Xena and Gabrielle’s Friends to Lovers progression

My personal interpretation of a censored lesbian couple’s journey from the ’90s (during my first watch of the show).

I’ve always been very sceptical about the rule of only seeing what you want to see rather than what it actually is. Because Xena and Gabrielle only ever referred to each other as best friends, family members (and eventually soulmates), and also because of the restrictions of the network (which made the relationship a platonic one through censorship), viewers who saw their relationship can never distinguish when it ‘transitioned’ into a romance, or if it ever was one at all.

From the second episode ‘Chariots of War’ on, Gabrielle called Xena her best friend — that was the term that was always used to describe their relationship, no matter what stage they were in. It was never anything like ‘this is my travelling companion’, “this is my sister’, “this is my girlfriend’, “this is my best friend’, “this is my wife’ etc. There was no clear progression from one to the other in the writing itself. (This may have been ‘no homosexual damage control’ on the part of the authors) Their dynamic was long past that kind of ‘romantic duality’ at that point. In theory, they just get closer.

There have been many theories and explanations analysing when they got together or started getting intimate, but none of them have been confirmed. That’s what makes it one of the greatest love stories I’ve ever seen on screen. When I first started watching Xena, I tried to get a clear head and judge the episode as it was written and not be swayed by my own thoughts or those of other people.
I found that as the restrictions on Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship were loosened over the course of the series, parts of their relationship were slowly revealed to the viewer. It was as if the characters themselves controlled what the viewer could see of their “very private connection”

SEASON 1

This season was primarily about the development of Xena and Gabrielle as independent characters and less about their ‘relationship’ with each other.

When Xena first sees Gabrielle in the first episode “Sins of the Past”, she’s stunned by her courage in confronting the warlords and feels the need to save her. It’s as if she instinctively knows that this is her soul mate. Instant love at first sight, even if she doesn’t realise it. Gabrielle is absolutely fixated on Xena when she first meets her — ‘it’s like a celebrity crush’ — and also sees this as a way to get out of her environment. At first, Xena sees Gabby as something of a burden. But when she talks to her brother in the crypt, she finds comfort in knowing that this strange farm girl is on her side. Although she tells her she’s “sending her home”, she realises she’s not leaving anytime soon and asks herself, ‘Why not?’ This seems to be true in all relationships that queer people have with each other. Even if no one has ‘come out’, we rally together and give each other a home when the outside world rejects us.
At the beginning of the season, the show establishes that these two women are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Gabrielle believes in soul mates. Xena, on the other hand, doesn’t.

As the episodes progress, Xena quickly takes a liking to Gabrielle, both for her innocent, chirpy demeanour and her intelligence. Gabrielle is quick-witted and can finally put her skills to good use after being taken out of her mentally stressful environment. She no longer seems to be a blank slate. And Xena understands that. In episode six “The Reckoning”, when Gabrielle tries to get her out of prison, we see Ares trying to manipulate Xena into siding with him. When Xena snaps and accidentally punches Gabrielle in the face, she sees what she’s done and immediately comes back to herself — which to me suggests that ‘she has feelings for her’ — and is very surprised when she receives unconditional love from Gabrielle in return. In episodes 7 and 9 and 14, she shows the first signs of jealousy towards Gabrielle’s boyfriend of the week. It’s unclear how Gabrielle feels because Gabrielle is only nineteen and still trying to find her soul mate.
In the first half of the season, the two are really like sisters and friends, even though Xena definitely has feelings for her and Gabrielle has a crush on her.

Their boyfriends in each episode consist of Xena revisiting her past loves and Gabrielle wanting to find a soul mate. Regardless of whether or not it makes sense from a character standpoint, it serves a purpose in the story.

It wasn’t until I got to episode 16 that I started to wonder if the two had a sexual relationship (that she might have taught her something) — I know it sounds strange even at this early stage, but anything can happen at night in the bedroll. And then ‘The Prodigal” happened, and it was confirmed that Xena was nothing like ‘Gabrielle’s sister’, and Gabrielle realised that she was destined to travel with her. This is by far my favourite episode of the first season.

In “Altered States”, which definitely makes me think that Xena might have taught her some “stuff” since the “fishing” scene” is a metaphor for oral sex (in fact, “fishing” metaphor is used throughout the series to connote queerness and lesbian sex) and Gabrielle confessing her attraction to Xena kind of confirmed that for me. The final scene of this episode made me believe that Xena has definitely fallen in love with this woman.

In the second part of the season, they established that they have a great friendship that goes beyond blood.

In “The Greater Good”, when Xena “died”, it was clear to me that Gabrielle was also falling in love with Xena, but whether she realised it or not was a little unclear. I think she realised a little. “I’m going home one day” GABRIELLE IS HER HOME.

