Season 8 no. n-n-n-n-nineteen
Nov. 28th, 2008 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyYou know, I had this half-formed theory that maybe, just maybe, the delay of #19 was due to Joss re-reading the bits in #18 where Buffy repeatedly insists that it's right to sacrifice civilians for "the big picture", realising how she came across, and trying to come up with a way to back-pedal at least a little bit.
So much for that theory. Good to see he knows what he's doing, at least.
Of course, we'd already been spoiled that Future!Willow would get killed, but as she herself pointed out in the previews: it's not so much who dies as who does the killing – so the question still remained, who'd actually finish her off, would she have time to explain what the hell's going on first, and would anyone else die as well?
Turns out the answers are "Buffy" (asssuming that Future!Willow is (will be) really dead, of course), "nope", and "probably not" (assuming that Fray and Erin aren't in some sort of afterlife).
Yes, in this issue Buffy joins the illustrous crowd of Whedon heroes who have murdered humans – and the person she kills is her supposedly best friend. Or, well, her possible future self. Of course, future!Willow didn't seem much of a good guy - she was fine with Harth killing a bunch of innocent people if it fit her plan, after all – and she's even on record as saying she's not quite human anymore, which I suppose makes it a matter of definition. Buffy's tearful reaction is strong stuff, and it's a cunning "Becoming" callback and everything but... is there any particular reason Buffy doesn't just knock Willow out of the way? Or better yet, tackle her through the portal and ask questions in the safety of her own New York hotel? How come her first reaction is "stabbity"? I'm sure we can come up with some explanation, but it doesn't change the fact that my first impression was "Uh... why did she have to do that?"
Which is a pity as it undercuts what should have been an emotional ending to an issue that, while a bit confusing and featuring the occasional wtf moment, still had some pretty great scenes. Despite the weird circumstances, Willow's discussion with Fray, Erin and Buffy are very nice indeed - at least until Harth shows up and it turns into 20 Questions - and a good mirror of Buffy's breakdown in #18. And both Willow and Buffy seem determined to do whatever they have to do to get out of this situation, even if it makes them both come across as villains to the heroes of the Fray!verse. It's to Fray's credit that she still refuses to even consider killing Buffy right up until the very end, and I do like the confrontation between them. When Fray tries to talk to her, Buffy simply says she doesn't care; when Fray more or less begs her to reconsider something that they both think will wipe out Fray's entire world, Buffy not only won't but even finds time to taunt Fray in the process.
MEL: The big picture.
BUFFY: It’s called the fate of the world, short view.
MEL: “Fate of the world.” Made sense… when there was only one.
That's actually a pretty spot-on observation by Fray there; not only are we talking about there being more than one world, but also more than one Slayer. Buffy used to call the shots on account of being Slayer comma The, and despite all her talk about sharing her power, that's what she still does back home and that's at least part of what she's desperate to get back to. Except there isn't only one Slayer anymore, and apart from Faith (who never wanted a leadership position) there's nobody better to remind her than Fray. This isn't some naive potential who owes her power to Buffy; Fray made herself, and she has more than earned her right to defend her world from (in her view) amoral time-travellers who threaten to wipe it from existence. Buffy's big picture, it seems, has become so big that not even an entire world with billions of people makes a blip on her radar.
FRAY: So come on, guys. I'm just one girl. No big hero, no protector of justice, not even a bona fide one-hundred-percent Slayer. So what are you waiting for? Take me on. Hurt my world. I dare you.
BUFFY: I don't care about your world.
Maybe that's a bit unfair. Because at the same time, while Buffy doesn't exactly come across as the most selfless and compromising hero – in fact, much like she has been throughout the comics, she seems determined to defiantly prove her accusers right and kick their asses in the process...
BUFFY: Oh. ...Kay.
