Between Seasons: Buffy Season Nine Wrap-up

Now that Buffy Season Nine has ended, the wait begins for Season Ten. So far, nothing concrete has been announced, so we’re at the perfect point to appraise the season and blindly (and likely incorrectly) speculate forward. This article also serves as a companion piece to my Angel & Faith #25 and Buffy Season Nine #25 reviews, now having the liberty of spoilers.

I’m starting with Buffy because I want to get the negative out of the way. Xander betrayed Buffy to Severin and Simone to help them turn back time and undo the ending of Season Eight. During the ensuing conflict at the Deeper Well, Willow created a new seed that restored magic to Earth, but the sheer amount of energy released killed both Severin and Illyria. Simone was turned by Maloker, the demon who created the first vampire, then killed by Buffy. Everyone else escaped unharmed, and once they returned home, Willow stopped Dawn from fading away, bringing back everyone’s memories in the process. Buffy and Willow discovered that the Vampyr book is now blank, and the final issue closes on a vampire standing, unharmed, in sunlight before turning into a bat and flying off.

The first problem I have is that everything kind of returns to normal at the end. Dawn doesn’t die (I don’t hate her, but killing her would’ve made things interesting) even though they set up everything so that they could. The only thing that made an impact was that they killed Illyria, but only due to my fondness for the character – in this series, she was a plot device at best. The characters haven’t advanced, instead resetting to themselves at the beginning of Season Nine or (in Willow’s case) right before the end of Season Eight. With a major exception, everything stays the same.

That major exception being the return of magic. I’ve talked a lot about this in my reviews, but while the Buffyverse is weird without magic (even though it still kind of had magic – I don’t think the writers even understood it), I wanted to see what they did with it. You change something that big about the world, the characters have to react. There were hints of it at the beginning, but overall this series just seemed aimless and lost without magic. Given the Fray series, I was even thinking it might be a permanent change, since a major part of the backstory there was the loss of magic at some indeterminate point in their past. Instead, they spent one season dealing with the loss of magic by coming up with every way they could think of to work magic into it anyway and restoring it completely at the end. Between this and Giles’s resurrection, it feels like the mission statement of Season Nine was “retcon the ending of Season Eight”.

Vampires changed, too. Part of this is me just not liking the change – I’m not above admitting personal bias. I just don’t see the point of it. The vampire rules in the series has always been a little fuzzy (some vampires get immolated almost immediately in any sunlight, but some can run around in daylight protected just by a blanket), but the general rules never changed. Yes, different worlds have different magic rules – Angel didn’t burn up in the sunlight when they went to Pylea – and the creation of a new seed in a much different place points to things being different. It’s not a question of logic, but story. This is the third season in a row that the finale made a fundamental change to the universe, and they keep changing the rules too much and too quickly, not allowing us to get comfortable with what they currently are and exploring the Buffyverse with those rules. Now, yes, this does open up more possibilities, and I can guarantee you that there are certain jokes that must be used (I could write them ahead of time). There’s a lot of room to write a good story with all of this, I just don’t have much confidence, especially after this season squandered good ideas and a relatively strong start.

Enough of the negativity, I should talk about something that I liked. It’s not perfect and I’ll never claim it is, but now is time for me to gush about Angel & Faith again.

While Whistler, Pearl, and Nash collected enough magical energy to set off an explosion likely to kill two billion people, Angel focused almost solely on the resurrection spell to bring back Giles. They succeed, but Giles is brought back in the body of a twelve-year old, leading to easily my favorite issue of the season. Whistler is successful up until the point that he’s given some magical power back, at which point he realizes what he’s doing to the world and kills himself to spare two billion people. Nash was also killed in the chaos with Pearl disappearing, likely to become a pain in the ass later. Faith leaves to join Kennedy’s bodyguard/mercenary company, Giles goes back to America to find Buffy, and Angel stays in London, returning to the basics of helping the helpless.

