---
title: "Xena: Warrior Princess"
year: 1995
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/xena-warrior-princess"
fi1m_score: 74
critics_reviews: 1
published: "2026-09-16T23:21:31.698228+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-16T23:21:32.024968+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Xena: Warrior Princess (1995)

Created by John Schulian, Robert Tapert · 44m · MPA TV-PG · Drama, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

**Fi1m score: 74** · Critics: 1 of 6 reviews so far

*In a sentence:* Two women, one flying frisbee, and enough leather to reupholster the Peloponnese

> Lucy Lawless plays a warlord trying to be good and Renée O’Connor the village girl who will not leave her alone, and for six seasons the show is loud, silly and far more sincere than its wigs suggest. Come for the fights; stay for the friendship.

## Synopsis

Greece, in a mythic past where gods walk about and villages burn. Xena (Lucy Lawless), a warlord who has spent years leading armies against the innocent, decides she is finished with it, buries her armour and sword, and sets out to do some good. The first thing she meets is a slaver raid on the village of Potidaea, and the first person she saves is Gabrielle (Renée O’Connor), a farmer’s daughter who wants to be a bard and refuses to be left behind. Xena’s old comrades want her dead; her home town of Amphipolis wants nothing to do with her; and Ares (Kevin Smith), god of war, wants his favourite warlord back.

## Review

*Xena: Warrior Princess* began as a spin-off from *Hercules: The Legendary Journeys*, and it was plainly meant to be the same thing with a taller lead and a different chest plate. Robert Tapert and John Schulian created it, Sam Raimi produced, and it ran from 4 September 1995 for six seasons and 134 episodes of 44 minutes each. It is a good show, sometimes a surprising one, and the surprise is how much of it is about two people talking round a campfire rather than the fights that got it made.

Lucy Lawless is the reason it works. She is tall, she can fight, and she can do the flip-and-yell business with a straight face, which most actors cannot. What she does that the part did not require is play guilt. Xena grins, throws a chakram that bounces off three helmets and returns to her hand, and then in the next scene sits with her back to the fire looking like a woman who cannot sleep. Lawless keeps both in the same body and never asks us to choose. Renée O’Connor’s Gabrielle is the talker, all questions and stories and ideals, and the show is smart enough to make her the one who changes most.

The pictures are better than syndicated action had any right to be. It was shot in New Zealand, and Allen Guilford, Donald Duncan and John Cavill give ancient Greece green hills, wet rock and enormous skies that no Greek has ever seen and nobody watching will mind. Douglas Ibold, Jim Prior and Robert Field cut the fights hard, with whip pans and speed changes and the whistle of that chakram on the soundtrack, so that a woman on a wire looks like a woman who can fly. Joseph LoDuca’s score opens every episode with a chorus of women chanting over drums, and it does more to sell the world than any line of dialogue.

It is also, often, ridiculous. The wigs are bad. The villains bellow. Some of the early effects would embarrass a school play. The comedy episodes swing from properly funny to painful, and the swing can happen inside a single hour. We winced at a good many things in season one, and we will not pretend the writing keeps pace with its own ambition every week. Kevin Smith’s Ares, though, is a real pleasure: a god of war played as a man in black leather who half flirts and half threatens, and who plainly finds Xena’s repentance a personal insult.

Here is what caught us out. We came for camp and got it, and then somewhere in the second season we noticed we minded what happened to these two. It was the quiet scenes that did it, the ones where nothing happens except Gabrielle asking whether a person can change and Xena declining to answer. The show believes she can, and it makes the case slowly, without speeches, over years. We were moved, and we had not budgeted for that.

The writers, R.J. Stewart, Steven L. Sears, Chris Manheim and Liz Friedman among them, were willing to try nearly anything: farce one week, a body count the next, an episode sung almost all the way through. Directors were drawn from the family, Michael Hurst and Bruce Campbell from *Hercules*, and O’Connor herself behind the camera for some episodes. Not all of it lands. The later seasons take turns we will not describe, and one or two of them we would argue with. But the show earns the right to be argued with, which *Hercules* rarely did.

It carries a 15, mostly for the fighting, and it is built for evenings rather than binges. Watch the first two episodes back to back. If the second one has not made you smile at the leather and care a little about the girl with the staff, this is not for you, and no amount of chakram will change that.

