yesbothways:

Xena is not queer baiting.  It’s the opposite.  I’m gonna use gay instead of queer here, so this post is easier to read, but all this amazing stuff happened in Xena because of queering of hegemony and gender politics in this narrative, I swear to God, and I will talk to you about that endlessly if you let me.  The censors made Xena gayer by forcing the creative team to imbed the gayness deeper into the show than the surface to get it past them.  I know it’s been done, but y’all who’ve seen it want to rank the top five gayest episodes of Xena with me?  I’m going to rank it based on how deeply imbedded the gayness is in the narrative structure. Here are my immediate  answers in no particular order:  

Destiny / The Quest:  In her quest for redemption, Xena gets crushed by a log saving a little girl.  Gabrielle is stabbed in the leg and then drags Xena up a mountain in the snow to find a crazy powerful healer, while Xena experiences an internal revisiting of her past of evil and the last time she nearly died.  Xena dies, and then she hears Gabrielle’s voice asking her to come back.  So Xena possesses the body of a friend she trusts who is a great thief, and Gabrielle eventually recognizes her even in this dude’s body.  They quest and bring Xena back to life.  During said quest, with Xena in this dude’s body, they talk face-to-face in some kind of freaky space between the worlds and blatantly kiss. 

Heart of Darkness:  A primary narrative tension in this is literally that Xena and/or Gabrielle will have sex with a dude and thus suffer a loss of identity and harm their relationship.  They use the eroticism of a dance together to demonstrate the profound power of the pleasure of lust.  I have no idea what people committed to heteronormativity see happening in this episode.  

Who’s Gurkhan?:  Gabrielle gets put in a desperate situation and plans to recklessly risk her life and her identity by mercilessly killing someone while attempting to save her niece.  Xena submits to being sold then tortured and risks her life to save Gabrielle while being sustained by a vision of Gabrielle’s erotic dance and desire to save her niece in her mind.  Meanwhile, they both use their sexualities to subvert and overthrow a patriarchal rape palace.  

Return of the Valkyrie:  Xena has lost her memory and with it her sense of self.  Gabrielle has been locked in a ring of eternal fire only to wake up when her soulmate kisses her.  A heroic dude who knows them recognizes Xena and gets her to come on a quest to wake up Gabrielle by kissing her.  Gabrielle’s ghost / memory / something I don’t know appears to Xena and carries her along on the quest.  Xena jumps through the ring of eternal flame and is recognized as Gabrielle’s soulmate.  Xena kisses Gabrielle, and Gabrielle wakes up and is released from the flame ring and also has a new aesthetic, and Xena gets back her memories and sense of self and also her signature outfit.   

When Fates Collide:  A whole AU is created where Xena became Empress of Rome and never met Gabrielle.  But by fate, they end up meeting and becoming instantly enamored with one another.  Xena shrugs off the sexual advances of her emperor husband then has a profound physical and emotional response to the sight of Gabrielle wearing only a robe on a balcony, and there’s some epic passionate gazing.  Xena ends up getting herself tortured and killed saving Gabrielle’s life.  Then Gabrielle goes from peaceful, terrified playwright to recklessly confronting the Fates and burning the world in a rage over it.  

Runner up:  Many Happy Returns:  There’s a main plot to this episode, so it didn’t rank.  But the important gay side plot is that Xena sets it up so that it accidentally slips that she has gotten Sappho tickets for Gabrielle for her birthday. Then she allegedly loses them.  But it turns out that it was a trick, because Xena got Sappho to write a poem for Gabrielle.  And, of course, it’s the sexiest poem in history.  If you haven’t read the fragment, you absolutely have to go do it right now.  

Very nicely done!

Though it’s not one of my favourite episodes, Fallen Angel, of course, is nothing but maintext: they’ve died and gone to heaven, but, once again, are forced apart by an attack from Xena’s past (Callisto in demon form). Xena and Gabrielle both take leaps of faith for one another, to never be parted. Even in demon form, Xena is single-minded in her desire to be with Gabrielle forever.  

This episode should have been the start of the relationship as maintext (season 4 built up spectacularly to this point), but the studio didn’t want it, gears were reversed and the inexperienced writers Orci and Kurtzman (they who would later bring us the sexist trash of the Transformers films and the first two Star Trek revivals) managed to downgrade the gay (and the ratings) so hard it was something of a miracle the show was renewed for a sixth season.  And, yet, the fifth season was also the inspiration for Genevieve Valentine’s recent Xena comics – in which maintext is without question (great save there, GV).  

Season 4 is filled with so many maintext moments (male love interests were a thing of the past at this point) you can just point at anyone and say ‘aha,’ though none quite as rich as The Ides of March, which literally culminates with the ‘completion’ of their narrative: they die (and go to heaven) together.  

Because Xena was essentially camp, ‘getting away with’ overt gay subtext was seen as harmless due to the humour, specifically episodes like A Day in the Life and Fins, Femmes and Gems.  Two women traveling together, fighting bad guys (the writers said more than once they wrote Xena as they would a male character), who would take that seriously?  And yet they did, we did and the world was better for it.