Season three, episode 11
Maternal Instincts proved another challenge for the relationship between Gabrielle and Xena.
Maternal love must be as blind as the other sort. For Gabrielle not to have seen Hope for what she was proves this. The death of Xena’s child at the hands of Gabrielle’s child not only helped to deepen the rift, it makes you wonder if the relationship between our girls will ever be the same again.
The fact that Gabrielle is willing to poison Hope was too little, too late. Despite her grief, Xena found the strength to help the children and to trap Callisto once again. I thought it was extremely insensitive of Ephiny to seek out Xena’s help under the circumstances, but how else would they have defeated Callisto?
I tried to feel sympathy for Gabrielle’s loss, but I couldn’t. All along she was aware that Hope was possibly a vessel for evil. The circumstances of Hope’s birth, the events in the temple in Britannia. Do maternal hormones rage so much, they knock the reasoning out of a person?
When the child eventually shows up again, Gabrielle still fails to alert anyone to her evil presence. The rift has many parts but to apportion blame correctly the separate incidents need to be carefully looked at.
Just because she stuck her fingers in her ears rather than heed a warning, doesn’t make her blameless later on.
At the end of Maternal Instincts, when Gabrielle says “I love you Xena”, it left me cold. I guess it’s all she could say but I hope she didn’t expect more of a reaction than the one she got.
Pash
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