Xena & Hercules Articles Archive

Gods and Monsters

When Hercules and the Amazon Women made its debut, it seemed that the matter of gods and religion and their relationship to the world of mortal men was simple enough. This was a world based on Greek myth, and here it is all true. The opening narration of both series deliberately points this out. The voiceover to Xena: Warrior Princess tells us that this is "a time of ancient gods, warlords and kings", whilst the spiel on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys makes it clear that this is a "time of myth and legend, when the ancient gods were petty and cruel, and plagued mankind with suffering".

In this time and place Zeus is the King of the Gods, with a wife called Hera, and Hercules is his illegitimate offspring.

A pantheon of Zeus and Hercules' relations govern and influence various aspects of human behaviour. Ares is responsible for war, Aphrodite's irresponsible about love, Hades keeps the Underworld in order and Poseidon controls the seas. These gods interfere in the mortal world on a daily basis, sometimes with positive results and sometimes with disastrous consequences.

The gods we see in the Hercules TV movies and early episodes of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess seem to be written with this straightforward `it's all true' intention. They are deities, the supreme power in this world. Aside from their `official responsibilities', the gods are immortal, have the power to resurrect the dead (as Zeus does for Lyla in Outcast and Ares for Darphus in The Gauntlet) and reverse time (in Hercules and the Amazon Women). They can vanish, moving from place to place at will and they have control over the destination of people's souls after the death of their physical form.

The gods of this period are not a matter of faith, they are actual physical fact: super-powBred beings that people can see, talk to, even have sex with. People don't have any choice over whether to `believe' in them, as their existence is manifest. You can disapprove of the Olympians, but you can never disprove their existence. Only on the isolated island of Atlantis is their reality doubted. On Atlantis the gods have no interaction with human beings, and because of this the people of Atlantis haven't believed in the gods for centuries, embracing rationality and logic as an alternative belief system. Their King Panthius admits to that being "our religion."

Even at this early stage though, it is obvious that Zeus - although extremely powerful and the king of the current generation of gods is not the creator of the world. It is made clear on several occasions that the traditional view of Greek mythology is being adhered to. There was a generation of deities before this one, including Zeus' father Kronos (whom Ares claims Zeus "offed") and possibly one before., ruled by Zeus' grandfather Uranus. Of course, neither series keeps strictly to one version of the Hellenic myths. Hercules' name is the Roman version (the Greeks styled him Hercules) whereas Ares is called by his Greek name in preference to the maybe more familiar, Mars. In the wonderful Xena episode A Comedy of Eros, Cupid and Eros are shown to be father and son, rather than two different names the same being.

As Hercules expanded into a regular series, which itself begat two spin-offs, the hungry machine of television ideas begins to drag more influences into play. Just as Xena and Hercules have both pillaged multiple time periods and numerous film and literary sources to provide inspiration for episodes, eventually it becomes clear that one mythology is not enough.

In season five of Hercules, our hero encounters a number of gods from other pantheons, chiefly the Norse gods Odin, Loki and Balder. The two episodes set in Norway, Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bridge and Norse by Norsewest, go to great pains to show the Norse gods as equal alternatives to their Greek counterparts. Like Zeus and his family, Odin's brood are a real physical presence in the world of men, have magical abilites, and can influence the spirits of the dead. There can be no doubting their power, and their control over their part of the world. This is interesting, because it sets separate pantheons of gods and belief systems against each other, and explicitly makes them equal. Zeus is not all-powerful, therefore, as he equals in beings like Odin.

Later in the same season, we're given a luok at a few more faiths. Celtic magic is explored in the Eire episodes of Hercules and we encounter aspects of Egyptian theology in the later instalment City of the Dead The spirituality, power and beauty of the Hindu faith is touched ;tpon in Xena in the trilogy of episodes set in India - Between the Lines, Devi and The Way. rbe introduction of all these separate faiths in so short a space of time emphasises that, in the series' new view, the Greek religion is not tque. It is true, but there are other truths. It is this fragmentation that later allows the series to introduce its version of a pseudoChristian faith.

