It’s been a long time since I lasted posted some Xena Warrior Princess reviews, as my newish DVD player doesn’t read my considerably older discs, which means I have to go elsewhere to refresh my memory on how these episodes played out, and that depends a lot on whether assorted family members are willing to let me veg out on their couches for an extended period of time. (These reviews were written years ago, but I still like to have some recollection of what I’m actually posting about).
For this entry, I’ve decided to feature four rather than the usual three episodes, as this quartet neatly encompass the entirety of the India arc. Plus, there are twenty-two episodes per season, so at some point I always have to add an extra episode to a post so everything fits.
The India arc is arguably what season four is best known for, and I’m pretty certain there were some recreational drugs being passed around the writers’ room while they were being conceptualized. Shit gets weird. Furthermore, when it comes to the show’s treatment of India’s culture and religion... holy cultural appropriation Batman! In particular, “The Way” is filled with apologetic official disclaimers, for even back in 1998 there was pushback against using other people’s belief systems as a backdrop for your cheesy fantasy series.
Let’s get to it...
Paradise Found
Xena and Gabrielle find themselves in a strange underground world ruled by a mystical guru called Aiden, who trains Gabrielle in breathing and yoga techniques. She loves the newfound feelings of renewal and vitality, but Xena is going through quite a different transformation, gradually becoming deranged and animalistic.
On realizing that Aiden draws the life-force out of people and turns them into statues to maintain his environment, Xena comes up with a plan to break Gabrielle out of her stupor and escape back to the real world.
So this episode started off interesting, then got weird, then got more interesting, then got more weird. I'm not really sure what to make of it.
There was some nice continuity at work here, first in all the little hints that have been made over the season regarding Gabrielle’s search for some meaningful, all-encompassing answer to the big questions in life, and secondly in Xena’s reoccurring vision that makes her increasingly paranoid about Gabrielle’s safety. It’s easy to see why both those preoccupations have led to the women travelling to India: Gabrielle to find enlightenment, and Xena to get Gabrielle away from those mountains.
Things take a turn for the intriguing when, while camping out in a cave of some kind, the women fall down a hole and into an underground paradise. Just as I thought to myself that this place looks just like Illusia, Xena references it and establishes that it’s not. They meet the master of the place, Aiden, who seems nice enough and extends them hospitality for the night. So far, so good.
He's a mystical type of guy, and offers to teach Gabrielle some meditation/yoga techniques that will help her reach inner peace, which Gabby is all-for considering that's exactly why she's on this journey in the first place. Xena’s not as convinced by such mumbo-jumbo, and the longer they stay, the more antsy she gets – all whilst Gabrielle is busy extolling the virtues of Aiden's techniques and how good they make her feel.
Around this point, the episode started to lose me. Suddenly I'm watching Gabrielle in training montages and lounging about on yin-yang signs and Xena giving her back massages whilst trying to prevent a drop of blood from falling on her skin. Er, okay. I'm sure that symbolizes... something. And then the big reveal is that – oh! – Aiden was Evil All Along and his home does something that will turn you either into a statue or a crazy person. Right.
The problems were these:
First of all, I was trying to get a fix on Aiden throughout the course of the episode. It's difficult to know what side he’ll fall down on: good, evil or – like Najara – some twisted form of self-perceived goodness. It was also tricky to pin down what exactly the vibe between him and Gabrielle is meant to be. Mentor/student? Big bro/little sis? Or something creepier, given the touchy-feely quality of his “breathing exercises”?
The initial ambiguity was good, but I’m disappointed at how it was resolved. Turns out, Aidan was sucking the goodness out of people in order to maintain the beauty of his surroundings. Xena finds out and throws a sword at him, transforming him into ugly nineties-quality CGI goo. That’s pretty disappointing, all the more so because Aiden could have easily been another of those “not quite good, not entirely bad” villains that this show is usually so good at.
Between him legitimately helping Gabrielle get over her inner pain and his hints that he was once “just like Xena,” it felt as though the writers missed out on giving him just one more layer that would have made him a truly interesting guest-star.
As it was, his motivation ended up being as much of a letdown as his demise (surely it would have been a better idea for Gabrielle to take him out, preferably with some of the mental powers that he taught her along the way).
Then there were the “rules” of Aiden’s home, which were either totally arbitrary, or so far removed from my personal understanding of how the world works that they may as well have been completely arbitrary. Here’s the thing: this show often talks about the concept of “inner goodness” and “inner darkness,” without ever really trying to define what these terms mean.
