Ohhhh welcome another member to the FIN therapy circle, pull up a chair, road wine and red stuff-stuffed dumplings are on the side table.....

I think the biggest problem of the finale was treating it as its own grandiose telemovie, so disconnected from the rest of the series. I have no idea why they thought that a series finale should be treated so insularly. Now's not the time to attract new viewers by doing things so shocking and so unlike everything we else we saw leading up to it. Everything about it just seemed like too many extremes piled on us in some distant strange land. It felt so alien and disconnected from the series for the sake of pure aesthetics and shock value.

Hercules ended his run fighting Hera, Ares and Titans in good old Greece. Why does Xena have to traipse off and die in some foreign country we've had zero knowledge of? Just because The Debt is one of the best rated episodes doesn't mean it must be repeated. End Xena in Greece, maybe at Amphipolis where she came full circle! Her last journey home mirroring her first journey home in the premiere.

40K souls we had zero emotional connections to as viewers are called Xena's greatest crime ever in the most ridiculous line of the series, because this one event had the highest body count?! Xena has abused children, tortured folks, and ruined lives, but this is the one single act that requires her to end her series and not be allowed resurrection?! Come on....

Fine, Xena's a warrior. If she must die and stay dead, there are better ways of doing it. Have Gabrielle fighting right next to her and go out with her. That's exactly what happened in Ides of March. Sacrifice the end of Xena's warrior life for her relationship with Gabrielle. If the world must lose Xena forever, give Xena & Gab eternal happiness, she's earned that much. I'd accept martyring Gab to be with Xena way more than giving Gab a life without Xena against her will.

Oh, Akemi didn't tell you the catch?! How conveeeeeeenient!