Notes to Self
About the end in Xena
Completed in early summer 2002
I. Ho Thanatos tees Xenees
What should be said about the death of Xena, the warrior princess?
Importantly, the event possessed the qualities of necessary tragedy and
also fulfillment of the (undoubtedly direst) possibility or chance of the
realistic world. However it is in the relation to the story that a point must
be made. While Xena's death itself may have been suitable for her as a
warrior, it had tremendous consequences to the entire legendarium.
Powerful, no doubt, but subject to observation no matter the viewpoint.
Without exaggerating too much, I think it is fair to say that though
serving continuity by delivering Xena (and hence Gabrielle later as well)
to the fiery wheel of Karma, the final solution in "Friend in Need" pretty
much nullified the value of all the adventures leading up to it. While this
might be realistical, it is a contempt of the story due to the fact known to
the creators and producers that, this was indeed to be the finale of the
entire arc, and nothing was to be expected after that. The facts (and the
message) remain: Love is of no use but an illusion, vengeance is the
only thing that matters in the black-and-white universe, and everyone is
eventually struck down by the despair. There is no hope; we imagine
crazy things; our life has no real meaning (and hence even all the
reasonings for the machinations of Ares -- or anyone else -- were a folly,
a strange nothing from nothing). Gabrielle has no function in the final
equasion. And to some this labeling of the entirety as a play of shadows
may even sound acceptable. Or wait; maybe somebody else succeeded
better, a nameless character in far countries; it was just the heroines of
the tale that took the worst blow. Oh yeah, maybe we should have been
told! It all begins to sound just a tad ridiculous. However, if there is even
the most remote chance that Xena: Warrior Princess is not just a nod to
the great classic tragedy of Greece, but a great tragedy and a story with
some value as a whole, then the subsequent things must follow: 1) love
is real, 2) despair is real and there is a remote chance of a sublime
turnout, 3) Xena was tricked into embracing death; though her heroic and
righteous motivations (or recognitions, foolish and dangerous as they
might have been) might "stand for something". At some level Xena
thought that, by yielding to the revenge which also made sense to her
(knowing her absolute sense of justice makes it also a bit more
interesting from a storyteller's viewpoint), by sacrificing herself, she
could outwin the Shadow with which she thought she had her war.
Unfortunately it was a decision not thought quite through. It spelled bad
for Gabrielle, and for her own soul. The strength of the real Shadow is
immense in all strings, nonetheless. Everything has now been stretched
to its limit.
Perhaps it really was hard for Robert Tapert to "choose" the kind of
baby-kill he did. Or perhaps an even stronger "happy" ending would've
taken a lot more skill. Or maybe something unseen will still grow from
what we got. Still, it was a great tragic climax. But it was not the end,
not in either case. Also in a convenient case of deja vu, we have now
been introduced to a similar event at the end Buffy: The Vampire
Slayer's sixth season.
"Stories are not about what we want." Quite right... they are meant to
be more.
II. Hee Oikoumenee Metepeita
But what about the world? "How did the tales disappear?" Now would
there be any greater irony that, perchance, even the earth itself might
have been changed (slowly), contingently (as it seemed) after the
demise of what would look to any modern analyzer as a mere "collective
copy of heroic and tragic values"? Nay, but surely there was a Xena,
Xena who was all that (exactly) and changed the world, though she
might have unawarely lived in a World of Fate's Decreeing, a plane
influencing the state for this lower domain of ours, and hence all those
things that were possible in Xena; she was like a Kalevalan hero¹, but
her entrapment in death (and Gabrielle's imminent descent unto typical
human despair and vices) must have spelt an even direr future. The world
that was hers lost its last chance (as it were), and Mist encircled it, and
it became the domain of the Greece we know, where philosophers
debated all the "mysteries" of past on paths now laid fully Round, even
the past now turning in on itself.
with one's "flawed" characteristics yet having some abilities which would
seem more or less "supernatural" to a modern observant (cf. also Elves
and carmė; J.R.R. Tolkien: Unfinished Tales p. 459).
III. Ti Alla de Nyn?
If the story should be told, it should have a novelty plot, but also new
and interesting characters... It should neither be any obvious "triumph of
love" (from the beginning, or in the open "mood" and feeling) but
powerful, intriguing, and by no means with a diminished danger to
everyone in the now world-of-the-blind (World diminished, or under the
Shadow), though that may not be evident at all to the characters met in
the beginning. And as with "The Deliverer" (XWP), the real evil should
lurk there where not too many would suspect, and not make itself
known until at least halfway through. Yet even if there was only the
White and the Blacks, and the Fiery Wheel, then what would be the
point of even trying to fight...
What happens in the world of a tear
falling down to the floor
on a ship somewhere, perchance;
mayhap loud swishing, wars of men
beneath the surface translucent blue,
or flatten hills, a coppice odd; on someone's dream do lay..?