Hope is played by: as a baby, Hannah Carr and Alyssa Carr. As a child/teenager: Amy Morrison. As an adult: Renee O’Connor. She was in: “Gabrielle’s Hope” season 3, episode 5. “Maternal Instincts” season 3, episode 11. Hercules’ “Armageddon Now” season 4, episode 13. “Armageddon Now II” season 4, episode 14. (back to Xena)“Sacrifice” season 3, episode 21. “Sacrifice II” season 3, episode 22. “A Family Affair” season 4, episode 3.
Hope is the daughter of Gabrielle and Dahak. Dahak is the one great evil. He is supposedly more powerful than the gods, all of them. He is a force that can never be let into the world. In a nutshell, “Dahak is a bad god-type thing”. Gab was on his altar and he planted his seed in her. Thats how they put it anyway. She was born in Britannia aka England.
She grew really fast, in a matter of hours actually. Gab thought that she was being punished for committing her first kill. Gab had lost all faith in the world, but when she gave birth, she had hope again. So she named her daughter “Hope”. The birth scene was pretty neat. It was in a barn-type place, with a storm raging, animals watching, and some people trying to kill her. When Hope was born the storm disappeared without a trace and the people broke through the door.
They thought Gab’s child was evil, and wanted to kill her. Two of their own turned with Xena, and went into another room, and blocked the doorway. It would be safe to stay in that room until Gab could travel again. Gab is a great mother. You can tell she loves Hope more than anyone or anything in the world.
While they were sleeping, Xena heard a noise and went to investigate. One of their new “friends” let banshees into the place. Xena rushed to get Gab, Hope, and the loyal ally of theirs. She found him dead, strangled with a medallion chain he wore. Guess who was holding the medallion? Hope. Xena was about to kill Hope when Gab woke up. She said that her child was not evil, and then went with the banshees, who are helpers of Dahak. Xena chased Gab and Hope. She caught up with Gab on a cliff, without Hope. Gab said that Hope had tried to kill her, and she had thrown Hope over the edge of the cliff. What really happened was she had sent Hope in a basket, with a toy, down a river. At the end of the ep, Gab says a little prayer for Hope.
The next time Hope appears, she is grown. She is around 12-13 years old, I would guess. She has powers now, telekinesis( I think that’s what it is called). Hope can move things with her mind. She frees Callisto from the lava pit she was dumped in. Hope is still weak, every time she uses her powers it weakens her. After she released Callisto, she fainted. She then makes plans to kill Solan and many more children in order to help fulfill Dahak’s “plan”. She kills Kaleipus, and that weakens her. But not enough to stop her from killing Solan later on. She does reveal herself to Gab, or lets herself be revealed. She walks around with the toy that Gab left for her in the basket. Gab notices it, and starts protecting Hope from Xena again. Hope makes a mistake after she kills Solan though, and Gab knows she is evil. Gab poisons Hope, killing her.
The next time we see Hope, she has turned into more of a demon. She looks like every inch of her body has been burned. Which it has, her dead body was burned on a funeral pyre. She makes plans to rid the world of Hercules. She frees Callisto from another tomb Xena placed her in, and orders her to get Hind’s blood. Callisto at first does not want to help, until Hope promises to rid Callisto of her demons, in a way she never thought possible. So Callisto follows orders and gets the Hind’s bloods. And she kills a god in doing so, and traps Herc in a place between worlds. Then Hope sends Callisto back in time to kill Hercules’ mother. Long story short: Iolaus saves the day and everything works out, Herc comes back, the regular timeline is restored, and there is only two things that happened in the second half of Armageddon Now. One: Callisto is now trapped in a place between worlds for a while. Two: Iolaus had smeared Hind’s Blood on a dagger to use against Callisto. He never used it and Herc shoved it in a stone to keep anyone else from using it. The dagger is now called “The Hind’s Blood Dagger”. Hope saw where Herc put it.PS: While all of this was happening, Gab and Xena were enemies and in Illusia, most likely.
In Sacrifice, Callisto gets out of the place between worlds. Hope is in a cocoon, growing all over again. Callisto must get the Priest of the Flesh, which she does, and the Priestess of the Blood, Seraphin. Seraphin is an old friend of Gab’s, and they think she is in a cult and rescue her. Once they figure everything out, about Hope being reborn and all, they try to stop it. Without Seraphin’s blood, Hope can’t be reborn. But she might choose another Priestess of the Blood, so Xena has to kill her while she is still in the cocoon. Ares joins with Dahak and protects Hope. He makes it so if Xena kills Hope, then Xena dies. This creates a problem, but Xena still wants to kill Hope. Hope, now looks exactly like Gabrielle. Outfit, staff, everything. And she is sleeping with Ares, so she can get pregnant and create, well I’ll let Ares explain it. “Ares: “Our child will be the first of what Dahak calls “the six destroyers” insidious creatures with no souls, who eat of the living and the righteous, and lay waste to all gods.” So there you have it. But, Callisto joins up with Gab and Xena. She wants to die and they have the Hind’s Blood Dagger. It was moved from its original spot. Hope has no idea where it is now. So they all meet up in Dahak’s temple when he is about to be released. Joxer tosses Xena the Hind’s Blood Dagger, which he got, and that scares off Ares. Xena is about to kill Hope when Gab jumps in front of Hope and pushes her down a lava pit, and unfortunately falls with Hope to their deaths. Xena stabs Callsito with the dagger and kills Callisto. Both her and Joxer are stricken with grief.
“A Family Affair” It seems like Gab is alive and well in. Poteidaia. But when a monster is caught around the city, Xena goes after it with Gab. When fighting the monster Xena notices that it never attacked Gab. She realizes that who she thought is Gab was actually Hope all along. She vows to kill Hope and her child. She can now kill Hope because Ares, thinking Hope is dead, lifted that If-Xena-kills-Hope-she-will-die-rule. Hope is threatening to kill Gab’s family, so Xena can’t kill her just yet. But then the real Gab returns and Xena uses this to trick the monster. The poor monster really loves Hope, she seems fond of him to. When he gets confused and stabs Hope, killing her and himself, it is sad. And that is the end of Hope, well maybe not. We just haven’t seen her anymore this season. Maybe she will return in Season 5.
INTERESTING FACTS:
For those of you keeping track, Hope has died a total of: 3 times. In Maternal Instincts, when Gab poisoned her, In Sacrifice II when she was pushed into the lava pit, and in Family Affair.
In Sacrifice Seraphin says something interesting when telling Gab about Hope and Dahak: Seraphin: “And you have no idea of the greatness of Dahok. When the goddess is reborn, she will return from the Sister Peaks. The bringer of the destroyer will wash the land of its sins. On the rebirth, it will come to pass. Werfner, the high priest,has promised us this.” Notice how she says Destroyer, without an “S” not plural. Ares spoke of 6 Destroyer, she is saying Hope will bring only one child.
I’m thinking two things. One: That Seraphin knew (subconsciously) that Hope would never live to have more than one child. Or that it was Dahak’s plan to have only one Destroyer on the Earth and that so far everything has gone according to plan, and he is closer to trying to take over the world, only Xena and Gab don’t realize it.
