Welcome to my overview of Season 1 of Xena: Warrior Princess. Like most first seasons, this one was mostly about establishing the characters and letting us get to know them. But it’s not just us in the audience who have to get acquainted with the characters, they also have to get acquainted with each other. The first season was mostly about Xena and Gabi getting to know and trust each other, getting closer as time went on. They had an instant rapport, seeming to understand each other right away. When talking about a future
episode, writer Steve Sears will say that Xena and Gabi are “old friends who just met”, and they do seem drawn to each other right away. We can put that down to the “soulmate” stuff that’ll be introduced in later seasons, but even without that, there are several reasons for Xena and Gabi to get along upon first meeting. At first glance, they look quite different, but they’re actually very much alike. Both of them are small town farm girls at heart (as we’ll see in Old Ares Had a Farm), looking to expand their horizons and find adventure, and also trying to get away from who they used to be (and who other people think they are). So they probably recognize something of themselves in each other and more importantly, they see in 
each other what they aspire to be: Xena sees an innocent girl who always thinks of others before herself, and Gabi sees an unbeatable warrior whose life is full of non-stop adventure. It makes sense they’d be alike, since Poteidaia and Amphipolis are both towns in Macedonia and only about 50 miles or so apart as the crow flies. It’s strange that Xena didn’t conquer Poteidaia when she was taking over villages around Amphipolis. In Sins of the Past, Gabi’s father says they’ve heard of Xena and her tactics, but it doesn’t sound like she actually conquered Poteidaia; maybe she never considered them a threat? Or maybe they offered her tribute to forestall her invading.
As I said above, Season 1 doesn’t really have an overall theme; it basically introduces us to the main characters and shows them getting to know each other. In the best stories, you learn more about the characters from the way
they interact with others than you do just watching them in isolation, and that’s definitely the case here. Not only do we learn about Xena and Gabi through the way their own relationship grows, we learn a lot from the way they deal with other characters throughout the season, some of whom will become iconic. The first season sees the introduction of stalwarts like Ares, Ephiny, Joxer, Callisto, and Autolycus, all of whom are fascinating on first meeting them, but will grow 
and become even more profound over the next few years. And some of the most revealing aspects of character come not from the similarities, but from the contrasts. Xena and Callisto are somewhat alike (by Callisto’s design), but Callisto is a dark mirror of Xena, representing everything Xena was but no longer wants to be. And in a way, Joxer is a distorted mirror of Gabi; she’s brave, heroic, selfless, and rapidly becomes a skilled fighter, all things Joxer would love to be.
In fact, there’s an argument to be made (and I’m certainly not the first person to come up with this idea) that Gabi is actually the hero of the series … at least if we’re using “Hero” in Joseph Campbell/Hero’s Journey terms.
After all, Gabi is the one who has farther to go; she starts out as the innocent kid and slowly becomes a Hero throughout the course of the series. Xena is already a fully-formed Hero (or maybe Anti-Hero) when the series starts, so she acts as the Mentor, passing on her knowledge and skills to Gabi. Xena’s character arc through the series is pretty straightforward: she’s trying to find redemption for all the terrible things she’s done, even though she doesn’t really believe she’s worthy of it. So Xena’s character arc is straighter than Gabi’s, although considering all the shit they’ll go through over the next five years, both their “arcs” probably 
look more like sine waves. I think Xena is constantly teaching Gabi in between episodes, passing on her knowledge all through the series. And not just physical skills and tactics, but moral lessons and character building. Xena sees in Gabi someone she can mould into the person Xena might have been if she hadn’t strayed from her path for the sake of revenge, anger, and hate. But Gabi (who would be the last person to consider herself a Hero) is kind of acting as Xena’s mentor too, showing her how to be selfless instinctively, something Xena aspires to but can’t always achieve. So in a way, they end up balancing each other out, with each acting as Hero or Mentor at various times.
In fact, I see that balancing act as central to the series. The best way to think of it is in terms of the ladder scene at the end of Callisto. The whole series is basically Xena and Gabi on a teeter-totter trying to find balance. They start
out wildly out of balance: depending on how you want to look at it, you could say Xena’s lower on the teeter-totter because her skills and experience outweigh Gabi’s. But Gabi’s sense of morality and justice could weight the teeter-totter in her favour instead. When one person on a teeter-totter outweighs the other, the heavier person has to move toward the centre until a balance is found. After that, they just have to coordinate their movements, each of them edging toward the centre until they both reach it. By the end of the season, I think Xena 
and Gabi have started to find their balance, which they’ll perfect next season. After that, the rest of the series is just them trying to meet in the middle and once they reach that equilibrium, whenever one of them steps out of balance, the other one can pull her back to the centre. That’s one of the reasons I believe their romance is delayed, because they have to find their balance before they can be together. Trying to have a relationship where one person is above the other (they do tend to put each other on pedestals early on) never works.
That’s why I don’t see much in the way of romance for the first season. There are a few subtle signs (like Gabi twice describing Xena as beautiful), but I don’t really see anything substantial until the final episode of the season, when Xena realizes how much Gabi means to her after almost
losing her. (I’m not counting the fishing scene in Altared States, since nothing actually happens, and it was inserted on purpose by the creators just to screw with audience expectations.) I think on Gabi’s part, she’s a little slow to catch on to that vibe (as we’ll see next season); not that Gabi couldn’t be into that sort of relationship (she’s very open-minded), but I think she’s stuck in hero-worship mode with Xena, so it wouldn’t occur to her that Xena might see her as someone worth getting involved with. (In other words, Gabi probably figures Xena is out of her league.) I know some people think Gabi left Poteidaia because she was a lesbian and didn’t fit in there, which later dialogue will suggest may be the 
case, but I just don’t see it that way (bearing in mind that I’m a straight, cis male, so maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about). But if Gabi left Poteidaia because she was gay, why did she have so many boyfriends-of-the-week? I know a lot of gay people are confused (or in denial) about who they are, but if Gabi was self-aware enough to leave home because she was gay, she shouldn’t be so confused that she spends the next season and a half falling for various dudes. I think Gabi’s romances were part of the experience for her; she’s looking for love as much as she is adventure. It just hasn’t occurred to her yet that she might find both of those things with Xena. But that’ll change next season …
Speaking of which, I’ll be starting my Season 2 reviews next week. Season 2 will build on the first season, giving us even more character depth and deepening the bond between Xena and Gabi. We’ll see the return of some favourites from Season 1 (Ares, Joxer, Callisto, Ephiny, Autolycus, Draco), plus some new characters (Aphrodite, Minya, Caesar) who are destined to
become very important to the series. I’ll be sticking to the same schedule and reviewing the episodes in the order they originally aired, with one notable exception: I’ll be reviewing Warrior … Princess … Tramp as the third episode of the season. I’ll talk more about my reasoning when we get there, but basically it makes no sense to have it (or any other episode) between Return of Callisto and Intimate Stranger; it completely ruins the flow of those two episodes and makes no logical sense there, so I pushed it forward to third spot, where it makes way more sense. Tomorrow I’ll have a special post on the geography and chronology of Season 1, so check it out (especially if you like delving into the minutiae of continuity like I do), then join me here next Wednesday for my first Season 2 review.