Episode 11 & 12: The Black Wolf & Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts
The chakram makes for an excellent hat, and everyone's obsessed with a ridiculously oversized replica horse
Season 1, Episode 11: The Black Wolf
DEVIN:
Welcome back to the second half of Season 1 and our regular scheduled programming! The Black Wolf is just as confusing and silly an episode as we could want, and we’re also introduced to a new recurring character (I think? He seems familiar! We’ll have to wait and see).
Our cold open this week is a village being terribly extorted by some Bad Guys. But just as a soldier is about to make off with some poor villager’s money, a bunch of vigilante ninjas leap out of the sidelines, defeat the soldiers, and return the money. But unfortunately the soldier is employed by Xerxes, the ruler of Persia who invaded mainland Greece in 480 BC. What does Persia have to do with this episode? Absolutely nothing! Xerxes is a classic Greek villain (thanks to Alexander the Great, apparently) and he’s certainly the bad guy in this episode, living in a displaced Mont St Michel, the French tidal island off of Normandy and distinctly un-Greek (however it is pretty old! And was used by the Romans. So like, close? I guess?). Anyway, it turns out the vigilantes work for some sort of new Robin Hood in town called The Black Wolf and when Xerxes comes to demand the village turns over said Wolf, every able bodied youth in town promptly turns in him and herself to go to Xerxes’ dungeon. So now I guess the village is undefended.
Xena rocks up to town and runs into her old friend Hermia, the daughter of whom has got caught up with one of the Wolves and who has been thrown in the dungeon. Xena decides she must rescue this daughter, Flora, and develops an extremely convoluted plan wherein she heads to Mont St Michel, breaks in Xerxes’ living room, and offers to go undercover into the dungeon to find which of the gang Xerxes arrested is the Black Wolf before the end of the week, for 10,000 dinars and a pair of boots.
On the way out she purposely gets in a fight in the courtyard with Xerxes’ “Minister of Security,” Koulos, for absolutely no reason but then lets him defeat her and finish their trip to the dungeon.
Meanwhile! Gabrielle also arrives in town and figures out Xena’s in the dungeon. Classic best friend stuff. She then gets herself also thrown in the dungeon by tossing first tomatoes and then a cream pie at some guards, and in the interim also meeting local traveling souvenir salesman and budding agent Salmoneus (“writing’s gonna be big!” he declares later, when figuring out if he can sell Black Wolf stories on scrolls) who also gets thrown in the dungeon during the tomato throwing bit… like I said there’s a lot happening.
Back in the dungeon the terrible and failing plan just keeps going: first Xena is briefly thrown into a water dungeon and then just as she’s about to drown she manages to break her way through the wooden cover, and then convinces all the Wolfpack to escape by borrowing everyone’s belts and pillow cases and they all tie ropes and then they all climb out of the sky light and then when Koulos’ men come in they jump on them and fight them and try to escape through the front of the dungeon but WAIT it turns out someone in the dungeon is a turncoat and has told Koulos of this terrible plan so he puts them all back in dungeon, and then Gabrielle arrives, and then Xena tells Koulos that sweet Flora is the Black Wolf so then they’re taken out again and then everyone’s in chains at the execution sight but luckily this whole time Gabrielle was hiding Xena’s chakram in her Renaissance Fair-style hat and Xena throws the chakram JUST as the executioner is swinging the axe and breaks it in half and then all the prisoners raise their chained arms and the chakram breaks them all and then everyone fights and then Xena kicks Xerxes in the chest and he flies across the courtyard and lands on the broken ax shaft, dead.
Some key moments in this extremely poorly thought out ‘plan’.
The Wolf Pack had been actually digging a sizeable tunnel in the 3 hours since they’d been in the dungeon but Xena sees it and says “That boulder’s been shifted too many times not to show wear.” ????
Xena considered Flora a younger sister 10 years ago and taught her how to use a sword and be a good person but wasn’t Xena a bad person 10 years ago and that’s the whole point of this show?
Why didn’t the Wolf Pack just leave the first time they got out of the skylight?
When they catch the spy in the dungeon and he knows a secondary plan to escape through an underground river (?) and he admits he’s a spy, they just let him knock on the ol’ dungeon door and leave rather than use him as leverage.
Once everyone is freed and Xerxes is dead, they talk about rebuilding and Flora says “we have some people in the government”. Excuse me what.
SAGAN:
10 minutes into this episode and I was thinking, “I’m really glad I’m not responsible for doing the episode recap, because WHAT IS HAPPENING.”
(Good job, by the way!)
Okay, who are the Black Wolves? What are they? What do they DO? They’re rebels who… do rebellious things??? Does anyone ever explain what they’re working toward or why they’re a group or… anything about their purpose?
