The Royal Couple of Thieves – Director: John Cameron/Writer: Steven L. Sears
This one starts with a hooded figure stealing a huge diamond from some monks (in spectacular fashion). Xena shows up to confront the guy and he takes off, but it doesn’t take Xena (and Gabi) long to catch him. He turns out to be Autolycus, the self-proclaimed King of Thieves. Xena reveals that the “diamond” he just stole is actually rock sugar, but has another proposition for Autolycus … she wants him to help steal the most valuable object in the world.
In a tavern, Xena tells Autolycus she wants him to help steal a chest from a warlord named Malthus who lives on a nearby island. Malthus stole the
chest from some friends of Xena’s and it contains a powerful weapon of some kind that Malthus plans to auction off to the highest bidder. Autolycus has heard of Malthus and doesn’t want to piss him off, but Xena and Gabi play on his ego as the greatest thief in the world, so he agrees to help. When he meets Xena’s friends, they offer a reward (although it’s not as much as Autolycus would like). Malthus has invited a who’s who of scumbags to bid on the weapon and Autolycus is going to go to the island disguised as a famed assassin named Sinteres 
(who’s busy overthrowing a kingdom, so he shouldn’t get in the way). Gabi tells Autolycus about Sinteres, who constantly spouts philosophy, chews toothpicks, and is so deadly he once killed someone with a rose petal. Xena goes along as Sinteres’ assistant, but Autolycus introduces her as his concubine and makes her wear a revealing outfit. On the boat, they run into a guy named Prognese, whose brother was killed by Sinteres. Prognese tries to avenge his brother by throwing Autolycus (and Xena) overboard.
Xena uses Autolycus’s grappling hook to save them from hitting the water and Autolycus climbs up to confront Prognese. When Autolycus tosses a toothpick, Xena hauls Prognese backward with the grappling hook, knocking him out against the gunwale. Everyone is impressed with “Sinteres”, but Xena’s not happy that Autolycus left her to climb out of the
water herself. Since she’s pretending to be his concubine, she can’t protest too much. When they get to the island, Autolycus gets some romantic ideas (especially since their chamber only has one bed), but Xena shuts him down pretty fast. (When he offers to flip her for the bed, she literally flips him over onto the floor and takes the bed for herself.) Malthus brings everyone to the main chamber to view the chest and show off his defenses, including invisible spider silk 
threads (which Autolycus dismisses as bullshit) and a pressure plate. Autolycus has Xena do a sexy dance to distract everyone (not the last time we’ll see her do that), giving him the chance to take a wax impression of Malthus’s key to the room. I’m not sure where Autolycus would’ve gotten the key cut; maybe he carries blanks and filed them into a duplicate key himself. When Xena and Autolycus come back later to steal the chest, they find it gone and Malthus’s corpse in its place. Autolycus sets off the alarm by breaking the invisible threads he didn’t believe were there.
Now that everyone knows Malthus is dead, Arkell (Malthus’s assistant) sends the boat away, saying nobody can leave until he finds out who killed
Malthus and took the chest. Autolycus is ready to bail on the plan, but Xena tells him she has to find the chest because she owes her life to her friends. Autolycus opens up a bit, telling Xena how his parents died when he was young and his brother took care of him until he was killed, forcing Autolycus to do whatever he could to survive. Xena and Autolycus find the chest in their chamber and have to pretend they’re banging to hide it when a guard comes to search the room. 
Xena figures Malthus’s killer is setting them up and decides to put the chest back where it was to screw up the killer’s plans. They get the chest back to its proper place, but Xena has to pretend to be hot for Arkell to distract him while Autolycus gets the chest back in position. The next day, Arkell decides to go ahead with the auction and plans to demonstrate the weapon by obliterating some innocent villagers. Before he can get things set up, the real Sinteres shows up with Gabi as his captive.
