blood innocence, of Xena's quest for redemption, and examines them through the prism of impending death. When they linked their fingers together and talked about seeing each other on the other side, I may have shed a tear...
The Persian spy was another nice detail, and I honestly didn't see that one coming – though I loved that Xena figured him out well before I did. I was actually getting quite involved in his cowardice and need to prove himself, not to mention his bonding with Gabrielle, which made it all the more chilling when he returned with the army and stood over her, poised and ready to kill her.
Another interesting thing was Gabrielle's prophetic dream. Usually it's irritating when a character is given a hitherto unmentioned superpower that saves the day, but somehow this worked really well. It was suitably enigmatic without being too much of a plot convenience, and I like that it went unexplained. Gabrielle shared her vision with Xena, and Xena heeded it, no questions asked. It was a nice counterpoint to Xena being unable to reclaim the powers she had in Chin, and even if it's never brought up again, it was a deliberately mysterious little sequence.
There were a few glitches, such as the extremely slow walking that Xena and Gabrielle were doing at the start of the episode (there's an army coming – run!) and the 22B that was clearly visible on Argo's side, and the immediate recovery Gabrielle has after she's given the antidote to the poison – but apart from those contrivances, I thought this was a great episode. It's probably going to end up one of my favourites: the setup of the approaching army, Gabrielle taken out of commission, Xena being forced to decide between Greece and Gabrielle, the preparation and goodbye sequences (especially when a delirious Gabrielle started repeating the first words she ever said to Xena)… it was all great stuff, and felt like a definitive Xena Warrior Princess episode.
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