#the convert

TIOREORE NGATAI-MELBOURNE as Rangimai in The Convert (2023)

Wishing the incomparable 👸🏿 and my fave, Danai Gurira a fantastic 🎂 and Valentines Day! 💝

GABRIELLE: "Yeah, I remember. A place whose only purpose is to ease suffering. It was a good idea."

NAJARA: “It still is."

GABRIELLE: “Najara, I think what you're doing is wonderful. Giving up fighting, working through peace and starting a hospice would be good for you. But it's not for me. My place is with Xena."

NAJARA: “I know and it always will be… until her continuing violence finally makes her do something even you can't excuse."

GABRIELLE: “That's not going to happen."

NAJARA: “It has to. And then you will have to choose - not between me and Xena - but between Xena and your own soul."

Watching ‘The Convert’. This conversation really struck me this time around knowing what happens going forward and knowing what they just discovered. Najara argues that Gabrielle being with Xena is not good for her. Claiming that continuing travelling with her will tear at her soul and she’ll have to choose to either stay or separate. But what Najara doesn’t know but Xena and Gabrielle do at this point is that Gabrielle’s soul IS Xena’s soul as they’re one soul inhabiting two bodies. So if Gabrielle were to separate from Xena to choose her own soul… it would still tear at her soul anyway because her soul cosmically belongs to both of them.

It wouldn’t be a solution. It would just make things worse. They’re better off being and staying together because at least they’re able to face the violence and the pain with the strength of two people. Not just one.

But then I suppose Najara thinks Gabrielle wouldn’t be worse off because she’d somehow find a way to worm her way into her life again even if Gabrielle doesn’t want her. Even if she has no interest in finding a new partner. Even if Xena is all that will ever be good enough for her.

And to every love interest that comes into the narrative from this point onwards she says this. Literally says that Xena is her partner and nothing will change that - separated or not. it’s just a very poignant interaction that tells you that Gabrielle still had so many options - many different paths to take or different ways to follow.

And yet she still chose Xena every single time to the point where it wasn’t Xena’s continued violence that made the difference. It was falling back into her own.

For Xena. Because her love for her mattered more than the continuing cycle of violence that teared at her soul.

You see everything is a lot more complicated now that they know that they’re literal soulmates for all eternity. It’s a serious narrative. It’s not something they just throw in for the sake of it pleasing the pink audience. They really grapple with the implications of what it means for them to be cosmically intertwined in this way. To share the same soul and all karmic lifetimes - obviously including the one they’re currently living.

I mean what do you do when you discover that you’re soulmates with someone you live with and are in love with? That the Universe itself won’t let you separate. That regardless of what your choices are, you’re all in on a fundamental level because your soul says it’s so.

I mean Gabrielle literally says that to Brunhilda in ‘The Ring’. She says neither herself or Xena made it this way. It just is the way it is and they just had to accept and embrace that because it was never going to change. Even after their lives ended - that was just how it was. I mean what else can you do about it but stay together?

But the question is - if Najara had known what Xena and Gabrielle knew, would she have relented? Would she have stopped trying to hurt and sabotage their strong relationship? Or did “The Light” and her philosophy only matter to her when it was about herself and what she wanted or chose to do? Was she really adherent to her philosophy or was that only as it was useful to her?

A battle-hardened life would always tear at Gabrielle’s soul. But part of the reason why it would is because she was never meant to be the peace loving farm life wife but she was much more accustomed to that way of life. Xena walked into it and completely upended everything but that was not totally on Xena. She made her choices.

And her choices were:

Season 1 - Xena.

Season 2 - Xena.

Season 3 - Xena.

Season 4 - Xena.

After that it was only second nature to her. Instinct. The soulmate scenario was merely just a “just in case…” 😝

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