Sinteres is a master of pressure points and he’s inches away from killing Gabi with pressure on her temples, so Xena and Autolycus admit who they really are. Xena distracts everyone by outing Prognese as Malthus’s killer,
since Prognese quoted something written on the chest even though none of them had seen it. Sinteres kills Prognese, but Xena frees Gabi and they take off with Autolycus. Arkell sends guards after them, but decides to go ahead with the weapon demonstration. Xena sends Gabi to mark Arkell’s trail (and she gets captured again by Sinteres), while Xena and Autolycus head to the castle to change. Autolycus gets romantic again and Xena seems somewhat 
interested, but she has bigger things to worry about now. Autolycus stays behind to fight the guards while Xena follows the trail and ends up in a pressure-point duel with Sinteres. He numbs one of her arms and one leg, but she ends up using the old Three Stooges block when he tries to explode her brain and she kills him with a strike to the chest. Xena, Gabi, and Autolycus pound the guards and Arkell opens the chest to check out the weapon. It turns out to be some kind of energy and Xena urges Gabi and Autolycus to heed the writing on the chest, warning them not to run but to face the truth. Arkell does try to run and is struck down by a pillar of fire. Xena, Gabi, and Autolycus examine the
chest and find some stone tablets inside, with stuff about not coveting or stealing (laws Autolycus thinks are impossible to live by); yeah, it’s the Ark of the Covenant. They return the Ark to Xena’s friends (who are obviously Israelites) and they pay Autolycus his reward, but he slips the money into one of their baskets, proving he’s not such a bad guy after all. Autolycus says farewell to Xena and Gabi (still angling for a kiss and still getting nothing) and Xena points out to Gabi that Autolycus returned the money. Gabi feels guilty for stealing his ring (which he “acquired” from a princess) and promises to return it to its rightful owner.
This is a pretty good episode (#76 on my all-time list) and it’s a great 
introduction to Autolycus, the King of Thieves with a heart of gold (who had already appeared on Hercules at this point). There’s some romantic tension between Xena and Autolycus, but mainly it’s played for laughs. They do have a lot in common, mostly that they’re both good people at heart who sometimes do bad things. I think they both believe themselves to be worse than they really are and get flustered when someone tries to point out their good qualities. Autolycus is pretty smart and very good at planning things out, but Xena is usually a
little bit ahead of him (except when he tricks her into wearing the concubine outfit … the look on her face when she knows he’s outmaneuvered her is priceless). I get the feeling Autolycus tries his luck with pretty much every attractive woman he meets, so it’s not surprising he’d put the moves on Xena. She seems vaguely interested (and probably finds him attractive on some level), but ultimately isn’t swayed by his charms. Maybe he’s too much like her and that kinda turns her off, or maybe she just has no patience for his constant bluster, even if it is mostly a front.
Noticeable Things:
- There was supposed to be a running joke through the episode that ended up getting cut: every time Autolycus described himself as the King of Thieves, someone would say, “I thought that was Cadmus” and Autolycus would reply, “I said Thieves, not Thebes!”
- There’s a young woman who appears in several scenes with the
cutthroats who come to the island to bid on the weapon. She could be a servant (or another concubine), but I’d like to think that she’s a bad-ass herself who’s there to bid with all the other scumbags. - Xena says the Israelites saved her life when she was wounded and her enemies came looking for her. She says she was very young at the time, so it must’ve been shortly after Cortese’s attack on Amphipolis, before she became a murderous (and ungrateful) warlord.
- Malthus is like a Bond villain is this episode. Specifically, he reminds me of Scaramanga in Man With the Golden Gun: he’s got his own island, possesses a deadly weapon, and Xena has a duel at the end (although it’s with Sinteres, not Malthus).
- Xena gives Gabi shit for stealing the ring from Autolycus and Gabi promises to return it to its rightful owner … if she can find her. I believe Gabi probably did return the ring (if she could), or maybe donated it to an orphanage or something.
- There’s speculation among fans about whether Xena and Autolycus
might’ve hooked up in this episode, since things got kinda heated while they were changing in the castle. But there’s a scene in the script that got cut that shows them leaving the room without doing anything (not even a kiss). Plus, I don’t think Xena would stop to bang when Arkell was about to waste a bunch of villagers with a super-weapon, especially since she knew Gabi was out there following him. - If you’re wondering how Sinteres captured Gabi, there was a line in the shooting script that didn’t make it into the final cut: apparently Gabi tried to stop Sinteres from heading for Malthus’s island and he ended up capturing her. Gabi must’ve recognized him and knew his showing up on the island would ruin Xena’s plans, so she tried to stop him.
- There was another scene that got cut where Xena eases Gabi’s
headache (caused by Sinteres’ pressure point manipulation) and Gabi runs into a couple of guards while tracking Arkell. She tells them to leave her alone because she’s not in the mood to fight and when they attack, she beats the shit out of them, screaming “I told you I have a headache!” I wish they’d left that in, but I guess it was probably cut for time.
Favourite Quotes:
- “You’re so young.” Autolycus, when Gabi asks if the ring he got from the princess was a gift.
- “… so for situations like that I use a muffin.” Autolycus (as Sinteres) explaining that sometimes apricots are just too lethal.
- “Have you ever had a headache that was so painful you wanted to be dead? Well, I wish I had one of those right now.”Gabi, explaining how bad her head hurts after Sinteres’ used his pressure point technique on her temples.