XWP: Maternal Instincts
So you're going along, watching Xena and it's good and campy fun with two hot ladies you totally think are doing the wild thing and the stories are good and sometimes serious but it's still basically this fantasy show that takes you out of you world for a little wild which is pretty cool.
And then along comes Maternal Instincts and it's like . . . Shit. This show is actually going into pretty deep and dark places. Which makes sense considering the scary past of its hero.
Let's get to it.
1) The episode opens with Xena and Gabrielle walking through centaur land. The centaurs are having some kind of peace treaty. I'm not really sure if it's among themselves (Xena says something about the centaurs being united) or if its with their human neighbors (there are non-centaur males fighting with the centaurs later in the episode), but there are totems of some kind so that's really all I truly need to know.
2) From out of the trees Solan springs, trying to jump on Xena like some kind of expert tracker. He's there with Kaleipus, his adopted father.
And boy is this a super awkward kid. I have a hard time thinking this goofy child sprang from the loins of Xena and Borias. Not even just because he shares none of their coloring.
3) There's this mysterious creeper of a girl in the forest with some kind of ball that goes down a cliff into some rocks. From those rocks springs fire (never a good sign) and from that fire emerges Callisto.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time we saw Callisto, she was a newly minted goddess and was trapped in a flowing river of lava for all of eternity with her good pal Velasca.
I assume she got out somehow in Hercules and somehow ended up under a bed of rocks (as often happens to Callisto as we see in this very episode).
But . . . hey! Callisto's back! I'm so happy! I've really missed her!
4) Who else is back? Ephiny! Exclamation points abound!
I've missed Ephiny, too. We haven't seen her since . . . Well, the same episode in which we last saw Callisto (The Quest). And she's brought her little centaur boy (are there centaur girls?), Xenon. Maternal Instincts is a straight up family reunion.
5) It's a good thing that Ephiny is there because she's not only showing support for the centaur nation, which her husband belonged and her son now belongs, but because Gabrielle super needs someone to talk to. I mean, having a demon baby and faking that baby's death so that you're lover best friend who kill her takes a lot out of a girl.
If I were Ephiny, I probably would have been like, "Um . . . Uh . . . Okay. I think I'll see you later." But, luckily for Gabrielle, I am not Ephiny and she found a sympathetic ear for her story.
6) Minutes out of the rock bed and Callisto's already wreaking havoc, what with burning those totems and killing some dudes and slinging their bodies on them.
Oh, Callisto. The more things change, the more they say the same.
7) The mysterious creeper girl shows up at the centaur village, mysteriously and creepily having survived a run in with Callisto. She's really shaken, though, and finds Gabrielle, mistaking her for Xena. Gabrielle sets her straight, but the mysterious creeper has a message she needs to give to Xena: The terrifying god lady she accidentally freed told her to tell Xena that she knows Xena's secret and is going to take it to the grave.
Uh oh. That's no good. Gabrielle tells Xena and Xena, because she knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, immediately deduces that Callisto knows that Solan is her son.
And is so not happy about that.
8) But shit. Mysterious creeper disappears but shows up with Callisto in the next scene. And the really bad news? Mysterious creeper girl is Hope.
Fuck.
9) Xena immediately determines that Solan needs to hide.
Understatement of the episode.
10) Hope shows back up in the village, conveniently locating Gabrielle and even more conveniently dropping the lamb Gabrielle had given Hope as she sent her down the stream in that basket, the same lamb that Xena had gotten for Gabrielle the previous Solstice.
Gabrielle, quick on her feet, figures out that this girl is Hope, especially after the girl tells her that she was found in a basket in the water with only the lamb beside her.
Pretty unlikely to be a coincidence, right?
Gabrielle's understandably shocked. And probably should have been way more suspicious. She sent Hope down the stream in Britannia. Which is, by the way, an island. And really far away from Greece. So the chances of her showing up in the centaur village at that time? Kind of strange.
But Gabrielle is so shocked by the realization that this is her lost daughter that she's not really into being suspicious. And she's really not into telling Xena.
11) Before Gabrielle can really do anything about it, though, she has to go act a decoy for Xena by pretending to Solan to get Callisto's attention so that the real Solan could be more safely transported to the hide out.
Callisto falls for it and lights a bunch of stuff on fire and, after she figures out it was all a ruse, let's Xena in on the big secret: She's working with someone.
And Gabrielle does not make the connection that it may be Hope.
12) And Hope's been a busy girl, what with killing Kaleipus while he's in the Exion caves.