The first difference is that this is really an ending. Sure, the only deaths are villains (Nadira somehow survived having half her body burned up), but the characters are really in a different place now from the beginning. Angel was completely consumed by his mission to resurrect Giles, and Faith was so far in his debt that she helped him despite her misgivings. Now, Angel has returned to doing the small things, and Faith has taken control of her life back again. Giles has changed greatly in that he’s, well, alive again, but he’s going to find Buffy now, compared to their almost total lack of interaction in Season Eight.

What strikes me after everything wrapped up is that the ending was really all about Whistler. He’s the one with the power and ability to bring magic back, and ultimately he’s the only one who can decide what happens. I didn’t notice it as the story played out, but now that it has, it’s so obvious that I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before.

All that said, the biggest reason why the ending worked is that everything that happened in the series had consequences. With the possible exception of issue #5, everything had a marked effect on the characters whether or not it seemed major at the time. The biggest thing that kept its impact was Giles’s resurrection – a lot of people thought that he was going to die in the final battle (again), but instead of wasting his character, they keep him alive and (presumably) have something major planned for him in the next season, but more on that later.

I skipped over the Willow and Spike miniseries on purpose. I already reviewed them, and they weren’t part of the end of the series, so I’ve already said what I have to say.

So, that’s my last word on Season Nine for a while. I may come back to it in the future, but for now, just wait two weeks for the beginning of my blind and likely incorrect speculation about what Season Ten will be.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) just wants to warn you about long-winded, rampant speculation coming soon. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: King Conan – The Hour of the Dragon #3

While Hour of the Dragon #1 and #2 seemed somewhat slow-paced, issue #3 goes from one action scene to the next, with a few brief pauses for exposition in between. Conan still hasn’t found out exactly why Zenobia is helping him, but the comic does show a glimpse of King Tarascus’ plans. Xaltotun appears only briefly in this issue, but his role in the story is far from over. I shouldn’t really say more than that, but it’s difficult to discuss this issue without spoiling the plot. Well, Robert E. Howard’s original Hour of the Dragon has been in print for decades now, but for those who haven’t read it, here’s a spoiler-free review: Timothy Truman, Tomás Giorello, and José Villarrubia have created another good issue. King Conan: Hour of the Dragon #3 is full of action, and there are a few significant plot developments. If the first two issues intrigued you, pick this one up, but one more thing I should mention is a poorly-adapted scene in this comic, that I’ll spoil below. My full review, with spoilers, follows after the jump.

As far as the story goes, perhaps the most interesting scene in this issue is when Tarascus finds the magic gem that appears to be the source of Xaltotun’s power. This story won’t just be Conan against the sorcerer; Tarascus knows he can’t trust such a powerful wizard, so he needs some leverage for the likely betrayal. Or maybe Tarascus just wants Xaltotun out of the way now that he’s served his purpose: capturing Conan and defeating the Aquilonian army. 

But thanks to Zenobia, that first goal has backfired on the Nemedians, as Tarascus soon finds out, in what is perhaps the weakest scene in this comic. Conan attacks, but fails to kill Tarascus with his first stab, and has to fight off the king’s bodyguard. After this, he doesn’t go after the king, but decides to run away from the rest of the guards with Zenobia. The way the comic is drawn, Tarascus seems only a few feet away from Conan, running for his life and screaming for the guards. A few pages later, Conan kills Tarascus’ bodyguard by throwing a dagger into his throat, from at least a few feet away. Couldn’t he have done the same to the fleeing king?

In Howard’s original novel, this scene makes a bit more sense. The bodyguard isn’t present in the original, and the room is lit only by a candle on the table. Conan slips and knocks the table over, putting out the candle. Tarascus manages to escape in the darkness, as Conan does not know the layout of the palace. 

taken from http://www.darkhorse.com

Maybe it would have been difficult to draw Tarascus and Conan fumbling in the dark, but the way the scene changes from the original just makes Conan seem cowardly. In the original, he fails to finish off Tarascus because he doesn’t know which way the king went; in this comic it’s not as clear. Sure, Conan is wounded from the fight with the ape earlier, but that’s never stopped him from vengeance before. It seems more like he’s afraid of the palace guards. “Instead of settling my score with Tarascus, I’d kicked up a hornet’s next,” King Conan narrates. “To save my hide, I had no choice… but to run!” 