*Fi1m score 74, published 16 September 2026.*

### Reviews we read (1)

- **Variety**, Brian Lowry (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the series a solid companion to 'Hercules,' delivering action, effects, and humor in a mythological setting with an appealing lead in Lucy Lawless. It notes that comic relief is weaker and questions whether the male audience will fully embrace a female lead, but predicts commercial success. [Read](https://variety.com/1995/tv/reviews/xena-warrior-princess-1200443013/)

## Details

- **Created by:** John Schulian, Robert Tapert
- **Creator:** John Schulian, Robert Tapert
- **Director:** Garth Maxwell, Rick Jacobson, Mark Beesley, Josh Becker, Charles Siebert, T.J. Scott, Andrew Merrifield, Michael Hurst, John Fawcett, Michael Levine, Oley Sassone, Robert Tapert, Doug Lefler, Gary Jones, John Laing, Charlie Haskell, Chris Martin-Jones, Paul Lynch, Bruce Campbell, Christopher Graves, Stephen L. Posey, John T. Kretchmer, Jace Alexander, Renée O'Connor, Stewart Main, Mario DiLeo, Marina Sargenti, Ken Girotti, Bruce Seth Green, Gilbert M. Shilton, David Warry-Smith, Anson Williams, Eric Brevig, Philip Sgriccia, Harley Cokeliss, Paul Grinder, Patrick R. Norris, Robert Ginty, Janet Greek, John Cameron, Allison Liddi-Brown
- **Writer:** Steven L. Sears, R.J. Stewart, Chris Manheim, Nora Kay Foster, Adam Armus, Paul Robert Coyle, Joel Metzger, Hilary Bader, Tom O’Neill, George Strayton, Emily Skopov, Terence Winter, Liz Friedman, Peter Allan Fields, Carl Ellsworth, Melissa Good, Vanessa Place, Chris Black, Jeff Vlaming, Thomas A. Swyden, Noreen Tobin, James Kahn, Linda McGibney, Brenda Lilly, Gillian Horvath, Julie Sherman, Eric Morris, Robert Sidney Mellette, Ashley Gable, Melissa Blake, Alan Jay Glueckman, Gene O'Neill, Katherine Fugate, Gregg Ostrin, Patricia Manney, Kevin Maynard
- **Story:** Robert Tapert, R.J. Stewart, Chris Manheim, Steven L. Sears, Nora Kay Foster, Adam Armus, Josh Becker, Joel Metzger, Liz Friedman, Edithe Swensen, Jack Perez, Michael Levine, Roy Thomas, Janis Hendler, Babs Greyhosky
- **Teleplay:** R.J. Stewart, Nora Kay Foster, Adam Armus, Steven L. Sears, Chris Manheim, Joel Metzger, Hilary Bader, Tom O’Neill, George Strayton, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci
- **Cinematography:** Donald Duncan, John Cavill, Allen Guilford
- **Editor:** Jim Prior, Robert Field, Douglas Ibold
- **Music:** Joseph LoDuca
- **Producer:** Sam Raimi
- **Cast:** Lucy Lawless as Xena; Renée O'Connor as Gabrielle; Kevin Smith as Ares; Meg Foster as Hera; Musetta Vander as Ilainus; Mary Elizabeth McGlynn as Pandora; Christopher Mayer as Peranis; Andy Anderson as Hesiod
- **Runtime:** 44m
- **Certificate (MPA):** TV-PG
- **Release (the US):** 4 September 1995
- **Genres:** Drama, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

## Where to watch in the US

- The Roku Channel: free, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy, sd

*Checked 2026-09-16.*

Also available in: AU, BE, BG, CZ, GB, IE, IT, LT, NL, NO, NZ, RO, RS, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Hercules: The Legendary Journeys* (1995): The parent show, gentler and sillier, with Kevin Sorbo hitting people cheerfully.
- *Buffy the Vampire Slayer* (1997), Fi1m 80: Another young woman with a destiny, better jokes and a longer shadow. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/buffy-the-vampire-slayer.md)
- *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon* (2000), Fi1m 90: Women on wires done with all the grace Xena could only gesture at. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/crouching-tiger-hidden-dragon.md)
- *Robin of Sherwood* (1984): British myth with mud, mist and a folk score that sets the mood.
- *Jason and the Argonauts* (1963): Greek gods meddling with mortals, and Harryhausen’s skeletons still frighten.

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/xena-warrior-princess