Xena Reviews: Season 2, Episode 1

Orphan of War – Director: Charles Siebert/Writer: Steven L. Sears

This one starts with Xena and Gabi in centaur territory, talking about an imminent attack by a warlord named Dagnine. Dagnine used to be in Xena’s army and she knows how dangerous he is, but she isn’t sure if the centaurs will welcome her help, since she fought them too in her evil days. Some of Dagnine’s men attack and Xena and Gabi pound them. The attackers run off when some centaurs show up, led by Kaleipus, who isn’t happy to see Xena. (He refers to her as the “Destroyer of Nations”, the first time we’ve heard that particular appellation.) Xena warns Kaleipus that Dagnine is after the Ixion Stone, which would give him a lot of evil power, but Kaleipus figures Xena wants the Stone for herself, since that’s what she was after the last time he saw her nearly ten years ago. Xena is jumped by a kid (Solan) who accuses her of killing his father, the great Borias. Kaleipus tells Solan to leave and Xena admits to Gabi that Solan is her son.

Watching Solan in the centaur village, Xena flashes back to giving him to Kaleipus nine years ago, while also agreeing to withdraw her armies from her battle with the centaurs. Gabi gives Xena shit for abandoning her child, but Xena tells her to mind her own business. We see Dagnine and a Seer using a telescope to spy on Xena from a hill. Xena argues with Kaleipus about Solan being a warrior (since he’s wearing Borias’s sword and is clearly eager to use it), but Kaleipus reminds her she gave up any say in Solan’s upbringing when she gave him up. Outside, Xena tells Gabi about the Ixion Stone (which holds all the evil from the centaurs) and how she was seeking it years ago. Borias defied her and joined the centaurs to keep her from getting the Stone, but she didn’t kill him; she ordered he be taken alive, but someone had other ideas. Gabi says Solan deserves the truth, but Xena forbids her from telling him. The Seer is watching and can read lips, so he knows Solan is Xena’s son and tells Dagnine. Xena visits Borias’s grave and talks with Solan, but he believes all the bad stuff he’s heard about her, so he’s not in a friendly mood. Xena notices a flash from the hill and catches Seer. Using the Pinch, she finds out Dagnine knows about Solan. Gabi is making friends with Solan, trying to soften his attitude toward Xena and teach him to be less eager to fight. Dagnine’s men attack and Gabi is distracted by Solan, getting knocked out. They leave her alive so she can tell Xena they have Solan.

Xena finds Gabi, who tells her what happened. Solan is locked in a cage, with Borias’s sword just out of reach. Xena talks to Dagnine, who thinks he holds all the cards. Dagnine says he’s close to finding the Ixion Stone (which is hidden in some caverns in the vicinity) and wants Xena to leave him be or he’ll kill Solan. (He also tries to put the moves on her.) She knocks him out to get the key to Solan’s cage and sneaks out to save him. As she’s hoisting the cage up, Solan grabs Borias’s sword and Dagnine’s men notice what’s happening. Xena pounds them, but Solan’s cage hits the ground, opening up a shaft to the Ixion Caverns. To avoid being skewered by arrows, Xena and Solan jump down the shaft into the Caverns.

Dagnine heads down to the Caverns to look for the Stone. Solan’s arm is broken, so Xena takes care of him, answering some of his questions about Borias and trying to comfort him. Kaleipus is tired of waiting around and is ready to attack Dagnine’s camp, even though the forested terrain favours humans over centaurs. Since Gabi can’t talk him out of attacking, she decides to go along. Xena and Solan find the Ixion Shrine, but the Stone isn’t there, having been found and removed by Borias years ago. Xena uses a hollow root to send an alarm call and Gabi figures out what it means. Dagnine and his men show up just as Gabi and the centaurs are trying to pull Xena and Solan out of the Shrine. Xena fights them off long enough for her and Solan to be rescued, but Solan drops Borias’s sword, which had the Ixion Stone hidden in the pommel. When the Stone pops loose, Dagnine grabs it.

Dagnine uses the Stone to transform himself into a giant evil centaur. The centaurs and their allies prepare for Dagnine’s assault and Xena warns them they’ll need a ballista with a huge arrow to penetrate Dagnine’s hide now. Gabi apologizes for giving Xena a hard time and they make up. Gabi tends Solan’s arm and he admits he doesn’t hate Xena, since she’s not the monster he’d always heard she was. Dagnine attacks and Xena and Kaleipus go out to stall him. Some of his men slip into the camp to grab Solan and Gabi ends up fighting them. Xena helps Gabi with her chakram and Dagnine grabs her. He tells her he’s the one who killed Borias (with Borias’s own sword), but before he can finish Xena she throws her sword, triggering the ballista and impaling Dagnine on the giant arrow. Later, Xena says goodbye to Solan; it’s obvious she wants to tell him she’s his mother, but she can’t bring herself to take him away from the only life he knows, so she leaves him behind again.

