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Glad you had a chance to post, Pandora - now, it's clobberin' time!

In the annals of genre television, using one of a series' final episodes to readdress a 3-year old plot conundrum may not be the stupidest idea ever, but it's far from the brightest. Soul Possession is an uninspired rendition of that idea, one that creates more problems than it resolves and trashes a couple of major characters in the process. Why Rob Tapert was so determined to revisit a subject that no one really cared about anymore is something only he can answer - it may be that he was so absorbed in the finale by that time that he simply ran some ideas off of the top of his head and let Melissa Blake take it from there. As it turns out, the havoc it creates in existing storylines is in no way ameliorated by the sporadic bits of humor it dishes out, or by the reintroduction of some lame uber characters that weren't very interesting the first time around.

The C.H.A.K.R.A.M. organization is mildly cute, as is the shoutout to the Whoosh! website - hooray for Kym Taborn! On the other hand, the two demented fans crashing in to demand a seventh Xena season are the same old caricatures we've already seen on Send in the Clones, or for that matter Déjà vu All Over Again - yes, hard-core fans can be silly; been there, seen that. Professor Windbag tells his enrapt audience that a new Xena scroll has been found, one that reveals that Xena was married to Ares! Cue gasps of horror, and we segue into the commercial break and Act I . . .

Xena returns from the Amazon Otherworld convinced that Gab is still alive, and gets Joxer to come along, leading us to Inconsistency #1 - remember the opening of A Family Affair, when Joxer is leaving the flowers for Gab at the lava pit? If Joxer had actually gone through everything we see him experience in this ep, would he have been behaving like that? As I recall, he wasn't surprised to see Xena alive, just that she happened to be crawling out of the lava pit. Ah well, let's move on to the appearance of Ares, the God of Sleaze. Now, Ares was a lot of things in S3 - manipulative, disingenuous, untrustworthy - but this marriage scam feels utterly out-of-character. He was obsessed with Xena, sure, but there were always certain rules to the "game," even when he sicced the Furies on her. And what's this deal about marriage, and why does being married in the presence of the Fates mean that it's eternally binding? More rabbits pulled out of the hat, and it's awfully late in the series to be pulling out rabbits.

The bit about Gab selling her soul to save Hope smells like 100% BS as well, and Melissa ironically puts her finger on its fatal flaw when she claims that it represents the ultimate "maternal instinct." Gab killed Hope in Maternal Instincts, remember? Why would she suddenly be stricken with the desire to save Hope, especially after what she saw in Sacrifice? The deal with Ares is not only dumb, it's degrading to Gab's character - so she suddenly decides to dump all of her hard-earned wisdom and experience because she can't bear to see her little monster destroyed? For that matter, when did Ares become a soul merchant? He's not Alti - he's never given a damn about anyone's past or future lives before, nor has he been notably interested in people's "souls" - if they serve him, great, if not, they're expendable. I'm sure everyone already is well aware that this absurd story also contradicts virtually everything we were shown in A Family Affair - it was quite clear in that episode that Gab was shocked to find out that Hope was still alive.

Xena's comment that Ares wanted to save Hope because she was carrying "his child" was especially fatuous - does anyone imagine Ares having fond paternal feelings towards the Destroyer? This marriage business also makes the entire Xena/Ares S5 storyline more than a little dicey - what was all the big deal about a child if there was already a document that gave Xena's soul to Ares? Wouldn't he have spent his time scouring the Ionian Sea for it, rather than hanging around Xena? If Melissa is correct in claiming that she and RT worked on this plot together, it's one more piece of evidence that RT didn't really understand his characters or their journey all that well - his picture of them was formed early in the series, and never changed very much. His strengths lie in concept and imagery, not narrative.

If there's one character who comes out of this fetid mess with any dignity, it's Joxer. Blake managed to give the Mighty One some good material, and Ted Raimi rises to the occasion with one of his best turns as "classic" Joxer (pre-25-year sleep). He has his full share of idiocy on display, but also some great character moments, and his scene with Xena the evening before the "wedding" is the strongest the two of them ever had together - I wish they'd had material this good to work with while the series was in its prime.

One other character I liked - Meg only got a short scene, but it was certainly memorable! Her dismissal of Gab's death was pretty cold, but I suppose she looked at Short, Blonde and Preachy as a rival for Joxer's affections, even if Gab never saw it that way. The brief contact between Meg and Joxer actually fits in well with what we see of them later in Key to the Kingdom and Livia.

As for the present-day characters, Mattie, Annie and Harry were OK as one-offs in Déjà vu All Over Again, but they didn't really deserve a repeat appearance. At least Mel Pappas, Janice Covington and Jacques Ser were interesting people in their own right back in The Xena Scrolls - these goombahs are utterly bland carriers for their reincarnated souls, although Annie is somewhat appealing as she makes a valiant effort to defend Joxer. BTW, I thought that the cheap shot at Joxer ("he never twitched a heroic muscle") was utterly uncalled for - he may have never twitched a competent muscle, but that's another matter entirely. As good as Ted Raimi's Joxer scenes are in this ep, I'd like to request that he never, EVER tries to do Xena again - he looks and sounds utterly ridiculous, which isn't supposed to be the point here.

Ares does look pretty slick in his black duster on a big motorcycle - I wonder if Kevin Smith got to do all of the riding scenes? We get another cheapo story trick when Ares magics all of the reincarnated souls into their "proper" bodies - hate to tell you this, Melissa, but reincarnation doesn't work that way. Those souls were born into the bodies they were meant to be in, whether Ares likes it that way or not. We get the standard Xena/Ares fight scene, Ares gets tricked into blowing up the marriage document, he delivers the hokey "until next time" line that he'd already stopped using by S2, and all ends happily, I guess.

Josh Becker's direction is competent, and the clips are far fewer and much less annoying than they were in Send In The Clones. Lucy Lawless and Ted Raimi work very well together in this one, and Kevin Smith gives us his Hercules Ares - it doesn't feel quite right, but that's the writer's and director's fault, not his.

This one gets 6/10 chakrams - Joxer, Meg and Xena save it from getting rated a lot lower. Not the episode I would have chosen to say goodbye to Ares with . . .