However, not all religions seen in Xena or Hercules are adaptations of things that people believe or once believed. The third season Xena episode The Deliverer introduces us to another religion, a fictional one, and plays a cruel and unusual tick on its audience in the process. Gabrielle and Xena have travelled to Britain and encountered a group of people who believe in the `One God', not many. Gabrielle, in particular, is attracted to and intrigued by their seemingly gentle and forgiving faith. The episode leads us slowly n a path, to a point where we in to assume that Gabrielle has ountered early Christians. It n pulls the rug from under us, revealing this `god' to actually be a demon, a malevolent entity that collects followers and feeds n their pain and suffering, while ecking entry into the material jt orld. Gabrielle's shocked line This is not the one God of the Israelites" is one of the most unsettling lines in any episode of either series. This `evil god' or 'demon' (he's described as both) is called Dahak, and will become the villain who confounds Xena through much of her third season, and occupies Hercules' time for almost all of his fifth.

Oddly, it is this storyline which brings the series closest to an examination of the Christian faith. Dahak kills lolaus in Faith and in the process incarnates himself on Earth in the dead hero's body. Hercules, in Redemption, eventually destroys Dahak - with more than a little help from lolaus' soul, which is trapped in his corpse alongside Dahak's vile essence. lolaus is then taken into `the light', a blissful place of eternal rest, by a shining figure. Iolaus' ascension into this Heaven is one of the first outwardly Christian events in either Xena or Hercules and it is quickly followed up by further developments.

Revelations, the last episode of Hercules' fifth season, brings lolaus back from the dead. He returns from `the light' with tales of the `one God'. In the same episode we encounter the Archangel Michael for the first time; he is a servant of `the light', like lolaus. lolaus has returned to warn Hercules that Michael's God is planning to `cleanse' the world of human beings as he did once before. (It is implied that this refers to the flood, of Noah's Ark fame, although interestingly this event is part of Greek theology as well.) Hercules averts the destruction of humankind by proving the innate worthiness of people through his own nobility and capacity for self-sacrifice.

The first episode of Xena's fifth season gives us our first real look at this new religion. Fallen Angel takes us head first into an explicitly Christian vision of eternity straight out of Milton or Renaissance art. Hell is red and fiery, a place reserved for the souls of the evil, the corrupted and the damned, a place where there is no hope and an infinity of suffering. Heaven is all angels, clouds, ethereal music, pure water and forgiveness. The battle between good and evil is played out in explicit and emblematic terms, with angels fighting demons for the prize of the souls of Callisto and Xena.

It is in this episode that Callisto is finally redeemed. Xena gives up her own place in Heaven and her position as an angel, to transform Callisto from the ranting psychotic of her previous appearances to the innocent, kindly girl she would have been but for Xena's intervention in her life.

The hierarchy of the Heaven of this episode seems pretty straightforward. God (or `the light') is surrounded and supported by angels and archangels. Hell is full of demons, and is controlled by a fallen angel, here unnamed. The rules are made pretty clear as well. Salvatior depends on redemption, evils committed can be forgiven if truly repented. This is very, very dif ferent to the Greek myth set-up, where people can be judged by their worth as warriors, and where bad people can buy their way into salvattion through tricks.

Seeds of Faith, the 100th episode of Xena, also mentions that the souls of the dead can be reincarnated and reborn on Earth in another body after spending a certain amount of time in the afterlife. This is explicitly against mo Christian thinking: the Catholic Church, for example, frowns on any notions of reincar tion. Seeds of Faith also concerns itself with now seemingly inevitable fall of Olympus seems that one god, an entity with much common with the Christian God, is the actual originator of the universe, and that the other gods are super-powered creatures who have been allowed to play at divinity whilst mankind reached some kind of maturity.

Ares and his like are gods in the Greek sense, living beings with personalities, folibles and imense power, but they are inferior to the 'one God' that Xena is currently spending so much time building up, and they will one day have to give away to Him. Eli, an old friend of Xena and Gabrielle's from their days in India, is a leading a cult of peace, which will no longer tolerate the Olympian gods and their ways. He believes that the Olympus will fall if nobody warships Zeus and his family. He's probably right. "The day of the Olympians is over," says Eli in Seeds of Faith. During the course of this episode, both he and Xena prophesy 'the Twilight of the Gods', the final collapse of the Greek gods and their brethren in other parts of the world. And whilst Ares professes not to believe in it, he is clearly frightened by the thought of it.

Presumbly, this will tie in the intention of Eli's own cult of peace, and his hope that a culture of love and understanding can replace the explicitly 'warrior' culture of the gods of Corinth. It may even have something to do with Xena's pregnancy, and the soul of the reincarnated Callisto that dwells within her child.

There's something going on, and only time will tell exactly what it is.

Smith, Jim. Gods and Monsters. Officicial Xena Magazine. Issue 5 April 2000; pgs 41-44.