Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Headscratchers/Season 7

Headscratchers for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Spoilers abound.

Willow's Gun

 * In "The Killer in Me", what appears to be a dead man walks into a gun shop with no ID or Handgun Safety Certificate, picks out a gun and buys it without a method of payment, and immediately walks off with it without filling out a single form or waiting ten days. Now, the entire episode is a Wall Banger, even by Season 7 standards, but how the hell does this happen? Is the gun dealer somehow affected by the spell cast on Willow? There's no obvious reason to believe he is... other than that he sold the gun.
 * Willow's magic was affecting his mind. It's been shown that Willow's will can affect the world - she wanted the situation to play out exactly the same, and for that she needed the man to sell her the gun. It was probably entirely subconscious.
 * Having never bought a firearm myself, I'm not too sure about the rules, but it's clear that this dealer was specifically the same one who had sold Warren a gun (that he used to kill Tara). Would it help if Warren had had something on file with the gun dealer showing he passed a background check within the last 6 months (or so)? While Willow's spell changed not only her appearance but her clothes too, it seems likely that her wallet became a guy's wallet with her ID changing to have Warren's face and name as well. Perhaps it could have been shown on-screen, but the whole "proper registration of a firearm" thing would sort of break the flow of the drama in the story.
 * Given the highly restrictive gun laws in California require a 10-day waiting period between buying a gun and actually being able to take it with you, clearly the gun dealer wasn't on the up and up in the first place. Even if he was a legitimately licensed dealer, he must have been making illegal sales on the side.

Pedestrian Fantasy

 * Buffy was supposed to be an intelligent, athletic, and confident girl, living in the suburbs with a loving mom and supportive watcher. Was there any reason she turned twenty-two without ever learning how to drive? Granted, she was pretty busy, but you'd think your watcher would want you to be able to make it across town in a hurry when the world needed saving. Beyond that, it's a detail that seems bizarrely out of synch with the whole girl-empowerment theme of the show. Was there a meta reason for this?
 * I understand it's slightly easier in America, but in Britain the driving test has a pass rate of 42 per cent. Logically, more than half the cast should be unable to drive. Buffy's casual attitude towards book learning would probably do her no favours in the theory side, and superhuman reflexes would probably throw other parts of the test off.
 * Yeah, but we drive way more than you guys. :) In the US, about 50% pass their road test on the first try, but mostly we start early and keep taking it until we pass -- you only have to wait a few weeks to take it again if you fail. In California, it's only around 10% of women that haven't learned to drive by Buffy's age at the end of the series -- more of them in densely populated urban areas than in small towns like Sunnydale.
 * She Drives Like Crazy, this is canon. My guess is that she has some sort of mental block against learning to drive well early in the series, and later in the series (possibly as early as the aftereffects of "Band Candy") she's stopped practicing at all because the automobile damage was getting to be too expensive and too dangerous for Joyce or any other licensed adult who would willingly get in the car with her.
 * By Season 7 she seems to have learned to drive off screen. In "Him" she pulls into the school parking lot in an SUV before trying to kill Principal Wood.
 * Buffy's a bit of an adrenaline junkie, and because of how much foot pursuit she does, she's more or less used to weaving around and over obstacles at high speeds. It comes from years of hunting vampires; taking her time to go around obstacles in her path can potentially be the difference between a successfully dusted vampire, and letting her quarry escape. This does not translate very well to careful and attentive driving; she drives about the way she sprints, urgently forcing everything else out of her way with instincts trained to go over and through obstacles instead of around, and taking her turns as fast as she possibly can without flipping the car. One instance of being in the car with her is enough to make anyone decide never to let her drive again, and she can never learn to drive if no one lets her drive. So without any chance to practice, Buffy's never honed the skill, and continues to drive as recklessly as ever.