Is it innocence? The desire to do good? Some sort of physical manifestation of light/darkness that people carry around with them? Because personally, I don’t believe in what this show is trying to sell. To me, goodness is DOING ACTS OF GOODNESS, and evil is the exact opposite. It doesn’t matter what goes on inside a person’s head or heart, only what you put out into the world.
So I was having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that Aiden was drawing some sort of nebulous inner quality from Gabrielle in order to maintain his house and garden, which at the same time was making Xena act all haywire.
Which was another weird thing. If “goodness” is some sort of physical manifestation (as this episode would have you believe) and Aiden had the ability to manipulate it, then... does that make him good or evil? Because apparently Xena was immune to his powers because of her own inner darkness, which she then had to embrace in order to save Gabrielle (which is itself an interesting concept – using evil in order to do good). And doing this turned her into a crazy lady with wild hair and bad teeth. What on earth was that about?
It reminds me of back in “The Deliverer,” in which Gabrielle’s “goodness/innocence” is used as a plot-point in a way that feels a little fetishist, like her “inner goodness” is some sort of valuable commodity that bad guys really want to get their hands on. Which doesn’t make much sense to me, since – as stated – goodness is about actions, not whatever’s swimming around inside you. And I’m not entirely sure what separates Gabrielle from, say, Joxer or Ephiny or Xena’s mother, or any other halfway decent person who’s just trying to do their best and help out others when they can.
But that this episode explicitly referenced Hope almost seemed to be a deliberate attempt to link it into the whole Dahak saga (in which Gabrielle’s loving heart and loss of innocence was the gateway through which Dahak entered the world) so it was difficult not to pick up on the implicit theme of Gabrielle’s innate goodness making her super special in some indefinable way.
But having raised all these interesting points, the episode then takes a turn for the clichéd when it comes to dispatching Aiden and having his entire world evaporate on his death. A very disappointing conclusion, though the writing once again gestured towards some depth when Gabrielle pointed out that Xena’s “darkness” is something she keeps fighting, but also something that keeps them both alive.
In short, this episode was a bit of a mess – but a halfway interesting mess. There were some nice visuals (I’ve already mentioned the yin-yang couch) and some intriguing points raised; I’m just sorry they didn’t take any of it to a satisfying conclusion. I almost wish Aiden had turned out to be a good guy, or at least a more ambiguous one, since at the inception I was getting a tad annoyed with Xena for being so dismissive of Gabrielle’s interest in what he had to teach her (especially since she clearly still feels so much pain after Hope, something she can’t really talk about with Xena considering what happened to Solan).
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It could have been interesting for the writers to make the audience believe Aiden was up to no good by having Xena’s paranoia get the better of her, only for Aiden to explain it was a side-effect of her own self-doubt interacting with her surroundings, and Gabrielle deciding to leave for Xena’s sake despite the peace she’d found in Aiden’s realm. Perhaps they could have even played with the idea that Xena could purge away that “inner darkness” of hers, only for Gabrielle to realize it’s got its uses in protecting her – even if that means Xena will continue to enjoy violence, as was pointed out at the very start of the episode.
And then of course, this could have led to a nice bit of guilt-tripping for Xena when she realizes that Gabby has given up her own peace of mind AND a safe environment where she would have been protected from her prophecy. Ah well, I guess they had to get a fight scene in somehow.
But I’d rather watch an episode that strives for something different and takes risks instead of the well-worn path of predictability. The strange thing about this episode is that it starts as the former, but ends as the latter.
Devi
Xena and Gabrielle arrive in India, where they wander through a market square filled with every Indian cliché known to man. They stop to watch a street magician called Eli perform his act, in which he throws a rope into the air that hangs without any support. His assistant climbs to the top, but is seemingly possessed by an evil spirit that attacks the crowd. Xena manages to subdue the girl with her whip, but when Gabrielle rushes to her aid, the spirit leaves the girl’s body and Gabrielle is heralded as a devi, or healing god.
A priest accuses Eli of bringing evil spirits to the market, and Xena help him escape while Gabrielle stays with the awestruck crowd, using her newfound gifts to heal more people and garnering more acclaim.
The following day, Gabrielle’s followers have swelled in number, but the priest that accused Eli is found dead in the temple where he and Xena hid the day before. She notices a resemblance between the painting of a goddess known as Tataka, who also had healing powers that she used to control the masses, and Gabrielle, who is now decked out in pearls and being worshipped as a deity.