At the end of the episode, they’re just like, “Huzzah, we got out of jail, all is well,” but… what’s supposed to happen next for the Black Wolves? What is their next goal? The people in power seem to be bad guys, so isn’t Xena kinda concerned about that? Once the Black Wolves are out of prison, she doesn’t seem to be too concerned about what happens next. Won’t they just get rounded up again and put in prison again??
Also: AGAIN with the reference to Corinth. Does Xena just spend all of her time going back and forth between Corinth and other random towns?
Sidebar: Absolutely HAD to show y’all this very important screenshot, featuring Gabrielle hiding the chakram in her hat. I half expected her to say, “It’s terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.”
Top 4 Xena fighting moments in this episode:
Xena’s use of the double fighting staffs in the opening fight scene is excellent.
How strong are Xena’s wrists that she’s able to shove dude aside just by grabbing hold of his fists? Nice.
Chakram power! With A SINGLE THROW, the chakram chops the axe from its handle, then releases all the prisoners from their chains. Thank you for your complete recap of that scene because it was perfection. The chakram is so all-powerful that I’m almost waiting for an episode with a chakram-kryptonite theme to take place at some point.
This whole exchange: “Diomedes, you don’t want to do this… You *really* don’t want to do this,” Xena says. She just continually beats people up in front of their friends in this episode, and then the next person comes along, tries to attack her, and also gets beaten to a pulp. A) Toxic masculinity much? B) Why do none of you learn from watching the other dudes get tossed around by Xena?
Speaking of that exchange, these were some of my other favourite lines in this episode:
“My name is Xena. I’m a problem solver” — totally reminds me of Olivia Pope on Scandal
Baddie: “Looking for the man of your dreams, darling?”
“Yep,” Xena says, punching him in the stomach. “You’re not him.” *Takes notes*
“You… embroider?” Dude says, eyeing Xena up and down.
Xena, looking grim and serious: “I have many skills.”
“She’s your friend? You have a friend?”
Two more very important things:
First, WOAH the chemistry between Xena and Flora, whaaaaaat hello.
“I can tell you that you were the closest thing I ever had to a sister.” Um. That is not how you look at your sister.
Second, can we talk about the underwater scene?
I swear, you can hear Xena chuckling to herself, even while she’s under water. AND THEN SHE DOES AN AYE-AYE-AYE UNDER WATER! The way she’s always so proud of/satisfied with herself is hilarious and delightful.
DEVIN:
The underwater scene was so mindblowing between the bubbly “AYE AYE AYE AYE AYE” and the grabbing of the sword by the blade with her bare hands and then jet-packing herself out of a wooden cage, I didn’t know how to put it into words.
Also, I agree, Xena and Flora do not have sibling energy.
Finally, yeah, we still have no idea who the Black Wolves or what their purpose was. Not a strong political message, if you ask me! I can’t believe we got an episode about Xerxes and it wasn’t about Thermopylae.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:
The Kiwi accents in this episode are particularly easy to spot! Both Flora and Kouros don’t even try to hide them much.
“I’m just a traveling salesman!” - Salmoneus
Aye aye aye aye ayes: at least 3, including some wolf pack howls, but especially the one Xena does while trapped in an underwater cage before she bursts through as though she’s wearing a jet pack!
Season 1, Episode 12: Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts
SAGAN:
We open on a bedroom with a sleeping woman, who appears to be having a vision of fighting. As you can imagine from the title of this episode… it's Helen of Troy! She wakes up with Paris and he’s all “Don’t worry, your nightmares won’t portent the future,” MHM sure sure buddy.
Luckily, Helen sends a messenger out to find Xena and help her! It turns out they used to be friends!
Conveniently, Xena and Gabrielle happen to be journeying near Troy right then (they have FINALLY departed from Corinth! Took them like 5 episodes). They come across Helen’s messenger, who’s being attacked, and they save him just in time to receive his message for them from Helen, before he dies (they have a knack for arriving *right* before people die. Couldn’t have shown up like 30 seconds earlier, huh?)
(At this point, we’re informed that Troy and Sparta have been at war for 10 years, which if my memory is correct means the infamous gift horse should be arriving any day now.)
Xena and Gabrielle arrive at Troy and have to fight through a bunch of Greeks to get to Troy—but then one of the soldiers in Troy recognizes Gabrielle, and he helps them get inside the city. Turns out it’s Perdicus, AKA Gabrielle’s betrothed from Episode 1! He’s a soldier now! Gabrielle appears slightly more interested now that he’s no longer a farm boy.
