Plot summary
Helen secretly sends for Xena, hoping to end the long war around Troy. Xena and Gabrielle receive the dying messenger's request and fight their way into the city. At the gates they encounter Gabrielle's former fiancé Perdicas, who has become a Trojan soldier.
Helen believes that returning to Menelaus might stop the fighting. Xena doubts that surrendering herself will solve the conflict. While watching Helen attempt to leave, she discovers Paris' brother Deiphobus using a secret passage to meet Menelaus. Deiphobus is plotting Troy's fall.
Paris refuses to believe the warning and has Xena imprisoned. The Greeks appear to withdraw, leaving an enormous wooden horse as a peace offering. During the celebrations, soldiers emerge from it and open the gates to Menelaus' army.
Xena escapes and sends Gabrielle and Perdicas to gather civilians in the temple. Deiphobus enters by another passage, kills Paris and takes Helen for himself. As the Greeks break into the temple, Xena creates a smoke screen and gets the refugees out. She then hides them in the wooden horse so that the Greeks unknowingly carry them away from the city.
Returning to burning Troy, Xena defeats Deiphobus and leaves him bound for Menelaus to find. Helen is rescued but no longer has a kingdom or marriage to return to. She chooses to begin a new life, leaving with Perdicas while Gabrielle watches with mixed feelings.
Xena and Gabrielle depart with the survivors. Their final joke about taking the horse acknowledges the extraordinary escape without disguising the destruction they could not prevent.
Credits
Adapted from Legendary Journeys Wiki contributors, Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts. Complete episode narrative, rewritten and condensed for clarity; causal developments and the episode's ending retained. Illustrations, dialogue quotations and non-story metadata omitted.