Ties That Bind – Director: Charles Siebert/Writers: Adam Armus, Nora Kay Foster
This one starts with a warlord named Kirilus rounding up a bunch of girls to sell into slavery. Kirilus is working for Ares, but Ares shows up and tells him he won’t be needed anymore, since Ares wants Xena to lead his army instead. Xena and Gabi are watching Kirilus’s men cage up the girls and planning how to rescue them when an older man (Atrius) shows up to challenge a couple of the guards. Atrius gets in trouble and Xena saves him and when Atrius finds out who she is, he claims to be her long-lost father.
Xena doesn’t believe Atrius (since her father wasn’t the type to be rescuing
anyone) and leaves with Gabi to free the girls. While Xena distracts the guards, Gabi lets the girls out of the cage. One of the girls (Rhea) runs off in the wrong direction and Gabi has to chase her. They run into one of Kirilus’s men, but Atrius shows up and takes him down. Xena is grateful Atrius helped Gabi, but still doesn’t believe he’s her father. Ares shows up in Kirilus’s tent to taunt him over Xena freeing the girls. Kirilus sends an assassin (Tarkus) to kill Xena. Gabi and Xena are 
leading the girls back to their home village of Locia and Gabi asks Rhea why she ran off. Rhea is scared to go home because when Kirilus’s men came to Locia to grab the girls, Rhea volunteered to go with them willingly. Later, Xena tells Gabi she never really missed having a father, but does mention one good memory of her father riding past her on his horse and lifting her into the saddle. Xena sees Atrius riding like a bat out of hell with two guys chasing him.
Xena saves Atrius from the two guys and Atrius tells her they were after him because he got a horse from them. She assumes he stole it, but Atrius says he won it in a bet and when Xena checks with the two guys, they confirm it. That makes Xena start to wonder about her snap judgment of Atrius. Rhea
tells Gabi the reason she volunteered to be taken was to save her younger sister from becoming a slave, since her sister was about to be married. Gabi tells Rhea she did the right thing and that her family will understand. Atrius reminds Xena how he used to lift her into his saddle when she was a kid and they start to bond. Tarkus tries to kill Xena, but she takes him down pretty easily. Atrius goes after Tarkus, kicking his ass and killing him when he tries to surrender, all of which is witnessed by Gabi.
Gabi tells Xena that Atrius killed Tarkus after he surrendered, but Atrius insists Tarkus had a dagger ready to stab him. There is a dagger under 
Tarkus’s body and Gabi apologizes, saying she didn’t see it. Atrius tells Gabi he doesn’t want to come between her and Xena and that he’ll be leaving once the girls are safe. Gabi figures Xena should have time to bond with her father and another conversation with Rhea (about Rhea leaving her family to help her sister) convinces Gabi that she should leave Xena so Xena and Atrius can get reacquainted. Gabi tells Xena she’ll take the girls to the village while Xena and Atrius watch for Kirilus’s men. Xena agrees, not knowing that Gabi
plans to take off after returning the girls to Locia. Xena tries to tell Atrius about her terrible past, but he assures her he doesn’t care and accepts her the way she is. After capturing some of Kirilus’s men, Xena learns Kirilus is targeting Locia. She’s ready to defend the village alone, but Atrius insists on coming, saying he’s done terrible things to the Locians and wants to make up for it. Gabi gets the girls safely to Locia and Rhea is reunited with her family, who are happy and grateful to see her. Ares taunts Kirilus, telling him he can’t stop Xena, which makes Kirilus determined to prove Ares wrong. When Xena and Atrius arrive in Locia to warn them about Kirilus, it turns out Atrius had tricked them a while ago, pretending to be their friend before leading an army against them. They seize Atrius and 
Xena says she’ll take care of the army if they promise to let Atrius go afterwards. Xena goes to Kirilus’s camp and beats him, becoming leader of his army. Ares shows up to tell the Kirilus he played his part perfectly and Kirilus realizes Ares has manipulated things so Xena would end up leading his army of cutthroats … something she’d never normally consider. When Xena arrives at Locia with Kirilus’s army (hoping to free Atrius now that the army is no longer a threat), she sees the Locians have beaten the shit out of Atrius and strung him up. She orders the army to take the village.
Once the villagers have been rounded up, Xena cuts Atrius down and
confronts the village leader, who says Atrius tried to escape. Atrius dies (seemingly) in Xena’s arms and she’s ready to massacre all the villagers for killing her father. Gabi stands up to her, telling her she’s doing just what Xena did against Draco, except now Xena’s acting like the murderous warlord. Xena tries to push past Gabi, who whacks her in the head with a pitchfork. That brings Xena to her senses and 
her anger melts away. Atrius (now miraculously recovered) chastises her for not killing everyone and joining him, and Xena finally realizes Atrius has been Ares in disguise all along. Ares and Xena have a brief fight and Ares threatens to kill her when she refuses to join him, but relents and vanishes. Later, Xena tells Gabi their bond is closer than blood and thanks Gabi for stopping her from doing something she’d regret.
