Xena: Warrior Princess was an American TV show centered around an ex-warlord named Xena, who sought to make up for her past sins by using her considerable fighting skills for righteous causes. Of course, her instincts in this regard were not the best, which is why she received some much-needed assistance from her companion Gabrielle, who started out as a simple moral compass but managed to become something much more over the course of the TV show’s run. Setting-wise, Xena is supposed to be a contemporary of not just Hercules but also Julius Caesar, which rendered it nonsense but also helped to make it entertaining nonsense by allowing for a much wider range of storytelling possibilities than otherwise possible.
Why Was Xena: Warrior Princess So Popular?
There are numerous reasons why Xena: Warrior Princess became so popular with people watching it in the 90s. For example, Lucy Lawless boasted plenty of presence on the screen, which combined with her character’s exceptional capabilities to create someone worth watching. Furthermore, it should be noted that Xena was a strong female character not just in the physical sense but also in the sense that she possessed agency in a way that a lot of supposedly strong female characters still don’t. After all, Xena was the one who made the choices about what she was going to do instead of being forced to respond to the choices of other people. As a result, when combined with a surprising amount of nuance in both male and female characters as well as positive depictions of relationships between women, it is no wonder that a lot of people saw and continue to see Xena: Warrior Princess as a very campy but also a very feminist TV show.
With that said, it is important to note that there are also a lot of people who consider Xena: Warrior Princess to be something of a cultural landmark because of the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. While it was never stated outright, Xena and Gabrielle are close, so much so that they are literally soulmates who have been married to one another in other lives. Given the sheer amount of subtext, it is not exactly difficult to see why there are a lot of Xena: Warrior Princess fans who see the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle as being romantic in nature, which might not seem so ground-breaking in modern times but was a huge deal in the 90s.
Does a Xena: Warrior Princess Reboot Make Sense?
Summed up, there is still plenty of love for Xena: Warrior Princess. While a reboot can never hope to be the same as the original, it would still possess plenty of potential because of the built-in fan-base as well as the core elements that promise to be as important now as they were then. As a result, a reboot of Xena: Warrior Princess makes lots of sense even if the most recent effort at NBC is dead for the time being, meaning that fans of the TV show should continue holding out hope for a new TV show sometime in the future.
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