Hera kills the family of her stepson Hercules, and he decided to take revenge of her by destroying her temples. Meanwhile, Iolaus becomes a stone statue by a she-demon.
A traditional festival dedicated to Dionysus, the god of wine, is about to be celebrated, but this year someone wants to turn it into a massacre with the murder of a fair king. Hercules will try to stop this plan.
Nemis the Centaur desperately wants to possess Penelope. Hera provides a drug to blind Hercules and a club to kill him. Lyla slips the drug into Hercules' drink. Penelope and her bridesmaid Cheris are kidnapped from Penelope's wedding, and Salmoneus must guide a blinded Hercules to rescue them.
A treacherous slave dealer, Belus, pretends to lead a group of refugees to safety so he can sell them as slaves. Hercules buys Oi-lan to save her from prostitution and agrees to help her rescue her fiancé Cyrus.
After Hercules helped him forge a swell knife, Iolaus finds out his village sweetheart Syreene just married another. On the rebound he falls for Xena; Hercules' distrust at first sight is waved by his mother Almene. Xena tells Iolaus she was preparing with some men to chase war lord Petrakis, who terrorizes her native Arcadian fields, to get him to come help; meanwhile she pushes her actual lover Theodorus to go kill Hercules, but he falls to his death in the duel, saying he regrets failing Xena. As Alcmene predicted, Iolaus won't believe his friend over his lover, so...
Hercules volunteers to help a woman show her new son to her husband, being kept as a slave. He and Iolaus arrange to be captured to free Gladius and all the other slaves.
The evil Xena and her mercenaries return; after destroying six villages on a single peninsula, she's heading for Parthis. Begging for his life as a cross-dresser, salesman Salmoneus is spared for her amusement. Hercules sets out when his help is enlisted by his adolescent cousin Roran, whose mother lives in Parthis. When Xena learns her lieutenant Darphus chose which village to attack and ordered women and children slaughtered, she resists and saves a baby, for which Salmoneus finds a shepherdess. The men choose Darphus's side, so Xena is exiled and must run the ...
Darphus, revived by Ares, is pillaging everything in sight to feed a monster called Graegus. Hercules and Xena (now turned to good) are determined to stop him. Iolaus joins Hercules but has trouble believing she is really reformed.