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Drusilla? Drusill-nah. I never should have fallen for the "madwoman" misdirect, as the 8.19 cover really did make it kind of obvious. And as soon as it was clear she was speaking "human" and not "vampire", it was a sure thing.
Wow, what an issue. Fray is every bit the great character she was in her own book. Harth is every bit as complex a villain. And WILLOW has been waiting around for centuries to prove a point.
Firstly, I love how Buffy adjusts, or doesn't, to Melaka's world -- gains her trust, learns her language, and is even moved to sympathy by what Melaka's been through. But what I never thought about is how learning of Melaka's time would affect Buffy mentally. In "Chosen", we saw Buffy emerge from great pessimism and doubt with a moment of sudden certainty -- "we're gonna win". Now, in "Time of Your Life", her period of great optimism and victory as head of a world-wide army of Slayers that's changed the fate of the line of Chosen, of heroes, of the world, ends in another moment of sudden clarity -- "we're gonna lose", if you will. Fray laid it all down. Buffy's age was the end of the Slayer line until Melaka and Harth. The ties to the past were broken. Twilight came, and night fell.
And all this settles in right before she hears Willow's name come from Gunther's lips.
Willow, on the other hand... wow. She's felt off, distant, cold in the present-day story, and also a bit self-loathing. That continues as she makes clear that it's her fault that Buffy got sent to the future. That means more than even she can understand, since apparently FDW had something to do with orchestrating this. And yet, she acts like she's been waiting around 200+ years to prove a point to Buffy, not to kill her. She's here to judge her, not to kill her, to reverse a phrase. Whatever it is that happens to the Slayers and the world in the present is clearly something that Willow holds Buffy accountable for, and wants her to appreciate that... perhaps before killing her?
In the meantime, the BHC is not a BPR apparently, and I'm actually glad because to wipe out the whole Scotland team right in front of Xander would have been too much. He is really, really stepping up and I love it. Love him snapping Rowena out of it and barking orders. That's twice now we've seen Rowena... pretty much fold in a sticky situation. I wonder if she's mostly there as a reminder of how many girls probably weren't ready to be Slayers. It even makes me wonder if the Slayer line on its own had a sort of intelligence underneath it, that it never activated someone that clearly didn't have the steele to succeed.
A little puzzled by the nature of the attack on the BHC -- why have a small explosion that spawns freaky ghost-ish snake warrior things when, well, big explosion? Sharks with frickin' laser beams.
I'm definitely thinking there's Xander/Dawn subtext officially a-brewin'. "Ride me". 'Nuff said. And I totally called that scene.
Wow, what an issue. Fray is every bit the great character she was in her own book. Harth is every bit as complex a villain. And WILLOW has been waiting around for centuries to prove a point.
Firstly, I love how Buffy adjusts, or doesn't, to Melaka's world -- gains her trust, learns her language, and is even moved to sympathy by what Melaka's been through. But what I never thought about is how learning of Melaka's time would affect Buffy mentally. In "Chosen", we saw Buffy emerge from great pessimism and doubt with a moment of sudden certainty -- "we're gonna win". Now, in "Time of Your Life", her period of great optimism and victory as head of a world-wide army of Slayers that's changed the fate of the line of Chosen, of heroes, of the world, ends in another moment of sudden clarity -- "we're gonna lose", if you will. Fray laid it all down. Buffy's age was the end of the Slayer line until Melaka and Harth. The ties to the past were broken. Twilight came, and night fell.
And all this settles in right before she hears Willow's name come from Gunther's lips.
Willow, on the other hand... wow. She's felt off, distant, cold in the present-day story, and also a bit self-loathing. That continues as she makes clear that it's her fault that Buffy got sent to the future. That means more than even she can understand, since apparently FDW had something to do with orchestrating this. And yet, she acts like she's been waiting around 200+ years to prove a point to Buffy, not to kill her. She's here to judge her, not to kill her, to reverse a phrase. Whatever it is that happens to the Slayers and the world in the present is clearly something that Willow holds Buffy accountable for, and wants her to appreciate that... perhaps before killing her?
In the meantime, the BHC is not a BPR apparently, and I'm actually glad because to wipe out the whole Scotland team right in front of Xander would have been too much. He is really, really stepping up and I love it. Love him snapping Rowena out of it and barking orders. That's twice now we've seen Rowena... pretty much fold in a sticky situation. I wonder if she's mostly there as a reminder of how many girls probably weren't ready to be Slayers. It even makes me wonder if the Slayer line on its own had a sort of intelligence underneath it, that it never activated someone that clearly didn't have the steele to succeed.
A little puzzled by the nature of the attack on the BHC -- why have a small explosion that spawns freaky ghost-ish snake warrior things when, well, big explosion? Sharks with frickin' laser beams.
I'm definitely thinking there's Xander/Dawn subtext officially a-brewin'. "Ride me". 'Nuff said. And I totally called that scene.
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