"Why would Faith kill a person who studies Vulcans?"
Wow. That’s an amazingly compact but efficient “previously on” that manages to cover an awful lot of ground. I’m impressed.
Everything about this ominously serious episodes points to something shocking terrible happening. From the constant reminders of how the Potentials are untested, to Xander’s rousing speech about how Buffy cares about their lives which makes it certain that something bad will happen to him, to the atmosphere of doom and gloom, we expect something tragic to happen.
In the meantime we get introduced to the darkly misogynistic and manipulative Caleb, a superb preacher-like villain played by the ever-superb Nathan Fillion, recent refugee from Firefly. Caleb gives a face and personality to the First, somethingbthat was previously missing, and is both enormously charismatic and (as we shockingly see at the end) strong enough to swat away slayers like flies. We also have Faith’s awkward return to Sunnyvale, where under the circumstances she’s certainly welcome but doesn’t fit in. But she and Spike bond over their shared bad past, their shared kinky natures, and the revelation that they have in fact had some incredible sex in the past when Faith was pretending to be Buffy. First impressions and all that...
It’s weird, although inevitable, to see Faith and Dawn recognise each other though.
We also see Buffy and Robin reconcile, although he fires her; she has far more important things to do. But much of the interaction concerns the wisdom of Buffy’s proposed attack on Caleb- both Giles (still in the doghouse) and Xander disagree, which I’m sure is something we will return to next episode. But we end with the assault on the First and, of course, evedything goes wrong as a redshirt Potential is killed- and Xander loses an eye.
A tensexand superb bit of telly, then, that makes it clear we’re now entering the final stretch.
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