Hi there folks, I´m Mike Eriksson, the editor in chief of the unofficial swedish Lucy Lawless fanzine Lucy In The Sky. I´ve been asked to put some thoughts down about what the show has meant to me and here it is.

The swedish Xenaverse opened up pretty late. The show begun to air in Sweden as late as towards the end of 1998 on TV 3. In fact, it started all over Scandinavia at that time, including Denmark, Norway and Finland.

Personally I had seen a small article on Xena a year before that in the december 1997 issue of Realms Of Fantasy. This issue had a "Fall Fantasy Television Preview" in it and there was a small picture of Xena at the top of the cover. That picture caught my attention. I grabbed the magazine and bought it just becauce of that picture. Then inside the magazine I could read about Xena and I just knew that this was important somehow. I really envied you people abroad that could see it. Then, a year later, it reached Sweden.

It made an impact on me straight away. After each episode I said to myself "That was very good!". And the show kept getting better and better and naturally this had a lot to do with the fact that the Xenaverse expanded and more interesting characters came along. Autolycus, Callisto, Joxer, Aphrodite, Ares, Caesar. I loved the fact that this show dared to venture into a vast universe of its own. We had the drama, the comedies, the pure action adventures and even the odd musical. Seldom did an episode bore me. It happened but usually I would either feel elated after a show or, if it ended in a sad and dramatic way, I would have tears in my eyes. No other show ever got to me like that.

The interaction between Lucy Lawless and Renee O´Connor through the years have been a joy to watch. And I know that they went through great hardships at times to give us these adventures but you can´t see that. It´s easy to forget that they litterary spent six years in boot camp (to quote Robert Tapert). I respect them a lot for this superhuman effort.

The fact that the set seems to have been a happy one is nice to know too. A tight knit unit of friends with a common goal, working on a tight budget but with great enthusiasm. The fact alone that the lightningguy could come up with a suggestion at the time of shooting and that they used the idea if they felt like it speaks for itself. That would never ever happen in America on a set. Also, the show was a bit of an underdog in the beginning and it says a lot that it still managed to have a major impact on the world of television entertainment.

The show is in its 4th season here at the moment and season 5 will be aired in 2002 and the final season in 2003. This is good news to me becauce it means that Xena will be on the air for over five years here, with reruns included. And by the time we have seen all the episodes I´m sure both Lucy and Renee will have been highly visably elsewhere.

In a way I´m glad that they ended the show while the going was good and they still enjoyed it to some degree. Many actors who popped up now and then in the show have managed to create careers for themselves. This is something that we owe to Lucy and Renee as well. They gave us six years of their lives. Now they must get a fair chance to do something else. To raise families and to be able to star in whatever projects they chose. I wish them all the best on their journeys!

And secretly, I wish for the Xena Motion Picture to happen somewhere down the road. But only if it is a big budget affair and only if they all do it for the right reasons. If it happened five or six years from now, it could be great fun for all concerned. And by then I´m sure that both Lucy and Renee have visible careers outside of Xena as well. Who knows, maybe Renee would be able to direct it?

This is far from over. I know that much. I started Lucy In The Sky early last year (2000) and since then a dozen homepages have started in Sweden alone. At the moment a new Xena movement is also rising in the form of a gang that is adamant to put up the first swedish Xena Convention. And as a bonus, the last six months have been pretty good in the media over here as well. Like in the States, the reaction to the show in the media was slow, but it is happening now. And maybe this is something for you guys in America to remember, that you are ahead of the rest of the world. The Xenaverse is growing. Believe it!!

I would like to say thanks to all the great people out there. The spirit that I have encountered during my work for the Lucy fanzine has been nothing short of phenomenal. I knew it would be great fun to do this as a hobby but I had no idea how fantastic it would turn out to be. I salute you all for keeping the Xenaverse such a wonderful place to be. Love.

MIKE ERIKSSON/Lucy In The Sky
http://hem.passagen.se/dreamworker/
(Swedish homepage)