Xena Reviews: Season 2, Episode 12

Destiny – Director: Rob Tapert/Story: Rob Tapert/Teleplay: R.J. Stewart, Steven L. Sears

This one starts with Xena and Gabi visiting Cirrha, Callisto’s home village that was accidentally burned down by Xena’s men back in her warlord days. Xena’s feeling guilty and Gabi tries to make her feel better. Xena rides through the ruined village, remembering the night it burned (and a crying girl who’s probably Callisto as a kid). The memories overwhelm her and Xena leaves the village, but when she reaches the top of the hill, Gabi is gone. Xena finds Gabi’s staff and tracks to her to the camp of some sun-worshippers, who have captured a bunch of other people too. Xena pounds them and frees the captives, but while fighting the chief, Xena is distracted by a kid wearing a Celtic knot medallion and gets smashed by a deadfall trap.

Gabi pounds the sun-worshipper chief, but gets stabbed in the leg. Xena is in bad shape and asks Gabi to take her to Mount Nestos. Gabi’s skeptical, but agrees. Xena starts remembering (or hallucinating) her warlord days when she was raiding towns to extract tribute and insure they weren’t helping the enemies of Amphipolis. Xena’s flashback to ten years ago involves meeting Julius Caesar while raiding Neapolitas. She holds him for ransom, but ends up being impressed with his swagger; Caesar isn’t afraid to die because he’s convinced his destiny is to rule the world, starting with the Roman Empire. Xena finds a stowaway (M’lila) on her boat who knows a bunch of fancy fighting moves (the 360 degree kick, numerous flips, and especially the Pinch) and wears a Celtic knot medallion. Caesar speaks M’lila’s language and Xena promises to spare her if she teaches Xena all her tricks. M’lila teaches Xena the Pinch by putting it on her, almost killing her.

M’lila takes the Pinch off and shows Xena how to do it. Xena is drawn to Caesar’s will and sense of destiny and ends up proposing an alliance. They bang and Xena releases Caesar after receiving her ransom. Caesar promises they’ll be together again soon and conquer the world. Some time goes by and Caesar does meet up with Xena’s ship, but he betrays her, taking her and her crew captive and stealing all her loot.

Caesar tells Xena his destiny includes her, but not as a partner … he rules alone. He has Xena and her men crucified (and Xena’s legs broken) as a message to anyone who might oppose him. Now that Caesar has Xena’s plunder, he can afford to use his army to conquer Gaul without needing to ask the Senate for money. M’lila (who never trusted Caesar and escaped when he took Xena’s ship) rescues Xena from the cross and takes her to Mount Nestos, to see the healer Niclio. When Caesar finds out Xena is gone, he sends soldiers after her. In the present, Gabi (even though she’s wounded, half-frozen, and exhausted) has managed to get Xena to Mount Nestos and Niclio. Xena tells Niclio to let her go and even though Gabi begs him to help Xena, he tells her it’s too late.

Xena’s not quite dead yet and she’s still remembering the past. Niclio has set her broken legs and Xena asked M’lila why she saved her from the cross. M’lila told her it wasn’t her time to die yet. Xena is quite moved by M’lila’s gesture and M’lila asks if she hates Caesar. Before Xena can answer, the Roman soldiers bust in and attack, knocking Niclio out immediately. M’lila dies saving Xena from a dagger and Xena pounds the soldiers (which doesn’t do her broken legs any favours), vowing that from now on she’ll dedicate herself to dealing out death. In the present, Xena’s life slips away and she sees M’lila on the other side. Xena thinks she deserves to die because of all he terrible things she’s done, but M’lila tells her it’s not her destiny to die yet, and that the good she can do in the future will outweigh whatever evil she’s done in her past. M’lila reminds her that the dead can hear the thoughts of the living and Xena hears Gabi begging her to come back and not to stop fighting, complete with flashbacks to some of their more tender moments from earlier episodes. Realizing how much Gabi cares for her (and maybe remembering how much she loves Gabi), Xena decides she has to go back … but that’s not as easy as it sounds. Originally, Xena was supposed to wake up here and the scene between her and Gabi (which you can read over at Whoosh under “shooting script differences”) was quite sweet; it would’ve made an interesting parallel with Xena bringing Gabi back in Is There a Doctor in the House? … Niclio even urges Gabi to let Xena go, just as Marmax told Xena to let Gabi go in that episode. But because of Lucy’s accident, they left Xena “dead”, which will be resolved in the next episode.

