an episode that was clearly titled at the last minute after it was already written

At long last I’m back with another episode. The plan for Xena right now is to pick from a selection of episodes that hit on some of the major themes and follow our characters’ evolution. (Y’all were not a fan of this before but unfortunately I *really* don’t have the ability to cover all of them right now – so this beats skipping it altogether. This is only S1 so things might change if I go on beyond!) Ok, vamonos!



Straightaway open into a crowd, and pan down to our two leads. So their journey into the sunset didn’t last long. These two are bonding. About…relationships. Xena is still practical and Gabrielle is artsy. There’s a whole metaphor about trees in a forest and it feels that only Gabrielle is taking it metaphorically as intended, Xena just can’t wait to get back out there. And predictably, almost straight after… Xena goes off riding on her own telling Gabrielle to wait for her…in a field. Fun.

Cut to some townspeople including our probably victims of the week, a single dad (?) and three young kids. Looking like they’re rebuilding a village. But uh oh, new riders coming to invade them.

(Including an oddly photogenic fella who’s wearing a lot of eyeliner)

Xena happens across this scene and intercedes to protect the village. Naturally with all the property damage that you might expect! The villagers’ hard work is undone, but at least Xena’s able to save the little kiddies…before promptly getting shot with an arrow. Well, this was a short show.

Into opening credits. Its voiceover guy from all those movie ads giving us a good rundown of the show’s mantra, spoken word. I can’t recall if this was common in the 90s but it feels VERY of its time.

Into the episode, and single dad is caring for Xena. Lucy Lawless is shot like a sexy war victim, beads of sweat and cleavage and all which is A Choice.

So now we see the arrow sticking out of Xena (abdomen) with blood, which is a bit of a switchup from last episode where everyone was getting pushed over and tripped with sticks, much more slapsticky. Now we get a scene essentially of Xena operating on herself before cauterising with a hot poker, yikes.

Structurally its all still a bit of a hot mess as the scene jumps to another two new characters, warlords? The costuming makes all these people look the same, but I think this might be mr guyliner from earlier. It’s him and his dad here, having a wee spar while chatting, as you do. Fighting a woman is seen here as shameful, so there is some gender in this world then, instead of it not really being mentioned in Ep01.

Flick back to Xena, now recuperating in bed. Pretty boujee bed for some village people, a queen if not a king, with some fancy looking red sheets. Then the scene jumps to Gabrielle, who’s gone back to the pub, who can blame her at this stage??

Back with Xena, its nighttime (the next night? how long has this been?) and she’s telling the kids stories – quickly moderated when the dad comes in. When she’s asked about family Xena’s quick to say she doesn’t have one – interesting take for episode 2 when episode 1’s storyline heavily featured her mother and a reconciliation! Anyway, Xena overhears the villagers whispering that she is a murderer and decides to leave before she is healed – when challenged offering the excuse that Gabrielle needs her. (not named, of course)

Unfortunately during her leaving, more bandits come along and set fire to single dad’s outhouse – these people can’t catch a break eh! Also she’s too injured to leave, so seems she might be stuck.

Back to Gabrielle, who’s dodging being chatted up by a bar patron. It’s implied she has stayed here overnight, drinking pints of water because she has no money. Hopefully the bar has a bathroom! She drops Xena’s name to get the guy to leave her alone. Which reminds me, about the show’s title…Warrior Princess. We don’t seem to have got much detail on what that means yet. Is she royal? An authority? Rich?

Gabrielle drops the ‘my boyfriend is here somewhere’ excuse and naturally, ends up cosying up to this episode’s villain, who’s all too happy to play along. That’s cliche, but a neat turn that’s in character and reels the audience in closer for the inevitable reveal. There’s not much in it, but this feels just about tighter plotted overall than the last episode although there is still very much the sense that we’re just going scene to scene following the two lead characters; if there’s an overarching story here, I’m not following it. (at least there’s no random mythical creature yet popping up to be scene dressing, although now I’ve said that no doubt there’ll be a giant spider or a friendly mermaid or something 35 min in…)

Back to Xena, who appears to be…doing the laundry? I don’t know if they were low on prop budget but she’s humping a wicker basket of fabrics around in what looks like an outhouse. Apparently she’s looking for her weapons. We get some backstory on single dad, he seems to be an ex soldier too. Begs her not to fight – although fighting saved the life of his kids. There’s power dynamics at play here but I haven’t quite followed what exactly they are – if Xena is superhuman then different rules will apply, possibly even if she is just separate by class standards.

Back to Gabrielle and villain, and they actually don’t play it for farce – they have a surprising heart to heart where villain reveals himself to be perhaps not-so-evil and just following his father’s direction. Gabrielle urges him to follow his own path, as she has. (…for literally a few days, you’re hardly a life coach girl…) It makes an impact though. These two actuallyhave decent chemistry despite the lesbian energy Gabrielle has been radiating since she first came onscreen.

Back to Xena and single dad. They’re going to some kind of meeting, single dad wants Xena to wear his dead wife’s clothes. (Pretty lucky if they’re the same size) She protests but eventually goes for it. Its very blue Virgin Mary and we have a sexy (but PG) scene of her getting changed, sigh.

Sidenote, she’s clearly meant to look beautiful in the dress in-story but it’s a very unflattering cut.

