Honestly, I could not have cared less about Darnelle and Glaphyra as characters but I do like Steven's passion for them and an explanation of their similar characteristics and how that's what makes them interact and have them develop a challenging dynamic with each other that attracts one to the other. I'm more interested in the whole opposites attract dynamic that Xena and Gabrielle have so I never thought much of either of those characters either as individuals or as a couple. However, I do really like how he uses those characters along with the other two new faces that don't make it to the end of the episode to tell a story between Xena and Gabrielle and Gabrielle's questioning of what would have happened if she had met Xena when she was evil - ultimately answering it after those new faces had gone through their arcs and showing that two of them out of the four could be changed and turned to good because they chose to rather than because they were forced to - making the rather corny answer of Gabrielle's question by Xena more believable because even if Gabrielle had lost herself and became like any of these characters in meeting evil Xena, not everyone falls to a complete conditioning in the sense that they can still find their own way back out of that trap and given what goes on in the episode with the new faces - I believe that's what Xena really means in her answer to Gabrielle. It's not that she wouldn't have become like those characters - she may have but ultimately... the changes in her would come out of her own volition because fundamentally she was who she was regardless of influence. But then Xena tells her that without HER influence, she'd have much more of a struggle to hold on to who she really was because it's much more difficult for her to not let conditioning dictate her choices and actions and we see that a few times in the show. That regardless what Xena believes in for herself, without Gabrielle (her light) there, she'd just fall off the edge into the abyss of darkness and that's the really striking differences in their characters that give them the profound dynamic that they have. One of always balancing the other through everything.
And when the roles reverse in the 5th and 6th seasons, the same is still true, just the other way around. They still balance each other and neither of them can truly fall off the precipice when with each other. You see, a fair bit of conditioning happens to Gabrielle while travelling around and falling more in love with Xena - but as I've said - the thing is that because they have each other around to pull each other out of that cycle, then neither of them really can lose themselves entirely because their profound dynamic just doesn't allow for it to happen.
I give Darnelle and Glaphyra a week in comparison. See how they fair. Maybe they would stay together but they wouldn't be good people together because they're too much of the same people. Xena and Gabrielle are complete polar opposites all the way through and so that constant contrasting is what neutralises any of their extremities.
Opposites attract is not just a clever physics phrase. It's how anything works. Any relationships. That does include human relationships.
