Xena Finally Comes Out in Reboot

A lot has changed since the 1990s when Xena: Warrior Princess first aired. For one thing, the idea of a strong, capable, independent female heroine was novel back then, but these days you can find strong women all over TV. It's the overall cultural shift in attitudes toward same-sex relationships over the past two decades, however, that will have the biggest effect on the upcoming reboot of the series on NBC. Yes, after all these years, Xena will finally be able to be openly gay.

From the beginning, the relationship between Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle was clearly something more than simply friendship, and fans have long assumed that the couple shared a romantic and/or sexual connection. Lucy Lawless, who played Xena in the original series, has acknowledged for years that she believed her character was gay, but in the 90s, openly gay characters were rare on TV, and the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle had to remain in subtext.

Now it's 20 years later, and those repressive days are over. This week, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, the writer in charge of bringing Xena back to TV, said that he'll not stand for being anything less than open about Xena's sexuality.

"There is no reason to bring back Xena if it is not there for the purpose of fully exploring a relationship that could only be shown subtextually in first-run syndication in the 1990s," he said in a post on Tumblr.

Of course, Grillo-Marxuach still has to get his vision past the series' producers and the network, but there's reason to believe that the Warrior Princess will at last be able to show us who she truly is.

The Xena reboot is set to debut on NBC later this year.