PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, metaphysical, psychological, sociological*
The final season of XENA, while keeping up a decent level of quality, becomes rather rootless in its more up-for-grabs mythology. I'd have to say that, if the main point of Seasons Five and Six was to give Xena's daughter her own quasi-Christian place in the Xenaverse, the show-runners flopped in that endeavor, and it didn't help things that the time-jump mitigated against using any of the mortal personages from the defunct HERCULES show. Like Nietzsche, who gets some play once again, they killed the gods and had nothing to put in their place.
COMING HOME (F)-- The writers don't bother to explain how Xena, Gabrielle, Ares and Eve get back to Earth from Olympus; fan-commentary attributes their transition to help from surviving god Aphrodite. Wherever they end up, some time evidently passes, for the three females are on their own with no comment about the disposition of Ares, who sacrificed his godhood to save the women, due to his investment in Xena. Then the heroines are summoned to Amazon territory to help the tribe repel an invading force. The big catch is that the invaders are under the command of mortal Ares, pretending that he's still a war-god. He's also being manipulated by the Furies, who desire both to become the new gods of the world and to avenge the slaughter of the old. A further complication is that one of the Amazons recognizes Eve as the former Livia, who slaughtered many of the warrior-women for Rome. In addition to keeping Eve safe, Xena must find a way to stop Ares without killing him. Her method of doing this, and of slaying the Furies with her god-killing power, is pretty far-fetched even for the Xenaverse. But Xena's bare-knuckle brawl with Ares is fun, as are her conflicted feelings about the former war-god.
THE HAUNTING OF AMPHIPOLIS (P)-- For the first time since being time-jumped, Xena and Gabrielle, accompanied by Eve once again, seek out Xena's home town, to see what's become of the locals and of Xena's mother Cyrene. The city's become a ghost town, and a surviving local claims that everything in Amphipolis became cursed by evil magic. For some reason the townsfolk accused Cyrene and executed her, but with no result. In the clouds above Michael and Raphael, two of the angels encountered by the heroines in FALLEN ANGEL, survey all that happens but vouchsafe no advice. After many encounters of the spooky kind, Xena learns that the source of the evil magic is Mephistopheles, whom none of the heroines have known about except indirectly, through his influence upon Callisto in IDES OF MARCH. He's apparently chosen to victimize Amphipolis not only to revenge himself on Xena but also to create some sort of beachhead for a war on Heaven. The demon, not content with also possessing Gabrielle, tells Xena she can't kill him without taking his place in Hell. Xena kills him anyway, but in the next episode she finds a way around her dilemma. Cyrene stays dead.
HEART OF DARKNESS (F)-- For a pagan Greek who barely knows anything more than the basics about the Jude0-Christian mythos, Xena seems to have some advanced research in order to figure out how to con a prideful angel-- that is, Lucifer himself-- into taking her place as the ruler of hell. Superficial though the myth-making is, it is fun to see Xena pulling one of her "long cons," seducing Lucifer into committing the seven deadly sins so that he'll be consigned to the throne of Hell. Eve registers a meager protest against using evil to escape evil, and Virgil, absent in the previous two episodes, is worked into the story to no great purpose.
WHO'S GURKHAN? (F)-- As if to make up for Season Four's horrendous TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE, this episode successfully interbreeds Xena's peplum adventure with a detective story. Xena, Gabrielle, Eve and Virgil visit Gabrielle's home town. They meet Gabrielle's sister Lillah and learn that eight years previous, Gabrielle's niece Sarah (whom of course Gabrielle's never met) was carried off by the slave-traders of a mysterious, rarely-seen warlord, Gurkhan. The slavers also slew Gabrielle's mother and father, so the usually peaceful heroine wants vengeance, and Xena guarantees to give her the opportunity. Eve is sidelined while Xena and Virgil arrange for Xena to be sold as a "harem wife" to Gurkhan. Gabrielle horns in against Xena's advice, and the two heroines must discern the identities of both Gurkhan and Sarah while figuring out a way to liberate the female slaves. Gabrielle can't take the warlord's life in cold blood but Xena arranges for his death through a trick. Sarah and Lillah are presumably re-united but not seen again.