The Scooby Murder Gang

 * What really bugs this troper is how the half the Scoobies are murderers, and yet nobody ever gets punished, not even karmic punishment, for it. Buffy makes a big deal about turning herself in when she thinks she's killed someone in "Dead Things", but then Willow kills Warren of her own totally free, premeditated will, and everyone handwaves that as "he had it coming" (it's funny how Buffy talks about how she has to keep Willow from crossing the line by killing a human being in "Villains", and then after Willow does so, Buffy redraws that imaginary line and says that now Willow would cross it by killing innocent people). She suffers no consequences whatsoever for it, just the karma-free satisfaction of having gotten revenge for Tara's death, not to mention free magic lessons from Giles and a coven of witches. Then Anya goes on her own killing spree as a vengeance demon, and Xander actually hangs a lampshade on this problem with the line "when our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them!" And then there's Faith, whose penance for killing multiple people in cold blood was to spend maybe two years in jail, and then run around the Buffyverse being a "hot chick with superpowers" (her words!) once the rather flimsy pretext of Angelus being loose arose. The heroes in the Buffyverse not only don't pay for their murderous moral lapses, they don't even feel guilty about it. They kill to boost the drama, but then they go right back to witty one-liners and "one for all" comradery once the blood's been mopped up.
 * This really comes down to a question of morality. If you think murder is murder regardless of circumstances, context, or aftermath, then obviously nothing we could say will convince you differently. As many others have pointed out, saving the world is kind of a bigger deal than killing a psychotic murderer in a fit of rage. If you expect your good guys to all be saints, or will only be satisfied when every "mistake" is treated with mindless compulsion to imperfect law, may I suggest you avoid fiction?
 * Oh get off it. This actually really annoys me, when people defend horrible behavior from their favorite characters with "if you expect all your good guys to be saints". Excuse me, we're talking about murder here. This isn't "Willow ran a red light" or even "Willow had an affair," this is Willow killed someone in cold blood. Since when is every character who doesn't commit murder a Purity Sue? I don't know about you, but I've managed to go my whole life without killing one person. Haven't you? And your sense of morality is seriously warped if you think it's just a math game, that you're free to kill people as long as you've saved more. Hey, in that case, why not just give every doctor a license to kill? And again, I'm talking about karma. The writers sent Angel to Hell for Angelus's rampage, Faith sent herself to jail for a few years, Spike spent almost half a season as an ensouled lunatic in a basement after trying to rape Buffy and Anya lost her best friend and got targeted by demon assassins as karmic payback for her brief Face Heel Turn (and she even brought her victims back to life). Willow, however, got an absolutely free pass (losing Tara doesn't count - that was the cause of her rampage, not a consequence). The show itself drew attention to this, via Willow saying that she was expecting Giles to kill her rather than go "all Hogwarts" over the summer and Xander comparing how they treated Dark Willow to how they're treating Anya. It's likely that Joss also saw this as a problem, given that almost the first thing he did in the Season 8 comic book was.
 * And for that matter, why are you assuming I don't like Willow? Willow is my favorite character in the show, apart from maybe Giles. The last three episodes of Season 6 were some of my favorites in the series. That's why I'm so bothered that, apart from morbid jokes and Willow's fear of using magic, there was absolutely no follow-up on what happened at all. Those were some very extreme, major events that really should have changed things, and yet the relationships just went right back to what they were before, which is especially glaring in a series that usually does a great job of building on its continuity and character development. So stop assuming I'm complaining because I have it in for your favorite character - I'm complaining because she's one of my favorite characters, and I think the story cheated her growth as a character by pushing the reset button on S6 too quickly and easily.
 * What's more important, rehabilitation or punishment? Willow circa season 7 was making an honest effort to change from the magic-obsessed "I can fix everything by cramming magic down it's throat, to hell with the consequences" personality she'd developed over the years. She spent her summer actually studying magic and what it means to the world from Giles's coven, and then she spent her year learning how to live in the physical world again. She was finally making the actual, honest-to-god improvement over herself that Tara had desperately wanted her to make. At this point, antagonizing Willow and reminding her over and over again, "Hey, by the way, you're a murdering scumbag and should burn in Hell," would only have driven her into a corner and discouraged her from improving herself. Sure, in the short term, it might be emotionally satisfying to punch her in the gut if you think that what she did is unforgiveable. But the long term cost is, by getting her defensive and making her believe that her improvement isn't enough, you would only make her want to stop, because why should she work so hard if everyone's just going to spit on her anyway? Positive reinforcement is the best way to help someone who truly wants to change.
 * About Faith, she just saved the world and then went off to do it again. It seems to me that if you save the world, you should be given a full pardon and a mansion and the ability to restart any TV show you please. Plus, Angelus being loose is not a "flimsy pretext". It's an apocalyptic level threat. Plus, the only karma you should get for killing a raping, murdering, homicidal madman is good karma (for making the world a safer and cleaner place). The "free magic lessons" were to help her control herself, as she's in a line of work where pure rage is likely to happen again. They don't want a repeat of Dark Willow Tries To End The World. Plus, murdering evil isn't murder, it's just cleaning up messes. Hell, even Faith killing the Mayor's Assistant was a good thing, because he was the Mayor's Assistant. It's like complaining when Darth Vader or Tartarus dies! Even if he never killed anyone before, his inaction alone has caused deaths, which still makes him deserving of death.
 * Try turning your friends into the police. Buffy wouldn't want to throw her best friend in jail, evil non-withstanding.
 * OK, one at a time: Willow was literally insane with grief at Tara's death, so, standard insanity defense applies here. In addition, at the beginning of season 7, she still clearly deeply regrets what she's done. For demon Anya, this was SOP; she was known for the creative ways in which she would wreak havoc in her earlier demon days. She was also willing to give up her life to take back the wish that killed so many, and since it was taken back, she effectively only killed Halfrek. She's still guilty about this, as she distances herself from the Scoobies at the end of the episode, but Buffy brings her back by telling her that they need to stick together. Justified in that Halfrek was a demon. As for Faith, watch the Angel episodes "Five By Five" and "Sanctuary."
 * I saw those episodes. I agreed with Wesley that someone who spends the night torturing people shouldn't be eating pastries the next morning. The gist of these rebuttals is "well they felt really bad about it". That's not the point. You don't get to walk away from your crimes just by saying you regret them. Not to mention that Willow never even regretted killing Warren. Her guilt in "The Killer in Me" was all about Tara, and she even went on to use her murder of Warren as a Rule of Funny threat against Andrew. In a storyline where Angel's spent decades on Earth, and centuries in a hell dimension, trying to atone for the actions of a demon inhabiting his soulless body, I'd expect some kind of karmic come-uppance for the free will decision of a human character to commit murder. Andrew actually suffered more for his killing Jonathan than Willow did for her behavior: at least we saw him directly confronted with it and moved to tears by what he'd done. Willow was taken to England on a magical holiday and the most she ever had to deal with was a vague, almost played-for-laughs worry in one episode that she's "still evil".
 * "You don't get to walk away from your crimes just by saying you regret them." You think going to prison, voluntarily, with full knowledge that you could, at any time you wanted, break out of said prison with insolent ease, counts as walking away from your crimes?
 * First of all, that only applies to Faith and not to the others. Second, if you're really not walking away from your crimes, you don't get to pick the length of your prison sentence--you go to prison for as long as the court sends you. If Faith didn't immediately go back to prison after the crisis was over, then yes, she walked away from (part of) her crimes.
 * Since Faith is my favorite character in the Whedonverse, I feel compelled to speak up. Look at the timeline: Wes goes to collect Faith, she busts out, they go to LA and put Angelus back in Angel, with Willow's help; Willow and Faith immediately head for Sunnydale; we then have the Buffy finale and Sunnydale goes bye-bye; at this point, Faith's been out for awhile and since her trail led to Sunnydale, could be of the opinion that nobody in law enforcement was going to find her, and she could do more good outside of prison than inside it. If you were given that set of circumstances, and had a problem with authority already, wouldn't you opt out of returning to prison?
 * The timeline just proves that Faith is able to stay out of prison, not that it's the right thing to do. If she really wasn't walking away from her crimes, she'd turn herself in and serve the rest of her sentence, whether the police could catch her or not and whether she likes the authorities or not.
 * Two points. One, the only actually legal reason to break out of prison in US law is if you legitimately fear that you will be murdered in custody and that the authorities cannot protect you... which accurately describes Faith's position at the moment she makes her jailbreak, as the First is hiring inmates to make murder attempts on her and the conventional authorities cannot protect her vs. supernatural forces. (She is admittedly obligated to return to custody as soon as she feels her life is no longer under threat, which she does not do, but her initial jailbreak is actually defensible in court.) And two, while being the Slayer does not give her license to break the law for selfish benefit (which is why her speech in 'Bad Girls' is wrong) there is a kernel of truth to that belief - if the conventional legal system conflicts with necessary action on the part of demon hunters to stop demons from threatening or destroying the world, we have already accepted that they are "right" to break the law. How many laws do the Scooby Gang or the Fang Gang break every week?
 * There's also that by serving any jail time for her crimes, even if incomplete, Faith is still solidly on the moral high ground over every Scooby save Dawn or Tara. Because every single one of them save the two just mentioned is guilty of at least one count of manslaughter, and has never so much as faced a police investigation over any of it.
 * You seem to have missed the parts where Buffy attempted to kill Anya and only stopped when Anya hit her Reset Button, Faith attempted to commit Suicide by Cop using Angel, and Season 8 is definitely building to something with Willow, given recent events.
 * On another note, Anya gets somewhat of a pass since she did Reset Button her own actions at the expense of what she expected to be her life. Faith also gets a pass for willingly being in prison for several years, since that's at least some karmic balance, some permanent change in her life. Willow, more than anyone, is what bothers me. Even if she doesn't go to prison, there should be some repercussion, some lost trust among friends, some lasting sense of guilt, something substantial. If one good thing came out of the Season 8 comic book, it's that,, it's at least.
 * As was said, Willow was insane at the time. If she had been turned in she probably would have gone to an asylum for treatment. Which is exactly what happened to her after season 6. Also what would you tell the police? "She used magic to turn him inside out?" Welcome to the loony bin. And Faith was reformed. She willingly chose to go back to prison because she was reformed. When the world needed her she broke out. (Buffy might have even had Riley use his pull to get a pardon for Faith after she helped Buffy defeat the First. Or Angel as head of Wolfram and Hart might have used his newfound influence to get Faith pardoned.)
