How to express true love without calling it true love.
A masterclass by the Xena writers.
Also I think it’s because they wanted to distinguish this way from ‘The Way of Love’ so they couldn’t call it the same thing.
Even though it technically is - and better.
What it really amounts to is The Way of the Protector and Defender. It just happened to be that Xena was always the person Gabrielle expressed her Way for.
The thing is that she was always on this path. She just never knew it. Never recognized it for what it was.
However - once she did. You couldn’t deter her. This is what I mean about how she freely walked into the darkness but her core self remained unmoved because at the heart of it was the warrior within.
And we debate whether this was right for her or not.
But if it was her karma - then why wouldn’t it be?
I think we all as a fanbase need to discuss Shakti. We don’t know much about him but what we do know is that he was a protector and defender as a warrior and that he followed the guidance of the mother of peace. So essentially - we get a swapped dynamic of Xena and Gabrielle and they do make it apparent it is that.
This was their next lives. Their reincarnated bodies. So if the roles hadn’t swapped - then they wouldn’t be ready for their reincarnations. For their next lives. Michael does tell us in ‘Fallen Angel’ that Xena was never meant to have an afterlife as an Archangel. She was meant to be reincarnated straight away. Xena defied that fate for her and chose to be an Archangel to rescue Gabrielle. Had that not been on her mind, then she likely would have accepted reincarnation knowing that her next life would be Arminestra. This means that Gabrielle was never meant to die with her and follow her into the afterlife. She was to wait for it.
Eventually she would die and then be reincarnated.
This explains the extreme age difference between Arminestra and Shakti. Xena was always first to die.
It also explains - theoretically - why they didn’t stay dead when they died together. They weren’t meant to.
As romantic as the whole “we’ll die together” trope is, it just wasn’t ever the way it was supposed to go down. Xena was to die first to be reincarnated first.
When you watch and analyze AFIN through the soulmate and karma lens - it does make sense.
They set this up so that the impact of Xena’s death wouldn’t hit so hard. I think fans just forgot about it.
Think about it. How long would “Gabrielle” have to wait to be with “Xena” again? 30 years? Not that long.
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