Episode 15 & 16: Warrior...princess & Mortal Beloved
A doppelganger in the Xena: Warrior Princess Universe, and Hades needs help AGAIN (someone's not going to get a bonus at their annual performance review!)
Season 1, Episode 15: Warrior...princess
DEVIN
Xena is making her way to a castle. She expects to have to fight her way in but suddenly everyone she encounters is bowing and making way for her. Everyone’s treating her as though…. She’s in charge? She requests to see the king. “Your wish is my command!” says the servant, while Xena stares at her, nonplussed. Left alone for a minute, an assassin tries to jump her, but she promptly lights him on fire and tosses him out the window. The king enters a moment later. He’s asked Xena to come here to protect his daughter, because someone is trying to kill her. What’s going on, Xena’s confused face looks, but then in walks the king’s daughter who is DUN DUN DUN Xena’s doppelganger!
Oh man, I fucking love a doppelganger. This is gonna be fun.
Meet Diana, Princess of Treus, and heir to the throne, a Xena lookalike with a baby voice. At first I literally couldn’t tell if this was still Lucy Lawless’s voice or if someone dubbed it? This is going to be an episode full of switcheroos!
The king (never caught his name!) says his guards are crap and he needs someone to defend his daughter, who is betrothed to Mineus of Libereum, and they’re meant to get married soon. The thing is, Libereum is full of slavers, and Treus has abolished slavery, and for some fun reason Mineus is going to have to also embrace emancipation for Libereum once he’s married to Diana (feminism!). The king thinks someone in Libereum wants to kill Diana to disrupt the marriage and keep slavery. Anyway as they’re having this fun discussion the guards come up to inform the king that the would-be assassin from a few minutes escaped despite Xena lighting him on fire and throwing him out a window. No one here is good at their job.
Xena and Diana are to switch places until the wedding so that the princess is protected, and Lucy Lawless gets to have some fun.
Xena quickly meets Diana’s future brother-in-law who is here to negotiate the marriage, but is clearly in love with Diana. They’re accosted by a pile of ninjas in the hallway and while Xena pretends to hold back she keeps Philemon’s back safe. “You were so brave,” she assures Philemon, after they mutually defeat the brigands [who they just let run off? Into the castle?]
Anyway, out in the woods, Gabrielle is working on some poetry when Diana rocks up in her leathers and does nothing! to help her when a man tries to mug her. “It’s test day, isn’t it,” Gabrielle says with a huff, before Diana manages to convince her that she is not, in fact, Xena. The crying helped give it away! They continue to bond, as Diana realizes she can use this time to meet “the little people” aka commoners. Though she’s initially unhappy about some of the arrangements, she can’t help but be inspired by Gabrielle’s salt-of-the-earth attitude, which was charming except for the part when Gabrielle suggested, “Try the cheese, it may not be as bad as you think,” and Diana takes a nibble and spits it out. Cheese is delicious, how dare you Diana. Xena loves cheese.
Back at the castle, Mineus has arrived to meet Diana, whom he has never met. But Xena isn’t great at being a gentle princess, and she’s trying to use the time to scope out to the crowd. We’ve got Bromius, a top general, and Glauce, “looks like a used chariot salesman.” As they survey the room, the king points out all these reliable, loyal people in it, but idk, a room full of that many shifty old white guys would make me suspicious too.
“Diana” makes some not-so-subtle toasts in a successful attempt to make everyone uncomfortable: “To the end of slavery! To the end of corruption! Death to traitors in our midst!”
But uh oh, the ruse is about to be up, because it turns out Diana is an accomplished harp player and our girl Xena not so much. The harp is made out of an enormous mammoth tusk or something, I’m sure a historically accurate representation of ancient Greek instruments. Xena strikes it so far the strings explode, and everyone looks on, shocked!
Philemon has figured out that Diana is notttt Diana. As Philemon and Xena bond, yet another assassin tries to throw a molotov cocktail through the window but of course Xena catches it and throws it back at him, setting him on fire. Honestly as someone who has personally caught on fire this episode is a little triggering for me! Anyway Xena catches him and he spills that he’s employed by Bromius, the king’s general!
They go to speak to the freshly arrested Bromius but he’s already hung himself in the dungeon. The king is relieved, the leader of the conspiracy is dead. They all think the episode is over and Xena urges Philemon to tell Diana how he feels. She belongs to Mineus, he’s the firstborn, Philemon mopes.
“Diana belongs to no one but herself.” Hear hear!
