The Child
While I was watching “Maternal Instincts,” something that I’ve not seen asked anywhere else nagged me a lot: Why did Hope knowing Solan’s name give her away as being his killer?
Directly after Hope related Callisto’s threat to Xena, Gabrielle pushed the girl into a chair and then took a whole two steps away from her before both Xena and Kaleipus name-dropped the boy.
So, I wonder why Hope didn’t think to answer her mother’s question with, “Because you, Xena, and the centaur said so right in front of me! Don’t you remember? I was trying to leave, but you went out of your way to give me a front-row seat to that discussion!” Okay, I’m joking a bit with the last part, but still. That was not remotely the right point for Gabrielle to lose faith in Hope. Beyond the obviousness I’ve just laid out, Callisto is the one who supposedly said she’d take Solan to the grave; as far as any of the good guys knew, Hope had no reason to hurt the boy. She only remembered being alone in the basket, nothing about Xena at all, according to what she told Gabrielle. Yes, she cries, “Xena hates me!”, but that could be taken as a response to Xena’s “shoot the messenger” glare upon hearing that Solan was set to die, even why the girl disappeared after hearing the conversation about Solan.
Personally, I think Gabrielle’s realization of her daughter’s guilt was much better set up earlier in the episode: Given the look on her face upon seeing him and her shifty eyes while he lay dying, she knew in an instant that Hope had attacked Kaleipus. And when she burst into her hut after that, she shouted “Fayla!” not with worry in her voice, but frustration. Then she covered her face as if to ask, “What have I done?”
It’s too bad that our battling bard was so quick to invalidate what she knew in her heart to be true. Sigh. T_T Her denial… hope? …is literally killer, many times over. (Like when she tried to say someone else broke through their barricade and killed Goewin but left Hope alone, when Hope is the only one anybody—particularly Goewin’s fellow knights, the only other possible suspects—wanted dead.)
I’m also surprised Xena wasn’t as quick on the uptake about Kaleipus’s assailant as Gabrielle was. Only they, he, and Hope knew about the plan to hide Solan in the Ixion Caves. None of the good guys could have known, at that point, that Hope had returned to Callisto. And Callisto couldn’t be in two places at once, anyway, as she warned our ladies… Tsk tsk. (The script went too far, though. Kaleipus practically gasped, “Hope!” when he would only have known her as Fayla, if anything. Nevertheless, Xena should have picked up on his dying message in a second. Who else would “The child!” have been? Solan? Xenan?) Aish.
TL; DR:
Hope: She knows your little secret, and she’s gonna take it to the grave.
Xena, in front of Hope (thanks to Gabrielle): Callisto knows about Solan!
Kaleipus, also in front of Hope thanks to Gabrielle: Doesn’t matter! Bottom line is protecting Solan!
Gabrielle to Hope later: I will take you to the safest place there is.
Hope: *brought to a hut where exactly one other person is hiding* Gee. Who could this be? -> *“realizes the boy’s dead”* -> *runs* -> (to Gabrielle) I don’t want to die like Solan.
Gabrielle: How did you know that was Solan?! Die, evil demon-child!
Me: …Wut?
*How do you like the new HD pix, eh???
