Buffy Season 8 – Volume 4. Time of Your Life

Wow, this episode starts off with a bang. Right away you see Buffy fighting a girl with a scarred face and purple tipped hair. I thought, “Dang that girl looks familiar. Who the heck is she?” It took me a few minutes as I went through my mental list of the slayer army ™. Nope, not her. Nope, not her either. Ohhhh. That’s right. She’s not technically part of the slayer army ™. She’s from the future. She’s Fray. And then I went, “what the what?” Which is also a colleague’s new favorite saying.

So, yeah…Fray. In a word: awesome. I loved that two very separate worlds collided in a kick butt storyline. What happens is present day Willow gets a magical tip that there is going to be some sort of a temporal shift in NYC and that her and the Buffster need to be there. As always, things aren’t as they seem and Buffy gets sucked into the future and into a fight with Fray – who takes a few minutes to recognize that Buffy is a fellow slayer from the past. There is one scene where Buffy asks Fray how many slayers she’s got on her side and Fray’s like just me girl (oh and my evil twin brother who’s a vamp – he’s got my memories and he wants to kill me). So obviously, the slayer army ™ does not survive. Hip Hip Hooray! I wonder what happens to them? Maybe they’re just de-slayerfied. It’s got to be wrapped up in Buffy’s special Scythe, since they all but spelled out how that is the source of the slayer army’s ™ power. And just for you FYI, Fray is two centuries in the future. Only two centuries until flying cars, y’all! Oh and Willow is in the future. (*spoiler alert*) And she’s EVIIIIIIIIIL! She’s behind the temporal shift that present day Willow heard about. Trippy, huh? I had to read this twice, but I’m fairly certain that she pulled Buffy into the future so that Buffy could kill her and set some wrong right. To me, it seemed as though Willow was making up for some wrong she did Buffy. Possibly kill/de-slayerify the slayer army ™? I can’t wait to find out! (end of spoilers).

Anyhow, all this is wrapped up in Twilight’s plot to take away Buffy’s moral standing. He thinks that if she doesn’t have a strong moral certainty that she is on the right side that he can defeat her and get rid of all the magic. And Riley is part of Twilight’s crew. Or possibly a double agent. Riley has always annoyed me. That Initiative storyline was just lame. I hope he doesn’t figure too prominently in the future episodes.

Previously:
The Long Way Home
No Future For You
Wolves at the Gate


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Book Source: Library Copy