...where was I? Oh, right. While Buffy doesn't exactly come across yada yada yada, it's also been made pretty clear that she really doesn't want this reality. She doesn't even want to accept that it is reality. Seeing everything she's fought for for... well, for the one and a half years post-"Chosen" that we'll never be told about, I guess... seeing all that ripped away and cancelled out has got her so spooked that she'll do anything to get out of it – even walk across the corpse of her best friend and sell short the future of Slayerdom in her Miracle Mile-style dash for the supposedly one chance to get back to the world she has saved a lot. Buffy breaks Fray's scythe; Buffy kills Willow with the scythe; can we say "symbolism", boys and girls? It's about power, and as it has been throughout Season 8, the ethics of how to use that power seem secondary; it's about having it, keeping it and getting it back. What sets Fray apart from Buffy, in Buffy's own words:
BUFFY: She's stronger than me. On her home turf. And she knows what she's fighting for.
Hmmm...?
Let's get back to that in a bit. While most of the issue took place in the future, at least it checked in with the "real" timeline, so I might as well too.
Willow really trusts Saga Vasuki and does exactly as she's told with the blindfold (I guess the word is "blind faith"). Still saying it would be nice to know what SV has done to earn that trust, especially considering what happened the last time Willow trusted her. What happened to curious Willow?
We find out who Buffy met in #16. It was Riley. And, he's suddenly evil. But of course he is. (Somewhere, all the writers of Rapist!Riley fics just punched the air in triumphant vindication.) But hey, at least he's not Twilight but just his minion, which feels marginally less wtf-ish. Scott Allie has said we'll eventually find out what made Riley seemingly do a 180 from the slightly too traditional and not overly intelligent but at heart decent guy he was on the show, and I suppose there's always a possibility that he really is Buffy's man on the inside and that he's just playing Twilight, or that he has an agenda all of his own. That would still mean he just stood by and watched, smiling, as Warren killed a bunch of Slayers and almost killed Xander, but hey, big picture right?
As ridiculous as the fight between the woodland critters and the army of green snake demons is, I like Rowena's (nope, still can't read that name without hearing Bernard Black say it) order. "Slayers – fuck 'em up." And Xander's comment on the five stages of grief – heh. It's Tolkien on crack, but at least it's short.
Meanwhile, Dawn is still away at college like she has been since the start of the comic. A pity, as I'm sure Joss could have come up with a half-decent storyline for her if he'd tried, but yay Dawn for getting a life I suppose.
As opposed to Future!Willow, to get back to the main story. This is the second time Willow's rarely-mentioned-on-the-actual-show love for history is mentioned – the first being by Amy in "The Long Way Home." And this time, she takes her history with her to her (supposed) grave. Which is even more the pity as her role in this was really quite promising; she kept speaking in riddles and lies, but she was obviously the only one here who knew what was going on, who was pulling the strings from the beginning... and she was killed before she had time to explain even half of it. We don't know what her plan was about, even if we can make a few wild guesses. We don't know why she needed to involve Harth. We don't know how she got there in the first place. We don't know what her involvement with Saga Vasuki is. We don't know who set up the time portal, though Ms Snake is a good guess, I suppose. We don't know who's in charge of the two; present!Willow certainly isn't. And since we don't know what Future!Willow's plan was, we have no idea if she was successful or failed miserably. If the idea was to have Buffy kill her (and why) or if it really was to keep Buffy in the 23rd century.
Even if it's a nice meta-commentary on Season 8 to have Buffy kill Willow rather than provide much-needed backstory on what the hell is going on, it does mean the issue – and the entire arc – ends up looking more like "just a bunch of stuff that happened" than one where we can at least make an educated guess of what everyone's agenda is. (There's that pesky thing about seeing the characters make the choices that get them into the situation again.) On the surface, nothing much really changed; Buffy is right back where she left off, Willow found out nothing, Kennedy probably found out nothing, nobody anyone cares about got killed, the castle was torn down but nobody really gives a damn, Riley is evil but we still don't know why or who Twilight is, we never found out what happened to Future!Willow, and Fray is right where she always was (if now unarmed and demoralized against a pissed-off Harth). So what was the point of the entire arc, apart from saying "No, we haven't forgotten that we gave away the ending in Fray?"