The eternal skeptic, Xena grows suspicious of Gabrielle, and sure enough the truth soon comes to light. Eli is the real devi, who cast the evil spirit out of his assistant unknowingly – only for it to enter Gabrielle instead. Gabrielle, now identifying fully as Tataka, plans to assassinate Eli and Xena to consolidate her own power – and there’s no way for Xena to get rid of Tataka without harming Gabrielle, who can now evenly match her in a fight.
Just kidding, she just uses the pinch on Tataka so that Eli can touch her and cast the evil spirit out. Although the women invite Eli to travel with them for a while, he declines, saying that although he believes there’s a benevolent higher power out there somewhere, he has to find it for himself.
As with “Paradise Found,” this is a pretty interesting episode while you’re watching it, but is let down by its final act. It was an improvement on its predecessor in that they set up a mystery and then managed to keep me guessing as to what was really going on, but there were still a few confusing bits.
I had to roll my eyes at the opening sequence in which every conceivable Indian cliché is packed into a single market square: people charming snakes, lying on beds of nails, walking on pits of hot embers, swallowing fire, doing yoga – all while Gabrielle helpfully extols everything as “exotic!” and “mysterious!” Yikes.
But like I said, I enjoyed the story’s twists and turns, from Elia’s assistant falling from the spirit world in pieces, to the reveal of Gabrielle being possessed by Takata. I was caught off-guard by a lot of what was happening, perhaps a little too much, since I’m not entirely certain what exactly was happening at certain points. As I understand it, Eli’s assistant was possessed by Takata (how?) and Eli healed her (without realizing it?) and Takata entered Gabrielle instead (again – how?) But it takes a while for Takata to properly take over Gabrielle’s faculties, leading her to believe she’s somehow manifested real healing powers.
Eventually Takata takes full control of Gabrielle’s body and decides that Eli is a threat. So she... turns her bodyguards into dogs and sets them on Eli? Is that what that sequence was all about?
But what about the priest that was found dead? And what was up with Eli levitating in front of Takata? Was that one of his tricks, or was she doing it? And what was the deal with Eli anyway? Most of the time he insisted that everything he did was just stage magic, but at other times he seemed to acknowledge he had actual powers.
The best parts were definitely the scenes in which Gabrielle was embracing her newfound healing powers while Xena subtly tested her (first by suggesting yoga and then by collecting holy water), which Gabrielle/Takata angrily saw through both times.
But I’m starting to feel really sorry for Gabrielle. She’s clearly a woman on a mission to find some degree of self-enlightenment, but everything she ever comes across (the Dahak cult, Najara, Aiden, her temporary healing powers) always end up rooted in evil. It must be doing her head in!
Just once I’d like to see Xena proved wrong and Gabrielle proved right, and for something strange and powerful to turn out to be as good as it initially appears. Even the show itself wants to back her up on this, what with her ending speech on how she’s decided to believe that somewhere out there, there’s a force for good. I hope she finds it one day.
With that in mind, it made for a nice change that Eli didn’t end up being the bad guy, and there were some surprisingly nice interactions between him and Xena throughout this episode, from him trying to hypnotize her at the start, to her actually giving him a hug at the conclusion. I was a little disappointed to see she was only faking hypnosis; on the one hand, she’s probably got too much strength of mind to actually be hypnotized, and she seemed pretty spiritually tuned-in during “Adventures in the Sin Trade,” on the other, it would have been cool if Xena was a bit out of her league when it came to mysticism and so on. I would have thought bringing her to a new location would be the perfect opportunity to have her face brand-new challenges.
But when Takata finally manifested... ow. At this point things went full camp, and it was a little disconcerting to realize Xena was fully prepared to kill Gabrielle to destroy Takata, but all’s well that ends well. Other than a few confusing bits, and a lot of running in, out and around that market place/temple, I enjoyed this one.
Between the Lines
Xena and Gabrielle are still in India when they come across a funeral procession which seemingly involves throwing a young woman (called Naiyima) onto a burning pyre. The duo rescue her, who – on reaching the safety of a deserted house – reveals that her body is covered with Mehndi tattoos. As repayment for Xena saving her life, she uses these tattoos in a ritual that sends Xena into a future carnation.
Xena comes to in the same market square she just left, where she’s addressed as Arminestra, the great Peacemaker, by those around her. Glancing into a polished shield, she realizes that she has the visage of an old woman. An army that wants to take over the village is poised to attack, only for Xena to be rescued by a young soldier called Shakti and his warriors.
