There’s still a way to make Xena: Warrior Princess work, but those “creative differences” have to stop being used to hold it back. Whether or not the exploration of a relationship between Xena and Gabrielle will be explored or not is still up for grabs, but right now shifting the focus entirely to that would only stymie the production simply because it’s the wrong thing to focus on. Getting the show to come back and showing that while Xena is still awesome but not infallible would be a big step forward. A leap would include the fact that while Lucy Lawless will forever be remembered as the first, she is not bound to be the last if the show wants any shot at coming back.
That probably sounds like sacrilege to anyone that’s ever watched the show and it’s understandable since it would be like making any other beloved show from the past and rewriting it so that the main character had to be played by someone else. It wouldn’t be the first time but in various cases it would certainly be the last since fans don’t often stand for this unless the replacement is just that good. Even then the success rate is low since so many people are firmly against this kind of thing that trying to pull a fast one on them would be anything but a good idea. Xena was the type of hero that everyone knows and whether you like her or not it can be agreed that playing fast and loose with someone’s favorite is never a something that should be considered worth the effort. But there’s more to why Xena would work in this era, and it has almost nothing to do with the fact that she and Gabrielle would probably hook up at some point.
This is the time for strong female characters that can lead their own show, and it’s the time to show them off and let them forge ahead when it comes to taking charge. People use Wonder Woman as a big example for a lot of things and while it’s not wrong she can’t shoulder the push for more women to take control all on her own. There’s not a lot of chance that women will ever take full control of the movie and TV from male characters but they’re coming out in a big way now and more and more people are loving it to the point that they want to see female-driven TV shows and movies. They want to see that women are being represented as much as the men and Xena can give them this. She’s every bit as tough as the men and in some cases is even tougher. Allowing her to make her way back to the small screen would likely cause a huge spike in the ratings simply because the fans would go nuts to know that she’s coming back.
However, the one thing that could derail it, besides ‘creative differences’ would be the reaction of the fans when they figure out that Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor are in their late 40’s, possibly early 50’s when it comes to Lawless. New actors would have to be found, and that might put a dent in peoples’ enthusiasm. Hopefully it would blow over but it would certainly cause a few gasps of surprise.
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