He stumbles out just as Xena and Gabrielle make it to him. Dying, he tries to tell Xena that he was attacked by "the child". I could understand exactly what he was saying. Xena, however, could not, which is strange, because she can hear a deer breathing from a mile away.
Yeah, okay.
I guess Gabrielle didn't hear him either because she still has no suspicions about Hope.
13) With Kaleipus' death, Solan asks Xena if he can start traveling with her and Gabrielle. Xena kind of wavers on it but decides, after about ten seconds of deep thought, that it's better than nothing. And it might be true. If Callisto knows about him others might also figure it out and perhaps the best way to keep Solan safe is to keep him near. There's probably no one better to protect him from do-wrongers.
14) But having your eleven year old around would probably put a real crimp in your nightly activities with your lady love best friend.
15) Gabrielle meets up with Hope back in the village and tells Hope that she's her mom.
Hope then manipulates Gabrielle into making her think that Hope's life is in danger from Callisto, prompting Gabrielle to hide Hope in the "safest place" in the village (which happens to be, for some reason, Kaleipus' hut), exactly where Solan has been hidden.
And exactly where Hope, once she's alone with him, kills Solan.
16) Xena figures out that Hope is alive because she accuses the mysterious creeper girl as being a little too mysterious and creepy and Gabrielle gets really defensive and kind of blurts out that it's Hope.
And to say that Xena isn't happy would be the second understatement of the episode. Because not only is Hope alive and working with Callisto to go after her son, but Gabrielle had been lying about Hope the whole time.
The good news (if there could be good news at this point) is that Hope is still young enough that she can be killed. Her powers are drained after killing Kaleipus (as we see in a scene with Callisto) and Xena believes she can be killed with poison.
17) Gabrielle spills that she sent Hope to Solan's hide out and Xena's out of there. She knows exactly what's likely to have gone down.
When she gets there, she finds Solan's body slumped over the altar meant to honor Kaleipus. He's unresponsive and has no pulse.
It's a little awkward to write about. Our hero has just found her son, dead. And Lucy Lawless is so good in that moment, trying to rouse him, trying to get a response, but knowing that he's dead. And then having Gabrielle run in and going off on her . . . It's a really, I think, powerful moment in the series. Because it's awful for two reasons: the dead child (which is obviously horrifying) and the breached trust between Xena and Gabrielle and the notion that Gabrielle may, in some way, be responsible for what happened to Solan.
18) Xena eventually lets go of Solan and goes out with a serious mission. She wants Callisto and Callisto is willing to play the game.
The two fight and Xena has these hidden centaurs and men shoot arrows into Callisto which doesn't do too much except make her shoot them back at them, but it does give Ephiny the time to usher the children of the village to the caves (because Hope and Callisto's plan, aside from specifically targeting Solan is to kill the other children, too). .
The fight's pretty cool, though. Callisto says to Xena, "You'd like to kill me. Wish you could." Such a wonderful line.
19) Callisto makes her way to the caves to kill the children because she wants to give them the "gift of oblivion".
Xena's not really down with that, though, and follows Callisto into the caves and continues to fight her.
It's a wonderful scene. Lucy Lawless and Hudson Leick have incredibly chemistry. And there's not all that much I love more on Xena than Callisto and Xena having actual discussions. So when Callisto tells Xena that Xena has already won, that she had lived so many years only wanting to cause Xena pain, thinking that that pain would alleviate hers and she would then be free to go on. But when Solan was killed and she heard Xena's cry of anguish, she realized that nothing changed at all. That Xena's pain didn't stop her own. It just made her feel empty.
So while Callisto may have won the battle, Xena won the war.
It's tremendous. It's a tremendous moment of acting and writing and it's a tremendous admission from such a character.
20) Still, Xena remains unmoved and goads Callisto, causing her to cause yet another cave in. IT was all a trap for the kids to go into the caves so Callisto would follow. Xena, even stricken with such grief, knew the caves were the best way to contain Callisto (though I don't understand how rocks could stop a god).
Before leaving Callisto in the cave she tells her, "You let your pain kill you years ago. I'm going to live with mine."
Again, a tremendous bit of writing and acting.
21) Gabrielle goes off into the woods with Hope, tricking Hope into believing that she believes Hope is good, but she ends up getting Hope to drink some poison, which kills her.
Aside from the brutality of having a scene where the co-star kills her own daughter, what's really hardcore about the scene is that Gabrielle lifts the water bag to her own mouth, nearly drinking the poison herself before deciding not to do it.
22) Funerals are held in the village.
