Prometheus

• Gabrielle gets jealous.
  • "How do you know you're supposed to visit this particular oracle if Prometheus is captured?" asks Gabrielle.
    "I just know."
    "Hey, you're plenty mysterious enough without having to work at it. Are you going to give me a straight answer?"
    "A friend told me."
    "A friend?! Who?"
    "Just a friend."
• Xena is concerned about providing for Gabrielle's future.
  • "You made it!" cries Gabrielle, pleased that Xena has returned from the temple.
    "You had faith, didn't you?"
    "Of course! Never a doubt. You always come through."
    "Gabrielle, what if one day I don't come through."
    "That's not gonna happen."
    "But if it does, what would you do?"
    "I'd become a travelling bard."
    "You'd be good at that. Shouldn't you have some schooling first?"
    "That would be great."
    "Where's the best place to study that kind of thing?"
    "Athens. At the academy. Why are we talking about this? It's depressing. Nothing's gonna happen to you."
    "You're probably right."
• In the barn, Gabrielle probes Xena about her past with Hercules and Iolaus, but Xena is unresponsive.
  • "You're not much for girl talk, are you? Of course, you're not like most girls."
• When Iolaus and Gabrielle stop in the caverns, it is Xena who comes immediately running back to make sure everything is alright. Jealousy?
• Eventually, Iolaus reveals that he is injured, and Gabrielle volunteers to stay with him.
  • Xena gives Gabrielle a look. (Once again, jealousy?)
  • Xena and Gabrielle exchange a tender embrace, and hold each other's hands.
  • Gabrielle calls after Xena, "Don't strike the blow!" She's more than willing to let Hercules die instead of Xena.
• Iolaus talks about his previous affections for Xena. Gabrielle responds, "She's really special, isn't she? Sometimes I wonder what she sees in me."
• Gabrielle relates the following story to Iolaus. Whom could she be referring to?
  • "Once a long, long time ago, all people had four legs and two heads. And then the gods threw down thunderbolts and split everyone into two. Each half, then, had two legs and one head. But the seperation left both sides with a desperate yearning to be reunited; because they each shared the same soul. And ever since then, all people spend their lives searching for the other half of their soul."
• Hercules and Iolaus have the following discussion as they are looking at Xena and Gabrielle.
  • "Hercules?"
    "Yeah?"
    "Do you believe that everyone has someone out there that shares a part of their soul?"
    "I know it."

Notes:
The only thing i can say about the motives of our heroines in this episode is that the immanent end of the world must have made them experimental.
HPP provides this excellent analysis:
As far as I can tell the best reference to an implied same-sex love occurs in Gabrielle's story to Iolaus while they wait in the cave. She tells him of a prehistoric time when mankind had "two heads and four legs", an idlyic state which Zeus destroyed by cutting them in half. This remembered loss, she states, is what drives people to constantly look for their missing mate.

Although she does not tell the whole tale, this is a paraphrase of the story told by the character of Aristophanes in Plato's symposioum. This well known allegory describes a primordial state in which there were three sexes, not two, and each person was two beings together -- either male/male, male/female, or female/female. "The reason for the existence of three sexes and for their being of such a nature is that originally the male sprung from the sun and the female from the earth, while the sex which was both male and female came from the moon, which partakes of the nature of both the sun and the earth." Because of the great strength of these units, Zeus decided to seperate each of them, saying "I will cut each of them in two; in this way they will be weaker."

Aristophanes goes on to describe the results of the operation saying, "Man's original body having been thus cut in two, each half yearned for the half from which it had been severed. When they met they threw their arms around one another and embraced, in their longing to grow together again... Each of us then, is the mere broken tally of a man, the result of a bisection which has reduced us to a condition like that of a flat fish, and each of us is perpertually in search of his corresponding tally...Women who are halves of a female whole direct their affections towards women and pay little attention to men; Lesbians belong to this category..."

"Whenever [such a woman has] the good fortune to encounter [her] own actual other half, affection and kinship and love combine and inspire in [her] an emotion which is quite overwhelming, and such a pair practically refuse ever to be separated even for a moment. It is people like these who form lifelong partnerships, although they would find if difficulty to say what they hope to gain from one another's society. No one can suppose that it is mere physical enjoyment which causes the other to take such delight in the company of the other. It is clear that the soul of each has some other longing which it cannot express, but only surmise and obscurely hint at."

"I say that the way to happiness for our race lies in fulfilling the behests of Love, and in each finding for himself the mate who properly belongs to him; in a word, in returning to our original condition."

Even though Gabrielle does not give all the story, the script writers certainly knew it. She tells it following a remark in which she wonders aloud what Xena sees in her. Even as she holds Iolas' head in her lap, she is thinking of a different kind of connection than the one she shares with him, and I believe the story is offered as a clue to the alert audience member.

HPP

*Quoted from: The Symposium (Plato ca. 427-347 B.C.) Translated by Walter Hamilton, Penguin Books, 1987.