Yes, Xena is getting a reboot pilot, with the writer making a promise of “fully exploring” the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle—so let’s not forget they’re both moms.
Show writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach told Vanity Fair Sunday, “there is no reason to bring back xena [sic] if it is not there for the purpose of fully exploring a relationship that could only be shown subtextually in first-run syndication in the 1990s.” VF reporter Charles Bramesco commented that while the pilot episode is far from a full run, the potential series would “provide young viewers with a hero with whom they can identify.”
True enough—although when it comes to Xena and Gabrielle as parenting role models, it gets a little complicated. Let’s review. Xena has a son by the warlord Borias. She has the boy, Soran, raised by centaurs to keep him safe. Later on, Soran is killed by Hope, Gabrielle’s demonic child, although Gabrielle believed Hope still had good in her. In her grief, Xena tries to kill Gabrielle, but the spirit of Solan helps them reconcile.
Xena later gives birth to Eve after an encounter with a mysterious deity. Eve is the reincarnation of Xena’s former enemy Callisto, and is prophesied to bring about the twilight of the Olympian gods. When Xena and Gabrielle are thought to be dead, however, the infant Eve is taken to be raised by Caesar, and becomes known as Livia, the champion of Rome. (With the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle a matter of deep subtext, it is arguable whether Gabrielle should be considered Eve’s mother, too. I’d like to think so, though.) Later, Xena ultimately kills most of the gods to save Eve, helping to fulfill the prophesy. Her ally Ares (who had an unrequited crush on Xena) gives up his immortality to heal the dying Eve/Livia and Gabrielle, and Xena later helps him to regain his godhood. That episode is titled “Motherhood.”
The story raises the old question of whether every adult female character on television has to become a mother (or grapple with why she can’t be) at some point. Even the theme of queer moms is an old one, as Sarah Warn wrote at After Ellen back in 2003. She observed that many shows convey “the notion that ‘woman’ is synonymous with ‘mother,'” while the same isn’t true for men and fatherhood. For lesbians, “the strategy is to make the lesbian characters so ‘normal’ and easy to identify with, viewers will almost forget that they’re gay.” She adds that there’s nothing wrong with being a mother—“it’s that their storylines revolve around their role as a mother as if it defined them exclusively.”
Xena was one of the few mother-inclusive shows that defied that. Xena did not raise either of her children. Her mothering instinct is protective more than nurturing, in keeping with her chosen path as a warrior. Gabrielle’s love for Hope made her blind to her child’s faults, which was almost her undoing. While the relationships both women have with their children could charitably be called “dysfunctional,” they at least give us a more interesting, less stereotypical, and entertaining look at some variations on motherhood, while the mothers also have “careers” outside the home.
Will the reboot (if it goes beyond a pilot) show us Xena and Gabrielle looking to start anew as mothers? I’m sure Ares would be happy to serve as their sperm donor. Personally, I hope they stay away from that storyline, though, since the trope of queer women trying to get pregnant is just as tired as that of queer moms with kids, as I wrote back in 2008. But once a mother, always a mother. Xena and Gabrielle have been affected by their past relationships to Hope, Solan, and Eve, and this will inform their relationships with each other and with others in the future. Just as bad as focusing exclusively on the pair’s identity as mothers would be to ignore it.
