A gun-toting Asgardian. A sassy skeleton. Weird wigs, oil wrestling, and bizarre 90s
sitcom parodies. What other weird moments do you remember from Xena : Warrior Princess?
It isn't uncommon these
days for showrunners and filmmakers to reward fans for paying careful attention to the end credits.
Adding hidden details is a terrific strategy for getting the fandom together and giving
them something to look for. It also creates buzz in online communities over the latest
new treasure hiding in something as mundane as a title card or an ongoing credits gag.
Xena: Warrior Princess was a pioneer in this realm. Messages in episodes were so subtle that
even some of the more attentive fans missed them the first time around. But thanks to the magic
of DVDs and streaming video, eager fans can now hit pause during the show's end credits to find
an amusing disclaimer hidden at the end of most episodes. From ensuring viewers that no mythical
creatures were harmed during the production of the episode to praising Danny Kaye's The Court Jester,
these silly disclaimers are a reminder that Xena never took itself too seriously and viewers shouldn't either.
One of the things that made Xena special was the show's ability to balance serious drama and
powerful writing with plenty of goofy hijinks to lighten up the mood. Of all the show's shenanigans
and amusing anachronisms, few were more absurdly wacky than the series' odd mashup of Goldie Hawn
and Kurt Russell's 1987 film Overboard and the Fox series Married with Children. Married with
Fishsticks had an amnesiac Gabrielle duped by divorced merman Hagar into believing she was
the mother of his out-of-control brood. To make things extra loony, the oceanic parallel world was
rife with doppelgangers from Gabby's real life. Plagued with strange and surreal horrors like
bad fashion, catty neighbors, and a misogynistic husband, Gabby's new reality was a nightmare. But
it was their three out-of-control offspring that kept viewers up at night wondering what
they'd seen, unable to get those images out of their heads. In order from oldest to youngest,
Gabrielle met three children straight out of special effects purgatory: Walrus-boy Flipper,
Mini-Hell Priest Urchin, and the octopus-adjacent Baby Roe. At once horrifying and weirdly cute,
Roe was one of the most puzzling creatures dreamed up by Xena creators. The meme potential alone garners plenty of pauses among viewers today.
Salon writer Andrew Leonard was spot on when he called the Xena Halloween episode Girls Just
Want to Have Fun the "disco lesbian vampire" episode. Starring a Lord Darkness from Legend
look-alike as Bacchus, the episode had a little something for everyone. There was a dance party,
possessed wolves, and a random musician's disembodied but still completely animated head
attached to everything from pikes to scarecrows. The production team got so carried away with
all of this crazy music video energy, that they even forgot to edit out a propane tank,
which can be seen in all its anachronistic glory. But it's the super sultry vampire lust in this
episode that solidified its place in the annals of TV thirstdom, helping shape the show's image
as an iconic lesbian love story. Since vampirism has always been used as a metaphor for sexuality,
the show's creators decided to use the Bacchae as a pre-Hellenic stand-in for vampires. It let them
sneakily explore Gabrielle and Xena's sexuality in a way that wasn't standard for the era.
Director T.J. Scott told Xena Magazine that he and Lucy Lawless set out to "push the envelope
in terms of sexual content." The result was a super-hot scene with gothed-out Gabby and Xena lost in erotic vamp bliss.
Some Xena: Warrior Princess story arcs are darker than others, such as the Alti tale. Once
a Siberian Amazon, Alti was booted by her tribe when she became a power-hungry shaman.
She would go on to become a toxic frenemy to a still-evil Xena. She worked to manipulate the
young chakram-wielder into murdering the entire Amazon tribe under the promise the shaman would
make Xena a "Destroyer of Nations." "This is war, Xena!"
"Just a little one." Although Xena would live
up to this title, Alti failed to tell her it came with a curse. The dark shaman placed the
curse on her lover Borias and unborn son Solan, costing Borias his life and Solan his parents.
If that super heavy back story wasn't enough, it got even darker.
Eventually, a reformed Xena journeyed with the Northern Amazons to the Amazon Resting Place.
There she was forced to confront the skeletons of the Amazons she once killed in the name of power.
But in the midst of this dark moment, if you look carefully, you'll see one sassy skeleton flipping the bird in its final moments.
There are countless reasons to love Karl Urban. If you're paying close attention,
he's everywhere. He looked majestic as heck in his Faire garb and glorious golden locks as Éomer in
The Lord of the Rings. As a super salty-but-sweet Bones, he's a bright spot in the oft-divisive
J.J. Abrams Star Trek films. He pops up in Thor: Ragnarok as Skurge. He even had a Star
Wars cameo. These days, he can be found in his breakthrough role as Billy Butcher on The Boys.
Of course, Xena fans have been on Team Urban since the late '90s, when he first appeared on
both Xena and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Urban's appearance on the two shows were some
of his earliest roles, and he didn't miss a chance to display his acting chops. On Xena,
he showed up in four different roles, often looking barely recognizable thanks to the
magic of a great hair and makeup department. He first appeared as Mael, a psychopathic
ancient Greek version of the Biblical Isaac's half-brother. Urban later spent eight episodes
as Xena's handsome lover and murderer Julius Caesar. He then took on more of a comic role,
donning wings and bleached hair as Aphrodite's son Cupid. Finally, he played a stone-age cannibal
named Kor alongside Selma Blair in Lifeblood, an episode that was meant to be a back-door pilot for the scrapped series Amazon High.
Like Karl Urban, Gina Torres is one of those actors that keeps taking roles in
iconic series that sci-fi fans fall in love with. Long before her appearance on Hercules and Xena,
Torres had been building a reputation as a solid television and film actor, and post-Xena,
she continued with roles on Firefly, Angel, and Westworld to name a few. Most recently,
she can be found as a main cast member on 9-1-1: Lone Star, where she plays EMT Tommy Vega.
