Final Tributes
© Michael Martinez
I encourage you to post your own thoughts and reflections about the show -- there are only four more episodes before the journey comes to an end!
The link hidden in the graphic below will take you to my hub for this event, where you can find links to the other pages currently taking part. I'd like to thank MaryD (of the Australian Xena Information Page) for putting together a beautiful montage. The hub page will have a larger version of the graphic as soon as I get it.
Seven years ago I couldn't even spell "Xenite". Now we are one. That's what it feels like. Rivers of tears have poured across the Internet ever since it became clear that Xena: Warrior Princess would wrap up its last season of production in March of this year. But I, unlike many other Xenites, haven't been weeping. I've been watching the last hoorah of the Warrior Princess and the Warrior Bard of Poteideia with a mixture of feelings, but mostly I'm just glad I got to have seen it all from start to finish. In my opinion, the first season was better than the last, but six years of whipping up on warlords and gods takes a little something out of the "Ooo! Awww!" factor.
Actually, it's not that we're getting the same old stuff as before. Rather, we seem to have plumbed the depths Xena's dark journey. Gabrielle is her light. We understand that now. We're clued in. We have it figured out. There is no secret any more. The inside joke is done. We got the message. Heck, some Xenites made the message. Others fought it. We have long debated it. The message was...what was it? Have hope, and write home more often? Soul mates can come from different cities? Perdicas will always be remembered, no matter how reviled he will be?
The funniest thing about Xena: Warrior Princess has to be the fact that so many of us took it so seriously. I remember spending entire weekends compiling, checking, and organizing lists of Web site links just so that people who would never thank me could find the kinds of Xena sites they were looking for. It became so large a task, so daunting a prospect, that I had to ask for help, and finally turn the task over to a great team of volunteers. Fortunately for all of us, someone found some software that made the task easier. Xena Online Resources now indexes over 1700 sites, mailing lists, and other Net thingees. It would take one person, working 12 hours a day, 16-18 days to visit every one of those Web sites with a 28.8K modem. I know. I used to visit 300 in 3 12-hour days. Often with no better than a 19.8 connection.
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