LEGACY (F)-- Maybe Eve and Virgil escort Sarah back to Greece, because X and G are still hanging around North Africa for no particular reason. They rescue a band of nomads from a raider-attack, and the leader of the nomads, the chieftainess Karina, doesn't believe the heroines when they give their names. X and G learn that in the past 25 years they've become legendary figures thanks to the good press of Gabrielle's scrolls. Once the nomads are convinced, they welcome the heroines into their camp, and also reveal that the various quasi-Arab tribes are being menaced by invading Romans. Just as the episode seems to be shaping up to one more "Beat the Romans" routine, Gabrielle accidentally slays the innocent son of a nomad chieftain, and all of the nomads want her head. Naturally, Xena manages to channel all that anger against the Roman incursion. While neither LEGACY or the previous North African episode are outstanding as stories, the costume department excels in capturing the exoticism of the Middle East.
THE ABYSS (G)-- Like THE PRICE, this episode is something of a "defense of the ways of war." Xena and Gabrielle are back in Greece and have somehow hooked up once more with Virgil. They get waylaid by the Djindar, a made-up tribe of white cannibals, and like the Horde in the original PRICE episode this tribe seems utterly devoid of humanity. Both Virgil and Gabrielle are captured to become entrees, and Gabrielle is explicitly undone because she second-guesses her moves after killing an innocent in LEGACY. Xena manages to wipe out most or all of the whole tribe, which is rather refreshing in light of the reformation of the Horde's rapacity. Virgil survives but gets written out of the mythos.
THE RHEINGOLD/THE RING/ THE RETURN OF THE VALKYRIE (P)-- Apparently the extirpation of the Greek gods moved the writers to go poaching on Nordic preserves, but with dire results. This three-parter cudgels together aspects of two unrelated epics, BEOWULF and THE NIBELUNGENLIED, and on top of that it's also another, "Current Xena must undo the acts of Bad Past Xena." Modern Xena tries to leave Gabrielle out of Beowulf's summons to the Far North, where Bad Past Xena created a monster called Grendel from the spirit of a good Valkyrie. Apparently after Bad Xena's adventures in Chin, but before she united again with Borias and conceived Solan, the evil warrior princess rode into the Northern lands and met Odin, hanging himself on a tree due to his Schopenhaurean despair. Xena gives the King of the Norse Gods a kind of "Spake Zarathustra" rap and he recruits her for his valkyries. Covetous Xena steals the Rheingold and forges it into a ring, able to grant great power, but only to those who renounce love. Past-Xena is forced to leave the Ring on the finger of the monster Grendel, and then Present-Xena is summoned to keep the ring's power from falling into the hands of Odin, now turned into a corrupt Nietzschean. Oh, and when Gabrielle follows Xena, the young heroine befriends a Norsewoman named Brunnhilda, but Brunnhilda wants to be more than just friends. Gabrielle is put into the position of the Brunhild of the NIBELUNGENLIED, where she's surrounded by protective flames-- but it's not no scuzzy MALE champion who releases Gabby from durance vile. Messy though the scenario is, Xena does undo her past evil and doesn't bring about any "twilight of the gods" with the Norse deity best known for the story.
OLD ARES HAD A FARM (F)-- Stop me if you've heard this one, but Xena and Gabrielle walk into a bar, and-- beat up on everyone there. Of course, all the occupants are cutthroats in the service of warlord Gasgar, all united to collect a bounty on the head of now-mortal Ares. X and G take him to an abandoned farmhouse where Xena's family once lived, near a town called Ipeiros, nowhere near Amphipolis. The ladies help Ares fix up the run-down place, which allows the three performers to put aside sword-and-sorcery for something akin to a Li'l Abner routine. The menace of the warlords is resolved with barely any violence at all, and Ares remains on the farm in the end, though he appears in other, more martial episodes later. A fair amount of the comedy is repetitive but I rate the "bed scene" as one of the ten best comic scenes on the show.
