We start with Warren flashing back to the infamous "Bored now" line of Willow's as she flays him alive. We get the exposition of how he's still around as he taunts her with a scalpel near her eye. Mentions that she was spiraling (referencing the title of a season 5 episode where things are also sort of in a whirl).
We learn that Amy had continued to keep an eye on Willow through the end of season 6, I imagine already resenting her for tossing her aside when Will tried to get clean of magic. Warren said she began to watch over him. I don't know if she became enamored of him because he was the enemy of the Scoobies, and Buffy and Willow in particular, or just figured, hey, if Willow wants him dead, I want him alive, but at any rate she was able to swoop in and save him before Willow tried to burn him away to nothing. And now her magic is his skin. I ask you, why can't her magic be opaque, but whatever.
They together came up with the spell in Killer in Me to punish Willow, and I think that works really well. I could understand before why Amy didn't like Willow and would go to the trouble to try and hurt her, but the method she used, the specifics of the spell seemed kind of weird. I mean, yeah, it was a nice hot button issue with Willow, but it would also be poetic justice to Warren, so it fits together nicely.
The scene ends with Warren asking Willow, "Are you bored now?"
Dawn's upset and hitting walls, but Buffy points out she's not proportionally as strong as she is large, so she could really hurt herself. Dawn feels useless to help Willow and tells Buffy that "Will is like a mom to me." Xander has either the mystics or the Wiccans or somebody figuring out how to use the portal echo to reopen it long enough to send in an extraction team or one or two people only. There's a nice moment where Xander tells Buffy she needs to pick a fighter to go with her, that he wouldn't be as useful there as here, even though you can tell he's worried about his oldest friend. Ah, Xander's all grown up now. And all Buffy starts to say is "Xander" so we don't know if she was going to ask him to come or try to find a way to say he couldn't. I like that ambiguity.
We intercut a lot in this episode, between Willow getting tortured by Warren, Buffy and Xander getting ready to go in, the military waiting for the Slayer, and a dreamspace/otherworldly plane that Willow visits in her mind to escape the pain her body is experiencing.
Pretty sure Warren pokes out Willow's eye before he starts to lobotomize her, but thankfully it's all suggested and talked about and not shown. Buffy chooses Satsu to accompany her into the portal (she's embarrassed to be singled out but the others just tell her to do them proud), and a chance sharing of lip gloss leads to Buffy realizing that Satsu is the one who kissed her to wake her up, meaning Satsu truly is in love with her. This isn't stated until later. We just hear Buffy commenting on the cinnamon lip gloss and have to remember she mentioned cinnamon buns when she awoke.
Willow calls on five goddesses(?) who we will see later -- is it in the Willow one-shot? Need to look it up. She asks entrance to their plane and they grant it. One looks like a tree person, maybe a dryad, another could be a naiad, a water or mist sprite, another looks pretty much like a wookie. Then there's a woman shaped piece of paper with math symbols on it who could be a representation of logic or mind maybe. And the fifth is a slightly diffuse looking woman who is blue on one side of her face and yellow on the other, at least in the shots we see. No clue. I don't think they're defined when we see them later either. I seem to recall them being possible mentors to Willow, but then she chooses snake lady instead. We'll see them again, that's all I remember for sure.
Suit guy and General Voll (I'm assuming guy in charge is always Voll because he's the character we've been introduced to. I don't have a good enough picture in my mind of his appearance to know that, but I'm going with it.) are asking Amy what the screaming is about. She tells them to just be ready for the portal to reopen, that Buffy will definitely come after Willow (bitter much), but that Willow belongs to Warren. I like that we continually see both sides in this being smart. The Twilight folk know the portal will reopen, it's part of the plan, and they're ready for it. Buffy and Xander know that it will be another trap, that they'll be ready for them, and they plan for that. None of it is talked about specifically, we just see it play out.
The goddesses keep Willow company. The naiad-like one talks to her the most. They show her a picture of her agony that looks like fire, with shadow people who represent pieces of what Willow could be. Ending. Brrr. This other plane of the goddesses is a lot like Buffy and Amy's dreamspace, and both seem to foreshadow or at least refer to the empty space that Buffy and Angel create. I'm not sure how it all ties together, and maybe it doesn't neatly tie together, but I think these mental spaces and thought planes are important to the season. I don't think they're just there because they can be drawn easily enough in the comic medium. But we'll have to see. For now, I'm just trying to notice when they appear.