The key, obviously, is Buffy – who is the only person in our timeline (apart from Saga Vasuki, I guess) who knows what happened. And since Fray and Erin still exist, I suppose there are two possibilities here:
1) Future!Willow did this to prevent Fray's world from happening. Her last act, in death, is to transport the Fray!verse into a separate dimension or some such, not unlike the Wishverse (though it seems like a very unselfish act to perform with one's last breath). Hey, maybe Fray is the future of the TV timeline as opposed to the comic one? ;-) Buffy goes back, utterly heartbroken at having killed Willow, opens her eyes and looks at the world – and decides to prove Twilight wrong and stop playing his game.
2) Willow was telling Harth the truth: what happened in his time caused his time to come. Turning Buffy into someone who's prepared to do anything to win, no matter who she has to step on, will cause Twilight to win – by turning everyone against Buffy and her army (hellooo there #21-25 arc) and/or by effectively robbing Buffy of her own conviction. (A line from Nabokov springs to mind: "The one who kills is always his victim's inferior" – then again, the character who said that was quite mad and possibly not even real, so I don't know where I'm going with that. Besides, Joss would probably be more likely to reference some Jedi credo here.) In this case, we'd have a Buffy who, by her own admission, doesn't know what she's fighting for. A Buffy who has stopped asking why – or at least waiting for the answers. A Buffy who is so convinced she's done everything right so far that she'll do anything to preserve her own status quo – even if she hurts those she loves, even if other Slayers are increasingly showing themselves to be perfectly capable of managing without her. A Buffy who has bought into her own myth as a hero so much that she'll knock people out for getting her name wrong. A Buffy whose first instinct in a tight situation is: "Slay."
Now, I've already seen several posts arguing both these alternatives and offer some pretty convincing arguments, but here's my main argument in favour of #2: the fact that Future!Willow doesn't get a backstory. They introduce a future version of a major character, repeatedly stress the importance of history throughout the arc, and then never reveal it. The only way that makes sense – assuming Season 8 cares about making sense – is if it'll get filled in as we go along. And the only way that's going to happen is if, well, that's the way it goes.
At least for a while yet.
So much for that theory. Good to see he knows what he's doing, at least.
Of course, we'd already been spoiled that Future!Willow would get killed, but as she herself pointed out in the previews: it's not so much who dies as who does the killing – so the question still remained, who'd actually finish her off, would she have time to explain what the hell's going on first, and would anyone else die as well?
Turns out the answers are "Buffy" (asssuming that Future!Willow is (will be) really dead, of course), "nope", and "probably not" (assuming that Fray and Erin aren't in some sort of afterlife).
Yes, in this issue Buffy joins the illustrous crowd of Whedon heroes who have murdered humans – and the person she kills is her supposedly best friend. Or, well, her possible future self. Of course, future!Willow didn't seem much of a good guy - she was fine with Harth killing a bunch of innocent people if it fit her plan, after all – and she's even on record as saying she's not quite human anymore, which I suppose makes it a matter of definition. Buffy's tearful reaction is strong stuff, and it's a cunning "Becoming" callback and everything but... is there any particular reason Buffy doesn't just knock Willow out of the way? Or better yet, tackle her through the portal and ask questions in the safety of her own New York hotel? How come her first reaction is "stabbity"? I'm sure we can come up with some explanation, but it doesn't change the fact that my first impression was "Uh... why did she have to do that?"
Which is a pity as it undercuts what should have been an emotional ending to an issue that, while a bit confusing and featuring the occasional wtf moment, still had some pretty great scenes. Despite the weird circumstances, Willow's discussion with Fray, Erin and Buffy are very nice indeed - at least until Harth shows up and it turns into 20 Questions - and a good mirror of Buffy's breakdown in #18. And both Willow and Buffy seem determined to do whatever they have to do to get out of this situation, even if it makes them both come across as villains to the heroes of the Fray!verse. It's to Fray's credit that she still refuses to even consider killing Buffy right up until the very end, and I do like the confrontation between them. When Fray tries to talk to her, Buffy simply says she doesn't care; when Fray more or less begs her to reconsider something that they both think will wipe out Fray's entire world, Buffy not only won't but even finds time to taunt Fray in the process.