 * Willow killed two people, both of which were very bad people. The rest she was stopped from doing. This doesn't get her off, but they are mitigating factors. She's also black magicked up. Faith, Anya, Giles even Buffy have a higher kill-count. Also, try sticking Willow in prison or a mental hospital. She gets treated like a normal criminal/patient. She doesn't get any training to counteract her magic addiction. I'd give her a month, maybe two, before she goes loopy again and massacres the whole place. Giles, being the all round clever bugger that he is, knew the proper treatment and saw to it that she got it. Then she helped save the world. Looks like redemption enough to me.
 * The closest mundane parallel to Willow's actions that I can think of would be if she was a recovering drug addict who, upon seeing her girlfriend shot, jacked herself up on PCP and adrenaline, killed Warren, tried to kill her associates, then tried to set fire to the town all in a drug-induced rampage. She needed rehab and counseling. Willow probably would have stayed in England for years if she hadn't had to leave early in order to save the world. They didn't bring her back because she was ready. They brought her back because she was the most powerful witch in the world and they couldn't afford to keep her on the sidelines. Same deal with Faith.
 * One element that seems to be missing from the discussion of this point is that the shows imply that some of these folks are just too powerful to be dealt with ordinary punishments. Faith can presumably break out of prison without too much effort, and there must be very few witches or warlocks willing to risk fighting Willow unnecessarily. There is very little meaningful chance of imprisoning these folks; short of killing them, the only punishments that can be dealt to them are those that they can be convinced they deserve.
 * Didn't Buffy outright say that they couldn't trust a Cardboard Prison with holding Faith after she woke up, and they were trying to figure out ways to take care of her that didn't involve the Watchers or killing her?
 * So, The Complainer Is Always Wrong? You basically just said that if you don't agree with the rest of society then you are evil. Plus, think for a moment. She just helped save the world. I think that should get you a full pardon and perhaps a religion to boot.
 * What purpose would she serve by going back to prison? There are three basic views as to the purpose of prison: to punish, with no purpose other than cruelty (a position that has rather fallen out of favour in the last century or so); to reform, through both punishment and education (a goal which was clearly achieved in Faith's case); and to protect society from those who are dangerous (clearly no longer necessary in Faith's case). So unless you believe in cruelty for cruelty's sake, Faith's further incarceration would have been a pointless waste of a useful, and possibly vital, resource.
 * "To punish, with no purpose other than cruelty (a position that has rather fallen out of favour in the last century or so)"? There is a huge portion of the general public, if not the majority (certainly the majority in the U.S., and I'm willing to bet the majority around the world when popular public opinion is considered alongside academic theory), that is very firmly in favor of legal punishment as its own virtue. And to those people, that's not "cruelty", it's "justice". Which is really what this whole thing comes down to. Half the fans are saying Willow and Faith were rehabilited and further punishment would be pointless, while the other half are saying that justice itself demands further punishment. Everyone's talking around each other's points because two different moral theories are clashing. There's really no way to compromise between them, and debating which view is "better" would be a topic for an ethics dissertation.
 * The real explanation for why all these things played out the way they did (regardless of if one agrees with it or not) is probably that Whedon himself rejects the value of punishment for its own sake. This is mostly clearly demonstrated with Spike. When he was first chipped, he was still a (literally)soulless monster. He was still actively tying to do evil. The only thing that had changed was his ability to do evil. The mere fact that he was no longer a threat was enough for Buffy to let him live (so to speak) and go about his business unpunished.
 * Agreeing with the above. Spike's story is probably the most visible example of this, but we do see it in Angel, Faith, Anya, Willow, Andrew, even Giles and his history as Ripper, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. A recurring theme in Buffy is the notion of rehabilitation as an effective and vital alternative to "punishment for punishment's sake", for those that are in a position to take it, and most of the characters who follow a rehabilitation path wind up becoming productive and valuable members of the Scoobies and/or Angel Investigations. At the same time, Punishment for the sake of simply punishing is portrayed as a negative thing with Enyos and the gypsies who cursed Angel; the line, "It is not justice we serve, but vengeance," pretty clearly establishes Whedon's views on the concept.
 * Here's the problem with Anya: if you hold her responsible in a way that demands legal culpability for what she did as a vengeance demon, then this also demands that she has legal rights. As such, Buffy's attempt to kill her would be attempted murder. And every slain vampire, every felled demon, every monster on her hit list would be a crime. You can't say that Buffy's absolved of her guilt because demons are universally evil, because they aren't. As for Willow, she was clearly not in control of her actions. If she had killed Warren immediately after Tara's death with conventional means, even as he was running away, it's unlikely she would have been found guilty, given what her state of mind would have been at the time: dark magic just extended that state of mind more or less indefinitely. With Faith? She does face justice. She turns herself in and apparently intends to serve her sentence. Mitigating circumstances like history's most sadistic vampire being set loose and/or the imminent end of the world get in the way. You could make the argument that part of the point of the justice system is that the guilty not be able to do what they want, but courts do typically make exceptions in extreme circumstances: allowing an inmate to donate an organ to a dying loved one, for instance. It's just that Faith's extreme circumstance is more complicated than most.
 * Warren DID have it coming. This troper cheered when Willow flayed him. And no, I don't pretend it had anything to do with 'justice.'
 * I agree, I also cheered when Warren suddenly lost his skin. Anyway, OP, did you even see the episode "The Killer In Me"? Willow felt horrible guilt for killing Warren, which she said plenty of times. Xander and the others did kind of try to justify it with "he deserved it", and well, he DID kind of deserve it. What Willow did wasn't justice, and it was evil, but it can't even be lumped in the same category as what Warren did out of malice and spite, killing both Tara and Katrina, and almost killing Buffy. It's pretty clear that Willow never forgot what she had done, and she felt guilt about it for the rest of series. Anya is another strange case because she was a vengeance demon. It was her JOB to murder or brutally maim men. The only murders she does on the show after she becomes a main character are the frat boys. She feels horrible and ends up resurrecting them all, meaning to sacrifice herself (it's not her fault that Halfrek was sacrificed instead, she didn't think D'Hoffryn would do that, and she lost her powers again). And Buffy was entirely prepared to kill her, as shown in the fight between them, it's not like Anya would have gotten away with it while her friends acted like nothing happened.
 * Did you watch that episode? Willow was only claiming to feel guilty about killing Warren to avoid confronting the actual guilt she felt over being attracted to Kennedy and thus symbolically killing Tara, which is why she changed into Warren (because she'd "killed" Tara all over again). And so long as we're rationalizing crimes, both of Warren's murders were accidents: Tara was hit by a stray bullet and Katrina got hit too hard on the head during the struggle. No matter how much of a misogynistic jerk Warren is, voluntary manslaughter doesn't rise to the same moral level as prolonged torture and premeditated murder. He did try premeditated murder on Buffy, but the show treats that as a bizarrely mild transgression too (even if we're writing off vampires since they don't have souls, Faith's a human being who tried to kill Buffy numerous times). And I've already said that Anya at least felt remorse and reversed her actions at what she expected to be the cost of her own life, and Faith at least voluntarily went to jail for several years, that Willow's the only who never really showed regret or faced any fallout for what she did. Am I going to have keep repeating myself every single time a new Willow fan comes along, ignores everything I've already written and restates the same arguments all over again? I've already said that Willow is my favorite character and it's the lack of follow-through on her S6 storyline that I'm protesting, so stop accusing me of ignorance about the show or bias against the character. Why is it that in every JBM page I visit, fans just attack each other instead of sharing any sense of comradary or at least civility over the fact that they're fellow fans? Why is saying that Willow's S6 actions were too consequence-free, and that that seems to be a pattern with the Scoobies, such a personal affront, especially when Joss himself is perfectly willing to poke fun at this very thing with lines like "when our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them!"
 * I disagree that Willow was only feigning guilt. Sure, she felt guilty about being in a relationship with Kennedy since it felt like betraying Tara's memory, but she also also clearly felt guilty about killing Warren. And you could technically say that Warren's actual crimes were accidents, but these accidents occurred while he was doing horrible, monstrous crimes in the first place. He might not have meant to kill Katrina, but he definitely knew that he was trying to rape her, and the stray shot that killed Tara came from a premeditated attempt to shoot Buffy, which would be flat-out first degree murder, not voluntary manslaughter. And chill out, no one's attacking you, we're just saying that we disagree with you. Willow didn't get off consequence-free. She spent months in Britain learning how to control her magic without going off the deep end (maybe that sounds like a free magical vacation, but she was severely shaken up over the events that happened, and she had to learn how to deal with her powers without being corrupted again), and the level of trust between her friends went down. In "Same Time Same Place", when flayed corpses start appearing, Willow is the first suspect of the Scoobies. Why didn't that trust go down any more than that? Because Willow had spent the last 6 years proving her extreme loyalty to her friends, saving the world multiple times. She did an unspeakable, horrible thing killing Warren, but that doesn't undo all the good she's done before that, such as resouling Angelus, draining Glory to save Tara and weaken the hellgod for Buffy, fuse everyone's souls to defeat Adam, and save the world from apocalypse on many occasions. I'm not saying that because she's a good guy she should be able to get away with the occasional murder, but how exactly should one punish one of the world's most powerful witches for a crime caused when driven literally insane by grief? Send to her jail, where she can't help her friends save the world at all, or rehabilitate her and make sure she stays on the side of good? And alienating Willow wouldn't have made sense; like I said, her friends are insanely loyal to her just as she is to them. They all love her and they're not going to start treating her like crap after all these years for going off the deep end after her girlfriend is murdered. Xander saved the day by showing his love for her, he's not gonna just start acting weird around her and admonishing her; even if she deserved it, it wouldn't be in character for any of the Scoobies (except maybe Anya). So I disagree that Willow didn't suffer any consequences, and I also disagree that she should've suffered more.
 * The fact of the matter is, regardless of what society thinks, punishment, in and of itself, is fucking stupid. It serves no purpose. When you jail someone, punishment is not the purpose. Ceasing the potential to repeat the crime is the purpose, either through isolation or rehabilitation, preferably both. Willow could just as easily murdered everyone inside a jail. Rehabilitation and acceptance were the only realistic things to do there. Anya's a vengeance demon, it's literally her job. It's outside normal laws. As it stands, her crimes are all reversed. Faith has been rehabilitated. She's still kind of fucked up, but there's nothing there to suggest the potential for damage that was the reason she "needed punishment" in the first place. Also, you say that you think most of the world thinks punishment is an end to itself? America, maybe. The developing world, maybe. Everywhere else? God no. The rest of the world is smart enough to treat people like people.