The rest of the issue is pretty good though. There’s plenty of action, and the artwork is just as good as previous issues. There’s also a clever flash-forward near the end of this issue, using Conan’s face to frame the shift in time. The aging King Conan looks very different from the young King, but he’s still recognizable. This issue is well-done for the most part, but there just isn’t that much to talk about except for the point when the storytelling falls flat. If you’re already following this series, the $3.50 cover price and that one disappointing scene probably won’t keep you away. 

Danilo Culibrk, aka Augustus, is a staff writer for the Red Shirt Crew. He wouldn’t let a few guards stand between him and vengeance. But hornets, maybe. They’re nasty. You can follow his escapes from monster-infested dungeons on Twitter at @Augustusing.

Revisiting Angel & Faith #22

I had to write this post – the review was one thing, but I had to write more. I have to talk about this in a context where I can spoil what happens. And I will – this is about the climax that they have between building to since the beginning of Angel & Faith, without any of the misleading or half true comments that are required in writing reviews without spoilers.

Where issue #21 ended, the spell to resurrect Giles was being cast when it was interrupted by Whistler, Pearl, and Nash. The spell was still going, and the issue ended on an ambiguous note, unclear whether the spell would work or not. When it picks up again, they desperately attempt, one last time, to get it to work. That is not the spoiler, as it’s all in the preview pages, but what comes next is (FINAL SPOILER WARNING DON’T CLICK ON THAT IF YOU WANT TO AVOID SPOILERS):

Giles is brought back… in the body of a twelve year old.

I… Just… Wow. Every time I read this issue, more than a week after reading it for the first time, I still have this huge smile on my face. I had expected a simple, probably underwhelming resolution – he was brought back, or he wasn’t. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, since the show never exactly took the simple way out (see the climax of Season 2 for a particularly devastating example), but this still caught me off guard, probably because it’s so far outside of what I would expect to happen – I don’t know how much time it would’ve taken me to come up with this idea, or even if I could’ve, and I love seeing stories that go in a direction that unexpected.

But the real genius is that they made this funny. Angel is best known for his incredible brooding skills, so making redemption for one of his worst crimes (which is arguable, but that’s how he sees things) into a comedic situation is both ridiculous yet inevitable. In an interview, David Boreanaz suggested a similarly ridiculous ending to the series: Angel finally has his humanity restored, and as he walks out into the sunlight… he’s hit by a truck. Something about that felt like the perfect end to his story. Here, Angel has undone his worst crime, and not taking it deathly seriously feels oddly like the perfect tone.

Does this fit with the established rules? It’s taken as fact that someone can’t be brought back from a natural death, and having your neck snapped is not overly supernatural. To preempt the arguments, go back and reread the first volume of the series. Angel’s argument about how he can collect Giles’s soul and restore his body are quite persuasive, even though it does sound like he’s trying to convince himself more than anything. I didn’t even think of this problem until more than a day after I read the issue, and there are good arguments for how it works, so I don’t have a problem with it bending the rules slightly.

Now what about the fact that he came back in a twelve year old body? This is what I never saw coming. The logic is interesting – his aunts, who were very steeped in magic, pictured him as the boy he was when they inadvertently showed his magical potential – but he’s slightly older than that. Giles says himself that he could feel it coming and resisted, which mostly explains it, even though the logic is a little weird, especially considering that they had his adult body there and intact. That doesn’t bother me much, though. Like I made sure to emphasize multiple times, this isn’t just a joke. There is a very fundamental change in Giles and his relationships with others and what he can contribute, even though he retains his memory and personality from just before he was killed. In the Buffyverse, they’ve bent the rules before if it told a better story, and I think this is just a continuation of that. We might not see it all here, but if they’re going in this direction, it’s because they have some story to tell. At this point, let the blind speculation begin.

