No Future for You Part 4.
We start with Faith thinking about and flashing back to Mayor Wilkins. She knows now that he was the evil scumbag everyone thought he was, but she can't feel it. It didn't feel like he was exploiting her at the time and even now, so she gets how girls can get sucked into bad relationships like that. She's remembering him asking her to call him Richard, saying she's a daughter who would make him and his departed wife proud, and thanking her for helping him with his plan and making it fun. Faith thinks that it's hard to remember that time in her life and not feel loved. I would guess it's probably the only time in her life she can say she felt that way.
But anyway, she is under attack from Lady Genevieve right now. Gigi is feeling betrayed by Hope (heh), but doesn't kill her right away. They start a slayer conversation instead, meaning they fight, banter, and talk. Faith drops her accent, which is another betrayal, and kicks Gigi into the greenhouse. They fight there amid the plants and statuary, under the eyes of a sculpted girl who looks not a little like Buffy. Nice symbolism of the other slayers being always under Buffy's shadow.
After getting past the betrayal and the America vs. Britain stuff that feels frankly a little tired, they get on the subject of Roden. It's obvious that's what Faith wants to talk about, after her thoughts on the Mayor.
Cut to Giles and Trafalgar, as the dwarf's special hammer gets eaten by Roden's magic. He says they'll need darker magic than his to get past the defenses. Cue Willow calling Giles' phone.
Except it's not Willow, it's Buffy, and she's still in a foul mood. "You're working with her and you didn't even tell me?" I wonder if something happened after season 7 and before season 8 between Buffy and Faith. Maybe Faith's starting out in Cleveland was less a tactical move and more a personal one, on either her part or Buffy's. Because it seems Buffy is more bent out of shape than at least I would expect after their End of Days reconciliation. But at any rate...
Giles is wanting Willow's help to get to Faith, but Buffy fills him in on what just happened to her last issue. Now he's really worried that Faith is still stuck there. Buffy won't put Willow on until he explains himself. And he refuses. See, this is where Giles has gotten annoying lately. He used to be so good at giving Buffy support when she needed it, letting her handle things when she could, helping her from the background but following her lead. But now, he goes behind her back to do what's best for her without telling her he's doing it (LMPTM) and tries to "fix" these problems in her slayerdom without her being aware they exist. I know it's just more of the killing Ben thing, where he doesn't think heroes should have to deal with the dirty stuff, but it's just not right in this situation. He tells her to be the leader and make the decisions, then he keeps information from her that she needs to lead. Argh!
Anyway, Buffy is hurt by his refusal, and she bails, leaving Will the phone, to go have some, as Xander puts it, alone time. "What other kind is there?" Well, Buff, that's a bit more self-pitying than I think is warranted at this point, even after what I said previously, but I get it. I do appreciate that Buffy, Giles, Faith and the others are still strong, complex and nuanced characters in the comics.
Back to Faith and Gigi fighting and arguing over Roden, who is conspicuously absent from this fight. Gigi says he trusts her to win and he adores her. Faith doesn't try to argue that point because maybe he does, but she knows he's using her too. She tells Gigi, "Part of you knows something ain't right...'cause you've never deserved to be loved by anybody." Hey, slayers fighting each other are always fighting themselves, I guess.
Gigi keeps monologuing about blood and birthrights, saying the nightmares will die when she kills the rest of "your" kind, and Faith kicks her hard, telling her to "wake the #^%* up." Sad really. The slayer dreams can fill you with hope that you can fight the darkness, or they can fill you with dread at the amount of darkness out there. Either way, it's a lot to handle when it just hits you from the blue. For every nameless slayer pretending to be Buffy, you get another like Gigi. It has always been that way for the slayer, but with so many slayers now, with the potential for sisterhood and comradery, one could hope it wouldn't be so devastating. Did Buffy and her cohorts not have time to deal with this, or did they make a mistake to concentrate on building defenses and training the actual recruits before finding the rest?
Faith's kick sends Gigi flying back towards a tree that has her double-bladed battleax stuck in it, so Faith sees it coming when Gigi lands against the ax and dies.
