Listen, I like a dark television that ends as much as the next jaded critic, but the end of “Xena: Warrior Princess” is exceptionally lamentable. The series, which featured Lucy Lawless as a warrior tritular princess, followed Xena as she was trying to find redemption for her past as a ruthless killer. The character had initially started as a villain in the series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys”, but she ended up being a character interesting enough to wear a spin-off. Xena, as an anti-hero before we even called them, was a deeply conflict character who had a horror to answer, but that does not mean that she deserved an end as brutal as those that we obtained later for serious dramas of the real world like “Breaking Bad” and “The Sopranos”.
“Xena: Warrior Princess” was a wild series that could be tonic everywhere, feeling like a part of soap opera, part of the epic fantastic adventure and a part of Roger Corman Monster Flick. With the executive producer Sam Raimi, helping to execute the program, things were guaranteed to become coarse and as bloody as network television would allow it, but apparently, the writing team had no problem cutting the heart of fans as easily as Xena could disintegrate a mythological villain.
In the final of the series, Xena dies not only, but also sacrifices herself as a ghost. The fans were devastated, and it turns out that it was not only fans who were upset – Lawless also hates the end.
Xena fans have turned fans and Lawless hated
In an oral story of the series for Entertainment Weekly, Sam’s brother, Ted Raimi, who played Joker, said that he loved the end. However, Lawless said that his feelings on this subject had really embittered over time:
“I always regret the end. It seemed a little fun for us at the time. You know, in a kind in a Tarantino-Esque way, like:” Oh yeah, it’s crazy. Cut your head. “But what it did to fans was just horrible.
At the end of “Xena”, the warrior princess took an army led by a powerful supernatural called Yodoshi, the eater of souls, who has the soul of 40,000 villagers Xena killed during her first years in him. She ends up killing in a very “Game of Thrones” way, turned with arrows and then beheaded, but that is not what really turned the fans. What injured them the most is the fact that Xena then goes to hell, kicked Yodoshi and eventually sacrificed himself so that the 40,000 souls can be in peace.
It has thematic sense because Xena was supposed to be beyond redemption, but it was also the fantasy of realization of awkward wishes in the 1990s. Some of us just wanted a happy ending for the woman we had watched try to improve and the life of others for six seasons.
Xena puts an end to the burned fans, but not too bad
Although Lawless is not a big fan of the fantastic genre, she nevertheless seemed to want an appropriate end for fans of “Xena” who felt burned by the character’s double death. She obtains a last last posting goodbye with her traveling companion / friend / girlfriend not so subtextual Gabrielle (Renée O’Connor), but Ghost Xena fading in any way and Gabrielle continuing her trip is a bit weak.
The co-creator of the RJ Stewart series (who created the series with Lawless’s husband Rob Tapert), told EW that he would not have opted for this end if he knew that it would completely alienate the fans and make them completely abandon the series, but also that fans who do not like ends have honestly came with the territory. However, he has no regrets, because he was “in conventions” Xena “” and saw the number of fans still present.
Like many other programs that have ended in a way that fans did not like, there is more for “Xena” than the official end. There are dozens of fanfictions, as well as the series of “Xena” comics by Dark Horse Comics, giving people more “Xena” after the series left the air. They may not have the cry of Lawless killer battle or the beautiful New Zealand shooting places, but at least we get more from the favorite war princess of each.