Missed Potential

 * While this troper has some issues with how the idea of the Potentials was executed, the notion that the could-be Slayers can be identified long before being called actually explains a lot. For instance, the great difference in attitudes between newly called Kendra, who had spent some time watchered before that, and Buffy, who still had a life when called. The Potentials as shown in season 7 clearly had no training at all. Still not the big issue. The big issue is "Chosen". In one glorious spell, the Potentials all over the world get activated... What Potentials? The ones that got that way after the Watchers Council was destroyed, that had no chance whatsoever to survive the obligatory visits by the Bringers?
 * Fanwanky answer: The Bringers and the Watchers could only detect those in line to be the next Slayer, when Faith was killed. So that's who got murdered/brought to Sunnydale. The spell activated everyone who had the potential to ever be the Slayer. Presumably whatever mystical randomness picks the next Slayer has an algorithm. It's worth noting at this point that there don't seem to be any older Slayers in the Season 8 comics, so presumably once you get past a certain age you've missed your chance.
 * Alternatively, the Bringers don't know instantly when new Potentials appear. If they did, the army that formed in Sunnydale would have been far smaller.
 * Or the Bringers simply were not particularly successful in their Potential Slayer genocide. They're a small cult working for an incorporeal being; there's only so many places they can be and so much they can do at any given time. And that's before you take into account that the methods available for identifying Potentials are far from perfect; between Buffy, Faith, and Kendra, 1 out of 3 Slayers that we know of have had the whole Official Watcher's Training prep for being activated, which is not an impressive identification rate. They probably just didn't get very far in wiping out the Potentials, before Potentials started massing in Sunnydale and thus became a priority target.
 * Or they were very good at wiping out the potentials. I haven't read much of the comics so I don't know how large the number of slayers they didn't find were. If we look at the series finale however it becomes obvious that bringers weren't going after nine year old little girls or thirty year old house wives. They were focused on a fairly narrow window of slayers that given that the average slayer shelf life is probably less than year, Kendra dies within a year of her calling, Faith only barely dodges death, Giles implies that making it to the 18th birthday is an accomplishment for a slayer. Considering both Buffy and Faith prove that Slayers can fall through the cracks it wouldn't shock me to find out that at any given time there are over one hundred potentials being actively trained. Of what we get what? Thirty odd?
 * As far as we saw, the only Potentials the First successfully killed were those whom the Council had already located, and who already had Watchers. Every Potential that showed up at the Summer's residence, that was the case for (excluding Amanda, whom they located themselves). This suggests that the First lacked the ability to locate Potentials itself, but had to rely on the Council and it's allies to do so for it.

First Evil's First Mistake

 * In "Conversations With Dead People", The First Evil uses the image of one-shot character Cassie to talk to Willow, claiming to have messages from Tara. Why Willow can't talk to Tara directly is Hand Waved early on, but we know that The First is lying at that point. So why can't it impersonate Tara? The First was only trying to mess with Willow's head after all, surely it would have been more successful if it did.
 * The easiest explanation and one which explains pretty much all of The First's actions in season seven is that The First is simply a moron who wouldn't know what a good plan was even if it came and hit it on the head.
 * The meta reason is that Amber Benson declined the offer, but in-universe, maybe because denying Willow the joy of seeing Tara again, and tying it to her being a murderer, was deliberately meant to add to her sense of despair: if it wanted Willow to kill herself, dangling the opportunity to see Tara again like a carrot on a stick must have seemed like a good strategy. And using someone Willow didn't really know gave the First more leeway to say things that Tara herself wouldn't say (that Willow eventually saw through it anyway shows how quickly the First might've blown it if it'd tried to impersonate Tara).

The First Evil - Using Buffy's Image

 * Why didn't the First, which could appear as Buffy, try to get Buffy in trouble by using that? Get a minion to pretend to be a hostage threatened by "Buffy". Once the police catch up and can clearly see who's the hostage-taker, then leave and have the hostage say "she miraculously didn't get hit by your bullets, but I know where she lives".
 * Since it is the First Evil, the most evil and powerful thing in the known Buffyverse, this troper is sure it had larger goals than that, such as world destruction.
 * The First wanted, as part of its plan, to get rid of Buffy. Getting her put in jail would easily do so.
 * A prison couldn't stop a slayer from busting out, which she would do if the world/her friends were in serious danger. See: Faith, that very season.
 * By the end of season 7, the First had corrupted all the cops in Sunnydale anyway, so it didn't have to bother with such an elaborate plan. Besides, police going after the slayer wouldn't take her out of the picture, they would just slow her down a bit.
 * In "Dirty Girls," Caleb mentions several times that he believes Buffy will lead the Potentials to their deaths. The First as Mayor Wilkins claims that The First, on some level, actually is the person it's impersonating. Because Buffy has died, The First can know her better than any other living opponent--At the very least, it likely has access to all of her thoughts and memories at the time of her death. The First now has intimate knowledge of Buffy, and the last thing it wants to kill or incapacitate a leader that it can easily manipulate (hence why both Caleb and the Turok-han spare Buffy's life when she's unconscious).
 * And on that note I have a pet theory that The First does use Buffy's image to get her into trouble. It's just a lot more subtle about it, going as far as messing with the audience by having us think it's Buffy, but it's really The First. Watch Get It Done, a lot of the way she acts is so nasty and out of character you have to wonder...

