What we now know as “And they were roommates” was “And they were soulmates”
And at this point in the show, there was absolutely no denying that Xena and Gabrielle were a couple.
I remember Renee talking about this scene in her commentary for it as the director of the episode and she said the reason they did this was because they knew while Xena was reincarnated into Joxer’s body, they could absolutely get away with the kiss even though it meant that it was Xena kissing Gabrielle.
Apparently the studio censors didn’t really care about the context of the scene, so long as it didn’t look like a woman was kissing another woman. So they did it. Again - because the cast/crew wanted it. Not because it was a way that they could ‘bait’ a queer audience.
2 hours study I did to shake myself a little out of the "I can't draw for fun until I'm done with work - I can't be productive until I have fun drawing for myself" cycle