Part two of No Future For You. Evocative title, given it's for Faith. She's not participating fully in this new future she helped create either. And it's also referring to the end where, either through Buffy and Angel creating a new world that has a future and abandoning the old one to its demonic past, or through taking away the magic and everything they had built, the future is not quite what they (or we) hoped it would be.
We start on a voiceover from Faith, as we see a flashback to the fight she and Buffy had at the end of season 3. We hear Faith's perspective on their relationship. It's the reason she's alone so much now. "This is friendship" as we see Faith's face reflected in THE knife. Her list of friendship steps? 1. Meet someone you want as a friend. 2. Share everything with them while they share some of themselves with you. 3. "It all goes to crap." Then comes the pain and then sometimes you forgive it, but it's never the same again because the pain doesn't go away. "And in the end, no matter how many wicked good times you had together, you woulda been better off flying solo all along."
Thing is, I don't think Faith believes that last part, even though she lives like she does. I think she's still got a huge self-hate thing going on, and she more likely just doesn't think she deserves to be part of connections with other people. As always when it comes to Faith and Buffy, their parts are interchangable. Who hurts who first, who should be forgiver or forgiven, all of that goes back and forth. And part of this section of story is about how Faith isn't better off flying solo. Maybe she can't let herself be part of the larger family of slayers, but she is perfect for dealing one-on-one with other women who don't want to join the group, maybe making some connections there. Is this what the Faith spin-off would have been?
So Faith is thinking about all of this stuff with Buffy as she goes into the gala at Lady Genevieve's place, which makes sense, since she's the one heading out this time to kill a rogue slayer. Her and Buffy's roles, back and forth they go.
Giles is acting as her handler, she's got a 2-way radio bud in her ear and he's there to help her with her cover if need be. He starts (I'm sure) reiterating her objective, but she discards the radio, saying she's got too many voices in her head as it is.
Then she acts like a snobby aristocrat, spoiled brat type to get into the party without an invite. The footman or whatever is glad enough to pass her through, buying that she belongs there. Faith is sweating and nervous, not really up for the task. She's in the receiving line, and she's got two knives hidden as hair ornaments. Roden is watching over things from the balcony with two gargoyles. He's suspicious of her because she makes his "wand tingle, and not in the good way." Ew you very much.
Her cover name, BTW, is Hope Lyonne, daughter of the viscount of Avalon. There has been such a thing before, it looks like, but mostly Avalon is a big part of the King Arthur myth, being the isle where Excalibur was forged among other things. Hope is a reference to the episode where Faith first appeared, Faith, Hope & Trick, and also maybe a symbol of her possible transition, or maybe just what she needs now more than faith. Regarding Lyonne: Check this out, it's hysterical. http://www.kabalarians.com/Female/lyonne.htm.
(WRITER'S NOTE: Continuing after long hiatus between when I started this recap and now, when I'm finishing it)
We cut over to Scotland, for a brief interlude with Willow and Dawn. Giant Dawn is eating handfuls of apples from a tree. Willow needs to know exactly what happened if she's going to fix it. We get the first clue that maybe Kenny isn't to blame for what happened, at least in Dawn's mind, though we won't learn the details for a while. They have a nice moment, but it's interrupted before it can bear fruit (heh, see what I did there?). Buffy sent Renee to Will to get her to be "laptop-geek Willow" and check out their radar stations. As far as what they're going to do once the army guys come for them, Dawn says, "All's fair." Which of course refers to love and war, and I'd bet Dawnie's talking more about love right now, since she thinks she deserves what happened to her.
Back to Faith. She's out on the balcony (probably a specific name when it's on a huge mansion, but whatever), psyching herself up to kill a slayer. I have in my notes that this theme of good guys doing bad things touches on what Voll was afraid of and also links to the robbery and the overall balance issue. I think I know what I mean, but I'm so behind at this point I wrote that note probably 3 months ago. So I'll just let it stand.
Faith is definitely not excited about her assassin role. Ironically, her experience with this kind of thing that makes her well-suited for it is the very thing that makes her not want to do it. But her chance is coming. Gigi bums a fag from her and they talk about the crappy people at the party and bond over liking Amy Winehouse and hating their parents. Well, that's not going to make your job easier, Faith (I mean, Hope).
Gigi asks her, "You sure we're not sisters?" and Faith starts to answer while pulling out her knife, but then she's gone! Roden sent his gargoyles to deal with her. So we get a cool fight in the air. Faith is thinking about how she can't even say goodbye to Giles since she threw him away, wondering why she's "such a dick to every guy who's the least bit nice" to her. But she manages to shake it off and take out 2 gargoyles by crashing them into each other. Then Roden knocks her out with magic, and we're left with a crane shot of the aftermath, with Faith lying in the middle of the wreckage and Gigi and Roden looking on.
We have a little bit of an epilogue at this point. Faith comes to slowly, hearing the other two arguing about killing her. Gigi identifies with her, thinking she's a peer and not a commoner and being very impressed with her skill. Roden thinks that's what makes her dangerous. She's cleaned up and in Gigi's bed. And Gigi has decided to recruit Hope to her cause. She tells her about being one of a line of important, powerful people, an ancient force they're tapped into. "Roden says I'm going to lead the lot of us to take our rightful place at the head of this wretched society." After she takes care of the queen who's "holding us back." Whoa, Gigi has a serial killer wall starring Buffy. The biggest picture of her has the twilight symbol drawn over her face. The end.
So again we see a consequence of Buffy and Willow's spell in Chosen. Another activated slayer who thinks they're naturally at the top of the food chain and should act and be treated as such. It's interesting that they show this with both Simone, who is more low-class punk/rebel, gonna finally get some for myself type and Lady Geneveive, who is aristocratic entitled, gonna finally get even more for myself because I'm certainly not gonna let myself be set low in this new hierarchy type. Different motivations, but they come to the same conclusions when they receive the power.
And now Faith is left facing someone who is from a different world than her, but eerily similar in outlook and circumstance. And, as we'll see next issue, it's still all about Buffy.
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