Empty Places

 * "Empty Places" in series 7 anyone? Buffy gets the Judas treatment from the entire group (bar Spike). What exactly had she done to deserve that? She has forgiven Willow and Faith for murder and trying to end the world. Forgiven Xander for all the snide comments about Spike and Angel not to mention his blatant lies to her about what Willow said about Angel back in Season 2. She put up with Giles going behind her back in an attempt to kill Spike and on top of that dumping the potentials on her most of whom turned out to be ungrateful whiners. Plus the final insult when Dawn throws her out of her own house, this being her own SISTER who had committed suicide to save her in the finale of season 5. What makes it worse is she was being blamed for things that were totally out of her control. She assaulted the vinyard with the potentials under advice from Robin Wood. She took exception to Faith taking the potentials out to the Bronze, an action which horribly exposed them to attack from the bringers and which Giles seems to have no problem with despite reprimanding Buffy about something virtually identical earlier in the season. Then when Buffy outlines a perfectly reasonable, if admittedly dangerous, plan to the team she is thrown out. If I had been Buffy I would have walked away from this bunch after the finale and never wanted to speak to any of them again. The entire supporting cast turned into total Jerkasses and if Joss meant us to feel any sympathy for them then I'm afraid he really got it wrong.
 * Oh, I completely agree. I can't even watch that episode without getting pissed off.
 * Personally I thought that Buffy was being a domineering bitch that was jumping into stupid plans out of fear of Caleb. Her last "plan" had gotten Molly killed, and many other girls injured. The next plan she suggested was exactly the same, yet she wasn't willing to listen to anyone else's suggestions. She needed a great big slice of humble pie.
 * Not just Molly. Buffy's rushed plan got two girls killed and many injured. And Xander lost an eye... not that this stopped him from following her for the rest of his life (despite not wanting her to take the lead in that particular not-too-clear-minded moment).
 * I didn't think the plan was too rushed. I thought it was quite clever. She left some of the weaker potentials at home under the protection of Willow. She split the team into two fairly even groups, both with their own Slayer's, and gave the advice to come in if it looks like an ambush. This was the most sensible thing she could have done given the resources.
 * One point at a time. First, Giles tried to kill Spike because SPIKE WAS A DANGER TO THEM ALL. He had a trigger in his head that overrode his soul, and his chip, and made him kill people. Willow and Giles tried to remove the trigger, but Spike didn't cooperate and Buffy WOULD NOT LET THEM. She WILLINGLY left a dangerous, unpredictable vampire, who had previously tried to RAPE HER, off his leash. That was STUPID. Spike, at that moment, had to be neutralized, and if the trigger could not be removed, then they had to take Spike out. Buffy later claims that SHE could not trust THEM! The woman who allowed an unpredictable vampire to have free reign and possibly MURDER THEM ALL couldn't trust them. Yeah. Buffy was an idiot. Second, they didn't throw her out. She LEFT HERSELF. She led them into a trap, several people got killed, Xander lost an eye. And what is her brilliant strategy? She wanted to go right back into that situation. The Scoobies, quite justifiably, said no. They told her they wanted her to back off. Try to come up with a better strategy. Maybe let someone else handle the whole strategy thing for a while. Buffy said no. Her entire attitude was 'We do this MY way. I'm the Slayer. I'm better than you. You do what I tell you to." She quite clearly said, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn't going to stay there if she couldn't be the one in charge. They weren't going to play the game Buffy wanted to play, so she was going to take her ball and go away. Dawn CALLED HER BLUFF. She put them in the position of either allowing her to boss them around, or she wasn't going to be there. So, she left. It was clearly stated by three different people, including Buffy herself, that she had a superiority complex. She felt herself above all of them, better that them. Because she was the Slayer. And she was acting like she had been handed the authority to lead from God Himself. The people who had her back, who kept her alive for SEVEN YEARS, did not matter to her. Willow. Giles. Anya. Xander. Her own sister. They were all beneath her in her mind, unworthy of her respect. Their opinions didn't matter. The only one she treated as an equal, with any respect at all, was the previously mentioned unstable vampire who not a year earlier had tried to rape her. When Buffy came back, she came back humbled. For the first time since her return to life, she listened to them. She took their opinions into account, and she actually treated them with respect, as her equals, as her FRIENDS again. The events of 'Empty Places' served to deflate her ego, and bring back to pre-season 6 Buffy Summers that was so effective.
 * Seconded. This was my favourite episode of the season. I lost patience with Buffy's self-righteous attitude fast, and found her crash to earth very satisfying. She didn't get kicked out of the house because her plans were no good; she got kicked out of the house because she openly stated that if she wasn't allowed to be in charge, then she wasn't going to play. That was horribly irresponsible and childish of her, especially since she had been a terrible leader thus far that season. It's not just that a few of the girls died on her watch; it was a war, I could accept that casualties are not completely avoidable. What annoys me is that that she decided halfway through the season that they were all doomed and as a result gave up on training them (and no, Buffy wandering around feeling hard-done-by while one of the potentials plays drill-sergeant does not count.) I'm annoyed that she made no attempt to become familiar with the girls or their individual strengths and weaknesses, so as to make good use of their abilities - Faith's comment about learning their names comes to mind. I'm annoyed that she carelessly tore down their morale because she was stressed out. Those are all understandable behaviours, given the pressure she was under - but they make her a crappy leader. Faith, by contrast, won the girls' loyalty in what, a month? She had some idea of who they are and familiarity with their individual talents, despite having arrived only relatively recently, and she showed confidence in their abilities, while still being there to back them up. To all appearances she's a brilliant natural leader, at least once she does her stint of pennance, so Buffy's insistence that no one else could possibly lead them is totally unwarranted, in fact laughable. Buffy's refusal to do the job she was good at (fighting) because she wasn't being allowed to do a job she was terrible at does not get her any sympathy from me.
 * Yes. Look at the previous seasons, especially 3-5, and how does Buffy handle the Big Bad? She talked to the Scoobies, listens to their input and advice, and with their help, develops a plan that utilizes each members individuals talents and strengths. Glory in season 5 is a perfect example. Each member contributed to the the final battle. Willow's magical talent and her her technological skills, Anya's suggestion of the Dagon's Sphere and Olaf's hammer, Xander with a wrecking ball and his idea of using the Buffybot. It resulted in a very efficient and impressive battle that took out Glory rather quickly. Seasons 3 & 4 showed Buffy displaying a similar level of strategic thinking and skill. That all disappeared in season 7, during which Buffy acted as a dictator, expecting everyone to immediately fall in line and do what she said without complaint, and she refused to listen or take input. Hence leading to one disaster after another. The final idea, to utilize Willow's magic to activate all the Slayers, came only after her exile and return. She had been humbled, her ego deflated, and again started listening to her friends and as before. As before, victory only came because she worked with other people and formulated an idea that, again, best utilized their individual talents. That was the whole point. She had to get rid of her ego, her feelings of superiority, in order to defeat the First.
 * Yes indeed, look at the previous seasons. There's a reason that this season is listed under Seasonal Rot on the main page, and Character Derailment is a big part of it.

Where Did the Magic Box Go?

 * Why did they stop using the Magic Box in S7? I know the in-story reason, because Dark Willow destroyed it at the end of S6, but what was the writers' reason for keeping it destroyed and not using it in S7? Because losing that set meant that the new "meeting place" became the Summers House, and as the main character and pretty much every other character was living there at that point, it meant that almost every single scene was set in that house, which made the whole season feel static and claustrophobic. Half-way through the season, many fans were screaming for them to get out of the damn house. Why wasn't the Magic Box kept as the meeting place, therefore diversifying the sets a little bit?
 * Maybe it was a Rule of Three sort of thing, and the spot where they met had to be destroyed once in every three years. Maybe something else would've been destroyed in season 9 or something.
 * But they'd only had the Magic Box set for two seasons.
 * They couldn't justify still having it. In season six Anya became the sole owner, and after becoming a vengeance demon again she didn't need it anymore. Because of this, after Willow destroyed it it wouldn't have made sense for her to keep it.
 * Besides, it SHOULD feel static and claustrophobic in S7. That's part of the idea, with all the Potentials and the Scoobies crammed inside the one little house, it SHOULD feel cramped and unwieldy.
 * Also, they probably couldn't write in a justification for rebuilding it. Rebuilding it would require money. Anya doesn't seem the type to shell out a lot of money to rebuild the store. And Giles had his own life to live in England.

Touching Giles (not like that)

 * Also in Season 7, the beloved Giles returns and nobody gives him a hug? I was at least hoping for a handwave of the Big Bad saying 'I crafted a low level spell just to screw with your minds; I was bored'. But nothing.
 * That was intentional. By not having him touch anyone for 'weeks' without making it too obtrusive, the audience could be kept guessing whether or not he had, in fact, survived the seemingly unsurvivable attack at the end of "Sleeper".
 * That's exactly the problem with that Mind Screw--it didn't make any sense. Giles should have been touching people all the time. The only reason for him not to do other than actually being the First (which has its own problems) is that he read the script.
 * The people who thought he was the First were Andrew, Anya, Xander and Dawn. He might have come into contact with Buffy, the Potentials and Willow, but they were all otherwise involved when the call came. Hell, he might have touched one of the others, but they just didn't remember, being too worked up by the idea that he might be the First.
 * Buffy attempts to hug him when he arrives in "Bring on the Night", but the Potentials get in the way.
 * (sorry for the wall of text, I don't know how to split paragraphs under bullets) I'll admit to only just starting to watch Buffy this year (I was aware of it years ago, just never watched it), and I've been on one hell of an Archive Binge the last 3 weeks (thank you Netflix instant streaming), but one theme I've noticed over the seasons is distance. The whole gang started out in season 1 being very physically near each other (hugs, arms thrown over each other, etc) in addition to emotionally (they definitely talked things out between much more in the early seasons). As is often the case in real life, things started drifting apart as time went on. This was given a mention, possibly foreshadowing, as early as the season 3(?) ep just after Willow and Xander got caught making out. Both are in the Bronze, trying to act like normal, when Xander takes Willow's hand in emphasis. Willow immediately pulls away and chides Xander while he complains that they used to do things like that all the time. The entirety of season 4 had the increasing distance between old friends as one of the major themes. This is also when the gang really starts hiding things from each other (though Buffy herself may have started that with the whole Angel hiding thing. My internal time line is a little confused since I've seen nearly 100 episodes since then). We see examples like Willow hiding Tara, Oz hiding that werewolf singer, and Xander hiding his ambition insecurities. I think Giles being cut off from his Watcher resources probably fits in here too. This particular case comes to a head when Spike plays their insecurities off each other. Unfortunately, the single revelation that they'd been hiding from each other wasn't enough to keep them from continuing down that path in the future. Remember each of the dreams in Restless at least touched on the distance/hiding thing. (The issue is given another big nod in the season 5 ep The Body, where the concept of negative space (the area around and between the subjects of an image) is both named and shot. We got a lot of overhead shots in that episode of characters standing apart, signaling the increasing distance between them. After Buffy gets pulled back to life in season 6, we move to a seasonal theme of isolation, and the entire gang continues their trend of talking less and less about and to each other. This season brings such events as Giles leaving, Buffy completely withdrawing inward, Xander and Anya having a terrible breakup through their lack of communication, Dawn feeling completely abandoned by no less than 3 parental figures (continuing from season 5, obviously, with her mom, Buffy, and Tara) and Willow losing herself to her magic (which I firmly believe came primarily from a place of isolation and lack of communication, like is often the case in real life, but that's another thesis). Most characters have started to respond that nothing's wrong in the increasingly rare cases they're asked. Throughout all this, even when the gang is together, nobody seems to want to be hanging over each other like they used to. Even the hugs when Giles comes back seem hesitant at best. True, they finally got some cellphones in season 7 (a symbolic gesture perhaps?), but how often did they actually work like they were intended? Feelings of isolation, despair, and betrayal continue to deepen for each of the characters as the season goes on. It's entirely plausible to me that none of the involved characters had actually touched Giles since he'd returned this time; they'd all been deeply emotionally scarred from recent events and were likely feeling incredibly abandoned, hurt, and unable to fully trust anyone around them. To sum up: overall physical interactions between characters in the show had been declining from its peak around season 2. (parenthetical statement)
 * Yeah drifting apart like that is very natural as you finish high-school and move into college. Especially since it was over this time that a heap of new characters came in/ became prominent - Tara, Anya, Riley. The gang just all had there own things going and drifted apart quite a bit in s4. Then in s6/7; Buffy's affection for Spike created a big divide between her and her friends aswell. All through s6 she went to him when she couldn't talk about stuff with her friends because she was going through a dark time, and didn't want her friends to see that side of her. But turning to Spike all the time like she did kind of drew her further in to her little self-destructive bubble. (Lol this is going pretty OT). What I actually was going to say before I digressed... I loved that red-herring with Giles, made me laugh, since earlier in the season I had wondered why he'd gotten so bloody lazy; he'ld always be having the potentials carry his books around, or he'ld boss them around and tell them to grab that notebook so-and-so left behind. I thought he was being a bit of a pompous ass treating them like his slaves. XD
 * The above essay on drifting apart is spectacular. After high school, it's very easy for friends to fall apart. They go their separate paths; Buffy and Willow stayed tight in college, Xander started trying to get a job and was no longer someone who could just be there at school every day, and Giles was now unemployed and only saw the group when they dropped by his house (symbolic of leaving your parental figure when you get out into the world). The simple act of being an adult pulled everyone in different directions, to the point that it took a conscious effort to stay friends. Secrets and conversations they would have confided in each other are now being shared with their respective lovers instead; newcomers to the group that nobody really knows or is particularly comfortable with initially, except the one member saying "This is my boy/girlfriend, he/she is part of the team now." For Xander, this is Anya, who took two years to really gain approval in the group. For Willow, it's Tara, who became familiar enough to be considered a friend, but nobody but Willow ever really "got" her. For Buffy, it was Riley, who actually did click with the group right off the bat, and later Spike, who was never popular with anyone except Buffy herself. They naturally gravitate towards their lovers over their friends, and their connection is irrepairably damaged for it. Xander leaves Anya at the altar over insecurities that, four years ago, he would have sat up with Buffy and Willow to talk about, and they would have talked reassured him that he could do this because they knew him better than anyone. Willow loses Tara and, instead of spending a couple days crying into a bucket of ice cream while Xander and Buffy comfort her, goes into straight, "I've lost everything that matters, rocks fall, everyone dies," mode. And when tensions over Spike get ugly, Buffy goes a bit over the edge making the point clear, "Spike is part of the group, and if anyone has a problem with it, bite me."

