Complex heroine with incredible combat skills that raised the rod to display the women's screen in general. Red hair a young woman who started as a cunning and a little naive alarm only to mature in a far more complex and capable figure. A comic book companion, which has been shown to have a far more emotional substance than their initial appearance would suggest. A fantasy TV series with a fantasy in the 90s, which could be shamelessly silly and self-conscious (so much that even included a musical episode, in itself, essentially unprecedented for its genre at the time), but it was still ready and capable of going to some dark places and continuing to do so.

Throw in a crucial creative behind the scenes, who will later be developed by a cult favorite artist in a big name director thanks to their work on Marvel's superhero blockbuster, and what do you get? "Xena: Warrior Princess", a show so influential that I was almost deceived to think that I was actually talking about the "Buffy" Vampire Sleer TV series and destroyed my joke.

If there is, widely speaking, a key difference between "Xena" and "Buffy" (except for Xena Executive producer Sam Raimi, still admired, Unlike the creator of "Bufi" Osos Vedon), then it will probably be their feuding theme ... Or, more precisely, the lack of explicit queer material in "Xena". Of course, if those who are familiar with the show's reputation are confused right now, I don't blame you. As anyone who has ever seen a series can tell you, television in the 1990s did not get much Quadder from Xena. Honestly, the relationship between the title "Lucy Lawless", "Alallas!"-Shouting, the warrior whose Chakram and her other half Gabriel (Rene O'Connor) is a better portrayal of a same-sex couple than much of the true Peder national team, which we received from the 21st century.

If you are wondering why the minds behind "Xena" not only diminished the chase and made XGab aka Xabrielle, aka Warrant (and others Ships names You have never been caught) Canon, it all was reduced to the same thing that it does so often in this industry: money.

As much as Xena helped roll the ball for the "Buffy" TV and its many offspring (Director Ruby Kuzui's thrilled film "Buff" If he really came out three years before Xena debuted in 1995, but it was a very different beer), there was also something bad. The LGBTK+ Small Screen Revolution, which used the likes of Will and Grace, did not happen until the end of the series, so the studio directors were deeply cautious about the term Xena-Gabriel romance. "It's like one of the few times that (studio's executives) sometimes said," You can't do it, we'll lose advertisers, "" As Xena co-creator Robert Tertert explained " Fun weekly For its 30th anniversary oral history of making the show.

Perhaps surprising, this just encouraged the minds behind "Xena" (who clearly had a sense of humor to their work) to behave badly by playing the show on the show's show. "It took a little time before we realized ... I think, we didn't really do it for the audience. We did it to be naughty," Tapert admitted, recalling that supporters of the series studio did not allow Xena and Gabriel to appear in the same shots in the same idea. "They were so strict about not wanting to make any insinuation that there were more among them than just good friends. It should never have been about two gay women on the road together, who were developing independently," Tapert added.

If the weather was a little different, Xena could even make Xena-Slash-Gabriel completely canonical. Let's not forget, the Buffy TV series gave its lead with red hair, Willow Rosenberg by Allison Hanigan, a sincere girl in the form of Amber Benson's magic, Tara McLay, just as Xena descended. .

Part of the problem with modern mainstream media is that it tends to be strictly shy and meek. Too often, the acts of intimacy of the queer and the ectionu are reduced to blinking-and you will miss the moments, while the queer characters themselves are not always allowed to be multilayer or have a lot of personality (see also: Like Sandman's icon 2 of Netflix made the trans comic book icon Wanda Dirty). It is all the result of a study and streamers who want to earn brown points to be inclusive, without drawing too much controversy in the process. But thinking Certain people obviously cannot cope with any A same -sex duo that shares a pure kiss in less than a second in the movie "Pixar", it really makes no sense to try to calm them down.

This is also what makes Xena so refreshing, as her team "accepted the lesbian context with a constant glay" after finding out the popularity of the show in the Queer community, as RJ Stewart (who co-developed the series) for EW. He later added:

"(...) In the old days, when people asked me if Xena and Gabriel were gay, I said, 'Live I leave it to the fans." But 30 years later, fans talked.

Helping things, lawless and O'Connor never meet as self -conscious or hesitate to express the idea of ​​Xena and Gabriel to be in a romantic loveub with their performances, even if it is mostly subtextually. "I think Rene and I didn't expect the fan response) because we had no heads in that space on the head, but of course the writers knew exactly what they were doing from the beginning," EV's complexity explained. And while she neither she nor O'Connor identified as a queer in their personal life, they just did what the good actors should do and inserted them into the feelings they (and someone else on that matter) could understand:

"We never thought about sexuality or nothing, but we were thinking of Loveubeub, and that's just finding the Loveube on stage. When you don't know what else to do, look for the Loveum on stage. And, I suppose, the magic ingredient."

You heard it, people. If Xena herself said that Xena and Gabriel were for Love Use, it is the canon in my book.