Was the Rift a controversial story line during the original airing and for the fans?

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Ok_Kangaroo_2160@reddit

I've been wondering the same - I debated asking a similar question to OP's. As someone who didn't get to watch this show as it came out, I imagine the Gabdrag was extremely controversial at the time for obvious reasons.

I also think it's very possible that Gabrielle's loss of blood innocence was met with backlash, particularly because she was tricked into taking a life.

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itsascreambaby96@reddit (OP)

and in results she was raped by Dahak

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Love-Is-Punk-Rock@reddit

Impregnation and rape are two completely different things, and I think you're just typing this nonsense to be incendiary. Gabrielle was never, ever raped in the entirety of this show and I think it's a shame that you'd even type such a terrible take. Gabrielle being raped never happened. Gabrielle being supernaturally impregnated DID happen. See the difference? Because apparently you can't with that nonsense comment. Rape is serious and Xena as a show would never play around with something like that.

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multiplecats@reddit

Sup Peanut

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Ok_Kangaroo_2160@reddit

I get why it happened, but idk if it was necessary 😑

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Cruise1313@reddit

I did not think it was necessary AT All!

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7Clarinetto9@reddit

To me it came across as "rape as a plot device." That is always gross. Surely it could've happened another way via magic or whatever.

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Few_Seaworthiness_82@reddit

https://www.whoosh.org/issue28/schultz1.html#:~:text=The%20rift%20between%20Xena%20and,necessary%2C%20from%20a%20dramatic%20perspective

I thought this article on the GabDrag from the time was very interesting!

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Ok_Kangaroo_2160@reddit

I appreciate you finding this and sharing it. Thank you!

I do find it really sad that Xena knew Gabrielle had no chance to defend herself, so it was one of the most demeaning and harshest ways to kill her best friend. She became nothing more than a rag doll. Hence, making it 'easier' for Xena to get it over with.

And then for her to try to kill her again in Illusia didn't sit right with me...because again, Gabrielle held no chance to defend herself.

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Cruise1313@reddit

I watched it when it first aired and the Gab drag was horrifying and controversial. Also controversial and infuriating was Dahak impregnating (rap e not sure if that word can be used on Reddit).

I hated that storyline as did many others.

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Aggravating_Mix8959@reddit

You can use any word on Reddit, although sometimes you can't publish a title for a new posts with some words. For example, some spoiler type words and I don't know if those are just for that sub or the whole site.

At least this is my experience. There are some random things: I wasn't allowed to publish a title with the word "fork" in it in the Downton Abbey sub. I had use "eating utensils".

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Cruise1313@reddit

Thanks I am fairly new to the rules of Reddit.

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Pop_Stensbold@reddit

The Rift has become one of my least favourite parts of the series as the years have gone by.

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Persistent_Parkie@reddit

There absolutely were thoughts at the time-

https://www.whoosh.org/issue18/hall1.html

https://www.whoosh.org/issue19/index.html

And more generally I always recommend the Whoosh archive for what was going on in the community at the time-

https://www.whoosh.org/issue24/index.html

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Ok_Kangaroo_2160@reddit

Thank you!! I'm already finding new ways to look at the show and its general reception at the time. These are very interesting!

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Persistent_Parkie@reddit

You are so very welcome. I Always loving sharing Whoosh with fans.

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FunCase8801@reddit

It wasn’t for me.

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multiplecats@reddit

It tore the fandom in half. Not like today where we have a spicy dark humor about internet bickering. Back then we had "flame wars". Think medieval trench warfare. The Rift flame war split the fandom, and every post to the mailing lists or forums remotely about the Rift, for a while, devolved into fighting.

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Love-Is-Punk-Rock@reddit

Not true at all. The extremely small minority of fans who complained on the early internet back in the late 90's were barely seen and not noticed at all by the public or the fandom at large. Please stop trying to disingenuously paint this as a bigger deal than it was. I was there. I lived through this. In NO WAY did it split the Xena fandom in half. Ugh...stop the cap. smh

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freyalorelei@reddit

I was there too and oh yes it did. I remember MASSIVE flame wars with pro-Xena/pro-Gabrielle camps screaming at each other about how [character] was justified in their actions and [other character] was a manipulative bitch for allowing [character] to suffer. It didn't trickle into the general public's knowledge because no one cares about fannish behavior outside of real-life murder, but fandom media like Ain't It Cool News and Entertainment Tonight definitely noticed and remarked on it. Hell, "The Bitter Suite" was so hyped as the end to the Rift that ET sent commentator Julie Moran to cover it behind the scenes, and she played one of the villagers in Poteidaia!