Scythe Or Axe

 * Why is the weapon obtained in season seven refered to as a scythe? It's not remotely scythe like. I don't know what would be a more accurate name but it's definitely not a scythe.
 * It's a war scythe. The handle is a bit shorter than normal though. I suppose you could call it an axe.
 * It's not a war scythe either. A war scythe is like a pike with a long blade instead of a spike. The scythe in BtVS is more like a Bardiche.
 * Isn't the weapon in question older then recorded history? Maybe it preceeded the wordage, like the theory that the assistants for the Fowl family generated the meaning for 'butler'.
 * Not quite - it was forged in ancient Egypt. As it is effectively unique, they really ought to just come up with a name of their own for it. Maybe "sineya" after the First Slayer?
 * Actually, The Scythe most closely resembles a lochaber axe, a weapon used in the Scottish Highlands around the 12th century, related closely to the Bardiche and more distantly to... the scythe. Historians believe the lochaber axe may have been used both in war and in farming, being used to reap crops much like a scythe. So besides being a symbolic name (death carries a scythe), to a manner of thinking the Slayers' weapon is being correctly identified by its function.

Ms Kitty Fantastico

 * Willow and Tara had a kitten. What the hell happened to it? It just disappeared.
 * Dawn has a line sometime late in Season 7 about how she doesn't leave crossbows lying around "since that time with Miss Kitty Fantastico."
 * Miss Kitty Fantastico lived with Tara in her dorm room, and the last time we saw it, Glory had just ripped the wall open. Maybe Miss Kitty was killed then, or just wandered off when no one came by to feed her for a few days.
 * This only suggests a more vexing question: if Miss Kitty Fantastico is dead, why is it that The First never took on her appearance to torment Willow/Dawn/Andrew?
 * I agree that Dawn messed up and accidentally shot the cat.

What was Caleb?

 * What exactly was Caleb? Were we ever told? Demon? Some insanely superpowered person? Something else entirely?
 * Apparently just some serial killer that the First imbued with portions of its power.
 * He was Nathan Fillion. No other explanation is needed to explain his godly super strength, it's a byproduct of being Nathan Fillion.
 * Caleb wears a dog collar. He is a Roman Catholic priest. He rapes children. That's logical, Captain.
 * He was what the first response said he was. He was just a murderer The First gave some power to.

Caleb And The Scythe

 * Why the heck did Caleb dig that Slayer weapon scythe out in the first place? Why the hell didn't he just leave it embedded deep in the rock where Buffy had no idea of its existence? For that matter, why didn't he just blow up the Summers house just like the Watcher's Council?
 * Because a) She's Buffy. She'd find out about it somehow, and b) He' a twisted psychopath. He wanted to play with his food before he ate it.
 * And why does Caleb lure Buffy into the very place where the Scythe was buried and not any random house anyway?
 * This troper thought it was all part of some Xanatos Gambit? 1: Dig up the weapon. 2: Mock the slayers loneliness. 3: Watch as slayer makes an army of X Slayers. 4: Cackle as the new army of slayers trashes the rule of one good and proper, leaving the world without slayers for X generations and ensuring the rule of the First in a couple generations time.
 * Buffy went a good seven years without ever knowing it was there, or even that it existed in the first place. It's a fair assumption that if Caleb hadn't dug it up, she would have continued on not knowing it was there or even existed.
 * She also didn't need it for those seven years. Those Who Watch the Watchers would have brought the Slayer to the Scyth when the time was right.
 * Also, how in the world could Buffy come up with the turn-potentials-into-slayers plan in the series finale? How could she know that the scythe had that kind of power?
 * She felt it, remember?
 * Excellent question. I would add one more - how did Willow manage to power the Potentials anyway? She just channeled some random magical energy into the Scythe and its magical AI did the work? Lucky for her that the Scythe did exactly what they wanted except for something completely random...
 * A Wizard Did It.
 * Caleb was going to try and use it. This is why he taunted Buffy by claiming he could kill her before she dislodged it from the rock; he had tried to get it out already.

