When Lucy Lawless, star of the cult fantasy hit Xena: Warrior Princess, first heard that her character was going to be killed in the show’s 2001 series finale, she thought it was a terrific idea, but she has since changed her mind.
“At the time, we thought that was a really strong choice,” Lawless says in an exclusive interview with TheTorchOnline.com. “But I think it really hurt the fans. I wish we hadn’t done it, actually.”
In the two-part finale, “A Friend in Need,” Xena finds herself unable to fight a powerful spiritual being. In order to be able to do so, she allows herself to be shot full of arrows. Once dead, her head is cut off, and she is cremated. The episodes feature several relatively gruesome scenes of the decapitated body.
Later, after Gabrielle finds away to bring Xena back to life, the Warrior-Princess chooses to stay dead in order to make amends for past sins. The episodes end with Gabrielle, a full-fledged warrior at last, carrying on Xena’s legacy and also carrying the Warrior-Princess’ memory in her heart.
Some found the episodes touching, and in keeping with the theme of the series that Xena couldn’t ever really be “redeemed” for her evil past. But they inspired a furious response from many fans. Some were upset with the gruesome way she died; others were upset that she died at all.
“Absolute betrayal is what the majority of Xena fans felt after the show ended,” says Mary D. Brooks of AUSXIP, a Xena fan-site. “Feelings of betrayal and rage engulfed the Xenaverse and it was not a nice place to be. There was so much vitriolic anger and hatred towards Rob Tapert and Lucy. It was very disturbing and unsettling to watch the rage against them.”
“I laughed when I heard she got her head cut off,” Lawless says now. “It was such a strong choice — I’m perverse like that.”
But since then, Lawless has had a big change of heart.
“It’s all like telling a bad placed joke, or laughing at some other group’s expense,” she says. “You’re like, ‘Come on, it’s funny!’ But then it’s like, ‘But it really hurts people.’ And finally the penny drops and you go, ‘Oh. That’s why it’s not funny, because somebody is in pain.’”
When asked if her husband, Xena co-creator Rob Tapert, regrets the choice to kill Xena too, Lawless says, “Oh, I imagine so. He’s a very spiritual guy, and he’s become very wise over the time that I’ve known him.”
Lawless holds out hope that time has changed the minds of many Xena fans as well.
“Maybe with the time that has passed, the fans have become less disenchanted,” she says.
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This may contain spoilers for some of those who haven’t seen the entire series.
I was a big XWP fan too, but towards the last seasons I found the series becoming extremely bizarre. Xena and Gabrielle both died and at one point ended up in a sort of Christian hell, with angels, Lucifer and Xena as a devil; Callisto becomes an angel who goes into Xena’s belly and is reincarnated as Xena’s daughter Eve; some Jesus-like character named Eli, etc. I realize that a series has to always find new and interesting angles to keep people interested but I thought some of it just didn’t ‘fit’ the series as I had come to know and love it. I wasn’t really surprised that TPTB killed Xena off in the end, and that Lucy Lawless would think it a good idea. Even though I never stopped watching the series I had chosen to stop believing in it, and started reading the fanfic of Melissa Good, who was considered good enough by the Xena creators to have written two scripts for the series, both of which were used. Ms. Good has rewritten the ‘rift’ story arc and in my opinion hers is so much more believable. In her stories Xena and Gabrielle are very much alive, never went to Japan (or India, at least not yet), never met anyone named Eli and Xena never had a daughter named Eve, even though they do have a daughter, and oh yes, they’re married. Okay, maybe the daughter angle stretches one’s belief but if you read the stories it does make sense inasmuch as anything can make sense in a fantasy world. That’s the only reason that FIN (which I never watched again even though I taped it) didn’t depress me as much as it did other fans. Nevertheless, I did feel that killing off Xena and letting Gabrielle go on alone was an extremely thoughtless way to end a beloved series, esp. knowing how it would hurt so many fans. Ironically, Ms. Good’s stories only go as far as the fourth season (if I remember correctly) and the two scripts she wrote for the series never happened in her fanfic storyline.