Fans of Torres watching Xena: Warrior Princess for the first time will be thrilled when she turns up
as the perfectly-eyelinered Cleopatra in The King of Assassins. Yet another doppelganger episode,
it places Cleopatra, Joxer, Autolycus, Gabrielle, and Xena in the middle of fresh mistaken identity
mayhem, courtesy of Joxer's much cooler evil twin, Jett. While much of the episode revolves
around thwarting a plot to kill Cleo, there's a whole thing going on between the Queen of Egypt
and our favorite King of Thieves. It’s complete with a steamy bathtub scene and enough double entendres to fill a Trojan horse.
Back in the 1990s, LGBTQ representation was rare, and typically poorly executed. In the 90s, every
time anyone or anything dared to be out and proud, some people really lost their minds over it.
It was also a time when TV producers had even less autonomy when it came to their production
and writing decisions than they do today. From the show's beginning, the network was aware of
the possibility that the relationship between Gabby and Xena could be perceived as romantic,
so they went out of their way to forbid any clear-cut lesbian relationship.
But what about subtext? As it turns out, the network was fine with LGBTQ
subtext. Especially since it became clear pretty quickly that the subtext was part of
what fans kept coming back to see. "Found it? Ah, you found it."
"I learned from the best." Audiences ended up with plenty
of steamy scenes where the heroes were bathing together, washing each other's backs, and having
heartfelt conversations about how they couldn't live without each other. For those of us who live
to see those super shippable moments, there were plenty of opportunities to hit the pause button.
There are good-bye kisses like in the episode The Return of Callisto. There are substitute
body kisses like when Xena kisses Gabby in Autolycus's body. There are forehead kisses,
cheek kisses, lifesaving kisses, and gothy vampire kisses. And every one of them looks great as smartphone wallpaper.
Anyone who writes or reads fan fiction knows that some fantasies are better kept private,
a lesson Joxer learns the hard way in The Quill is Mightier. See, while Xena and Gabrielle were
forging a bond that would last for eternity, their goofy friend Joxer was not-so-secretly holding a
torch for Gabrielle. One of the great things about Joxer's relationship with the heroes is
that no matter how knee-deep in cringe he was at all times, Xena and Gabrielle always loved
and respected him. They even had empathy for his feelings about Gabby. Nonetheless, he could be
incredibly annoying, and he never seemed to tire of pushing the limits of the girls' tolerance.
But when Aphrodite suddenly gifted Gabrielle the power to write her reality, mayhem
ensued. After conjuring an obsessively fishing Xena and some various troubles for the gods,
Gabby got the bright idea to have all the victims of her writing sleep in a nearby cave
until she could work out a solution. Amid this mess, a bad attempt at love poetry manifested
Joxer's Gabby fantasies as three naked dancing Gabrielles. Thanks to some fun camera work, the
scene remained fairly G-rated, but it still became one of the silliest sights in the entire series. If only all bad writing was so innocuous.
Generally speaking, big-budget films and higher-caliber TV shows will go out of their
way to conceal stunt doubles. Other entertainment options don't seem to be terribly concerned.
Perhaps it's because the director is confident the scenes will go so fast, or their audience
will be so dazzled by their sleight of hand that they won't look too closely. Or, perhaps
they're just working with a limited time frame and budget. So they do the best they can under those
constraints and move on to the next shot. But some productions just don't even seem to care, and not
every actor can have a near-perfect-photo double like Sazz from Only Murders in the Building.
"Is that filler?" "I'm over here."
"What the…What is this, Face/Off?" Either way, the results can be pretty
amusing when stunt doubles are obvious, and Xena: Warrior Princess was a frequent offender. This was
especially comical for a series that spent so much time focusing on doppelganger gags. Things seemed
to go off the rails at some point during Season 4 when blatant stunt doubles became a common sight.
One good example of this, guaranteed to make you laugh, is when an obvious stunt double can be seen riding Argo in the episode Endgame.
Sooner or later, everybody reaches the breaking point, where it's time to just phone it in.
That seems to be exactly what happened in If the Shoe Fits, when for no clear reason,
Gabrielle inexplicably had the most absurd wig in one scene only. In the episode, a burlap-sack-clad
Gabrielle tells a young runaway princess her version of the Cinderella story, starring herself
as the lovely and put-upon Tyrella. Throughout the episode, each of Gabrielle's companions take
over storytelling at some point, with Aphrodite, Joxer, and Xena each giving it their own spin.
While the story-within-a-story featured some pretty fancy wigs and costumes, back in real life,
Gabrielle was still hanging around in a burlap sack. That's why it's that much more puzzling
when she's randomly seen rifling through her belongings while wearing a bizarrely poofy,
much redder wig. Sometimes you just have to work with what you've got on hand so you can clock out in time for happy hour.
There are some episodes of Xena that beautifully capture the profound complexity and depth of
the human experience, touching the hearts and souls of viewers. Then there are the others.
Little Problems begins with Xena body swapping with a little girl in a coma,
and things only get worse from there. Aphrodite and Gabrielle are plotting to steal some magic
soul-dividing oil from club owners and skeezy conjoined twins Castor and Pollux.
For some reason, their convoluted plan involves pretending to be Swedish conjoined twins and
oil wrestling the brothers to get into their exclusive twins-only club. The episode is all
over the place, but the nonsensical scenes with Gabrielle and Aphrodite pretending to be Valkyrie
twins are worth the price of admission alone. Check out one of our newest videos right here!
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