Fighting the Ubervamps

 * Much as I enjoyed the season finale, the plan had gaping Fridge Logic holes a mile wide. When the first ubervamp appears, fighting him is a huge deal. Buffy, a Slayer with seven years of intense experience, barely manages to defeat him. So...
 * Fan interpretation: The one that escaped had a chance to feed and so was at full strength because of it. The thousands under the seal presumably had not fed in quite sometime and were thus likely to be weakened because of hunger. Not an official explanation but it makes sense, given what we know.
 * Alternate fan interpretation: The logical thing to do, when selecting a lone warrior to go up against your enemy's best fighter, is to pick your best fighter. The first Turok-Han gave Buffy trouble because he was the most skilled fighter among the Turok-Han. The rest of them didn't because they were average. For an example of this principle from canon, consider what happens when a vampire attacks the average human being as compared to what happens when it attacks someone like Gunn.
 * Let's take about thirty newly-empowered slayers and pit them against a horde of thousands of ubervamps. That means that the brand-new slayers are probably going to need to take out, on average, a hundred or more ubervamps each. In one fight. Did they know that Spike would be able to pull his Tanning Bed of Doom routine, or were the likes of Giles and Willow unable to perform basic math?
 * Wait. What if some of the ubervamps get past thirty armed slayers and head for the sewers? I know! Let's have teams of two non-superpowered humans guarding the exits! It totally makes sense that Anya and Andrew could hold off five or six of these monsters! This is a much better idea than, say, having Xander and company blow holes in the roof, leaving the vamps trapped until sundown, and having the normals outside with crossbows as an extra precaution.
 * Or, better yet, open the Seal of Danzalthaar, wait for the Ubervamps to try and get out and dust them easily when the three tops that can get out at a time are too preoccupied with trying to claw their way up out of the ground to adequately defend themselves.
 * The whole defense plan with the non-powered Scoobies is pretty misguided even by taking a short look at the basic pair-ups. Giles and Robin (experienced watcher with years of training and demon hunter with years of training), Xander and Dawn (7 years of experience demon fighting/imbued with military training and sister of the Slayer who has been personally trained by her), and then Anya and Andrew (ex-demon who's never been shown as a competent fighter without her powers and the most incompetent fighter since Wesley in season 3). Obviously one or both of the Anya/Andrew camp would die, the others at least stood somewhat of a chance.
 * Joss has actually acknowledged this and openly states that he weakened the other ones. "They couldn't all be as strong as the first one". Though, if you want an in-universe explanation, I guess you could say the First gave the first ubvervamp a power-up of sorts to make it more powerful. The First couldn't power up the entire army, so there you go.

First Evil: Dead, Still Around, in Mexico?
Did it ever actually die? Because all that did happen was that its plan was foiled. Is it still out there, doing evil, or did it lose a lot of power? How is it with this thing? Or did they just quietly ignore that fact in light of that they could do nothing about it? Ipood
 * The First is evil itself. It cannot die. But, it's probably too embarrassed to show its face so soon after losing an army of ubervamps and a Hellmouth's worth of future evil in one fell swoop to a small group of mortals and a half demon wearing jewelry.
 * As meta answers go, the writers probably aren't in a hurry to return to the concept very soon in the comics, but it's a hanging plot thread.