This isn’t one of my favourite episodes (it’s number 110 on my all-time list); it’s technically not a bad episode and it certainly gives us some great background on Xena that fleshes out her character and will resonate through the rest of the series. I guess I just don’t care that much about Solan in general. Nothing against the actor (the show always has great child actors), but I just don’t find Solan all that compelling. He starts out petulant and kind of whiny, blaming Xena for everything under the sun. Then later he’s cool with her, which is fine but I didn’t really get a sense of how he got there. And at the end when Xena’s hinting so hard that she’s his mother, wanting him to ask the question so she can confirm it, Solan is so dense; it’s pretty obvious what she’s getting at but he just doesn’t see it and he comes off as kind of stupid. We’ll see Solan again, but things aren’t destined to work out too well for him, and Xena will end up with even more regrets than she has here.

A lot of fans might say Xena should’ve just come right out and told Solan the truth, instead of dropping hints. But she’d already promised Kaleipus she wouldn’t and probably thinks her original reasons for giving him up—that he’d be a target for those who hate her, learn things a child shouldn’t know, and become like her—are still valid. Of course, Xena’s changed but as we’ll see in future episodes, Xena has a lower opinion of herself than others do; no matter how much good she does, she doesn’t really believe herself worthy of forgiveness and that’s a feeling that’ll continue right into the series finale. Xena obviously wants to tell Solan the truth, but can’t. That’s why she’s hinting so much, hoping Solan will ask her so she can confirm it. Steve Sears said that Xena has promised herself not to lie to Solan (and she certainly doesn’t sugar-coat any of the bad stuff she or Borias did), so if Solan came right out and asked if she was his mother, she’d tell him the truth.

Xena and Gabi’s disagreement on her walking away from Solan (the first time) is a little strange. Gabi comes off as pretty judgmental, giving Xena shit for her decision instead of trying to understand it. Steve Sears said Gabi was basically a proxy for the audience, saying a lot of the stuff the viewers would be thinking. But in the end, Gabi apologizes and admits she should’ve known how much Xena’s decision hurt her and should’ve tried to comfort her instead of blaming her. Gabi obviously wants to tell Solan the truth too, but she respects Xena’s wishes and keeps her mouth shut. She does try to change Solan’s opinion of Xena and she gives him some advice about fighting, telling him how a sword can make you a target (something she learned from Xena back in Dreamworker). Solan seems to take that to heart, as he throws his sword in the lake at the end (although, much like the rock Xena threw in the original lake, the sword is still there under the water). Gabi also mentions how a lot of the people they meet hate Xena on sight because of the things she’s done in the past. But this Xena, the good Xena, is the only one Gabi’s ever seen, so she has to base her opinion on her own experience, not on what she’s heard. We also see how much Xena trusts Gabi because even after Solan was kidnapped from Gabi’s care, Xena trusts Gabi to look after him in the final battle.

Noticeable Things:

• This is the first mention of Borias, someone who was instrumental in shaping Xena into the person she is now. We’ll actually see Borias in future episodes, but for now we only get a few hints about him. We’ll also get different take on the “Xena giving Solan up” scene that we saw here (in the fourth season episode Past Imperfect).
• In Greek myth, Ixion was the progenitor of the centaurs, though tales disagree on whether he was human or centaur. He wound up in Tartarus, condemned to revolve forever on a wheel because he tried to bang Hera. The Ixion Stone is something Steve Sears made up for this episode.
• During the big fight at the end, Gabrielle does one of those moves where she’s back-to-back with an attacker (both holding her staff) and gets flipped over his back so she’s facing him. We’ve seen that move before (and will see it plenty more times), but this time it looks like Renee O’Connor actually does the stunt herself.
• There’s no mention of Tyldus here, but he probably belongs to a different tribe of centaurs and lives in a different village.
• Xena’s handing over of Solan to Kaleipus is said to have happened nine years ago, which would mean eight years before the show began. That doesn’t quite fit with the Battle of Corinth happening ten years before the show started, but Xena’s past tends to get a bit cluttered, with a whole bunch of things happening roughly ten years ago.
• Dagnine mentions he had some trouble with Thersites and thanks Xena for killing him.

Favourite Quotes:

• “You’ve just met your worst enemy.” Solan telling Xena how he feels about her.
• “If this doesn’t work … ? One of you gets my tent, the other gets my horse.” Dagnine, showing his practical side.
• “Protect Solan.” Xena and Kaleipus, agreeing on Gabi’s role during the final fight.