MEL: The big picture.
BUFFY: It’s called the fate of the world, short view.
MEL: “Fate of the world.” Made sense… when there was only one.
That's actually a pretty spot-on observation by Fray there; not only are we talking about there being more than one world, but also more than one Slayer. Buffy used to call the shots on account of being Slayer comma The, and despite all her talk about sharing her power, that's what she still does back home and that's at least part of what she's desperate to get back to. Except there isn't only one Slayer anymore, and apart from Faith (who never wanted a leadership position) there's nobody better to remind her than Fray. This isn't some naive potential who owes her power to Buffy; Fray made herself, and she has more than earned her right to defend her world from (in her view) amoral time-travellers who threaten to wipe it from existence. Buffy's big picture, it seems, has become so big that not even an entire world with billions of people makes a blip on her radar.
FRAY: So come on, guys. I'm just one girl. No big hero, no protector of justice, not even a bona fide one-hundred-percent Slayer. So what are you waiting for? Take me on. Hurt my world. I dare you.
BUFFY: I don't care about your world.
Maybe that's a bit unfair. Because at the same time, while Buffy doesn't exactly come across as the most selfless and compromising hero – in fact, much like she has been throughout the comics, she seems determined to defiantly prove her accusers right and kick their asses in the process...
BUFFY: Oh. ...Kay.
...where was I? Oh, right. While Buffy doesn't exactly come across yada yada yada, it's also been made pretty clear that she really doesn't want this reality. She doesn't even want to accept that it is reality. Seeing everything she's fought for for... well, for the one and a half years post-"Chosen" that we'll never be told about, I guess... seeing all that ripped away and cancelled out has got her so spooked that she'll do anything to get out of it – even walk across the corpse of her best friend and sell short the future of Slayerdom in her Miracle Mile-style dash for the supposedly one chance to get back to the world she has saved a lot. Buffy breaks Fray's scythe; Buffy kills Willow with the scythe; can we say "symbolism", boys and girls? It's about power, and as it has been throughout Season 8, the ethics of how to use that power seem secondary; it's about having it, keeping it and getting it back. What sets Fray apart from Buffy, in Buffy's own words:
BUFFY: She's stronger than me. On her home turf. And she knows what she's fighting for.
Hmmm...?
Let's get back to that in a bit. While most of the issue took place in the future, at least it checked in with the "real" timeline, so I might as well too.
Willow really trusts Saga Vasuki and does exactly as she's told with the blindfold (I guess the word is "blind faith"). Still saying it would be nice to know what SV has done to earn that trust, especially considering what happened the last time Willow trusted her. What happened to curious Willow?
We find out who Buffy met in #16. It was Riley. And, he's suddenly evil. But of course he is. (Somewhere, all the writers of Rapist!Riley fics just punched the air in triumphant vindication.) But hey, at least he's not Twilight but just his minion, which feels marginally less wtf-ish. Scott Allie has said we'll eventually find out what made Riley seemingly do a 180 from the slightly too traditional and not overly intelligent but at heart decent guy he was on the show, and I suppose there's always a possibility that he really is Buffy's man on the inside and that he's just playing Twilight, or that he has an agenda all of his own. That would still mean he just stood by and watched, smiling, as Warren killed a bunch of Slayers and almost killed Xander, but hey, big picture right?
As ridiculous as the fight between the woodland critters and the army of green snake demons is, I like Rowena's (nope, still can't read that name without hearing Bernard Black say it) order. "Slayers – fuck 'em up." And Xander's comment on the five stages of grief – heh. It's Tolkien on crack, but at least it's short.
Meanwhile, Dawn is still away at college like she has been since the start of the comic. A pity, as I'm sure Joss could have come up with a half-decent storyline for her if he'd tried, but yay Dawn for getting a life I suppose.
