Time of Your Life Part 2.
We start with flying cars! Fray and Buffy have allied and are on the way to find a nest of vamps. Except the nest is actually the van they're flying next to. Except oops, it's not Buffy but Fray's sister, Erin. Similar look to them. Damn comics. My eyes don't adjust to the difference well. Anyway, we're in the future but back in time from the future we were in at the end of the last episode. Yeah, that works.
Fray cuts open the van with her scythe and fights vamps in midair, asking one where Harth is. If you've never read Fray or, like me, read it long ago and have forgotten virtually everything about it, don't worry. We'll find out more about Harth later on. Erin blows up the vamp van as it flies by a really cool, Isengard-like statue of an old man holding a book with his other hand positioned with thumb and ring ringer together in a circle. Does it mean anything? Is it a visual reference to the Fray comic? Need to reread (NTRR). Who knows.
As she rides the vamp onto the roof of another car (dirty), he mentions a madwoman who was supposed to save them. The way he describes her, she sounds a lot like Drusilla. I was fooled for a while the first time through.
Fray and Erin are back at her home. Fray mentions that Harth got her slayer memories from her and all she's got left are the diaries, so I guess that happened. NTRR. They're joined by a four-armed monkey thing as Fray talks about "Gates," the last great watcher who sacrificed himself at the Battle of Starbucks. ?? So I guess he's the monkey-thing now. And I'm not sure. Is that referring to Sunnydale or the end of season 8 or something we haven't seen? The histories are awfully incomplete and flawed as we'll see later.
Fray's looking for the madwoman in the books.
Harth speaks with the madwoman, telling of a slayer dream he's had of her fighting Buffy, who he knows is coming to the future. We don't see her face, and she does dress and talk like Dru. She's not slithering around like her though. And as we turn the page, she sounds less and less like Drusilla. Harth asks her why she wants the two slayers to combine forces. She replies, "Vampires gain strength from each other. Slayers, ultimately, don't." Also saying what happens here will help bring about the time they're in because of ripples.
Okay, one, that's foreshadowing. Two, and sad. The lone hero is stronger? Lot of bitterness there, and given that we find out later that she's Willow, it makes some sense given Will's role in the slayer spell vis-a-vis the ending of the season. But three, is this deconstructing season 7 and saying everything seemingly good about the ending is ultimately bad? That seems to be what all of season 8 says, which is a little bleak for Joss. I remember season 6 of Angel was supposed to be: Okay, now you've destroyed the status quo, now what do you do? And this feels like that too, especially given what Buffy says at the very start, but I don't know what kind of answers we're given when the end not only resets to a lone slayer (or 2), but also removes all magic from the world. But we'll get there.
Back in present New York, Willow says this is all her fault. Kennedy was injured by the demon that took Buffy's place. Will is keeping it alive to figure things out. Kennedy says this whole deal was supposed to help them, WTF? And Willow says that's what she thought so it's her fault. Does she know at this point? Or suspect?
Scotland. Green fire and destruction in the command center. Oh right, Warren's missile hit them. At least 7 slayers are dead that they know about so far. Rowena is freaking. Xander pulls her together as sickly green demons coalesce out of the flames and start macing computer screens and shooting green arrows, one of which nails Xander's shoulder as they move for the escape tunnels. Rowena makes it out, but Xander is down. Centaurette to the rescue! There's some awkwardness about Xander having to ride Dawn out of there, but they make it.
Fray ends up at the rift building because the diaries apparently said, "The last girl came here and was transformed." So I would say Willow had to plant that passage because we just established that she knew right away that it wasn't a transformation that happened. She's just putting the pieces into play. But also, Buffy is the last girl? For reals? Will Faith's death no longer call forth a new slayer after all is said and done?
Present Willow has found out from the demon it was hired to take down the Slayer. It didn't know about time traveling to kill a past Slayer though. Whoever did it has a lot of power and went to a lot of trouble to make sure Willow would get the Slayer in the right place at the right time. Yup. Sorry. Once you get the reveal, it's harder to look back and appreciate all the pieces leading up to it.
And we're back to the end of the last episode, with Buffy and Fray fighting in traffic, as is the Fray way. Buffy figures out she's another slayer quickly, which makes sense. She's kind of used to there being more than one around. This calls back to her meeting both Faith, and especially, Kendra.
They finally start talking, and Fray believes she's the real Buffy. They try to understand each other's particular brand of language, which is fun. Buffy is babbling a bit, asking her about how to destroy Twilight and how many slayers there are and how they're organized and -- boom. She finds out there's only one Slayer again, who was the first called in a century. Fray calls herself half a Slayer because her twin brother, Harth, has the Slayer memories, while she has the skills.
Okay, so Harth didn't steal the memories from her, he was somehow born with them. How could I forget that? NTRR. That's interesting. Now's he's a vamp and is using the memories to kill potentials and wreak havoc, all that normal villain stuff.
Fray has taken Buffy to see Gunther, a fishy demon/mutant type who lives in a sea of water under a glass floor. Buffy is regretting her choice to wear a dress. Fray asks him what he knows of the madwoman. Just that she's been alive since ancient times. Well, that's helpful. Not. Buffy's finally realizing this is all really happening.
Harth is gearing up for a battle. Madwoman is saying that Buffy is starting to feel the weight of her failure. Yeah, seeing that her changing of the world didn't stick, that would kind of suck.
Harth wants to kill his sister because she's the last thing he ever loved. "And what in this world is stronger than love?"
And the reveal. It's Willow who replies, "Time. Only time."
So time is stronger than love, slayers are stronger alone -- why does Joss hate joy? Right now this season is feeling as unremittingly bleak as season 6 or 7. I'm interested to see how I feel about the ending this time through, since right now all I feel is sadness at knowing what's to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment