BtVS S8.19 Time of Your Life (part IV)

[hazelk]

Thing 1
Riley is an inside man. Both Twilight and Buffy think he’s theirs but it’s the setting sun not an old flame carved on his chest. He’s not his old gentlemanly self, quite “just like a girl” in his mockery of her. Maybe it’s what Twilight expects to hear or something embittering has happened since the world changed. In the past Riley has been susceptible to the idea of Slayers succumbing to the attractions of the dark side, which isn’t so far from what Voll was proposing. He was always an establishment boy at heart.

Thing 2
Willow isn’t planning to stop an army by herself. Buffy finds an unexpected ally in Gates. Xander and Dawn’s scenes had some of the most laugh out loud lines and it was good to see the new Slayers doing it for themselves but I think it was significant that they didn’t have to fight alone. Connections being a source of strength has been a long-standing theme of the series but those connections were often limited to friends and family. In Chosen the scope was widened to include other ‘girls like me.’ But I’m wondering if with the emergence of all these strange and definitely not from Kansas allies, from the slug things of The Chain to Gunther’s cavalry, this season might be about widening that scope to breaking point.

Thing 3
The heart of this story as with The Long Way Home and Anywhere but Here lies with the complicated relationship between Buffy and Willow. Future Willow has outlived love, bent time and spun every side both ways and back to one end, her death at Buffy’s hands. But the point of their final conversation seems to be the last question Buffy asks. As she says, cute blonde and popular but not stupid. She listens when Willow tells her exactly where to get to and when to get out but also to what she said earlier about who dies and who kills them. Melaka assumes she’s talking about Slayer-Slayercide but with “Why does it have to be me?” Buffy shows she understands that Willow needed her to kill Willow and then she gives her what she needed.

Joss, the king of decompression, writes in TV (questions) rather than movie (answers) mode and I just don’t know what the whole long story is. Willow blindfolded herself so the one part of the exchange Future Willow couldn’t have known and needn’t have happened for the extraction to go exactly as she remembered is the death of her future self. So how might that change things? The only person it affects directly is Buffy. She killed Angel to save the world but she asked him to close his eyes. This time both of them knew what was happening so is it this that changes Buffy or what Buffy knows about what Willow is prepared to do? Either way, right now a long spell in S1 Pleasantville would probably be a very attractive prospect to her.