In “A Doctor in the House” when Gabrielle is dead, I think that was the moment when Xena started to realise how important Gabrielle was to her, as this was the first time she showed any kind of real emotion in the season. Gabrielle is her anchor. It was also obvious to me that she was in love with her, but I’m not sure she realised the extent of her feelings yet. By the end of the finale, it’s clear that the two have an inseparable bond/deep friendship and that they won’t be separating anytime soon.

SEASON 2

This second season was the first season that hinted that Xena and Gabrielle were soul mates

I began to wonder whether or not they had sex at the beginning of the season. (Not that they were together) I don’t know why. But there was definitely a lot of unspoken things between the two of them. That became clear in the vampire episode. And in “The Return of Callisto” I came to the conclusion that this was the episode where Xena realised she was officially in love with Gabrielle. And before anyone says anything, Perdicus manipulated Gabrielle into marrying him. I don’t really think she did it because she was “in love with him”, so to speak. She’s still searching for her “soul mate” and thought it was him because they grew up together and he was her first chaste love. But when he was killed, she was traumatised by the event and changed forever. The part where she is taught how to use the sword was structured like a sex scene.

In “Miss Amphipolis”, Gabrielle shows her first real sign of jealousy towards Xena, who kisses someone else.

In “Destiny,” when they visit Xena’s battlefield, Xena obviously feels remorse for her past wrongs, while Gabrielle tries to comfort her. But her depression over what has happened is too great. And she is ready to give up on life on the spot. When she is thrown against a tree, she doesn’t even try to fight back. She just wants to die. But her last request to Gabrielle is to take her to the place where she really began to take the “wrong path”, to understand what went wrong.

As the film flashes back to that moment (when she turned evil), it jumps forward to Gabrielle denying her death — suggesting to the viewer that she is trying to save her from that moment. On the other hand, Xena hears her words and realises that she must return, not just to save the world, but for it. Gabrielle has given her a reason to live again!

In ‘The Quest’ (it seems like a few months have passed) she confesses to Iolaus that she is in love with Xena, to which Iolaus responds with so much compassion. gabrielle, you just told her”

Throughout the episode, as she tries to build her new life with the Amazons, Gabrielle makes speeches about ‘how she’ll always love Xena, but has to let her go, and that “one day we’ll be together again. Little does she know that her feelings will be confronted.

When Gabrielle is taken to the dream world, she tries to say how she feels — but Xena says that Gabrielle doesn’t need to say anything because she heard what she said, and kisses her. Yeah, that’s right. It just happens. No gloating. It just happens. More TV shows should do that. And I love Autolycus’ reaction to it as well as Gabrielle’s. The most romantic part of the episode is when Gabrielle puts the ambrosia in Xena’s mouth, holds her hand and whispers to her to come back to life. Xena immediately responds by getting Gabrielle to hold her face. gabrielle Starts Xena, and Gabrielle just says, “I know” (this was an episode with a lot of text). From this point on, Xena begins to build a new life with Gabrielle.

For the viewer, it’s hard to tell when or if they got together because the makers could only tell a quarter of the story on screen (while being constantly censored by a homophobic broadcaster) and also the fact that we are so used to seeing perpetual slow burns on screen that our brains have long since adjusted (or maybe that’s not such a bad thing, depending on whether you like to overanalyse what you’re watching).

But from a personal point of view, I don’t think it’s that complicated. I think it’s quite simple.
When Gabrielle sat down at the end of the episode and put her arm around Xena, I thought, ‘Yes. That’s her wife.’ It was as simple as that. I didn’t even have to think about it.

In the second half of season 2, Gabrielle and Xena are clearly experimenting with their newfound relationship. Gabrielle is patient, knowing that Xena will need time to fully commit to her: “My heart belongs to another. Even if I can’t be with them now, I’m not ready to be with anyone else.” she says in the episode ‘Blind Faith’

In the early stages of a romantic relationship, depending on who you’re with, it’s really like two friends getting attached, and later on it gets much more serious as you grow together. It’s a learning process, i.e. seasons 1–4 were the development of their relationship. (You could say it’s the love relationship part of their relationship) It makes sense to me that they take it slow in their relationship instead of jumping right in, because of Xena’s healing heart (the fact that she’s never been in a loving, committed relationship that wasn’t just about sex/manipulation) and Gabrielle’s journey of self-discovery.
In seasons 5 and 6, their relationship is at a point where it’s fully ‘developed’ because they’ve grown as people and the show entered the 2000s, so the creators were able to integrate it more into the “main text.”

But at this point, in Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, it’s hard for me to believe that they’ve just entered into a romantic relationship with each other because they’ve already moved past those extremes in seasons 5 and 6 (‘The not tonight’ in ‘Kindred Spirits’ is a good example of them being past the honeymoon phase and their marriage being much more solid and monogamous) You could argue that calling them ‘best friends’ and ‘family’ hasn’t changed because they’ve always been married.

That’s not to say that Xena isn’t a story of friends and lovers, but it’s also primarily about a married couple.

In conclusion, there is no specific point at which Xena and Gabrielle become a couple, because they were already living as a couple. They grew into their relationship over time.