DANGEROUS PREY (F)-- Former Amazon Marga is slain by soldiers in the service of warlord Morloch, who's something of a "Most Dangerous Game" fan who likes to hunt human prey Xena and Gabrielle seek to organize the Amazons against their enemy, but Xena literally has to put the contentious Varia on a short leash. Xena and Varia end up being hunted by Morloch, who captures Varia and places her in a death-trap broadly similar to the one in CALLISTO. Morloch's one of the few male foes able to go toe-to-toe with Xena, so the way she defeats him is a slight surprise. Gabrielle hardly has anything to do here.
THE GOD YOU KNOW (F)-- X and G journey to Rome, informed that Xena's daughter Eve has been defying the current Roman emperor, the lubricious Caligula. But the heroines have been preceded by Ares. He reveals that his sister Aphrodite, unbalanced by the end of the cosmic force of "war," has fallen under Caligula's thrall, and that he may for some reason be able to siphon the godhood out of her. Xena is encouraged by the angel Michael to use her god-killing power to slay Caligula, but she must also figure out some way to liberate Aphrodite. However, Xena doesn't move fast enough to suit Michael, who moves to slay Aphrodite so that she won't make Caligula a full god and thus interfere with the spread of the Eli religion. Xena stops Michael and almost kills him, but the power of Eli removes Xena's god-killing power and Michael disappears. Still, Eli's mission is imperiled because Caligula completes his godhood-sapping, so that he becomes a god and Aphrodite becomes mortal (though she regains her memory). Xena, this time with no help from Heaven, must find a way to slay Caligula, less for the Eli-cult and more to preserve Eve's life. It's a lively episode but undermined by confused plotting.
YOU ARE THERE (F)-- Though this is mostly a comedy episode-- as well as the one that most overtly broaches the subtext question-- it's not nearly as silly as most funny XENA episodes. TV reporter Nigel and his unseen cameraman appear, with no fear whatever of anachronism, in Xena's world, and some scenes even depict Nigel's guests in a TV studio being interviewed. Nigel has heard rumors that Xena is planning to attack Odin to obtain the Golden Apples of Immortality, and the reporter seeks to find out why, theorizing that she hopes to return Ares to Olympus and to reign at his side. Xena won't reveal her plans, and Nigel pursues other interviewees with his aggressive style, with some amusing results, as when peace-minded Eve ends up punching him out. Since it's germane to the general evolution of the storylines, I'll give the game away: Xena does get an immortality-apple and re-god Ares-- but she does the same for Aphrodite, because the forces of love and war must have cosmic incarnations in order to spread their influence to mortals.
PATH OF VENGEANCE (F)-- No good deed goes unpunished. Though the season started with mortal Ares making war on the Amazons, his first move upon regaining his godhood is to beguile the women warriors into becoming his new pawns, launching an offensive against Rome. But the new emperor (not named, though implicitly Claudius) has liberalized his treatment of the Eli-cult, which may signal a shift in the Xenaverse in the real world's transformation of pagan Rome into a Christian nation. On the emperor's order a Roman detachment escorts Eve to make peace with the Amazons. However, new queen Varia not only refuses peace thanks to the blandishments of Ares, she decides to try Eve for the murder of many Amazons, including Varia's sister. Gabrielle tries to challenge Varia's queendom in a big fight, but she loses, and that leaves it to Xena to sway Varia's vengeful heart and to foil Ares' plans. Eve ends her dubious career on the show by deciding to drop whatever progress she's made in Rome and begin proselytizing in Chin.
