The Time of Your Life arc begins.
Part one. We open with Buffy holding her scythe, commenting on it being a bad day. "Started out bad, stayed that way." Been there. Next panel shows her fighting with Fray?!? over the streets of Fray's future New York. Of course, that there would be a crossover was leaked way ahead of time, but still awesome reveal.
I have to say I have read Fray and loved it, but I haven't done so recently, so I'm not fluent in the characters and backstory at the moment. I will soldier on though.
As they continue falling and fighting, which seems to be a staple of comic book BTVS, Buffy wonders where she is and what's up with Dawn, pretty much just as a funny non sequitur brain thing to lead to the next scene.
Cut to Dawnie acting like she's got major cramps, screaming and grabbing her midsection. Well, that's my ex--never mind. Then we move past that into the castle, where Buffy, Willow and Xander eat Scottish Chinese takeout and discuss an upcoming trip to New York. Willow insists that the message she got in the battle with Kumiko last issue, the one implanted by Saga Vasuki, the snake lady, means they have to go there. I guess it's to find out "what's to come" for Willow, but she says it's to find the scythe. Hunh? I guess it was a big part of her fiery vision. Buffy's as confused as I am because they just successfully recovered the scythe, so not so much needing to find it. Willow insists it's important and should be dealt with in the downtime between battles. And the scythe's importance as more than just a weapon or a symbol, as a physical part of the spell, being what it is, she's no doubt right to be concerned.
The last arc was all about vampires trying to undo the slayers by using the scythe that fulfilled their potential to regress them back, so we continue to see it as crucial to this world they've created. Having a vision of a future world with the scythe in it, a world that we know from Fray does not include a myriad of slayers, is probably a big foreshadowing hint to us that this situation will not last, but I didn't get that at the time. Fray is pretty far in the future, so we don't know when the line became defunct. Anyway, the scythe is hugely important, but I'm still not sure that's Willow's real motivation to head to New York.
Renee's death comes up with all the talk of the last battle, and Xander insists that he's fine, he's dealing. He's certainly had the practice. Leah, who I keep mixing up with Rowena (not really doing much better at keeping the slayers straight than I did the potentials the first time through) interrupts them with Dawn drama, and they rush to the rescue to find that she's no longer a giant. Yay! Now, she's a centaur. Yay! Though she claims neigh.
Twilight interlude to remind us he's out there. He's hanging with Warren and Amy, who have mad scienced something for him. I could believe he was playing them for time, just trying to focus their attention under his guidance instead of leaving them out there as random free agents, although it still doesn't seem like his style. We'll get there. Anyway, they've created a missile that's been magified. The worst parts of science and magic entwined, just like Warren and Amy. Ew, the visual.
Back to Willow and Buffy taking leave of Xander, first in a helicopter, then a private jet. Willow alludes again to Buffy's Thomas Crown thing but they don't let it get heavy. Now Willow's talking about a mystical event that they're heading to. I guess she got more out of her dream vision than we were shown. Buffy, who had been on the phone with an unnamed someone just before they got in the chopper, says she's got a meeting to go to before the main event at midnight.
When they land in New York, they're met by Kennedy. She's coordinated with the Manhattan squad who will be handling security while Kennedy's people head the op. What op? Whatever that means. Buffy is acting all giddy to be in New York, and I don't know if it's for real and this seems like a nice vakay, or if she's overcompensating to avoid fallout from/dealing with the issues between herself and Willow. Kennedy comments that the local slayers are not unexcited about meeting "the great and terrible --" and I think we assume Buffy, the Slayer, is the end of that, but later it seems like Willow is the big draw, so IDK.
Violet is in charge of Manhattan. Is that Vi?? I do believe it is. Yay! Anyway, she gives a briefing on the local situation, and it seems that New York is seething with monsters. The more slayers, the more demons to fight? Part of the balancing?
We find out that Willow sent a mystical signature to the NY Wiccan group (could be a whole story on how the slayers managed to ally with so many Wiccans who are presumably less globally organized), and they've found a hot spot.
Willow gives a lecture on temporal anomalies. Okay, now it's a temporal anomaly I guess. I appreciate new ways of doing exposition, but don't know if this works for me. But at any rate, we're setting up Buffy's visit to Fray's time through a segue from Saga Vasuki sending Willow a message about the scythe/Willow's future through a goth witch allied with mystically talented vampires defeated by Dracula to where we're at now, and I suppose that's a tough path to draw.
So the time thing is temporary and fixed in space, and we get Willow being a teacher again, which is cool. It's here that the slayers are all excited to see a celebrity, and Buffy's just sitting in the back with Kennedy, so I think "great and terrible" refers to Willow rather than Buffy, especially since this will end up being her arc more than it is Buffy's.
Oh, and Kennedy tells Buffy to keep her experimental lesbo hands off of Willow.
(Slight side note. Sometimes I wonder if Willow still being with Kennedy and Dawn having an arc about boy troubles in the comics isn't Joss directly telling the vocal haters of both characters/story lines to suck it.)
And speaking of Dawn, she's hanging out with Xander. Their expectation now is that she will go through one more transformation before it's over. Xander tells her she looks awesome. And come on, who didn't want to be a centaur once? Only me then? Okay. But this is another Xander/Dawn moment leading to their eventual romance that's very natural. I liked their scenes together on TV and also like them in the comics.
Of course the moment is ruined when Xander tells her to enjoy this and not be whiny about it, and she storms off. The punniness of the closeness of whiny to whinny is left unstated but not unappreciated.
Xander heads back to the castle just in time to see the incoming missile wreathed with green witchfire. Boom!
Back in New York at the site where the temporal anomaly will be happening (hope they have some amber handy) we see that Kennedy doesn't know about Saga Vasuki, or at least about her being Willow's information source. Buffy shows up late in a hot dress (who was she meeting? do we find out? We must, but I don't remember right now.) And she pulls out the scythe and fmmit! A groky demon appears in her place; much like in Get it Done when she visits the shadow men, a tradeoff happens. And Buffy, after a fair bit of pain, pops out on a rooftop in future New York and is subjected to Frayspeak, which she doesn't understand.
Fray thinks she's just been tricked by the groky demon, it taking on the form of Buffy, who she knows from her history lessons that I barely remember from that comic. She's got her scythe, which is the same as the scythe Buffy has but from a later time, and now the Fringe parallel is even more apt because that's confusing. Anyway, the end.