Off they go to meet up with Gabrielle and Diana, who is in the midst of showing off her chakram skills just as the king arrives to collect her and it knocks his crown off. Everyone traipses back to the castle.
“We are going to be back in Corinth by nightfall” Xena tells Gabrielle. BACK TO CORINTH.
But wait a second, it turns out there was another traitor because some servant is putting a chair back into a room (?) and casually drops that there was nothing to stand on in the room where Bromius hung himself (okay!) so UH OH. Cut to Glauce who is inexplicably in charge of installing the chandelier for the feast (??) and tells an underling evilly that he’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone after all.
Philemon runs out to pick up ‘Xena’ and they gallop back to the castle. “Don’t worry about me, I‘ll be fine!” Gabrielle calls after them, on foot, as usual.
AHA but it turns out that they never switched back and Diana in her wedding dress was Xena the whole time! And Xena promptly takes out all the traitors. Glauce sneaks out realizing Diana must be somewhere else. Xena uses Chekhov’s harp as a bow and skewers Glauce as he tries to leave.
Meanwhile Philemon discovers he’s still with Diana not Xena after all, and declares his love, and she declares hers, and they kiss.
They get married. “She’s so beautiful, look how her hair shines,” Gabrielle smiles at her. Mmhmm.
SAGAN
Ahhhh I love that this episode is a callback to Episode 9—this king is brothers with Sisyphys!
Okay, BUT: How are they both kings, and brothers? Did one of them conquer another land? It’s kinda weird that two brothers are both kings of separate realms, isn’t it?
After seeing Episode 13 (AKA the recap episode), and the way that this episode doesn’t really “further the story,” it’s a great reminder of how very different TV shows were in the 90s compared to now… the entire culture of binging episodes and not ever needing to worry about missing an episode is totally different than it used to be. This episode doesn’t contribute much to the overarching story of Xena, and/but it was important to have episodes like these in the 90s—to reinforce the characters’ personalities and relationships etc. (Plus this episode is hilarious and so silly and fun!)
It’s funny to watch these episodes and remember that, oh right, in the 90s, it wasn’t *that* big of a deal to miss an episode or two! (I mean, obviously *we* thought it was a HUGE deal, but in terms of continuity of the show… it didn’t interrupt the storyline.) I seem to remember that it usually wasn’t super critical to the plot, unless it was a season finale or mid-season finale.
Two more things:
Diana adds RIBBONS to her outfit when she’s dressed up as Xena, omg. And she rides side saddle when she’s dressed up as Xena!
Why doesn’t Phileman chase after one of the assassins when they attack them? THERE ARE LIKE A DOZEN OF THEM! Also who can run away after being tossed around and beaten up that much??? Who ARE these guys?
Princess Diana adorns her outfit with ribbons.
DEVIN
Yes Sisyphus! I also thought back that hmmm didn’t we decide Sisyphus wasn’t a great guy, for cheating Death twice and putting her in chains and stuff?
It’s a good point re: story arcs. This kind of TV was much more procedural back in the day, with the A plot of your typical sci-fi or fantasy show focusing on one key issue, be it monster-of-the-week or whatever. Also, seasons were 24 episodes long. That’s so long. That’s a lot of writing to achieve serious storytelling narratives that reach over multiple episodes! Even having a storyline that had a two or three episode arc was rare. That format is such a relic these days. I think, though, that successful shows were able to achieve that in later seasons (Fringe springs to mind) when they had a following and had time to have a bit more vision for where they wanted to take the characters. We shall see!
SAGAN
Yes and yes!
Looking back, Buffy (which started airing 2 years later in 1997, and clearly got SO MUCH inspiration from Xena) didn’t really start hitting its stride with storytelling narratives across multiple episodes until mid-to-late Season 2.
Maybe part of why this was SUCH a part of the style at the time for this genre of TV—to focus on the monster-of-the-week, where each episode could be watched as a stand-alone—is because it gave new viewers an opportunity to jump in at any time, and good hooked, which would have helped with ratings and then provide that evidence to the networks that these shows deserved longer-term contracts?
...More research is necessary!
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Mineus: “She’s attractive enough but her curtsy was abominable”
Xena: “Who’s the walking gem mine….looks like a used chariot salesman”
“It’s my... round killing thing,” Diana tells a commoner child when she’s dressed up as Xena and the kids ask about her chakram.
“Chakram,” Gabrielle says helpfully.
Diana: “Bless you!”
Aye aye aye aye ayes - 2, during the wedding.
The guy playing Mineus looks very familiar, who is he?