Opposing them is a woman called Khindin, and when she and Xena meet on the battlefield, each one realizes the other’s true identity: they are Xena and Alti, each in their future bodies. No prizes for guessing that Shakti turns out to be Gabrielle, who benefits from Xena’s healing arts.
Meanwhile, the present-day Gabrielle is being taught the Mehndi ritual by Naiyima, who tells her that it’s Xena’s only way home. On mastering it, Gabrielle is also sent into the future, to tell Xena that her purpose there is to stop a great evil – namely, Alti. As the battle rages on, Xena comes into possession of a box of tools that will assist her in performing the Mehndi ritual, and when she and Gabrielle/Shakti are taken captive by Alti, they use the night to prepare themselves.
The following morning, they successfully transport themselves and Alti back into their earlier bodies, after which the latter uses her power to inflict “future pain” on them – that is, the pain from the crucifixion that is still to come. Naiyima arrives, and Alti identifies her as the one that sent everyone to the future, attacking her until Xena and Gabrielle once more use the power of the Mehndi to subdue her. Alti is seemingly destroyed, and Naiyima tells the women they will be forever connected.
There’s only one sour note: during the battle Xena used her chakram to cut Gabrielle’s hair and so release her from Alti’s grip. Now she’s got the same haircut as the one Xena has been seeing in her vision, bringing them both one step further to its fulfilment.
Now this one I enjoyed, definitely the most of all the India episodes, which reminded me of “Adventures in the Sin Trade” as an important arc-episode, and “Crusade” in regards to exploring the characters.
Playing around with reincarnation seems a given considering Xena and Gabrielle are on a field trip throughout India (or at least, a single village in India) but the ingenious twist is that the pair of them are transported forward through time to visit their future lives. Neat idea! And compounding that is the fact that in these lives, it’s Gabrielle who is the warrior and Xena who is the Mother of Peace, giving us a nice bit of role-reversal. To see Xena forced into the body of an old woman, hobbling about with a stick and forced to rely on tactics other than violence, was a nifty conceit.
I know Alti is a divisive character, but I enjoy her. The actress has presence, she comes across as a legitimate threat, and I don’t even mind that she’s rather one-dimensional. Not every villain can be Callisto, and how they utilized her here was pretty clever: despite being defeated at the start of this season, her soul has been reincarnated into another body, leading her to continue her warmongering/acquisition of power.
Once she runs across Future!Xena and Future!Gabrielle, she tries to kill them in order to destroy their (current) life’s work and absorb their power... or something. Her objectives get a little vague, but I enjoyed the set up. There were some thought-provoking lines from all three main characters that played around with the temporal displacement they found themselves in (“I have an enemy in the past and I don’t know who it is” and “a future evil is hunting Xena’s soul into the past”).
From what I could gather, Xena and Gabrielle manage to defeat her by using the Mehndi and dragging her back to the present, which makes her weaker? Even though it also brings back her shaman powers? And then she’s still apparently going to be reincarnated at some point? Okay, I didn’t really follow any of this, and the script was throwing the word “karma” around as though it was interchangeable with “soul,” as well as confusing its real definition (which is closest to our understanding of “destiny”) with the Western belief that it’s more akin to the notion of “what goes around, comes around.”
I also would have liked some more from Naiyima, who is never called as such in the episode itself, only the end credits. I mean, what was her game? She seemed to have an interest in Xena and Gabrielle’s lives that went beyond thanking them for saving her life, as well as a lot of mystical power. Alti described her as “an enlightened one,” as though she had familiarity with people like her. The character was also reminiscent of other important mentors like Lao Mai and Cyane and M’Lila, so it’s a shame she didn’t stick around for longer – I would have liked Gabrielle to learn more from her. Goodness knows she deserves a break when it comes to choosing her spiritual guides in life.
There was some good use of Xena’s vision of the crucifixion: not only has Gabrielle now seen it, but her cut hair takes them both one step closer to it. And of course, Alti rubs salt in the wound, telling Gabrielle that her death will be Xena’s fault (though it remains to be seen whether this is true or not).
I like Gabrielle’s haircut (she looks more grown up) and Xena’s new outfit. The leather armour is too iconic to be gone for long, but it’s nice to have a change every now and then.
Four terrible things: a. the kiwi extra who tried for an Indian accent and ended up sounding Australian, b. how amazingly long it took for a group of grown men to knock down a door barricaded by nothing but bits of furniture, c. the line: “I’ve never known such pain!” (seriously, if you’re in that much pain, you can’t articulate it, you just scream) and d. Alti giving Xena and Gabrielle giving ample time to sensuously paint the Mehndi all over their bodies whilst awaiting execution. That was generous of her.