Now, I'm a little confused about this because it's clearly Solan's funeral but there's a second pyre. I've always thought that the second pyre was Hope's, which has never really made sense to me, because why would Xena ever allow Hope to have a pyre next to Solan's? Then I thought that it might be the pyre of Kaleipus, but the body on the pyre is clearly not a centaur.
So I don't know.
23) But, again, we have a tremendous scene.
Gabrielle tries to apologize to Xena, telling her that none of this would have happened if she had listening to Xena about Hope back in Britannia.
Xena's not really interested in hearing it. She trusted Gabrielle. She trusted Gabrielle than she had trusted anyone before. She trusted Gabrielle with her secrets and with her life and with her heart. With her vulnerabilities. And Gabrielle lied to her and that lie lead, directly or indirectly, to the death of her son.
Yes, Xena blames Gabrielle for Solan's death.
They're both crying. I can't really say this enough but Lucy Lawless really knocked this episode out of the ball park and definite big ups need to be given to Renee O'Connor who was also amazing.
Gabrielle turns to Xena and tells her, "I love you, Xena." Just as she had in The Debt II, after another betrayal. But instead of echoing back as she does in The Debt II, Xena has no response for Gabrielle. And they both leave, in opposite directions.
What does this mean for them?
24) And whose fault is it? As far as I can tell, it's a big question within the fandom.
On one hand, Gabrielle lied to Xena about Hope and failed to understand or acknowledge the reality of what she gave birth to and by saving her allowed her to wreak havoc, which ended up in her freeing Callisto and killing Solan.
On the other hand, Xena's tact in trying to convince Gabrielle of Hope's danger, by not being more sympathetic to the outstanding circumstances and Gabrielle's fragile state of mind meant that Gabrielle panicked and was likely not acting as rationally as she might have under a different approach. Not only that, she failed to verify that Hope was really dead.
They're both indirectly responsible for what happened, but ultimately neither can be blamed. Gabrielle did not kill Solan and neither did Xena. Hope killed Solan. Yes, it could have been avoided if the problems I mentioned above had never occurred or had been fixed, but Hope, though evil, still has some measure of free will and she chose to kill Solan. That's where the blame should be placed.
That was Maternal Instincts, the episode that really cemented my investment in this story and these characters and, if you ask me (and you have because you're reading my blog), pushed the show onto a new level of quality story telling. That's what I'm going to give Maternal Instincts 5 out of 5 airlocks.
And then along comes Maternal Instincts and it's like . . . Shit. This show is actually going into pretty deep and dark places. Which makes sense considering the scary past of its hero.
Let's get to it.
1) The episode opens with Xena and Gabrielle walking through centaur land. The centaurs are having some kind of peace treaty. I'm not really sure if it's among themselves (Xena says something about the centaurs being united) or if its with their human neighbors (there are non-centaur males fighting with the centaurs later in the episode), but there are totems of some kind so that's really all I truly need to know.
2) From out of the trees Solan springs, trying to jump on Xena like some kind of expert tracker. He's there with Kaleipus, his adopted father.
And boy is this a super awkward kid. I have a hard time thinking this goofy child sprang from the loins of Xena and Borias. Not even just because he shares none of their coloring.
3) There's this mysterious creeper of a girl in the forest with some kind of ball that goes down a cliff into some rocks. From those rocks springs fire (never a good sign) and from that fire emerges Callisto.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but the last time we saw Callisto, she was a newly minted goddess and was trapped in a flowing river of lava for all of eternity with her good pal Velasca.
I assume she got out somehow in Hercules and somehow ended up under a bed of rocks (as often happens to Callisto as we see in this very episode).
But . . . hey! Callisto's back! I'm so happy! I've really missed her!
4) Who else is back? Ephiny! Exclamation points abound!
I've missed Ephiny, too. We haven't seen her since . . . Well, the same episode in which we last saw Callisto (The Quest). And she's brought her little centaur boy (are there centaur girls?), Xenon. Maternal Instincts is a straight up family reunion.
5) It's a good thing that Ephiny is there because she's not only showing support for the centaur nation, which her husband belonged and her son now belongs, but because Gabrielle super needs someone to talk to. I mean, having a demon baby and faking that baby's death so that you're lover best friend who kill her takes a lot out of a girl.
If I were Ephiny, I probably would have been like, "Um . . . Uh . . . Okay. I think I'll see you later." But, luckily for Gabrielle, I am not Ephiny and she found a sympathetic ear for her story.
6) Minutes out of the rock bed and Callisto's already wreaking havoc, what with burning those totems and killing some dudes and slinging their bodies on them.