Xena sneaks into Helen’s room and they reunite. Helen doesn’t think Paris loves her anymore, and now all she wants is for the war to end. She wants to be taken back to Husband #1, AKA the Spartan king, Menelaus. Hey, everyone makes mistakes!
BUT WAIT! A soldier enters the chambers, and it’s the same guy who murdered Helen’s messenger at the beginning of the episode! But this guy Deiphobus, who’s the captain of the guard (or he might be Paris’ brother? Or maybe both? He might be both), hastily kills that soldier, insisting the soldier was a traitor, which ISN’T SUSPICIOUS AT ALL.
Meanwhile, Gabrielle and Perdicus chat, and she tries to convince him he should go back to his farming ways. Instead, he fights off a new attack, and all the other soldiers cheer for him. Gabrielle is conflicted—this isn’t the same dude she ran away from at the beginning of the show.
Xena talks Helen out of running back to Menelaus, because she’s pretty confident it’s not what Helen *really* wants.
“What do you want?” Xena asks.
“I don’t know,” Helen says, perplexed. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
Oof.
Their conversation is interrupted when Xena sees Deiphobus leaving the city! She follows him and catches him conferring with Menelaus. She goes back to warn Helen and Paris, but along comes Deiphobus and he’s all, “No no, you misread the situation, the Greeks are cool now, they even brought you a gift, it’s waiting outside the gates.”
“Beware Greeks bearing gifts, Paris,” Xena warns.
“Pish posh,” Paris says (well, the equivalent of that, anyway), and they lock up Xena because clearly SHE must be the baddie.
While that’s happening, the Trojans haul the giant Greek gift horse through the gates.
Okay but a sidebar: The Greeks bring them a giant constructed horse as a gift, right? Well... what are the Trojans supposed to DO with this giant wooden horse? Like, just leave it in the middle of the square? Why are they so delighted about this gift? I’m just saying, IT’S AN ODD GIFT. Why didn’t they give food or fabric or, I don’t know, literally anything else besides a gigantic knickknack? It’s a little weird!
The Trojans celebrate all night and are caught unawares and hungover when the Greeks jump out of the horse and open the gates. (Having a hangover is bad enough, but can you imagine being attacked by armed guards while hungover? All that shouting and clanging and banging? Ouch.)
Good thing Gabrielle can fight (even if one of the Greeks slices her fighting staff in half! EXCUSE ME SIR. FIRST OF ALL HOW DARE YOU.) Meanwhile, Xena escapes the dungeon, instructs Gabrielle and Perdicus to hide in the Temple of Aphrodite, and then she goes to save Helen from being stolen back by Menelaus’s guards.
POOR HELEN. She just keeps getting jostled around and stolen by one dude and then the next. SHE IS NOT YOUR PROPERTY. LET HER MAKE HER OWN DECISIONS. Anyway, Paris feels bad and apologizes for misjudging Xena, so I guess that’s something.
Gabrielle kisses Perdicus because he’s the boy toy of the week, after all!
Menelaus tells his guards to bring back the horse, because he wants it “as a memento of my conquest!”
I ask again: What’s the big deal with the horse??? Why does everyone want it? Like… what are you going to *do* with it? IT IS HUGE.
Helen and Paris go to the supply room, but they’re interrupted by Deiphobus, who KILLS PARIS AND TELLS HELEN SHE’S HIS NOW. Ugh. WHY ARE MEN. Anyway, he kidnaps her because that’s what dudes do with Helen, and he tells her he wants them to have a bunch of babies and basically create an army of their kids? How many kids are you planning on having, dude? Who’s going to raise them? You killed your brother so there won’t be an uncle around to babysit!
Luckily, Xena rescues Helen (whew!), and the battle wraps up very tidily. Helen tells Xena she’s not sure what’s next for her, “But for the first time, it’s my decision.” YES! We’re rooting for you, Helen! Make your own decisions!
Since the war is over and all the good guys in this episode managed to get through it alive, Perdicus tells Gabrielle he doesn’t expect anything from her. She’s kinda disappointed, they make out, and then off he goes on his way. Are we going to see Perdicus as a repeat character on the show??
Anyway, as Perdicus is leaving, he comes across Xena and Helen, and Helen decides to join forces with Perdicus so they’ll travel together for a while. Aw.
DEVIN:
“Have you heard of Xena?” Helen asks her footman at the beginning of the episode.
“Yes.”
“Take this to her.”
I love the casual introduction and way in which Xena and Gabrielle make it to Troy.
First of all, it’s 1400 kilometers by foot from Corinth to Troy if you take the good highway, unless you take the ferry, then it’s only about 400 km. Either way, that would be a few episodes worth of walking (just saying)! Also the chances of coming across a Trojan footman on the lookout for Xena seems to be quite low. But I do like that Gabrielle is all, “we can stop by Troy!” as though it’s a popular tourist destination. War tourists are the worst, Gabrielle.
