FAQ

Many reasons. Xena being a female action hero at this time in screen history immediately made her unique. Whereas for Hercules, there have been countless male heroes in TV and film. She was different from other female action heroes such as The Bionic Woman, or Wonder Woman. She didn't answer to anyone, she didn't have a job with bosses. She was her own boss. She wasn't domesticated.

She wasn't vanilla like other heroes, both male and female. In her dark past, she was referred to as "The Destroyer of Nations" and led armies. A very unique interesting quality for a character. She relishes fighting. Even after becoming good, which made her seem cool and/or funny at times depending on the circumstances and episode. She had a dark past that she was trying to overcome and redeem herself for. She could call on her dark self in order to defeat a bad guy if she needed to. Despite being so tough, she was vulnerable, giving the character many layers that were interesting to watch such as when being faced with her past, or struggling in an inner conflict with her dark self. She is unparalleled. Nothing set Hercules apart from other heroes. There have been many like him.

Gabrielle was on her own journey, continuing to be a bard and becoming a warrior like Xena, and yet finding her own way. She wasn't just a sidekick but a lead character, that became a warrior and an Amazon Queen. She suffered a lot and yet didn't become dark like Xena. They are very different personalities whose friendship was tested more than once. Iolaus, who might be considered Hercules' sidekick and a parallel to Gabrielle, wasn't on a journey of self-discovery like Gabrielle, and despite being a fun likable character, didn't develop any growth in the show's run. He remained the same all the way through. In fact, both Hercules and Iolaus didn't experience any growth and remained the same all the way through.

Xena and Gabrielle's relationship was a factor in the show's popularity. Their friendship alone, and what they went through touched all viewers. It really appealed, however, to the LGBTQ community who saw them as a couple. Whereas despite in actually Greek mythology, Hercules has male lovers including Iolaus, but the show never explored that, and both Hercules and Iolaus were played as being completely straight.

Xena had darker stories that fit with a somewhat dark character like Xena. Hercules was mainly light, and the character of Hercules was very vanilla. Many fans have said they have learned things from Xena such as the greater good, love, compassion, empathy, the importance of friendships, and the idea of being able to change and grow as a person.

In essence, Xena Warrior Princess appealed to a broad range of viewers. Women and young girls saw Xena and Gabrielle as strong women to admire and aspire to. Straight men, and all, appreciated strong women, the show's action, adventures, the personalities and friendship of Xena and Gabrielle, the stories, as well as the beautiful lead actresses who are both good actors. The LGBTQ community felt that Xena and Gabrielle were a couple, and for them, they were representation. Many straight viewers saw Xena and Gabrielle as a couple too and appreciated the touching relationship the two had, which may have been at that time, the first time for straight viewers to become enamored with a lesbian pairing.

For all these reasons, Xena Warrior Princess developed a huge cult following and became culturally significant over the years which still continues today. Hercules, despite having a successful run never became as popular as Xena, and is not considered culturally significant at all, except for being the show that Xena spun-off from.

A good question. The first explanation is that the Olympian gods are capable of using their magic to time travel as has been proven in 'You are there' and 'Armegedon Now'. Therefore Strife travelled forwards in time with Ares into the 1990s and then returned to ancient Greece where he was killed by Callisto later in his personal timeline. This poses the problem of Ares potentially knowing the future which he shows no sign off but his ability to time travel may be limited solely to attempting to wreck Hercules' TV show or a higher power such as The Fates, Zeus or Hera prevent him from learning anything in the future that would upset destiny in the past. Second explanation is that Ares has somehow brought Strife back to life in the present day. Whilst characters who have died return from the dead all the time on 'Xena' and 'Hercules' for the most part gods don't, they stay dead (in fact Valesca aside unlike mortals of all religions it's unclear if deities even have an afterlife at all). It also seems unlikely that if Ares could bring another god back to life he would pick his nephew Strife whom he obviously despises, his twin (and occasional lover) Discord seems a far more likely candidate, not least as it's hinted they're also lovers. Third explanation is that by killing Strife Callisto actually changes history. When we see the 'Hercules' cast again in the later story 'For those of us just joining us' everything is the same EXCEPT that Strife no longer accompanies Ares, nor does he show up in Ares' two later appearances in the modern day on 'Xena'. Possibly the alteration in the timeline was engineered by Dahak as part of his world conquering scheme and was later corrected by the God of Eli or some other protaganist. Fourth theory is that the writers screwed up.

(OP: Discord was Ares' twin, not his niece. Just needed to fix that :) )



(Edited: Whereas it is true that the question is not really answered in the series, some things mentiones above should be corrected:

1. Ares does not at all despise his nephew Strife, he is just often annoyed by his impudence. 2. Discord is not necessarily Ares' twin; she was in the original myths, but since the series changed/altered many of those, it is only safe to say that she is his sister. 3. In the modern day timeline, Hercules interacts with Ares and Strife in a way which suggests that he meets them on a pretty regular basis - like in the old times -, which eliminates the possibility of Ares and Strife meeting modern day-Hercules only because of a time travel. Also, Hercules explicitly says that Ares and he have been fighting for about five thousand years now. 4. In the modern-day episode, Ares and Strife mention Zeus not liking actors and mockingly ask what he thinks of the show, which means that Zeus is still alive - although he, like Strife, was "killed" in the old days. Again though this may be the result of events later being altered in the timeline. 5. In modern day, Ares tries to pinch merchandising rights from Hercules as a "compensation for the weekly slander he has to endure".

Combining all of this, I think the most likely explanation for the "Strife still alive??"-phenomenon is that the series EXCEPT for the modern-time episodes is just the series that Hercules aka Kevin Sorbo is producing. Which means that what the "old-times" episodes show us does not necessarily have to do with whatever truly happened. The death of the gods - probably as well as many other things - was just something Hercules made up for the series... maybe in order to prevent the humans from believing that the gods are still among them, which they obviously are but lacking the powers we've seen before.) However this goes against what we see later with Kevin Sorbo/Hercules insisting on historical accuracy in the show. It also begs the question that if the Greek gods survived why would they allow the rise of Christianity/Islam/Buddhism/Judaism etc as the world's dominant religions?

Simplest answer is we must accept the modern world as it is depicted in later episodes of Xena/Hercules and presume one of these solutions retroactively explains the Strife paradox.

Actor Kevin Sorbo suffered a minor stroke forcing him to drop out of filming whilst he recovered. As a result the writers were forced to improvise storylines with either no Hercules in them at all or the bare minimum, writing stories concentrating on other characters or which flashed back to young Hercules (played by a different actor) and even such conceits as transforming Hercules into a pig. They even produced an episode concentrating on the writers of the Hercules TV show forced to improvise new storylines after the loss of their leading man.

Ignoring clones and reincarnations;

Hercules=still alive in the modern era and masquerading as actor Kevin Sorbo.

Iolaus=lived to 100 and died of natural causes.

Ares=still alive in the modern era but significantly depowered.

Autolycus=reunited with his wife and opened a bank.

Salmoneus=last heard off thrown in jail for tax evasion.