Oh, Callisto. The more things change, the more they say the same.
7) The mysterious creeper girl shows up at the centaur village, mysteriously and creepily having survived a run in with Callisto. She's really shaken, though, and finds Gabrielle, mistaking her for Xena. Gabrielle sets her straight, but the mysterious creeper has a message she needs to give to Xena: The terrifying god lady she accidentally freed told her to tell Xena that she knows Xena's secret and is going to take it to the grave.
Uh oh. That's no good. Gabrielle tells Xena and Xena, because she knows a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff, immediately deduces that Callisto knows that Solan is her son.
And is so not happy about that.
8) But shit. Mysterious creeper disappears but shows up with Callisto in the next scene. And the really bad news? Mysterious creeper girl is Hope.
Fuck.
9) Xena immediately determines that Solan needs to hide.
Understatement of the episode.
10) Hope shows back up in the village, conveniently locating Gabrielle and even more conveniently dropping the lamb Gabrielle had given Hope as she sent her down the stream in that basket, the same lamb that Xena had gotten for Gabrielle the previous Solstice.
Gabrielle, quick on her feet, figures out that this girl is Hope, especially after the girl tells her that she was found in a basket in the water with only the lamb beside her.
Pretty unlikely to be a coincidence, right?
Gabrielle's understandably shocked. And probably should have been way more suspicious. She sent Hope down the stream in Britannia. Which is, by the way, an island. And really far away from Greece. So the chances of her showing up in the centaur village at that time? Kind of strange.
But Gabrielle is so shocked by the realization that this is her lost daughter that she's not really into being suspicious. And she's really not into telling Xena.
11) Before Gabrielle can really do anything about it, though, she has to go act a decoy for Xena by pretending to Solan to get Callisto's attention so that the real Solan could be more safely transported to the hide out.
Callisto falls for it and lights a bunch of stuff on fire and, after she figures out it was all a ruse, let's Xena in on the big secret: She's working with someone.
And Gabrielle does not make the connection that it may be Hope.
12) And Hope's been a busy girl, what with killing Kaleipus while he's in the Exion caves.
He stumbles out just as Xena and Gabrielle make it to him. Dying, he tries to tell Xena that he was attacked by "the child". I could understand exactly what he was saying. Xena, however, could not, which is strange, because she can hear a deer breathing from a mile away.
Yeah, okay.
I guess Gabrielle didn't hear him either because she still has no suspicions about Hope.
13) With Kaleipus' death, Solan asks Xena if he can start traveling with her and Gabrielle. Xena kind of wavers on it but decides, after about ten seconds of deep thought, that it's better than nothing. And it might be true. If Callisto knows about him others might also figure it out and perhaps the best way to keep Solan safe is to keep him near. There's probably no one better to protect him from do-wrongers.
14) But having your eleven year old around would probably put a real crimp in your nightly activities with your lady love best friend.
15) Gabrielle meets up with Hope back in the village and tells Hope that she's her mom.
Hope then manipulates Gabrielle into making her think that Hope's life is in danger from Callisto, prompting Gabrielle to hide Hope in the "safest place" in the village (which happens to be, for some reason, Kaleipus' hut), exactly where Solan has been hidden.
And exactly where Hope, once she's alone with him, kills Solan.
16) Xena figures out that Hope is alive because she accuses the mysterious creeper girl as being a little too mysterious and creepy and Gabrielle gets really defensive and kind of blurts out that it's Hope.
And to say that Xena isn't happy would be the second understatement of the episode. Because not only is Hope alive and working with Callisto to go after her son, but Gabrielle had been lying about Hope the whole time.
The good news (if there could be good news at this point) is that Hope is still young enough that she can be killed. Her powers are drained after killing Kaleipus (as we see in a scene with Callisto) and Xena believes she can be killed with poison.
17) Gabrielle spills that she sent Hope to Solan's hide out and Xena's out of there. She knows exactly what's likely to have gone down.
When she gets there, she finds Solan's body slumped over the altar meant to honor Kaleipus. He's unresponsive and has no pulse.
It's a little awkward to write about. Our hero has just found her son, dead. And Lucy Lawless is so good in that moment, trying to rouse him, trying to get a response, but knowing that he's dead. And then having Gabrielle run in and going off on her . . . It's a really, I think, powerful moment in the series. Because it's awful for two reasons: the dead child (which is obviously horrifying) and the breached trust between Xena and Gabrielle and the notion that Gabrielle may, in some way, be responsible for what happened to Solan.