→ This actor plays multiple characters across the X:WPU! We first saw him as Kastor in Cradle of Hope.
Season 1, Episode 16: Mortal Beloved
SAGAN
Little Red Riding Hood is walking through a forest when a ghost of some kind appears and whispers, “Help me… Help us all.”
She runs off into a tavern, and happens upon Xena and Gabrielle. Xena goes out to investigate the ghost, which immediately calls her by name… IT’S MARCUS! Yes, the awesome love interest we first met in Episode 5 before he was killed!
Anyway, it turns out that something’s gone wrong in the underworld. Marcus tells Xena she needs to help them. And then other ghosts appear and drag him off.
Xena figures out that the entrance to the underworld is at the bottom of a nearby lake (How does she know this? Why the bottom of the lake? Is it the only entrance to the underworld? Convenient that they were so close by when she received Marcus’s message!)
Xena dives in, much to Gabrielle’s chagrin (Gabrielle has crunched the numbers on how deep the lake is and doesn’t think Xena will have enough air to get back to the surface).
The next scene, Xena is… walking into a cave. How did she get there from the bottom of the lake?? I have questions.
Charon, the dude who takes the souls across the River Styx to the underworld, is kind of hilarious and refers to her as a tourist, since she’s not dead yet. He chauffeurs her to the other side of the lake at the bottom of the lake, and then Xena finds Marcus! Hurray! I approve of them being reunited.
The problem going on is that this mad man, Atyminius, TOOK OVER the underworld by stealing Hades’s helmet of invisibility. Atyminius likes to torture the innocent souls in the underworld. Yikes. This means that now, a bunch of innocent people are in Tartarus (AKA the bad place), and a bunch of bad guys are in the Elysian Fields (AKA the good place).
Unfortunately, Marcus was put in Tartarus when he died, which means that when Xena fixes everything in the underworld, Marcus is going to be stuck in the bad place… (Maybe he’ll be able to make up for his misdeeds and wind up in the good place instead though?? It’s worked in other TV shows!)
Marcus takes Xena to the Elysian Fields and Xena comes across Toxeus, that dude she killed in Episode 9: Death in Chains. LOVING these call-backs to previous episodes! Toxeus explains a bit about how Atyminius can appear at will because he’s got that invisibility helmet. And then… he appears before them!
Atyminius tells everyone that Xena is still alive so therefore they should kill her, but Xena quickly redirects the conversation to tell everyone that they should try to steal the helmet from him instead. Fighting ensues! Atyminius and Toxeus fight over the helmet but Atyminius gets it, puts it on, and chops off Toxeus’s head. The underworld is a chaotic place, y’all.
Marcus and Xena escape and go to a castle in the bad place where Hades lives, which is watched over by those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. (Well, actually, they’re harpies, but they totally looked like the Wicked Witch of the West’s flying monkeys at first! Plus one of them grabs Marcus and tries to fly away with him, which is totally what happens in the Wizard of Oz with Dorothy.)
Luckily, the harpy only succeeds in ripping off Marcus’s shirt, so OH NO HE NEEDS TO BE BARE CHESTED FOR A WHILE. HOW AWFUL. EVERYONE WATCHING THIS SHOW IS VERY DISAPPOINTED. Marcus gets his shirt back and wears it like he’s Aladdin or something. Very stylish. (Sidebar: This is like the first time ever that *strategic ripping* of clothing happens for a man instead of a woman, and OF COURSE this would happen on Xena! What a progressive show)
Anyway, they get into the castle and have a little chat with Hades. Hades explains that he’s powerless without the helmet. But then he realizes that when Atyminius wears the helmet, it’ll bring him back to life and he’ll be mortal again… which means that Atyminius can be killed again and defeated!
Xena suggests that she and Marcus return to the land of the living, so they can kill Atyminius and retrieve the helmet. She convinces Hades that he needs to give Marcus his life back, but he’s only allowed 48 hours. Hades warns Xena that the only way Atyminius will get out is the same way he got in, which is THROUGH THE LAKE, WHERE GABRIELLE IS WAITING FOR XENA.
Atyminius appears before Gabrielle, and it’s very kind of him to remove his helmet while he taunts and attempts to kill her. Gives our heroine a chance to fight back! She holds her own against Atyminius, but then he gets the upper hand, and right when he’s about to kill her… Xena and Marcus arrive!
Atyminius is being a real creeper, and he puts his invisibility helmet back on while he gets in a few blows. But honestly he’s a pretty bad fighter—even invisible, it’s super easy for Xena to handle him (go Xena go!). Then he escapes.
