#intimate stranger

like-

you can see how much effort they put into being these characters that they don't usually play

and i looooove it

Okay… so here’s what happened. They were going to do the body swap episode regardless but Xena and Callisto were supposed to swap back at the end of the episode. It wasn’t supposed to continue on with Hudson as Xena into another episode. The ending was very different and there is an alternative deleted scene where they show you how it originally ended and I much preferred the dialogue due to how much it informs Gabrielle and her arc with having to think before she acts. But because of the accident, they really had no choice but to use Hudson as Xena for next episode and not show Lucy as Callisto in the sense that you don’t ever see her character until they swap back. Giving Lucy as much time as she needs to recover from her injury. They could have just done a few Gabrielle-centric episodes with Lucy in and out of the start and end of the episode like they do sometimes. But I think they wanted to see what Hudson could really do as an actress who could have been Xena because she did audition for the role.