18) Xena eventually lets go of Solan and goes out with a serious mission. She wants Callisto and Callisto is willing to play the game.
The two fight and Xena has these hidden centaurs and men shoot arrows into Callisto which doesn't do too much except make her shoot them back at them, but it does give Ephiny the time to usher the children of the village to the caves (because Hope and Callisto's plan, aside from specifically targeting Solan is to kill the other children, too). .
The fight's pretty cool, though. Callisto says to Xena, "You'd like to kill me. Wish you could." Such a wonderful line.
19) Callisto makes her way to the caves to kill the children because she wants to give them the "gift of oblivion".
Xena's not really down with that, though, and follows Callisto into the caves and continues to fight her.
It's a wonderful scene. Lucy Lawless and Hudson Leick have incredibly chemistry. And there's not all that much I love more on Xena than Callisto and Xena having actual discussions. So when Callisto tells Xena that Xena has already won, that she had lived so many years only wanting to cause Xena pain, thinking that that pain would alleviate hers and she would then be free to go on. But when Solan was killed and she heard Xena's cry of anguish, she realized that nothing changed at all. That Xena's pain didn't stop her own. It just made her feel empty.
So while Callisto may have won the battle, Xena won the war.
It's tremendous. It's a tremendous moment of acting and writing and it's a tremendous admission from such a character.
20) Still, Xena remains unmoved and goads Callisto, causing her to cause yet another cave in. IT was all a trap for the kids to go into the caves so Callisto would follow. Xena, even stricken with such grief, knew the caves were the best way to contain Callisto (though I don't understand how rocks could stop a god).
Before leaving Callisto in the cave she tells her, "You let your pain kill you years ago. I'm going to live with mine."
Again, a tremendous bit of writing and acting.
21) Gabrielle goes off into the woods with Hope, tricking Hope into believing that she believes Hope is good, but she ends up getting Hope to drink some poison, which kills her.
Aside from the brutality of having a scene where the co-star kills her own daughter, what's really hardcore about the scene is that Gabrielle lifts the water bag to her own mouth, nearly drinking the poison herself before deciding not to do it.
22) Funerals are held in the village.
Now, I'm a little confused about this because it's clearly Solan's funeral but there's a second pyre. I've always thought that the second pyre was Hope's, which has never really made sense to me, because why would Xena ever allow Hope to have a pyre next to Solan's? Then I thought that it might be the pyre of Kaleipus, but the body on the pyre is clearly not a centaur.
So I don't know.
23) But, again, we have a tremendous scene.
Gabrielle tries to apologize to Xena, telling her that none of this would have happened if she had listening to Xena about Hope back in Britannia.
Xena's not really interested in hearing it. She trusted Gabrielle. She trusted Gabrielle than she had trusted anyone before. She trusted Gabrielle with her secrets and with her life and with her heart. With her vulnerabilities. And Gabrielle lied to her and that lie lead, directly or indirectly, to the death of her son.
Yes, Xena blames Gabrielle for Solan's death.
They're both crying. I can't really say this enough but Lucy Lawless really knocked this episode out of the ball park and definite big ups need to be given to Renee O'Connor who was also amazing.
Gabrielle turns to Xena and tells her, "I love you, Xena." Just as she had in The Debt II, after another betrayal. But instead of echoing back as she does in The Debt II, Xena has no response for Gabrielle. And they both leave, in opposite directions.
What does this mean for them?
24) And whose fault is it? As far as I can tell, it's a big question within the fandom.
On one hand, Gabrielle lied to Xena about Hope and failed to understand or acknowledge the reality of what she gave birth to and by saving her allowed her to wreak havoc, which ended up in her freeing Callisto and killing Solan.
On the other hand, Xena's tact in trying to convince Gabrielle of Hope's danger, by not being more sympathetic to the outstanding circumstances and Gabrielle's fragile state of mind meant that Gabrielle panicked and was likely not acting as rationally as she might have under a different approach. Not only that, she failed to verify that Hope was really dead.
They're both indirectly responsible for what happened, but ultimately neither can be blamed. Gabrielle did not kill Solan and neither did Xena. Hope killed Solan. Yes, it could have been avoided if the problems I mentioned above had never occurred or had been fixed, but Hope, though evil, still has some measure of free will and she chose to kill Solan. That's where the blame should be placed.
That was Maternal Instincts, the episode that really cemented my investment in this story and these characters and, if you ask me (and you have because you're reading my blog), pushed the show onto a new level of quality story telling. That's what I'm going to give Maternal Instincts 5 out of 5 airlocks.