hazelk | BtVS S8.27 Retreat #2 (Reply)

Don’t kill the baby Joss. Kill the puppy but spare the child.

Twilight is suddenly on first name terms with Buffy, previously she’d been referred to as the Slayer or ‘girl.’ In fact in this episode Twilight seems almost as obsessed with her as Angelus was in S2. Could the whole ‘end of magic/war with humanity’ thing be an excuse, a cover story for recruits? He’s certainly no respecter of human life, having minions eliminated for failing or doubting or possibly even tracking things they shouldn’t track.

Dawn is suddenly very much on board with the official Twilight line. Slayers=demons=badness, it comes up twice. Maybe the Kenny affair made her less liberal or she’s been secretly watching The View.

I was struck by how tired Buffy looked echoing Oz’s “just give in” in a small voice. She's tried all-Slaying, all-leading, all the time and it's just getting people hunted down and killed. They've fought but they lost and what were they fighting for? Humanity, now that it has the knowledge to make a choice, doesn't seem to want to be defended against vampires and Twilight seems able to control the demons. If the slayers aren't fighting on humanity’s behalf, why fight?

Having said that it does sound suspiciously like what Twilight calls laying down her sword (prior to skewering herself with it) although Buffy's a stake person or latterly a scythe person but not so much a sword person. Well that one time (against Angelus/Angel) two if you count Anya but neither of them went well for her. It also seems odd that only the physical attributes of Slayers are being referenced, the strength and the speed but not the dreams, the connection or the sense of purpose. Will Oz's approach suppress all that as well? Or not suppress it, channel it into the earth where it’s presumably still there in times of need, or was for Bay.

Oz says channeling half-heartedly is dangerous and also that failure might make his home a target. Which might be karma for what happened to the monks, since those that weren’t killed by Monroe’s werewolves seem to have left the monastery.