Buffy calls Xander a Watcher again and he says he'll "Watcher your butt." Hee. The portal opens, the military fire, and the (what do I call Buffy's organization? They're not all slayers, they're not watchers. Anyway) Buffy's forces use a giant mirror to reflect the ray gun back upon itself, blowing it up as Buffy and Satsu go through the portal. Xander says, "Magic, it's all done with mirrors." I'm putting a mark by that comment to see if it means more later.
Buffy and Satsu take down all the military dudes, hurting some of them to the point where they could die. Buffy tells Voll that Willow can heal them so he better tell her where Will is. Xander gets their location -- 2 miles south of Sunnydale. Amy is waiting in front of the door.
The naiad says Willow is close to natural death, one she can't come back from, but Willow is no longer concerned She mentions her best friend, then there's a cut to Buffy who says what Willow was saying, that she's a part of me, even when she's gone, a part of her is with me. Then Buffy goes all black eyes and starts flinging Willow magic at Amy. This confuses me a bit. Well, a lot. Is Willow speaking through Buffy, or is Buffy answering something Amy said to her that we don't hear. And when did this magical exchange happen? Was it something Will set up long ago for dire occasions? Or is it just that they have a connection, and when Buffy was close enough, Willow was able to access it and give her the power? It seems to be part of a plan, but I'm not sure. Did Willow enter Buffy's dreamspace at that point? Very confused as to how it actually works. But I like the result.
Buffy mentions having seen Amy's dreamspace and conjures up an image of her mom, Catherine the Great. It distracts Amy long enough for Satsu to grenade her ass. Buffy breaks through the door and sees uggo boy, but Amy recovers and magics them both away, him still spouting off about how it's not over. He'll be played as a pretty over-the-top villain in this season, which is fair enough. He's completely nuts at this point after all. And he was always pretty close to it.
We don't see what Willow looks like as Buffy breaks through her magical bonds, but then we do see her and she looks untouched. I'm assuming she healed herself at that moment. Again, thanks for not showing that. Everyone rejoices, and Dawn causes a small earthquake with her jumping up and down.
The three women head out to heal the soldiers and leave, but Buffy sees a door with the number 30 and remembers her dream talk with Ethan, seeing him imprisoned in three Xs. So she breaks in to free him, but General Voll has beat her to it and shot him dead. RIP Ethan Rayne. Voll didn't want him to be able to help Buffy. Buffy sees his mark and finally gets the name for it from him. "Twilight is coming...it all ends very soon.
We get to hear his perspective and motivation, and it will shape the rest of the season. "You've upset the balance," creating a master race, if you win your war with the demons, "you'll decide the world still isn't the way you want it and the demon in you will just say one thing. 'Slay.'" He also knows about the spell and the fight against the First and the fact that Slayer powers come from a demonic source. He knows a lot for someone we've never met. I take it Angel filled him in on just enough.
Buffy accuses him of misogyny, just not being able to stand all the women with power. He says it's more than men that want to bring them down and stresses the fact that Slayers aren't human. It's a mishmash of things. He's afraid of them because of their demonic origins. I read it as he's afraid that means that humans are done for and the demons, whether trying to do something "good" or "evil" will fight each other and human race will be collateral damage. How much of that is mixed with bigotry for not pure humans is debatable, but interesting he would throw the master race charge against Buffy, when he seems to be the one obsessed with purity of human blood.
Ultimately, it's fallout from the spell, how the rest of the people in the know think of the spell, and how much of it is based on Twilight recruiting versus natural uneasiness and fear of the unknown, we'll never know. Also, how much of it is misogyny, I don't think, is ever clearly shown. He finishes by saying that Buffy and her forces are now at war with the human race. She takes it in and says okay, but his words will weigh upon her for the rest of the season.
This theme of them against humans will continue to play out in a lot of variations through the season, I think, and I'll watch for it. And not just in continuing the argument between Faith and Buffy in season 3 about whether Slayers are superior and not bound by any human laws or mores (something that takes on a lot more weight when there's 1800 of them). Off the top of my head, the werewolf stuff of giving their magic to the Earth and staying human, the end result of magic sucked from the world, even the coming out of real vampires to the mainstream human world exemplified by Harmony, all of that touches on this back and forth, can we all live together, magic-yes or magic-no tension. Buffy not only upset the balance of good and evil with her spell, but possibly the balance of human and demon, Wizard and Muggle. Not sure how or if it relates to the creating a new world, ascending to a new level story. Something to keep an eye on.
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