I’m also not sure why the show needed to add the “a future life” subtitle, which we already knew thanks to Naiyima’s voiceover, Xena’s reflection in the shield, and the ancient spear embedded in the stone to figure it out. That last one was a nice touch by the way, along with Naiyima hiding the Mehndi supplies in the wall so they would be found so many years later. It reminded me of the ice skates in Tom’s Midnight Garden.
Not sure why it was so important that the Mother of Peace NOT kill someone to the point that one of her followers died in order to prevent it. Okay, I get that she was a symbolic figure, but at that point it seemed entirely incidental to what was going on in the episode, and had no narrative purpose whatsoever.
But all in all, a good episode. It was clever the way they revealed Alti, Xena and Gabrielle’s true identities to each other in the future, and so establish that their souls and lives will always be intertwined to some extent.
The Way
Xena and Gabrielle are attacked by a hoard of winged demons, who tell them they were sent by Indrajit, the King of Demons, to prevent them from reaching the Avatar, a deity in human form who is destined to save humanity. The following day, the women come across Eli, who is healing the sick among them, and being addressed as the Avatar.
Xena hears strange whispering, and on learning from Eli that Indrajit has also targeted him, suggests that they travel together for a while. That night, she hears someone approaches their encampment and faces down a human-sized talking monkey who introduces himself as Hanuman, who tells her he wants to help protect Eli from Indrajit by escorting him to the Great Temple of Krishna, the most powerful god of their pantheon.
Just as they reach the temple, the group of companions are once again attacked by winged demons, and while the others are distracted, Indrajit swoops down on a flying carpet to capture Eli and Gabrielle, flying away with them to the realm of demons. Hanuman convinces Xena that she’ll need the help of Krishna to rescue them, and the deity appears to her as she prays, telling her to call out his name in battle if she wants the strength to defeat Indrajit.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle and Eli are deposited in the locked room of a large palace, with the latter urging the former to be patient and not engage in violent resistance. They begin to meditate, though Gabrielle is distracted by a vision of Xena about to be killed by a demon. She intervenes with her staff, and the demon turns out to be Indrajit, who deliberately wanted to provoke an aggressive reaction from her.
At this point Xena arrives, and she and Indrajit engage in battle, with Indrajit sprouting several extra arms holding weapons, enough to severe Xena’s arms from her body. Xena calls out to Krishna for help, and she becomes Kali, complete with blue/black skin and extra arms. The battle continues, and Xena/Kali quickly gets the better of Indrajit.
Afterwards, Eli decides to keep travelling on his own, and Gabrielle throws her staff into the river, having decided to follow the Way of Love and become a pacifist.
Oh dear.
Why do I get the feeling that The Powers That Be got in a lot of trouble for this one? Judging from the disclaimer at the beginning and end of the episode, there were quite a few practitioners of Hinduism that were not impressed.
And I can’t say I blame them. If anyone wants a perfect example of what cultural appropriate is, I’d point them to this episode. With (presumably) the very best of intentions, the writers cherry-pick random bits of someone else’s religion, throw them at the wall, and make it all a learning curve for three white non-Hindus. From Gabrielle’s bindi to Xena becoming an avatar of Kali, “The Way” was the most tailormade way to offend this particular religious group since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The whole thing is built from elements of TheMahābhārata and The Rāmāyaṇa, and though my knowledge of these texts is very hazy, I know that most the episode’s concepts come from the dialogue between the god Krisha and Prince Arjuna in The Bhagavad Gita, only with Xena taking the place of Arjuna, and characters like Hanuman thrown in for good measure. And look, I can tentatively credit the writers for wanting to explore new cultures and explore their characters through the lens of various ideologies, but unlike sojourns into the Land of Chin or having fun with tarot card symbology in Illusia, what was dealt with here just doesn’t mesh with the tone of the show.
As another long-time fan (who I’m sure won’t mind me quoting him here) said:
What I didn't like was the way it ended, with Xena accepting Krishna’s Way of the Warrior as her dispensation for continuing on her course. Why would Xena, with her experiences of other gods, decide that this god was the Real Deal? Why is she so concerned with a future life she knew nothing about before the previous week? What happened to her very human quest for redemption in the here and now? Xena isn’t Arjuna – she is the product of a very different culture and past, and the demons she has been combating within herself for the past four years have nothing to do with some future sainthood. Xena fights to atone for her crimes in this life, not to build up spiritual brownie points for the next one.
