Greetings and welcome to this edition of XWP In Review. The Reckoning opens with Xena riding Argo and Gabrielle on foot. I love watching Xena watch Gabrielle as Gabrielle stomps away to find the road that Xena insists is not far down the way they are going. To hear her laugh made me smile — especially after the ending of The Path Not Taken. Xena calls out to Gabrielle not to get lost and her expression shows that she has begun to care very much for the brave little storyteller. Already Xena worries about losing Gabrielle.

The next moment Xena hears the sounds of a fight and men yelling for mercy and help. She and Argo charge through the trees into a clearing where a hooded and armed man is slaughtering a number of unarmed men. Xena leaps from the saddle and into the fray. She’s nearly met her match but suddenly her opponent disappears. She looks around for him but the wounded men need her help. She can only save one and in the process his blood gets on her hands and her sword which she tried to use as a splint of sorts.

Enter a crowd of people from the local village who have come to help their friends. All they see is an armed warrior covered with blood and their friends lying dead all around. One man survives but only points to Xena before he passes out, leaving the villagers to assume the worst: that this strange warrior woman murdered their friends and revenge, not justice, must be had.

Xena escapes, leaps onto Argo’s back and crashes through the woods to find Gabrielle, who for once does not argue when Xena says, Come on, get on the horse. Now! Later Gabrielle will fall from Argo and be captured by the lynch mob and Xena will bargain for her release and throw down her sword. Gabrielle can’t believe what she is seeing. She knows Xena can take these peasants. But that is exactly what Xena will not do. She is a warrior, they are not. She won’t fight men who don’t know how to fight. And her overpowering guilt, always there not far beneath the surface, leads her to accept her capture and punishment as if it were Fate.

Xena is chained in a dank, dark jail cell with her arms outstretched. Gabrielle is granted entry to the cell and the look on her face made me stop the DVD right there. The parallel and the foreshadowing struck me like a thunderbolt. My stomach lurched. Never before had I caught this. True, it’s been a while since I’ve seen this episode, but I don’t remember noticing that before. You know the scene, the one in FIN when Gabrielle discovers her beloved warrior’s…I can’t even say it. The horror of it burns in my memory and colors every scene of every episode I watch now. Sometimes I manage to forget for a while but it’s always there, lurking, waiting to catch me off guard, the way it did this time.

Gabrielle is determined to get Xena out of jail and out of town, but Xena knows that there is more to the situation than meets the eye. After Gabrielle leaves the hooded man appears before Xena. She knows who he is. He’s Ares, the God of War. Who else could be a near match for her skill and strength? She admitted to Gabrielle that he was as good as she was, maybe better. (Ha!) Ares has come to make Xena an offer. Turns out he staged the whole incident in order to entice her to come back to him. Oy! Somebody needs to teach that man a thing or two about romance. A lynch mob does not an enticing invitation make! But it does serve to get Xena’s warrior fires burning again. Ares invites Xena to step out of herself and offers his hand. She takes his hand and the space around them is transformed. They have stepped out of everyday reality and have entered the special world, a dream world. We are given clues to the true nature of this special world by the contrast with its appearance and that of the everyday world, and by what Ares says. And doesn’t say.

As in Dreamworker, color in The Reckoning gives us a clue to knowing wich world we are in. But unlike the worlds of Dreamworker, when the color-space in The Reckoning is blue and cool, stark and foreboding, we are in the world of everyday reality, as when Xena is imprisoned in her cell. (I can’t help but suspect that Ares had a hand in making the surroundings especially stark and foreboding for Xena’s benefit.) But when Ares invites Xena to step out of herself, the color-space she enters is warm and pink. The everyday space is devoid of aesthetic touches, the dream space is filled with luxuries: expensive fabrics, abundant food and wine, candles cast their warm glow all around. The metalwork in the window is ornate, in contrast to the stark bars of the cell. The walls are covered with stylized paintings of lotus blossoms, whereas the walls of the cell are brutally blank. He offers her her heart’s desire, the angry mob offer her hatred and suspicion.

