You know… what they did with Season 6 of Xena makes total sense when you realize that Xena and Gabrielle have just come out of a 25 year long time-freeze and even though they never personally and subjectively experienced those 25 years themselves, I think the audience needed a reaffirmation of their love because they were supposed to just accept that 25 years have passed. How does that influence Xena and Gabrielle’s dynamic and their love story compared to before it?
Well, in one sense, not very much at all because they themselves never experienced any of it that way.
In another…. A hell of a fucking lot because Season 5 was the season no one liked or at least liked the least.
So this season of maintext for them wasn’t just necessary. It was expected. It was the fix for it.
It was the apology. It was the “You guys were always right about them and we shouldn’t have doubted you.”
(Not that they ever really did. They were just scared.)
It was the way for them to prove to us that they truly were on our side and in our corner. Our queer corner.
And you know, I think it actually worked really well because if Xena and Gabrielle had experienced the 25 year long gap like everyone else in the show did, maybe their love wouldn’t have been as strong as it was in Season 6. Maybe they wouldn’t have had the same dynamic as they always did. Maybe maintext would have been narratively/thematically… wrong for them. Maybe their storyline wouldn’t have made any sense at all and it would have looked contrived and inauthentic.
We all have problems with the 25 year long gap, myself included, but this was their workaround for it. That Xena and Gabrielle would have never experienced that and therefore their love for each other wouldn’t really have changed because they were still the same as before it and they had to navigate the world alongside the fans - feeling just as confused and tonally whiplashed and overwhelmed and like someone was punking them.
No seriously, can you imagine the conversations on it?
XENA: “Ares did this. I know he did this. Where is he?!”
GABRIELLE: “Ares is mortal now, Xena. How could he? I mean it could have been Aphrodite. You know how temperamental she is with her magical powers. Like when she put you and Daphne into the same body…”
XENA: “Ares could have gotten his godhood back since then. It’s been 25 years, Gabrielle. 25. YEARS. AGO!”
But it is extremely interesting how that whole season is exactly the way the fans had watched the show anyway.
We knew it was a love story.
And we knew it worked best that way.
It just took the creators some time to realize they agreed with us and that they wanted it that way too.
Understandable. It was the 90’s. The network was breathing down their necks to make it hetereonormy (that’s a word I just came up with, do you like it? 😝) and they were about to end it anyway. So… why not?
The people that didn’t want that (a very small minority) would just have to deal with the fact the queers won.
