Xena and Gabrielle will finally be able to openly embrace their queer romance

During the course of her show’s six-season run, Xena, warrior princess took nearly as many loves as she won epic battles, but as any Xena fan worth their salt will tell you, there was only ever ONE person that she was destined to be with: her longtime companion Gabrielle.

Despite years of heavily-implied sapphic subtext and a number of tender, romantic scenes between the two woman, though, Xena and Gabrielle’s romance was never explicitly made canon on screen. Thankfully, that’s all about to change.

The Xena: Warrior Princess reboot is coming and it’s going to be queer as hell.

During a recent Tumblr Q&A about his current show The 100, TV writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach assured fans that the new, “modern” take on the iconic characters would be able to explore their relationship in ways that the original show couldn’t.

“Xena will be a very different show made for very different reasons,” Grillo-Marxuach explained. “There is no reason to bring back Xena if it is not there for the purpose of fully exploring a relationship that could only be shown subtextually in first-run syndication in the 1990s.”

While neither Lucy Lawless (Xena) nor Renee O’Connor (Gabrielle) will be reprising their respective roles, at least we can rest assured that the following gif will be as canonically accurate as it is emotionally satisfying.