If we’re keeping track, the siege of Troy is believed to have taken place in the 12th or 13th century BC, so like, 700-800 years before Xerxes invaded mainland Greece. I’m not trying to burst anyone’s bubble, but I do like the growing, Homeland-style timeline of the Xena: Warrior Princess Universe that I’m starting to put together. The X:WPU, if you will.
So: this rewriting of one of the oldest and most famous works in Western literature is absolutely bonkers. Somehow, despite gods and famous mythological characters making regular appearances on this show, we manage to have the Trojan War without any of the most important supporting characters. Where is Achilles! Where is Hector! Where is Patroclus! Where are the gods?? It’s hard to believe they replaced Hector with the only Trojan prince no one can remember - the lesser of Paris’ two brothers, Deiphobus. The whole Trojan War is really about how heroic Hector is, isn’t it? And how the gods play with the fates of men [and women]. However, fun fact: Deiphobus indeed was “given” Helen as a wife after the death of Paris near the end of the war so the Future is Female version of Xena is a better ending for Helen. However Paris was not killed by his brother, he was struck by a poison arrow. I think. Just in case any of our readers were keeping track during this recap and needed to clarify the accuracy of the X:WPU to Homer.
Anyway, aside from the egregious rewrite there are several other kind of hilarious points in this complicated retelling of an already complicated story. The Iliad is, like, 700 pages long.
Firstly, I especially like some of Xena’s lines in this one. Like, “Traitors rarely work alone.” Well so far, 11 episodes in, you keep catching traitors who are working alone so I don’t know how reflective that is of your own experience, Xena.
She also says, “Beware Greeks bearing gifts.” The irony is twofold. First, Xena is Greek, so what the heck is she talking about. Secondly, that saying isn’t gonna be true until after this moment in history when you get the horse. Speaking of which, a) why is it called the Trojan Horse rather than the Greek Horse, b) Sagan you make excellent points regarding what a weirdass gift it is and how inconvenient it would be but c) I think the wicker is cute.
Secondly, regarding security at Troy. It looks like a medieval town rather than the Troy I’m familiar with from the 2004 epic Brad Pitt vehicle Troy. When Xena and Gabrielle arrive and Perdicus yells ‘open the gates!’ and then, even though they’ve been under siege for 10 years, they just let these random women in. Then Perdicus tells the name of the commander (Deiphobus) and Xena asks “Who’s she?” and while I like the feminism here it’s also funny that a) I think Hector was in command of Troy, traditionally, and b) wouldn’t Xena, Warrior Princess, and friend to Helen, have known the name of the commanding officer of this place that is so famous Gabrielle is desperate to stop by?
Thirdly, also regarding security: the secret tunnel Deiphobus uses to get in and out of Troy constantly over this episode probably would have been discovered if he had been using it for 10 years, and why didn’t the Greeks use that to get inside instead of sending in an enormous horse full of sweaty soldiers who had to wait until the Trojans were drunk to sack Troy???
Fourthly, when Helen decides to leave and return to Menelaus (I’m sorry that is NOT canon!) and dons her cloak to hit the road in her silk nightgown. Girl. No.
However, all things considered, I’m happy that all these rewrites gave Helen her own ending to this story, and that the casting was also really progressive for the 90s in that a woman of colour was cast as Helen! 2004’s Troy was white as hell.
Why does everyone else think ancient Greeks were blond?
SAGAN:
We’re gonna start needing geography & history lessons for every episode recap!
I’m having a major facepalm moment right now because while watching this episode, I was so focused on writing the recap but also vaguely thinking, “This version of the story seems a little sparse,” and OH RIGHT, IT’S BECAUSE THE GODS AND ACHILLES AND HECTOR AND BASICALLY EVERYONE IS MISSING.
Agreed that it’s awesome to see a woman of colour being cast as Helen. I seem to remember that Xena is consistently pretty whitewashed (as with everything in the 90s, and the 00s, and the… oh wait, still is!)—Although it WOULD be interesting to compare Xena to other TV shows airing right then because I wonder if this was a big deal at the time?
Okay, just did some super quick Googling → it turns out that in the academic community in the 90s, there was a movement to acknowledge the history of Black people related to Mediterranean culture, so it’s likely that this episode was reflecting that.
I also loved that Bobby Hosea was featured as one of Xena’s love interests (even if he WAS immediately killed off. Ugh. I’m still mad about that).
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS:
“We don’t need a wolf among our sheep, now do we?” — Great callback to the previous episode.
“Thanks for the lift.” — Xena when a bunch of the Trojans jump out from hiding in the horse.