Black Armband Days

Well, it is official. The final episode wrapped filming in New Zealand this past week, and there have been several articles and interview transcripts making the internet rounds. As you can imagine, this event is making big news down in Auckland, and even the mainstream American news media (which had moved on to more recent fads) is jumping on the bandwagon.

In conjunction with the end of filming, Renee announced that she and Steve are expecting their first child. My congratulations extend to the couple, and I'm sure the fundraiser being run by Sword and Staff will generate a great deal of money for the Montefiore Medical Center (check out the Sword and Staff website at http://www.sword-and-staff.com for more information).

I'm speaking with a couple of other Xena webmasters, trying to come up with some kind of testimonial event to celebrate the ending of the series. More information will be forthcoming, but if you have any ideas, feel free to share them!

With that news out of the way, I'd like to return to the "Questions from Jan" theme I've been playing with. She asked, Why was Xena stripped of the power to kill gods and since when did Eli give it to her? Just a way to get rid of that aspect of the character for story-line purposes? I sort of addressed this question in my article about Michael, but I will address it again briefly.

Xena was supposedly given the ability to kill gods in order to protect Eve - the messenger of the Light. This is true - but there was a beneficial side effect to this ability. Xena ended up killing off most of the dominant pantheon in the area - effectively removing the Light's competition.

But when Xena threatened to use that divine assassination ability on the very powers that gave it to her - powers represented on Earth by Eli and Eve - it was taken away in a kind of divine disarmament. That's what I think the "story reason" is. However, I do believe RenPic took Xena's power away to remove as many elements of a generally unpopular storyline as they could.

Jan also asked how I thought the series would end. Would Xena retire and pass the mantle of hero to Gabrielle? Would she die, leaving Gabrielle as her heir? Would the series end in the same way Hercules did, with Xena and Gabrielle heading off into the sunset and further adventures?

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