And suffice to say – Krishna is never seen or heard from again, and there’s very little mention of Xena’s spiritual growth (if you want to call it that) in future episodes.
***
So, the showrunners learnt the hard way that there’s a huuuuge difference between fictionalizing gods that no one actually worships anymore, and gods that people... well, do. But having acknowledged the trouble they got into through their utter thoughtlessness, I’ll now put a pin in the issue and try to take the episode at face value.
And it’s a pretty weird one. The last episode had a lot of spiritual components, but they didn’t overshadow the plot or characters. Here, they did.
For example, what was up with the inclusion of Hanuman? He was in the episode from start to finish and provided valuable exposition, but at no point did anyone stop and ask the simple question: “why is a giant talking monkey here?” Yeah, I get that Hanuman is an important figure in Hinduism, but the writers just threw him in without any regard for context or... well, sense. We’ve never had anything like him in the show before, and that everyone just blithely accepted his presence without even a few basic questions was totally bizarre.
Still, those were some amazingly good prosthetics on that actor.
I’m also not quite sure what to make of Eli. His return certainly makes more sense that the secondary appearances of Meleager and Tara, but he’s still a bit of an odd duck. Perhaps I’m so used to seeing strong female mentors and/or adversaries on this show that it feels a little off to have a competent, benevolent male in the gang (sorry Joxer).
I kind of like the vibe though: Xena, Gabrielle and Eli all interest and respect each other without any pointless romantic entanglements, and the women have their own reasons for getting caught up in Eli’s own personal quest for understanding. All that said, it was a rather eye-rolly that for all his preaching on love and peace, Eli (and by extension, Gabrielle) were completely useless in the final battle against Indrajit. Is pacifism a belief system you really want to be exploring in your campy swords-and-sorcery show?
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That said, there was some interesting exploration of Xena’s role as a warrior that felt like a continuation of where she was at the conclusion of “Paradise Found,” not just in regards to her personal demons or that she enjoys combat, but the difficult idea that sometimes you need violence to save innocent people (which Krishna seemed to agree with, given that he sanctioned her mergence with Kali).
She had some nice scenes in which she confides to Hanuman that she’s also trying to find her way and reconcile her warrior side with her need for redemption, as well as when she had to swallow her pride and actually pray for assistance to a deity. Never thought I’d see the day.
On the flip side, I don’t think I’m going to enjoy Gabrielle’s pacifist phase, not because I don’t think it’s appropriate for the character, but because I can easily see the writers realizing it’s way too difficult to maintain and brushing it under the rug the first chance they get. I mean, Xena lost focus in the opening battle against the demons because Gabrielle was in danger, and by the end of the episode she’s thrown her only tool of self-defense into the river. It’s bad enough that Xena worries about Gabrielle when she can defend herself, and now she knows she’s not even going to TRY? How’s that meant to work?
In fact, all the ethical dialogue throughout this episode seemed a little skewered. Eli says everyone has to revere life wherever we find it, which apparently means letting people beat you to a bloody pulp if they’re so inclined (they even invoke the Biblical “turn the other cheek” in Eli’s sermon) and once again prowess in battle is linked to a lack of innocence.
Yet by the end of the episode, Krishna gives Xena “permission” to lop off the villain’s head with the reassurance that it’s okay for her to be a warrior and kill in a just cause (which apparently isn’t the case for Najara when her gods instruct her to do the exact same thing).
It’s all a bit of a mess. The visual and costumes are fun, and (as said) I can appreciate that the writers are trying to explore different belief systems and cultural teachings – but the problem is that nobody involved has any clear understanding of the message they’re trying to convey. Which again, wouldn’t be a bad thing if they were going for “deliberately ambiguous” instead of “we’re throwing things at the wall and seeing what will stick.”
And the audience can feel this difference. Although the show will run for two more full seasons, the India arc feels like the beginning of the end.
Miscellaneous Observations:
Shame we didn’t get to see Gabrielle’s reaction to Eli stating that he wanted to “bring people hope.” Kind of an unfortunate choice of words, but she didn’t seem to notice.
The episode establishes that Eli is an avatar, but of what deity? Rama?
Xena says she learnt how to jump like that from the Amazons. Surely she meant Lao Mai.
Krishna was rather short for a god.
What was up with the father and the little girl? Was he a demon in disguise all along? If so, who or what was his daughter?
So, that was India. Some great visuals, some intriguing ideas, but a mixed bag to say the least.
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