Xena: Warrior Princess: Why Xena and Gabrielle never got together
Aside from the anguish over — 15-year-
As discussed at length in our Xena oral history in this week’s issue of Entertainment Weekly, soon after the show’s 1995 debut, fans of the syndicated series, particularly those within the LGBT community, breathed life into the relationship. “The name Xena means ‘stranger,'” Lawless says of the former warlord spared by Hercules (Kevin Sorbo) to embark on a journey of redemption. “She felt she was irredeemable. That friendship between Xena and Gabrielle transmitted some message of self-worth, deservedness, and honor to people who felt very marginalized, so it had a lot of resonance in the gay community.”
But on the creative side, there was a specific reason why it never came to fruition. “We didn’t really ever want to get them 100 percent together for a very strange reason,” executive producer and co-creator Rob Tapert says. “There was Ares [Kevin Smith], God of
War, who we loved. We did not want to give up the hold that character had over Xena and the enjoyment we had with telling stories of Xena and Ares. So as much as we liked that Xena and Gabrielle were two people who were the best of friends, and perhaps intimate friends, we never wanted to give up Ares.”