This episode is pretty good; I have it at #74 on my all-time list, but it could probably move up a bit. It has some pretty good stuff about Xena and Ares, Xena and Gabi, and hints about Xena’s family life. Apparently, the original plan for the first season was to have Xena find out (in Sins of the Past) that her father wasn’t who she’d thought and for her to be looking for him in a
season-long arc. I’m kinda glad they didn’t do that because we wouldn’t have gotten a lot of these other stories. Xena starts out denying that she misses having a father, but her acceptance of Atrius and her desire to avenge him contradict that. Ares obviously knows what buttons to push, playing on Xena’s need for family to manipulate her. Having alienated her family, Xena probably feels 
alone a lot of the time, so it makes sense she’d be eager to get back what she’s lost. Of course, Ares didn’t realize how close Xena and Gabi have gotten; Gabi is Xena’s family now (or something closer than family, as Xena points out at the end). The issue of Xena’s father will come up again in The Furies and she’ll find out what really happened to him. In light of the revelations in that episode, I can’t help wondering how much Ares knows about Xena’s father here … does he know the truth already?
Ares is a master manipulator in this episode, showing how crafty he can be. He must’ve been setting this all up for quite a while, since his plan involved not only pushing Kirilus and Xena into fighting each other, but getting the people of Locia mad enough to kill Atrius. Ares must’ve used his Atrius guise
to betray the Locians some time ago, which means he’s really been playing the long game. I think Rhea must be working for Ares, either knowingly or unwittingly. When Gabi frees the girls, she clearly tells them to go right but Rhea immediately runs to the left, forcing Gabi to chase her into the woods, where one of Kirilus’s men just happens to be … and then Atrius just happens to show up at the exact place and time to rescue them? And Rhea’s story about leaving her family to give 
her sister the chance to be with her husband is a perfect parallel to Gabi leaving Xena so she can have time with her father. Rhea even shows up to reiterate that point seconds after Atrius tells Gabi he doesn’t want to come between her and Xena. That’s one coincidence too many for me. Rhea might be working for Atrius willingly, or Ares could be using his god-magic to control her. Or maybe when Ares was in Locia as Atrius, he talked Rhea into giving herself up for her sister. It’s also suspicious that Atrius just happened to know the story about Xena’s father
lifting her onto the horse (and Atrius hummed the same song Xena was humming while she talked to Gabi); Ares must’ve been listening in on Xena and Gabi’s conversation … invisibly maybe? In later episodes, Xena is shown to be able to sense when Ares is near, but maybe that only works when he’s in his true form, not disguised as a human. Ares also probably made the dagger appear under Tarkus’s body after killing him, which explains why Gabi didn’t see it before that.
Ares big mistake in this episode is underestimating Gabi; he obviously 
considers her a threat, since he went to such lengths to get her out of the way, but he doesn’t realize how strong the bond between Xena and Gabi has become. Gabi snaps Xena out of her bloodlust by hitting her with a pitchfork, which is a great scene; I love how everybody (even the bandits) kinda backs up and seems to be holding their breath, waiting to see Xena’s reaction. But Xena knows Gabi wouldn’t have done something that extreme unless it was necessary, so that
brings her back to her senses. We’ll see Gabi break through Xena’s bloodlust (usually in less direct ways) in future episodes. Once again, Gabi turns out to be Xena’s conscience, her moral compass, and isn’t afraid to stand up to Xena when she’s wrong. And we see Xena’s trust of Gabi has already grown, since she’s willing to confide in her about her memories of her father, and she trusts Gabi to return the girls to Locia by herself.
Noticeable Things:
- Gabi picks the lock on the cage with a dagger to free the captive girls; something Xena taught her? Probably.
- We get another instance of Xena saying “I have many skills”, this time when the leader of Locia insists one person can’t stop Kirilus’s army.
Favourite Quotes:
- “Strong.” Xena’s response when Atrius describes Xena’s mother as stubborn.
- “Yeah, yeah, and Zeus is my uncle.” Response of the soldier grabbing Gabi during Xena’s attack on Locia when she tells him Xena is her best friend.
- “You swing a pretty mean pitchfork.” Xena thanking Gabi for bringing her out of her bloodlust. Gabi is pretty pleased until Xena says “I owe you one.”
- “Gabrielle, I want you to understand something. We both have families we were born into; but sometimes families change and we have to build our own. For me, our friendship binds us closer than blood ever could.” Xena letting Gabi know that what they have transcends friendship and even familial bonds (and maybe setting the stage for their later romance, since it would be weird for them to fall in love if they thought of each other as sisters).