All of this color and charm is a clue to the real nature of what it is that Ares offers to Xena. Remember what he said? Step out of yourself, Xena. Then the room is transformed. When he is through talking to her, she is back in her cell and the world of the dream or vision, if you prefer, fades away, showing us that what Ares offers to Xena is nothing but a dream, an illusion. Ares offers a world at peace with a great leader ruling it: Xena. She is to rule at his side as his Warrior Queen and together they will maintain peace in that world…by force of arms. He tells her to look at a stack of papers on the table. These are decrees and sound wonderful and would help the world, certainly. But when Xena questions him about them, she says, I could pass these decrees? And he says yes. What she does not ask and what he does not answer is telling. He does not say that any of the high-sounding, humanitarian decrees will be carried out or enforced. He says she can pass them. He makes her offers that are too good to be true and too good to pass up. Or are they?

Xena has been around the stadium a time or two and she doesn’t fall for all his mischief and misdirection, not for one Mycenaean minute. (Well, for one minute, coming up in just a bit, actually.) She realizes full well that the God of War has engineered all these events to “persuade” her to come back to him. Ares doesn’t seem to be aware of how savvy the one time Destroyer of Nations really is. And another thing Ares doesn’t count on and can’t even understand is Xena’s commitment to her new path. And the indomitable will and optimism of a certain young bard in the making who refuses to give up on Xena no matter what the warrior may say or do.

When some of the local yokels enter Xena’s cell and begin beating her, Ares goads Xena into stirring up her warrior within and that fire erupts to the surface. Xena breaks her chains and beats her tormentors senseless and Gabrielle picks that moment, of all moments, to come through the door to talk to Xena. Xena, still in her battle frenzy, backhands Gabrielle so hard that I gasped out loud. Yes, I’ve seen this ep before. And, yes, I still jumped and I still gasped. And I still remember the look in Gabrielle’s eyes when she rolled over on the ground and stared in disbelief at her best friend, holding her hand to her still stinging face, and staggered up the stairs and out the door. And the look in Xena’s eyes as her head cleared and her mind registered what she had done and the fear came rushing in again, the fear that she had lost Gabrielle. And that is a worse fear than her fear of losing her own life. How could she have harmed the one who loves her most and will stand by her, has stood by her, is standing by her now?

This truly is what Xena fears most, you see: that she is still capable of doing those terrible things she did when she was that other Xena, Warrior Destroyer Princess. This is the real reason she fears so much for Gabrielle: she fears what may happen to Gabrielle as a result of being with her. Because of who she is. Because of who she is capable of being.

But, of all people, Gabrielle is the only one who truly knows the good of which Xena is truly capable. Gabrielle’s faith in Xena is boundless. At this point. And even when that faith is shaken further down their road together, Gabrielle will never completely lose faith in her Warrior Princess. And it’s a good thing Gabrielle does have so much faith because Xena has a lot to learn in that department. Until now she has only ever had faith in the sharpness of her sword and the strength of her arm, the speed of her horse and the powers of her charm.

But Xena is learning something now that is deeper than all the lessons she learned from all her other mentors through the years, Lao Ma and Ares included. Xena is learning to love. And to be loved. Look at her face when she has saved Ares’ victims and, expecting no thanks, hears the words of heartfelt gratitude that one of them speaks to the listening ears of the whole village. Xena begins to realize (once more — it is something she will have to learn again and again) that there is goodness in her after all. Gabrielle has been trying to tell her that. Gabrielle can see the goodness in Xena. Because she loves her.

Gabrielle looks at Xena through eyes of love and sees her innate goodness.

And these are some of the most important lessons Xena will ever learn, no matter how long she walks on the planet. The most powerful force on earth is not the force of arms and no peace is really peace that has to be enforced. Xena is learning that her warrior skills have their place, but that nothing will ever take the place of listening to her own heart. And the heart of someone who truly loves her.

And no power in the universe and no god of war or of anything else can make the Warrior Princess a better offer than that.

The End of XWP In Review, The Reckoning.

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll join me next time for XWP In Review. Next episode: The Titans. Soon. See ya!

Credits: All the screengrabs in this review were done by yours truly. Feel free to use ‘em if you want ‘em. You can crop out the url in the corner. I have more and I’m thinking about uploading them later.