I know at least one person who’s credited her own sexual awakening as a lesbian to Xena and Gabrielle. We had this conversation before, when I talked about Gillian Anderson, but you have to. Lesbians of the ’90s were strongly connected with Xena and Scully, and that’s just how it is. Apparently, while she was acting in it, Lucy Lawless wasn’t trying for any kind of specific relationship with Renée O’Connor as Gabrielle, but after watching the series finale acknowledged that, yes, they were married. Lawless herself isn’t a lesbian, but she’s so much of a lesbian icon that, when Subaru was trying to court lesbian car buyers in the ’90s, they ran an ad with two Subarus side by side, one with a license plate that said “CAMPOUT” and one that said “XENALVR.”

I mean, there’s more to Lucy Lawless than Xena. She’s been on a whole lot of other TV and a handful of movies. She’s a former Miss New Zealand. She’s an accomplished singer, even playing Rizzo in a Broadway revival of Grease. She is an environmental activist. She sits on the board of a charity that raises money for Starship Children’s Health, a children’s hospital in Auckland. And, of course, she had a dwarf planet nicknamed in reference to her character. How many people can say that? And Eris, as the planet was actually named, has a moon—named Dysnomia after the Greek goddess of lawlessness.

She seems like a really cheerful, laid back person, which is pleasant. She didn’t go out of her way to court Gay Icon Status, but she doesn’t reject it, either. Her appearance on The Simpsons is a lot of fun, too, poking fun at both fandom and her own persona. And she actually called Mike Brown, the discoverer of Eris, to thank him for the nickname, even though she didn’t necessarily believe it would stick. (I had rather hoped it wouldn’t; I’m not actually a Xena fan, because I read a ton of mythology as a child and was driven crazy by the show’s cavalier attitude toward the whole thing.) I know that the designation Eris has a lot to do with the Pluto controversy it caused, but after all, Eris is a character on the show.

Normally, it kind of bothers me when characters who are Just Friends are automatically lumped into romantic relationships, because it feels as though no one is allowed to have a friend without it being obviously something more. (See also Bert and Ernie.) I’ve long enjoyed the designation “hetero-life-mate.” I’ve also long hated the term “bromance,” though, because seriously, if two guys have a romantic relationship, that’s a romance. If they’re friends, that’s a friendship. We don’t need a new word. It feels like a “no homos” clause. Whereas Xena and Gabrielle just lean into it.

Part of why I’m glad they decided not to go with a revival of the show is that I feel as though they’d feel the need to make the relationship explicit. Don’t get me wrong—we could stand more lesbian relationships on television (and movies that aren’t aimed explicitly at queer audiences). I could just do with fewer lesbian relationships written by men, and most of Xena was from men. Created, written, and directed, for the most part. If there had to be a Xena revival—and I’ll confess to not being inordinately fond of revivals in general—I’d want a lot more women as writers and directors. Then again, that’s true of pretty much everything.

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