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multiplecats@reddit

pat head

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stardust102@reddit

I still don’t get why Xena was so angry at gabby with the gab drag when gab was the one raped when she knows it was hope that killed solan not of it was really gabby fault?

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Love-Is-Punk-Rock@reddit

Oh yes, it was ABSOLUTELY controversial when it first aired. I was there and I've been a highly invested and engaged Xenite for decades now. Quite literally, since the show first aired...I was there. First episode and all. That being said, I am seeing people type answers to your question that are simply not true. It was well understood that Gabrielle being impregnated by Dahak was a direct parallel to the legends of many gods being born through mortal women without the women directly knowing exactly what was going on, eg: The Christ Legend. However, it was certainly NOT looked on as any type of sexual abuse or violation of Gabrielle as a woman. That's simply not how the fandom responded as a whole, nor is that what happens in the show. The show had many female lesbian writers and they simply did not write that kind of nonsense into the show. When people make the point of "spiritual" sexual assault being the result of Gabrielle's pregnancy, they're speaking from a 2026 perspective, not the perspective of the late 90's where sexual assaults were typically not included in fantasy-fare, let alone mass produced television shows in this genre. Now? Thanks to Game of Thrones and the like, sexual abuse is discussed all the time, for good or for naught. But back then, beyond the few outliers...it was just NOT an issue.

As for "The Rift" storyline...YES, that was definitely major and it made many of us afraid for the show. We feared that the show we loved would never be the same, and we feared that their relationship was irretrievably broken. Thankfully, due to the masterful acting of Renee and Lucy, they played their parts so brilliantly that we saw Xena and Gabrielle mend their relationship in stunning fashion and it felt as if it were happening in real time. Therefore, the show BENEFITTED from their brief rift...the show became stronger for it, not weaker. The Rift episodes remain among the best in the entire series. And I daresay that "Motherhood" (the peak of the rift) is the single greatest show in Xena's entire historical run.

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Shaydu@reddit

Gotta respectfully disagree with your characterization of the fandom's response to the impregnation scene. I was part of the 'Gabchat' listserv, and there were heated arguments as to whether the impregnation scene was showing a sexual assault. The "pro" group pointed to the fact that at the moment of impregnation, Gabrielle threw her head back as if something was violently thrusting into her. Members of that group quit the listserv and stopped watching the show after Xena dragged Gabrielle behind her horse in Bitter Suite. They said they couldn't continue to support a show that depicted a rape in one episode and Xena physically assaulting and battering Gabrielle in the next.

Were a lot of people arguing that their interpretation was wrong? Absolutely. But I ran into the discourse in many disparate areas of the fandom.

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Love-Is-Punk-Rock@reddit

I get what you're saying. However, those people...no matter how wrong their interpretation of the show was for those few episodes...those people were NOWHERE near the majority of fans, and as per typical in a free society...the uber-loud minority makes the most noise. Xena remained the #1 Syndicated Show in the entire World for its entire run. That's proof that the audience did not go anywhere and the FEW...the VERY FEW who had issues with those two episodes were not missed. To even try to interpret "rape" to the Dahak impregnation of Gabrielle is absurd and reeks of Victim Olympics. smh

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itsascreambaby96@reddit (OP)

Did One An Against an Army bring you back to the show or did it feel like a course correction

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Love-Is-Punk-Rock@reddit

I never left the show. Not even once. Neither did the audience leave. Xena became the top syndicated show in the WORLD during its entire run. Tens and tens of millions of people watched the show in just America alone, and tens of millions more watched it around the world. They put Xena in theme parks for goodness sakes, and on the cover of nearly every magazine. It was a HUGE hit...not some cult show on the SyFy channel. Xena played on ABC...the biggest network in America, during a syndicated two hour block that they created for both Xena and Hercules. Again...the audience never left, and neither did I.

