Xena's Dark Side

Evening all!
I just finished watching "The Price" again and was rather impressed once again by both Lucy Lawless and especially Renee O'Connor. But great acting aside did anyone else watch that episode and realize just how easily Xena can slip back into mercliess killing machine-mode? She without a second thought axed one of the Horde in the back even after Gabrielle screamed for her not to. An instant before that she has sadistically slit another's throat. she pushed Gabrielle round like a child and ordered men who could not even stand to fight against a relentless enemy.
Mind you this was not the first time she has shall we say "reverted to type." In "The Reckoning"(season 1) after Ares taunts her she goes ballistic and beats the Hades out of a couple of villagers. In "Ties That Bind" she is on the verge of massacring an entire village.
In "The Deliverer" she is too blind with the same rage that originally turned her into the Warrior Princess to understand what was actually transpiring around her and Gabrielle. In "The Debt" she becomes so focused on revenge that she nearly gets herself killed and it forces Gabrielle to betray her. In "When in Rome" she once more nearly gets herself killed to take revenge on Caesar.
I don't think it's a question of whether there is still darkness in her soul, it is a question of what will it take to release it. But don't forget that in each occasion it was either the stupidity of others(i.e. Ares going to far while posing as her father in "Ties That Bind") or Gabrielle. Now that Gabrielle has benn removed from her life how long can it be before Xena's darkness overshadows the light that Gabrielle shed on her life? Somehow I think that should she again become the warlord she once it will take a lot more than just Hercules to stop her. It will take an act of Zeus.
Let the world fear the cry of Xena:Warrior Princess and the words "KILL THEM ALL!"