I get the feeling that Giles will be a major part of the next season. He could be a major supporting character in one series, or even get a series of his own. Either way, this puts him in a place where a lot of interesting stories can be told. One of the reasons that he was killed in Season Eight was because his character didn’t work in the comics the way he did on the show. Buffy didn’t need a father figure anymore due to character development, and Mr. Exposition doesn’t work as well in comics as on TV. He’s not that person anymore, even though he has all the memories, and this new dynamic could add to many different stories. I’m not sure which ones yet, as that would require knowing what happens at the end of the season and knowing who survives, and that is far from certain. Christos Gage has said that two people aren’t going to live through the finale of this season, and while I can speculate until the cows come home (and then I can speculate about the cows, or something like that), I can’t tell you with any certainty who I think they’re going to kill (please don’t kill Faith – sure, they’ll probably make that story good and I’ll eventually come to terms with it, but please don’t make it come to that), but as long as they don’t kill Giles, which would be a huge letdown, he’s likely to be a major part of the next season.

Now we know what the title of the arc means. It’s an inversion of the usual cliché, and I was quote interested in exactly what it meant for where the storyline was going. But now we know – Angel brings Giles back because of his guilt, and Faith got so caught up in wanting a father figure (they even had an arc called Daddy Issues – I may hate that term, but it’s a legitimate description of Faith’s problems) that they completely ignored everything else to go all in with the resurrection.

Yeah, that means that the resurrection is not the end of the story this season. Even though the season long arc has finished, there’s still Whistler’s plan to bring back magic to worry about. In a way, this reminds me of “Primeval”, with the difference being that I like this issue a lot more than that episode: even though the ostensibly main plot is over, there’s still one more thing to deal with, explicitly because of the characters’ actions. Faith and Angel have been ignoring Whistler, and now they have to deal with him when they could’ve possibly stopped him before he was capable of doing so much damage.

Speaking of Whistler and the imminent final battle, Nadira is now joining the battle after having been absent. Her absence felt a lot longer than it actually was — she was last in issue #19, but because issues come one month apart, it felt like she had been relegated to the background. I didn’t immediately recognize how important she was. Back in issue #1, Nadira told Faith that she was going to kill Pearl and Nash, then she was going to kill Angel. The final battle of this season involves those three on different sides of the battle, so I honestly don’t know what her effect will be in this battle. Her character has been established enough that she can believably take either side for emotional or logical reasons, which is very impressive for a side character first introduced in issue #1, but has made the most of the little time her character has had to develop and gain complex emotional motivations that I can’t quite untangle.

Looking over all this, I notice that I’m being oddly positive. I’ve spent a lot of time gushing about this issue and its rather bizarre twist. However, equally weird things have happened in the Buffy series that I have reacted to with puzzlement (the Twilight storyline from Season Eight) or frustration bordering on anger (Buffy thought she was pregnant but was really a robot. Yes, that was a thing that happened). I also spent a lot of time speculating about what might happen in Season Ten, assuming that they have a very good reason to resurrect Giles and a plan for following through. Thinking about it, I might not be this positive if I was talking about something in the Buffy series. Yes, it’s probably bias speaking, but the fact that the writing has been so much better in this series means that I’m willing to give them benefit of the doubt – I reacted to the weird and insane direction this comic went with unbridled enthusiasm, yet was more hesitantly enthusiastic for the less weird direction that the most recent Buffy comic went. If there’s anything to learn here, it’s that doing good work in the first place makes people more enthusiastic about anything you might do.

And for one final thing, this would cause some really interesting fanfiction if people actually wrote it using the comics (they don’t). There are several moments making a joke of a Faith/Giles pairing that would be perfect for shippers to grab onto and extrapolate from, and fanfiction is known for not caring about age gaps or any age-related weirdness. Making some guesses about their ages and the timeframe of the comics, Faith is 25, while Giles is in his early 50s but in the body of a 12-year old.

With that disturbing final thought, goodnight everyone.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) had no idea how to end this article, so you’re left with that disturbing conclusion. Follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings, which shouldn’t be as disturbing most of the time.