Turns out the meeting is with the bandits (?). All the other villagers are improbably enough dressed in yellow, so was deadwife a flashy dresser or what? Gabrielle’s ‘boyfriend’ is here ostensibly to negotiate, but has been instructed by his father – presumably the chief – to kill them all instead of making peace. He gives a pretty terrible speech, but its ambiguous as to whether he’s stalling or having a crisis of confidence.

Anyway cue fight scene as Xena sees his men preparing their weapons, with obligatory tearing of her modest dress and yodelling her warcry in the silent town hall causing stares. She’s unarmed, but luckily there are pots, pans, and other such weapons laying around. Xena is of course blamed for the ruckus by the townspeople.

Seems the villain is called Cygnus. Its unclear what happened in the fight scene but the bandits were driven off, I guess. Cygnus and Xena don’t meet and we don’t see a retreat, but Xena knocks out four or five soldiers and unfortunately shreds the dress that was singledad’s last heirloom of his former wife. Great going.

Xena leaves the family to go and confront Cygnus and co, presumably. I’m getting the sense that Cygnus will be a recurring character because we keep jumping back to him. (?) There’s the big reveal here that Xena killed his brother, who his father wants him to avenge – which of course we only have the father’s word on. Revenge for brothers seems to be a recurring theme in these 90s shows – its in Farscape, too – inescapably enough.

Xena and Gabrielle meet up again on the road, randomly enough. (We sure are lucky there are so few routes to and from places eh!) Xena suggests Gabrielle goes to wait with singledad and the family, but she refuses this time and strikes out alone, leaving Xena to catch up. They chat. Interestingly it seems that Gabrielle actually was into Cygnus – bi energy confirmed.

By chance (?) Cygnus and co are approaching through a river in the distance, and Xena prepares for battle, setting Gabrielle on their one horse to keep her out of the way. She hopes the bandits will mistake Gabrielle for her and stays back herself to ambush them. Good tactics tbf.

Seems the bandits are approaching in chariots – that’s our episode title. Looks like only two or tree though. Gonna predict now at some point this season Daddy Cygnus will die to up the moral quandary even more.

A chariot battle ensues between Xena and Daddyo. Gabrielle having jumped across from the horse to the chariot Xena comandeered off some of the soldiers. Of course while she is holding the reins she happens to catch the eye of Cygnus and is shocked, shocked I tell you.

Xena ends the chariot battle by cutting the other side’s horses loose of their cart, sending Cygnus and Cygnus Snr flying. She and Gabrielle promptly proceed to crash their own chariot while celebrating the win and be sent flying equally gracelessly.

Another fight scene, climax, as the two men confront the two women. Seems that the brother, Stenton (?) was killed by his own men trying to make peace, as Xena tells it. The father refuses to believe it and they fight. Meanwhile, Gabrielle tries to avoid Cygnus. Xena is disarmed, but Cygnus jumps in to defend her from his father, and end the conflicts, inspired by Gabrielle. (quite neatly they’re used her again, here spreading diplomacy and friendship, not just trickstering)

[Over the hill, singledad is riding down. He’s brought Xena her chakram – clearly he read the script to know she’ll need it for the climax. There’s an awkward scene where he stops and hands her it in the middle of Cygnus’s inspiring speech to his dad about how peace is better than war etc.]

And yikes, there it is, that was fast. Cygnus throws down his sword, his father tries to kill him, Xena throws the chakram to block it, zooms in, grabs the fallen sword and slashes CygDaddy. There’s clearly bubbling blood now, making me suggest the network mandated some kinds of making it less PG after the first episode was greenlit. Anyway its ambiguous but I think CygDaddy died.

Coda time, Cygnus and Gabrielle have a chat – seems peace talks have been successful now. (Not that we ever find out what the conflict was about in the first place) Gabrielle says that she will be leaving, but the chemistry is firing up between them – this woman is Not A Lesbian, ok, we get it faceless execs.

Xena and the townsman who spearheaded the opposition to her make up, a little. Xena makes her plans to leave – the cute kids beg her not to, of course. Singledad offers her to stay as well, and Xena says that she is tempted – he’s taught her about the value of home, family etc. He wishes her well. There was some heterosexuality on show in this episode eh – network-mandated? The episode closes exactly as the last did – those ladies sure like a walk out in the field in the sun. (I wonder if they were all shot at once?!)

//end recap

So that was an interesting episode. Less packed into it than the last one, but that feels more like a strength than a weakness. Some fun fight scenes. I won’t say I quite am a fan of the show yet but I can feel the guilty pleasure value of it and especially in ’95 the novelty of an action show led by two women that wasn’t COMPLETELY fanservice for male viewers would have been really refreshing. Even today, there’s shades that it would be!

Of the two leads, I actually think Gabrielle is coming off as the stronger written character so far; Xena seems to just be moving and evolving (‘evolving’?) as the plot demands, but Gabrielle’s actions and choices are born so far out of character logic, which makes her feel much more like a real person than the figurehead/merchandise/role model for viewers that Xena herself is being framed as thus far.

I know the next episode coming up is some kind of role reversal, so I look forward to that. After that we’ll be skipping a couple and coming back several into the series to see how our lead characters have developed. I’ll try not to leave that 6 months this time!