Okay, so let’s get a couple of things out of the way before I delve into Day 10. 1) I know I said I disliked magical pregnancies, and I will stand by that assertion and go into that later on in the challenge. However, I’m not going to address that today. 2) One of the things that I love about the later seasons is how absolutely whackadoo the episodes get, and OMG, did my favorite Xena-centered episode go above and beyond in that category.

Season Five’s “Them Bones, Them Bones” is just … I love it so much. It has 90s-CGI skeletons fighting each other, psychedelic montages, and Xena being tricksy, but it wasn’t one of my favorites until several years after I watched it. You can argue that it’s not really that Xena-centric, because both Gabrielle and Amarice are featured pretty heavily in it, but for me, I love Xena’s journey in the episode. She starts off revealing to Gabrielle that she’s relieved she won’t have to go through her pregnancy alone, and by the end of the episode, she’s accepted that she’s going to be a mom – such a beautiful metaphor for the fears surrounding motherhood. And that’s why this episode means so much to me.

For those of you who don’t know, I miscarried back in 2017. I was lucky that I had a supportive partner at the time (our relationship did not last and a big part of that was because of the miscarriage), but since I lost the baby at only seven or eight weeks, I didn’t really have the opportunity to move through the stages and into acceptance and actual longing. I was still in the OMG mode, basically where Xena is at the beginning of “Them Bones, Them Bones.”

But it’s not just the pregnancy that influenced my love for this episode. Xena’s baby is Callisto’s reincarnation – which, again, I will be getting into – so really, this is just continuing Xena’s redemption story, and her welcoming motherhood (I mean, she already had a kid, but he died so …) is, in a way, Xena starting over, as well. She can do things differently this time, definitely something that resonates with me.

Okay, I really need to go study, but I’ll be working on catching up with these challenges. I’m hoping to get Day 11 completed this evening, so be on the lookout for that. Wish me luck on the microbes!

Runners-Up: “The Debt, Part I and II,” “Callisto”

Art Credit: Varese Sarabande