As opposed to Future!Willow, to get back to the main story. This is the second time Willow's rarely-mentioned-on-the-actual-show love for history is mentioned – the first being by Amy in "The Long Way Home." And this time, she takes her history with her to her (supposed) grave. Which is even more the pity as her role in this was really quite promising; she kept speaking in riddles and lies, but she was obviously the only one here who knew what was going on, who was pulling the strings from the beginning... and she was killed before she had time to explain even half of it. We don't know what her plan was about, even if we can make a few wild guesses. We don't know why she needed to involve Harth. We don't know how she got there in the first place. We don't know what her involvement with Saga Vasuki is. We don't know who set up the time portal, though Ms Snake is a good guess, I suppose. We don't know who's in charge of the two; present!Willow certainly isn't. And since we don't know what Future!Willow's plan was, we have no idea if she was successful or failed miserably. If the idea was to have Buffy kill her (and why) or if it really was to keep Buffy in the 23rd century.
Even if it's a nice meta-commentary on Season 8 to have Buffy kill Willow rather than provide much-needed backstory on what the hell is going on, it does mean the issue – and the entire arc – ends up looking more like "just a bunch of stuff that happened" than one where we can at least make an educated guess of what everyone's agenda is. (There's that pesky thing about seeing the characters make the choices that get them into the situation again.) On the surface, nothing much really changed; Buffy is right back where she left off, Willow found out nothing, Kennedy probably found out nothing, nobody anyone cares about got killed, the castle was torn down but nobody really gives a damn, Riley is evil but we still don't know why or who Twilight is, we never found out what happened to Future!Willow, and Fray is right where she always was (if now unarmed and demoralized against a pissed-off Harth). So what was the point of the entire arc, apart from saying "No, we haven't forgotten that we gave away the ending in Fray?"
The key, obviously, is Buffy – who is the only person in our timeline (apart from Saga Vasuki, I guess) who knows what happened. And since Fray and Erin still exist, I suppose there are two possibilities here:
1) Future!Willow did this to prevent Fray's world from happening. Her last act, in death, is to transport the Fray!verse into a separate dimension or some such, not unlike the Wishverse (though it seems like a very unselfish act to perform with one's last breath). Hey, maybe Fray is the future of the TV timeline as opposed to the comic one? ;-) Buffy goes back, utterly heartbroken at having killed Willow, opens her eyes and looks at the world – and decides to prove Twilight wrong and stop playing his game.
2) Willow was telling Harth the truth: what happened in his time caused his time to come. Turning Buffy into someone who's prepared to do anything to win, no matter who she has to step on, will cause Twilight to win – by turning everyone against Buffy and her army (hellooo there #21-25 arc) and/or by effectively robbing Buffy of her own conviction. (A line from Nabokov springs to mind: "The one who kills is always his victim's inferior" – then again, the character who said that was quite mad and possibly not even real, so I don't know where I'm going with that. Besides, Joss would probably be more likely to reference some Jedi credo here.) In this case, we'd have a Buffy who, by her own admission, doesn't know what she's fighting for. A Buffy who has stopped asking why – or at least waiting for the answers. A Buffy who is so convinced she's done everything right so far that she'll do anything to preserve her own status quo – even if she hurts those she loves, even if other Slayers are increasingly showing themselves to be perfectly capable of managing without her. A Buffy who has bought into her own myth as a hero so much that she'll knock people out for getting her name wrong. A Buffy whose first instinct in a tight situation is: "Slay."
Now, I've already seen several posts arguing both these alternatives and offer some pretty convincing arguments, but here's my main argument in favour of #2: the fact that Future!Willow doesn't get a backstory. They introduce a future version of a major character, repeatedly stress the importance of history throughout the arc, and then never reveal it. The only way that makes sense – assuming Season 8 cares about making sense – is if it'll get filled in as we go along. And the only way that's going to happen is if, well, that's the way it goes.
At least for a while yet.
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Date: 2008-11-29 12:53 pm (UTC)Having said that both I and (I note) stormwreath perceived Riley's wisecracking as uncharacteristic so I think (and Scott Allie confirmed) that there will be more back story to come on this one.