TO HELICON AND BACK (F)-- Call this one "the evil that gods do lives after them." Of the many gods Xena slew to protect Eve, one was Artemis, and now her half-mortal son Bellerophon (apparently not related to the guy who mastered Pegasus) is out for blood. His desire to kill Xena and Gabrielle is logical enough, but his main gambit is using a small army of masked men and fire-blasting catapults to attack the Amazons commanded by Varia. The script claims that Bellerophon got cheesed off because the warrior women deserted the worship of Artemis and so made it easier for Xena to kill the goddess-- which may be the flimsiest excuse the show ever devised. Since the enemy soldiers capture Varia, Gabrielle takes charge of a force to attack Bellerophon's fortress, but the Amazons are outgunned, and the resulting carnage provides the show's most harrowing images of war since the first season's IS THERE A DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE? There's a subplot about Varia being used as Bellerophon's catspaw, but it's insubstantial. Inevitably Xena faces off against Bellerophon, albeit reluctantly.
SEND IN THE CLONES (P)-- It's another one of those stupid clip-shows that no viewer anywhere misses. In 2001, three TV-watching nerds work with scientist Alexis (Clair Stansfield) to create and revive clones of both Xena and Gabrielle. They succeed, resulting in lots of nerd-jokes and "fish out of water" humor. The nerds want modern versions of Xena and Gabrielle to battle modern forms of evil, but Alexis, who is a new incarnation of Alti, just wants Xena to serve her in a 21st-century reign of evil. Only a lively hand-to-hand beween Xena and Alti-- usually seen battling with shaman-fu-- saves the episode from being as bad as ATHENS CITY ACADEMY.
LAST OF THE CENTAURS (F)-- Frankly, I hadn't seen the centaurs and Amazons together in a story for so long, I didn't remember how things were between the two tribes, nor what role Xena's old lover Borias played in the rapprochement with the two groups (though the viewer gets a belated summation late in the episode). But the ghost of deceased Amazon Ephiny beseeches the help of X and G to help her son, the Centaur Xenan, against the warlord Belach. Belach, it seems, is the now-grown son of Borias, and he hates centaurs partly because his father revered them. Bad Xena was partly responsible for Belach's negative opinion of Borias, since the warrior princess stole Belach's father from his mother. This is a nice little melodrama with a little less action than the average episode.
WHEN FATES COLLIDE (P)-- Though the Fates were perfectly willing to rewrite all of reality to benefit Xena in REMEMBER NOTHING, they don't like it so much when the shade of Julius Caesar escapes Tartarus (thanks in part to Xena having killed Hades) and redoes the loom of Fate for his own purposes. This time, the evil emperor doesn't betray Xena as he did in DESTINY, but he makes her his consort in Rome. Yet, apparently to hedge his bets, Caesar also makes common cause with Alti. But of course this playwright named Gabrielle comes mooching around. It's a pretty confused plot and of course everything goes back to the original cosmos, with no new insights into character or history. There's a small reward in that Ted Raimi gets to play a non-Joxer support character.
MANY HAPPY RETURNS (F)-- While X and G are on their way to Thebes to drop off the Helmet of Hermes-- no reference as to who gave the object to them or who they're giving it to-- Gabrielle wonders what kind of birthday gift she'll get from her warrior-BFF. The heroines interrupt a sacrificial ritual, in which "zealots" try to execute a young woman named Genia (possibly named for Classical sacrifice-victim Iphigenia). However, once liberated, Genia claims that no matter what the heroines do, she plans to sacrifice herself to her god. In order to dispel the young woman's foolish devotion, X and G take Genia to Aphrodite's temple, so she can see how superficial gods are. All four of them end up going to Thebes, and there the warlord Ferragus seeks to steal the Helmet, since it confers on its wearer the power to fly. The high points of this comedy episode are the jousting between X and G, though there's a "serious" meaning in terms of getting Genia to choose her own path.