This episode is pretty good (it’s #82 on my all-time list), but I’m generally not a big fan of the flashback episodes. I know they establish Xena’s character and motivations, but for me they always drag a bit because Gabi isn’t in them. Xena and Gabi (or Lucy and Renee) work so well together that whenever they’re separated, I’m usually just waiting for them to appear together again. This episode does establish Caesar as Xena’s bête noire, the main impetus for losing her moral centre and becoming an evil warlord, as opposed to just trying to protect her home village. The Xena we see before meeting Caesar seemed to enjoy subjugating villages and stealing their stuff, but at least her underlying motive was still pure. It’s possible Xena was using protecting Amphipolis as an excuse for her excesses, but there’s no doubt she did care about her home and family. Unfortunately, getting a taste of power corrupted her a bit, making her hunger for more. Xena told Caesar she was getting bored with that life, which is probably why teaming up with him was so attractive. She thought they were kindred spirits, but (unlike Caesar) Xena still had a good side, even if she wasn’t listening to it much. Even after the crucifixion, it seemed like Xena was still leaning  toward her good side, but when M’lila was killed, that pushed her over the edge into darkness and (as we’ll see in upcoming episodes) it would take a long time before she broke free of that darkness. One of the writers said that Xena before and after Caesar was like the difference between Patton and Stalin. (In Season 6, we’ll also see what might’ve happened if Caesar hadn’t betrayed her.)

So we see two big influences at work on Xena in this episode: Caesar took away her capacity to trust and left hate in its place. He also showed her how to read people and use what they want against them. M’lila taught Xena the Pinch (and probably numerous other fighting moves), but she also taught her how to care about someone unselfishly … much like Gabi does now. There’s a lot of speculation about whether Xena and M’lila were lovers; I’m not sure what to think, since it could work either way. We know Xena isn’t averse to same-sex relationships (and tends to have a thing for the girls she mentors, as we’ll see). On M’lila’s side, she was willing to sacrifice her life to save Xena. Also, M’lila refers to Xena as “Annwyl”, which means “beloved”. That could mean that M’lila was in love with Xena but never acted on it (and couldn’t tell her because of the language barrier). So it’s possible they were lovers, but it’s also possible one (or both) had feelings for the other but never did anything about it. I don’t think it matters much either way; Xena certainly cared about M’lila (and vice versa) and probably did love her, whether romantically or otherwise. And M’lila’s biggest influence was to remind Xena that the good she does now can make up for the bad she’s done in the past. M’lila also tells her that by being evil, Xena learned how best to fight evil, since she knows it so well.

Noticeable Things:

• The sun worshippers are dressed like barbarians and don’t really look Greek. They could be some primitive tribe from Illyria or Epirus, which were considered to be uncivilized and not really part of Greece back then.
• This episode was inspired by a real life incident where Julius Caesar was captured and ransomed by pirates. Upon his release, he swore to the pirates that he’d track them down and have them executed … and he did.
• When Xena is first smashed by the tree, Gabi whistles for Argo and Argo responds.
• I’m not sure if Mount Nestos is a real place, but there was a Nestos River in the mountains northeast of Amphipolis, so that’s probably where it’s meant to be located. If Xena and Gabi started in Cirrha (which is way down on the west coast of Greece), that means Gabi (and Argo) hauled Xena a hell of a long way … and Gabi with a wounded leg.
• Caesar says M’lila is Egyptian (“from the land of the Pharaohs”), but speaks Gaelic (although it sounds more Slavic than Celtic to me); he presumes she was taken to Gaul as a slave. Caesar is an expert on Gaul because he believes part of his destiny is to conquer it. (Caesar even says that “All of Gaul is divided into three parts …”) which is the first line of The Gallic Wars, written by the real-life Caesar.
• Xena mentions Stagira being an ancient enemy of Amphipolis, which was true in real-life history too.
• Niclio uses acupuncture to heal Xena’s broken legs, which fascinates her.
• The pattern on M’lila’s shirt is the same pattern present-day Xena has on her breastplate.

Favourite Quotes:

• “You divide a woman’s emotions from her sensibilities and you have her.” Caesar’s philosophy, which turned out to be accurate in Xena’s case.
• “You’ve changed, Xena … like this valley. Once it was a place full of death and violence, now it’s full of beauty and life. The same kind of change has happened to you.” Gabi telling Xena that her past doesn’t have to define her, as they look on the remains of Cirrha.
• “Tell Hades to prepare himself … a new Xena is born tonight, with a new purpose in life … death!” Xena losing her humanity and allowing her dark side to take over.