Roden steps in now to claim the victor. He says his orders were to "train the slayer to end all slayers" and obviously now Faith could play that role. (Who plays it at the end of the season?) Faith is so not into Roden's deal, but he is observant and he offers her the chance to make Buffy go away forever. He holds up a guidebook with the Twilight symbol on it and says it will show them the way to end Buffy. Faith takes the book and nails him with it.
Roden magicks her across the greenhouse and then calls up a fist from the earth to squeeze her to death, saying, "Girls like you are supposed to shuffle off this mortal coil when you're young and fresh." That kind of echoes the Beljoxa's Eye thing about Buffy's resurrection and the balance of the world.
As Faith is dying, she sees Giles coming up behind Roden. Willow must have broken through. Giles shoves some gardening shears into Roden's back, releasing Faith. Roden magicks Giles and calls him the kennel master and says all his bitches will die. Lovely. Faith tosses Giles the Twilight book, and he uses it to create a containment field not around, but within Roden. Grossness ensues. And it's over.
Later, in Giles' flat, Faith is wearing a Lil' Devil T-shirt! They share a moment about how depressing it is to do wetworks, and Giles acknowledges that he generally tries to keep that side of himself from his charges (meaning Buffy). But Faith has seen it and understands. They both can feel the bond they have now.
Giles tries to give her the passport and 'discharge' they agreed upon in the beginning, but she refuses. This is cool. After all that happened with Gigi, she wants to find girls like her who haven't gone too far from redemption and "help walk a few bad girls back from the brink." Awesome. I think it means she's taken the next step, making the change that Angel made in season 3 Buffy, from regretting his past actions and trying not to make the same mistakes to actively trying to help others. Faith had already rededicated herself to fighting evil, but other than Angel in season 4 of Angel, she hadn't made it personal, about saving other people rather than focusing on herself.
Giles, having possibly burnt his last bridge with Buffy and wanting to continue dealing with the slayer situation, asks if he can join her. He wants to be not a mentor, but a partner. On those terms, and after hearing he and Buffy aren't on speaking terms, Faith agrees. Maybe these crazy slayer/watcher kids can make it work. (Not that way. Gross.)
Epilogue. A female lieutenant, Molter, has come to talk to Twilight. He's all in costume (is this the first time we see him?) and floating in the air. She tells him his plan failed and Summers lives. He claims Roden and Genevieve were actually the targets. Molter thought they were his soldiers. Twilight says this was about manipulating their enemies into fighting each other. The goal apparently is "bringing the age of magic to a close." Molter still doesn't think it's a victory because Buffy is still out there, but Twilight says she can have the day, "night falls soon enough."
EVEN MORE SPOILERS
Okay. So first off, nice calling her Summers and talking about her having the day. They're not the same, but related by sunlight. Second, we know Twilight is Angel. So it seems he planned for Buffy to learn of Roden and Gigi's threat and neutralize it, all while having his minions think he's aiming for her. His general plan has been supposedly to gather all of Buffy's enemies in one place to make it easier to deal with them, make them visible and fightable, as opposed to scattered and hard to find and predict. So this fits I guess. He must have recruited Roden as a potential enemy, set him up to find the most dangerous anti-Buffy slayer and thereby bring her to his and then Buffy's attention by aiming her right at Buffy.
I guess it hangs together. Still not sure it's a great plan. But it's interesting to see the parallels with what Giles was doing. He too was trying to help Buffy in ways he thought she wouldn't approve of to make things ultimately better for her. Do they think they're cleaning up her mess? The problem is that she doesn't know what is happening around her. Maybe she can't handle all this herself, but she should be able to delegate to her chosen lieutenants knowingly, rather than having them take on those tasks in total obscurity. I think, anyway.
But it is interesting that Twilight's goal is to end the age of magic. That is what happens at the end. Was it really Angel's goal all along or did he just think it would come to that? Or the opposite? I can't remember all of how the end went down, that's part of the reason for my reread, but I'll be watching for clues as I go.
No comments:
Post a Comment