Xena: Warrior Princess 3x05 "Gabrielle's Hope" Reaction
Added 2022-01-16 21:04:03 +0000 UTC
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Episode parallels and foreshadowing - The immaculate conception and complete irony of Gabrielle’s Hope One of the greatest and cleverest pieces of foreshadowing in ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ is the possibly intentional parallels with the episodes ‘Cradle Of Hope’ from Season 1 and ‘Gabrielle’s Hope’ from Season 3. Both these episodes are aptly titled and you’ll understand why and how when I explain what the respective episodes are about. In ‘Cradle Of Hope’ Xena and Gabrielle find a baby in a basket that has ended up on one of the banks from downstream and Gabrielle questions why anyone would send a baby down the river. They also meet this woman called Pandora who is the descendant of the original Pandora with the Box - of which she still carries through the lineage of her family bloodline. We all know the legendary story of how everything in Pandora’s Box escapes except the Hope of Mankind. The Box accidentally gets knocked over at the end of the episode by complete clumsiness on Gabrielle’s part and that is what causes it to open - only to find that there is absolutely nothing in it at all. No hope. In ‘Gabrielle’s Hope’ Gabrielle births a demon baby (who she literally calls Hope) because she was basically raped in the previous episode by Dahak; the One God of All Evil (or something like that). After birthing the baby and spending the second half of the episode running away from Xena and the Knights Of The Round Table (don’t ask) Gabrielle sends this baby down the river in a basket to protect it from Xena who wants to kill it to which comes to bite her back later. Coming to learn that Hope represented no hope at all. The foreshadowing with these episode parallels is so great and clever to me because with Pandora’s Box in ‘Cradle Of Hope’, the Box turns out to be empty and so nothing of materiality escapes from it. But we could interpret what Xena says to Gabrielle about hope “living inside all of us” as that foreshadowing to Gabrielle becoming pregnant with Hope. Then from that there’s this whole shows-long anxiety with Gabrielle every time someone uses the term “hope” in a positive or reassuring way. Because the Hope in this show was the opposite of the Hope of Mankind. It was the destruction of it. And whether this was intentional by the writers or not (I’ll make a note to ask Steven L. Sears about this at some point), it is a personal headcanon for me that Hope did actually escape from Pandora’s Box and it was entirely Gabrielle’s fault why and how for accidentally opening the Box. It’s like the metaphor for “opening up a can of worms”, and it sort of takes the rape scenario with Dahak and turns it into an immaculate conception out of the purity and innocence of Gabrielle that ultimately is part of what forces Gabrielle out of it and has a hand in developing the character even more into the eventually heart-hardened Battling Bard we come to know in the later seasons in much the same way that Xena’s immaculate conception of Eve (who represents the opposite of Hope for the most part) has a hand in what heart-softens the Warrior Princess. I really kind of love interpreting and headcanon-ing the theme and character of “Hope” in this way rather than it’s actual definition. It’s just another way the show can subvert tropes that are harmful and controversial. In a way, to me, Gabrielle protecting her purity and innocence ends up being what causes and forces her to actually lose it. 🎶And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?🎶
Girl4Music
2023-11-11 19:49:34 +0000 UTCThis Episode which we were both looking forward to, and afraid of crossing. It's like the "goblet of fire" of this fandom. Now we officially lost our innocence.
Lipaz
2022-01-17 16:26:27 +0000 UTCIt’s a very good episode, a very dark episode, and a heck of a way to follow the obvious impact of what happened in The Deliverer.
Koz
2022-01-17 14:40:55 +0000 UTC