“Are you alright? You look like you saw a ghost,” Gabrielle says, right before Marcus comes over. lolol.
They set up camp for the night, Gabrielle falls asleep immediately, and Xena and Marcus have a heart-to-heart. Turns out that in the afterlife, everyone can hear the thoughts people have in the land of the living whenever the living think of them—so Marcus knows exactly how Xena feels about him, and it’s been keeping him going this whole time.
Xena tells Marcus she loves him and they ~spend the night~ together.
The next day, our trio continues along, and they come across a few Kiwis on their way to a wedding festival, who were attacked by Atyminius. Xena realizes that that’s where he’s heading, so they hurry to get to the wedding festival and save the people there.
Atyminius, meanwhile, is being invisible and tossing people at the wedding festival all over the place just for kicks.
Our trio sneaks into the wedding festival and Xena says she’ll pretend to be the bride at the “ceremonial bathing,” and that the bride will stay asleep in her bed, because that way Atyminius will attack the “bride” at the bathing… but oh no! Atyminius was listening and he attacks the sleeping woman anyway!
...BUT WAIT! Xena KNEW he’d be listening, and so it was HER hiding in the bed the whole time! She defeats Atyminius and retrieves the helmet. She and Marcus go back to the lake, and Marcus wants to keep the helmet so that he can stay alive and spend a lifetime with Xena… but he says that Xena taught him that it would be wrong, so after a tearful goodbye, he and Xena take the helmet back to Hades.
Before they can do it, a harpy grabs hold of Marcus and tries to THROW HIM OFF A CLIFF. First of all, how dare you. Xena comes to the rescue, torches the harpy, and saves Marcus!
She goes into the castle to Hades, and makes a bargain with him that the only way she’ll give him the helmet is if he reassess Marcus’s deeds, so that he can go to the good place when he dies again.
Xena then STABS MARCUS IN THE HEART (seems unnecessary??? He was about to die again anyway! His 48 hours were almost up!!) and makes a case for him to Hades, insisting that he deserves to be in the good place.
...And she succeeds! Marcus gets to spend eternity in the Elysian Fields forever! Xena and Marcus make out for like the fifth time in this episode and then Xena returns to Gabrielle in the land of the living.
DEVIN
I also really like that we’re at the point in the series where we’re going to have recurring characters and callbacks - the X:WPU is growing, folks! There are lots of things I liked about this episode:
Xena went to the underworld in a black leather corset swimsuit. Okay!
The ferryman for the River Styx had a preposterous New York accent and I suppose they were trying to do a “tourists! [eyeroll]” thing here which is maybe funny and maybe not but I do especially like that boat on the river and Tartarus are back on the terrible ~otherworldly cave~ soundstage bathed in red light and looks cheap as hell.
But a few minutes later I realized why it looked so cheap and that is because they spent their CGI budget on the HARPIES who YES HAD SERIOUS WIZARD OF OZ VIBES if there was a Wizard of Oz video game in the mid-90s. Probably cutting edge for its time who can say.
I also love that it’s Marcus who gets his shirt ripped off but Xena never has a wardrobe issue despite swimming through a lake several times in, again, a leather corset swimsuit! What a show!
Everyone in the underworld looked very dead. Atyminius looks like if Jeremy Irons had a bad drug habit. And sad, helmet-less Hades, who only a few episodes roared into the land of the living in a jaunty cape was now wearing a red suede bathrobe and looking like a dejected True Blood vampire. Anyway, I also think he’s another person the list of people Xena meets who are Bad At Their Jobs because your one thing in the underworld is to keep people sorted out and some idiot named Atyminius arrives and steals your one most powerful tool (your, um, invisibility helmet?? Lol okay!) and throws everything into disarray. I’m just saying that this is the second time this season Hades has fucked up and needs help and maybe Xena could get a paid gig or something.
I was really hoping Hades’ palace would also be Mont St Michel but maybe next time. They’re switching it up.
What is the ceremonial bathing of the bride??? Is this historically accurate?
I really thought they’d just let Marcus live out his 48 hours or something, I agree stabbing him in the heart was a bit melodramatic. Also maybe he wanted to see the sky again, did anyone ask him, geez.
And finally, I really, really love that whenever Xena and Gabrielle come across a nice local event, be it a wedding, or a market with a fun souvenir seller, it always looks like a Renaissance Fair. Like there are zero ancient Greek vibes, everyone’s just wearing quilted coats and silly hats and juggling apples under pennant bunting.