"One Against An Army" was an absolutely incredible show, and next to "Motherhood" it is the 2nd best show in the entire series in my opinion. It's masterful, has the best action set pieces in the entire show and Xena fights like a demon the whole time. It's just PEAK Xena: Warrior Princess. And of course, the Gabrielle hallucination scene never ceases to make us real fans cry. The first time I saw that scene, I bawled. MY goodness, what an episode! It's beloved to this day and always will be.

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TicklingTentacles@reddit

Yes lol

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Zestyclose_Lake_1146@reddit

There are some people who stopped watching permanently because of it. It’s easier now where you can binge, but I can see why some people felt that it wasn’t properly dealt with

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Spokker@reddit

I have a feeling people said that but actually didn't stop watching.

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Spokker@reddit

I don't remember too much controversy, but at the time I didn't participate in online discussions and just read them, and Whoosh as well.

What I remember is some discussions about Xena having a better reason to be angry than Gabrielle. In the Bitter Suite, the whole "you lied to me" thing seemed to be pulled out someone's butt so Lucy could get another song lol

But it was still fun.

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Agent8699@reddit

Yes, it was … controversial amongst the fans. Well, as far as things were controversial during the early days of the internet.

There were many fans who stopped watching Xena due to the Rift storyline.

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IseQween@reddit

Agreed. The Gabdrag and her "impregnation" being lines of abuse/violation expected never to be crossed. I believe we got a wealth of fanfic from bards who consider Season 2 the end of XWP as they knew and loved it. I know folks who didn't watch any or much of S3-6, unless it was years later.

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Ok_Kangaroo_2160@reddit

This makes a lot of sense bc most fanfics I've stumbled across don't directly reference events from Season 3. I understand why some Xenites would feel a sense of betrayal - I personally think there was another way for a rift to develop and come to fruition. It seems that most of it is justified as furthering Gabrielle's character, and while that may be a fair assessment, it doesn't make it any less hard to watch, and a disservice to her.

With that said, though, later seasons don't do a great job of acknowledging the cataclysmic effects the Gabdrag and Solan's death would have on X/G's relationship moving forward. However, we're not relying on the show for its realism.

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IseQween@reddit

As an action show, it gave us more emotion and a beautiful relationship that stunned me. I agree, not much in the way of dealing with the multitude of traumas X&G endured. A bittersweet result were stories with the "heart" of some "touchy feely" productions, but not the focus on lasting impact or therapeutic resolutions. I think fans give a lot more thought and continuity to what Xenastaff figured as done and dusted, maybe underestimating how "real" the characters had become to us. Left us many gaps for our imaginations to fill.

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ObnoxiousConsistent@reddit

i think XWP was always constrained by its format there. you cannot really deal with trauma like that in a continuous way when the majority of your viewers who bring in the ratings are tuning in only a few times a season... core fans who care are a minority, in terms of their impact on ratings.

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IseQween@reddit

Good point. The simultaneous emergence of internet communication often gave fans the impression we were the world and everybody must be watching this fantastic show. Lucy's accident brought attention to XWP but also made me realize just how many people knew nothing about it until then. I given Xenastaff kudos for maintaining such a good balancing act in appeal between hard core and intermittent viewers.

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Ok_Kangaroo_2160@reddit

That's true, it impacted the show enough for the series finale to exclude characters dedicated fans felt needed to show up, like Ares and Eve, but to casual viewers it wouldn't have made a difference.

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Ok_Kangaroo_2160@reddit

A show like XWP can be easily overlooked as a campy show with bad CGI. It's unfortunate that it doesn't get nearly enough credit for being such an early trailblazer in its own right.

It offers so much rich conversations about love, redemption, fighting for the greater good and finding one's purpose and role in the world. I was mesmerized by its authenticity, and emotional depth so beautifully epitomized through the journeys of Xena and Gabrielle. Even though we don't get to see how their trauma hinders their every day life, we have the comforting realization that that they will always have each other's backs, and in a world that continues to be thrown into calamities, it's a beautifully powerful story to hold onto.

Reboot or not, the show's legacy lives on.

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