SOUL POSSESSION (P)-- Since it's all about the modern-day Xena-cultists finding a lost Gabrielle-scroll, shouldn't they have called it "scroll possession?" Anyway, the new scroll purports to tell an interstitial story following Season 4's SIN TRADE, Xena is convinced by a vision that Gabrielle is still alive, and she tries to convince the mourning Joxer of this fact. But Xena doesn't know where to start looking, and Ares offers to find the supposedly living Gabrielle-- if Xena will marry him. Xena goes along with the charade, says the scroll, only to find out what Ares already knows about what happened to Gabrielle and Hope (who was carrying Ares' child). However, to gain that intel, Xena negotiates a deal where Ares must leave the two heroines in peace in the ancient world, but the scroll binds her to the war-god in a future life. Thus, back in the 21st century, Ares, still hanging around since being released in XENA SCROLLS, claims the binding scroll, but has to fight the current incarnation of Xena in the body of Harry. Ares switches the soul of Xena into the body of Alice, and that of course leads to his final defeat. It's the last of the silly-pants episodes, but is bearable for giving Ted Raimi one more outing.
A FRIEND IN NEED PTS 1-2 (F)-- I guess the show-runners must have felt they'd wrapped up all the extant plot-threads in the Xenaverse, because for the show's finale, they decided to remake THE DEBT. The remake substitutes some Japanese people who were done dirty by "Bad Xena," in between her part of the DEBT II narrative and her segment of ADVENTURES IN THE SIN TRADE, which begins with Bad Xena leaving the Far East for the Siberian North. Perhaps this "Bad Xena" has been softened by the influence of Lao Ma, even though the former has reunited with Borias to continue their depredations. Bad Xena attempts to ransom Akemi, a young Japanese noblewoman, but despite her mercenary motives, the would-be evildoer becomes enthralled by Akemi's graceful spirit. Akemi guides Xena into fighting a duel to acquire a magical katana which will later become important to the story.
"Current Xena" and her battling bard buddy are summoned to Japan by a monk trading on the name of the long deceased Akemi. Together the heroines save a burning city from the onslaught of a Japanese warlord. But Xena's saving of the city now doesn't erase her past actions.
Back to Bad Xena: on the way to the house of Akemi's father to collect a ransom, the persuasive young woman also talks Xena into teaching her the nerve pinch. When Akemi confronts her father Yodoshi, she kills him with the pinch in vengeance for various unspecified crimes. Then Akemi commits hari kari, forcing the reluctant warrior princess to finish Akemi off to end her suffering. However, the killing of Yodoshi makes his evil spirit into an angry ghost, and after Bad Xena accidentally sets the city on fire, the Yodoshi-ghost collects all the slain spirits and prevents them from going on to the afterlife.
Good Xena's only way of battling Yodoshi is to let herself be slain, though with the plan of her mortal being revived in the nick of time. Xena's spirit meets that of Akemi on some astral plane controlled by the Yodoshi-ghost, and soon Xena also meets, and is humbled by, Yodoshi, though she only feigns to give in for good. Gabrielle and a ghost-hunter, Harukata, join Xena on the spirit plane but neither they nor Xena can slay Yodoshi. Before Harukata expires, he tells the heroes to prevent Yodoshi from accessing "the Fountain of Power." The good guys are not able to prevent the ghost-warrior from upping his power-level, and Yodoshi consumes the spirit-form of his rebellious daughter. But Gabrielle is able to get some of the fountain-water to Xena, so that she can fight and defeat Yodoshi on his level. The downside is that even though Xena frees the slain spirits from Yodoshi's gullet, she can't allow Gabrielle to resuscitate her body or the spirits won't be able to enter "a state of grace." So Xena sacrifices herself for this belatedly mentioned atrocity and Gabrielle vows to pursue the life of a warrior woman alone, with Xena still united to her in a spiritual sense.
The final XENA episode is colorful and action-packed, and the performances are typically soulful. But despite fair potential, Akemi and her evil father lack the symbolic resonance of their rough analogues from THE DEBT, Lao Ma and Ming Tien. And the make-work feel of the Japanese atrocity undermines the hypothetical sacrificial culmination of Xena's life.
Though my mythicity-ratings of the XENA episodes matter only to me, my argument that most seasons had on average four-five stories with strong myth-discourse demonstrates that the producers and writers had largely exhausted their creativity by Season Six. I may expound on a separate ARCHETYPAL ARCHIVE as to the overall significance of this fan-favorite (but critically overlooked) TV series.
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