Spike vs Robin

 * Why did Buffy - actually, why did anyone - take Spike's side over Robin's? Spike killed Robin's mother and tore her coat off her dead body. Yes, S7 Spike had a soul, but he didn't show it in any way. He was still willing to kill, still actually killing, and he was a danger to the whole group the moment Buffy took out his chip and let him run free. For the safety of the group Spike had to be killed, not just for personal revenge! And as for Buffy's argument that Spike was good now - he revealed he didn't regret killing Robin's mother, taunted him about how his dead mother never loved him, and then casually put back on the coat he stole from her corpse. When compared to Angel's actions with people he wronged as Angelus, this is even more obviously wrong and cruel. The other argument - that Spike is the best fighter, and necessary - is also proven wrong. Spike doesn't do anything spectacularly useful for the rest of the season, at least nothing crucial, apart from in the last fight when Angel's medallion saved everyone - and if Spike hadn't been there, Angel would have worn it, resulting in the exact same plot except that Buffy wouldn't have acted like a spoiled thirteen-year-old with a crush. The fact is, they should have killed Spike years before. Buffy choosing Spike over both Robin and Giles, who are good fighters and moreover good people, seems clearly wrong. So why does the show seem to imply that she's in the right?
 * Buffy is certainly very biased in Spike's favor in season seven, and there are numerous examples of that. But with regards to this particular incident, Buffy took Spike's side over Robin's and Giles's because Robin and Giles were the instigators. If Spike went off half-cocked to murder one or both of them in secret, she would have gone off on him the same way she did on them. Robin Wood and Giles behind Buffy's back and deliberately activated Spike's trigger (endangering not just himself, but anyone else that Spike may have killed if Robin had failed in his plan) in an attempt to murder him as an act of petty vengeance. Spike taunted Wood about his mom, yes...while Wood was trying to kill him in cold blood, hardly a good time to expect Spike to be sympathetic to Wood's situation. In this situation, Buffy is in the right because her people can't be undermining her authority to try and murder each other when they need to be presenting a unified front, and in a war zone, if ANYONE in the unit thinks their own agenda is more important than the cause they're fighting for, then they are a threat to the group as a whole, regardless of how justified their reasoning may or may not be.
 * The truth is by this point Buffy "loved" or was at least strongly emotionally attached to Spike and likely would have sided with him in even more irrational situations. However he IS the most effective non-slayer, just because he didn't get to shine in season 7 doesn't take away from six other seasons of proven inteligence and loyalty (though obviously not always to Buffy). There also a number of situations that Spike would prove uniquely good in should they come to pass. He can take a bullet for example or in general more abuse than even the slayers. Considering how odd things are with souls in general and with Spike in particular (Angel holds very little in common with Angelus, you could visually pick them apart. Spike with or without a soul is Spike sans a few crazy weeks in the basement)I don't really buy the whole this wasn't the same Spike who killed Nikki argument. He is or close enough and he really doesn't feel bad about it.
 * The reason Spike with a soul isn't that different from Spike without is that William as a vampire wasn't very different from William with a soul; whereas Liam changed dramatically when he turned into Angelus, Spike as a fledgeling vampire was still a romantic poet worrying about his mother. His transformation into Spike the badass punk-rock vampire came more from his mother turning on him and his experiences with Angelus and the gang. But even souled Spike made a valid point about Wood's mother: she was a slayer. There's a war between slayers and vampires, she went out and killed vampires every night, and he was just the lucky vampire who survived by killing her instead. Souled Spike does feel horribly guilty for most of his vampiric crimes, as we later see in "Hellbound" and especially "Damage," but he doesn't seem to count the two slayers he killed on the same level, much the same way as a soldier who'd feel guilty about killing innocent civilians wouldn't feel the same about killing an enemy soldier during a firefight. Spike was brutally undiplomatic in how he phrased all this, but, as said, Wood was in the middle of betraying and trying to kill him.
 * And Spike really WAS good now. Every single killing that he did after getting his soul was under the effects of the First using his trigger, he wasn't responsible for his actions. The fact that he had a soul now certainly was relevant, he was a very different person when he killed Nikki Wood. He taunted Robin because, as the above troper mentioned, Robin was trying to kill him and was actively trying to use the trigger on Spike. Can't blame Spike for getting a bit snarky. In fact, the fact that Spike did NOT kill Robin, sparing his life, shows that Spike really was a good guy in the end. A Nd of course, they're fighting a war, personal vendettas have no place. Robin had every right to be upset and angry with Spike, but in the end, the Spike that killed his mother wasn't the Spike that he was now on a team with.
 * Spike's actions did make a big difference, just not in that season. Wolfram & Hart made a deal with Angel that had him as head of the L.A. branch, a deal that included the amulet. But as Angel observed later, they expected him to use the amulet, not Spike. So the Senior Partners were actually planning on Angel getting trapped inside the amulet before he could even so much as step into his new office. Why? They never directly said, but it's not hard to imagine the possibilities. At best, an extraction team digs the amulet up and they stick it on a shelf labelled "do not open until the apocalypse." At worst, they know a way to release him from it sans soul and now they have Angelus running the branch. Spike screwed all that up when he took on the role instead, which is presumably why . Whatever the Senior Partners were planning for Angel, Spike derailed it so thoroughly that they called it a wash and just left the amulet buried in Sunnydale. Had Wood killed Spike, they might have stopped the First only to face an even worse threat from W&H just a few weeks later.
 * Spike may have been genuinely good, but he also had a trigger in his head that overrode his soul, and forced him to kill people. As such, as long as that trigger remained, he was still a danger to the Scoobies and the Potentials, and hence a potential threat that needed to be neutralized, one way or another. Robin and Giles were right in that instance. Furthermore, 'Kill Spike' was plan 'B'. Plan 'A' was the removal of the trigger, which failed because Spike not only did not cooperate, but actively RESISTED it, causing him pain. At that point, Buffy made them stop and release Spike. Yes. Buffy endangered the life of her friends and all the people under her command, just to save her boyfriend from a little discomfort. From that moment forwards, any lives Spike took would be Buffy's fault, their blood would be on her hands. And then, the woman who allowed said unpredictable vampire to be off his leash had the audacity to claim she couldn't trust Giles, the one who was actually trying to remove a potential threat to the world. Yeah. I have a hard time sympathizing with Buffy here. She was, quite simply, an idiot who was endangering the world because she wanted to act like an infatuated 13 year old. Spike may have been strong, and a good fighter, but that didn't outweigh the potential threat he posed due to his trigger, nor justify Buffy's refusal to acknowledge that very threat.
 * A few problems with this. First Spike is still a very valuble and proven resource trigger or no. Nobody else there can take a bullet, nobody else (Faith hasn't shown up yet) is remotely on par with Buffy. (We can debate I have the power but won't use it Willow later if you like.) He's important. His value far outweighs him maybe going nuts especially considering the potentials were literally useless until the last bit of the last episode. They were the equivalent of twenty lottery tickets to Spike's actual fifty dollar bill. The second problem with is that Buffy had assumed control. Military structures need a leader, if you want to say (as they did eventually) that Buffy was simply unfit to rule (a debatable point but one that honestly I would tend to support. Giles has far more wisdom and tactical inteligence being the best fighter doesn't make you the best general) that's one thing. However once the general lays down orders you shut up and follow. Even under the "it's better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" rule I think it's safe to say that killing Spike should have been on the assume Buffy doesn't want unlike say bringing Faith where I assume there was some behind closed doors talk between Buffy and Willow that went a bit like this. Buffy: You brought that crazy bitch here? Willow: Uh. . .two slayers are better than one. If you wanna send her away. Buffy: Ugg. . .fine. Next time ask first.
 * Again, Spike's skills do not outweigh the very real threat he posed due to his trigger. And that threat was not simply to the Potentials, but to the world at large. And the fact that he posed a very real danger to the Potentials is enough of a reason to neutralize him as a threat. The First Evil wasn't doing what it did for shits and giggles. It had a very real plan: The exterminate the Slayer line, and make sure their could be no more Slayers. As far as the Scoobies knew at that moment, the Potentials under their care were the last ones remaining, the very last of the Slayer line. And Buffy was willing to let the First have an agent with which to get to those very people she was supposed to be protecting. Between that and her numerous botched battles, Buffy was doing a damn good job of wiping out the Slayer line all by herself. The First didn't need to really do anything else. Furthermore, if a general is reckless, and endangers their own people through their blindness to threats, the way Buffy did with Spike, then the men under their command will usually remove said reckless leader FROM command, for the good of the unit. Usually by making sure they meet with an 'accident'. Fragging is very common in the military in situations just like that. As Anya said, Spike had a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card with Buffy that no one else had. She had clearly demonstrated that she was BLIND to the danger Spike posed, and she was too self-absorbed and arrogant to listen when they tried to make her realize that (it was canon that she had a superiority complex), and refused to listen to anyone's opinion but Spike's. Those simple facts meant that Giles and Robin had simply NO OTHER CHOICE but to take Spike out. They, unlike her, were not blind to the danger, were not acting, as the troper who started this question said, like a 13 year old girl with a crush. They saw a very real and very serious threat to their cause, and a 'leader' who was not only unwilling to do anything about that threat, but was, probably willingly, blind to it. As such, they tried to do what they HAD to do under the circumstances. To do anything else would be to leave said threat free to do whatever it wanted. Which was not acceptable.
 * Spike did not have a "get out of jail free card" no matter what the series might claim to the contrary. At least not in a world where Angel went bad and was instantly forgiven (despite being insane and feral) Anya entered the group pretty much right after summoning vampire Willow and is only ostracized from the group when she returns to vengence (it takes a pretty big blind spot to think that in the time between being left at the alter and getting her powers back that Buffy's response to you're a demon again is pretty much "shrug", it's not until she kills an entire fraternity that she makes it a point to go after her. She gets forgiven immediately for that too) Faith tried to kill her, tried to kill her boyfriend, tried to steal her body, Willow tried to destroy the entire world. I'd say everybody on the show pretty much has a get out of jail free card that's pretty constantly in effect. Also it's not a superiority complex if you actually are superior and the very fate of this dimension has hung on your shoulders for eight years and while there've been some close calls it's worked out. Robin was being vengeful, plain and simple. Giles was being pragmatic. It's not necessarily bad but lets stop pretending he Buffy was being entirely irrational and he was this shining beacon of all that is good. If you remember the conversation Buffy and Giles were having he was pretty much advocating cutting the knot. He more or less blatantly says that when Glory was around they should have taken the only sure route to stop her from opening the gates and simply killed Dawn and been done with it.
 * No, it IS a superiority complex when you BELIEVE yourself superior while you are not. Faith was equally as strong as Buffy, Giles was smarter, with more resources and more experience, Willow was the most powerful individual among them (something Buffy herself acknowledged in season 5), all all three showed themselves to be better leaders than Buffy. Anya had a thousand years worth of experience as a demon, and was probably more knowledgeable about demons than even Giles. There is a difference between recognizing that you have certain skills and advantages over other people, and believing those advantages translate into having been given authority to lead from God Himself. Buffy fell into the latter camp, showing clearly that she was unwilling to listen to or take advice from anyone else, treating everyone else like inferiors and expecting to just fall in line and do whatever she said without question. It was that very attitude that made her unwilling to listen to reason when it came to Spike, made her refuse to acknowledge the threat his trigger posed, and caused her to allow Spike to run around unrestricted. And yes, he DID have a 'Get out of Jail Free' card with Spike. When Anya killed the frat boys, Buffy couldn't WAIT to go after her. She tried to straight up murder Faith for poisoning Angel, and later chased Faith down to L.A. on a vengeance kick just for humiliating her. Contrast that to Spike who, even KNOWING he had a trigger, still had him staying in her house, had the Initiative REMOVE his chip, and even forced XANDER, who she KNEW had doubts about Spike, to keep him at his apartment. Would she have done that for Faith? Or Anya? Certainly not. The only way to spin it as Buffy NOT having a blind spot concerning the danger Spike, however unwillingly, posed is massive amounts of self delusion.
 * You're order is a bit off. Lies my Parents told me is episode 17, and Dirty Girl is 18. Which means Faith was currently unavailable and thus not Buffy's equal because she's not around. That's also the episode where Buffy gets a lot of potentials killed, before that most of if not all the potentials deaths were if not entirely unavoidable certainly not Buffy's fault. Willow raw power aside was unwilling to so much as try to get them out of a house as Anya pointed out earlier. If you refuse to use your power it's hard to call you powerful even if you are the biggest bad ass in the room. Anya's 1000 years of experience makes for a compelling case that perhaps she should have a rank we never see her earn or frankly display right to. Giles being in charge is a no brainer. It's already been mentioned that Giles has every qualification and Buffy frankly lacks a lot of them no matter how one tries to spin it. If the case is that Buffy shouldn't be in charge because she's emotional and immature as a whole that's fine. Giles wasn't wrong to suggest that showing up to Glory's ceremony with a sniper rifle and killing Dawn was the best solution. Worlds better than a Rube-Goldberg fight sequence that ultimately failed. But Buffy has been the agreed upon leader for a while and not only because nobody could make Buffy do something against her will. Again with the order of things that happened Giles and later Xander were forced to keep Spike in Season 4, well before Buffy had anything resembling affection or even appreciation for him. As for the specific charachters considering everything Faith did they were very nearly chummy when she showed up in Season 7. It wasn't UNTIL the Fratboy incident that Buffy went after Anya, contrast that to vamps that she literally waits for them to rise and slays prior to their first kill, and she's immediately forgiven after that. Willow nearly got Dawn killed functionally because she was drunk or high, take your pick. Unless your argument is that Spike's trigger is worse than being intoxicated because intoxication is a choice and a trigger is done to you Willow's sin was far worse. Oh and then Willow tried to end the world and Buffy shipped her off to England and then met her (or tried to, accidental spells aside the motive was there) to meet her at the airport. Even if you factor in Xander and Dawn's mishaps as humorous it's obvious that the "get out of jail free card" is universal. If you say your sorry and you really mean it (or in Spike's case in Seasons 4 and 5 simply some combination of useful, horny and harmless) Buffy doesn't kill you.
 * You're getting off point. The issue isn't who's done what badly, and it is obvious that Buffy's love interests were held to different standards than anyone else (and not just Spike. Look how long it took her to go after Angel, when he went bad), it's that Buffy possessed a blind spot concerning Spike. Again, he was a threat, whether that was willingly so or not is irrelevant. He was a threat, who was under the control of the force that was trying to extinguish the Slayer line. Again, Buffy refused to acknowledge said danger, and refused to listen to those around her when they tried to point out that fact. Again, that blindness led to her allowing said threat to run around unchained, with free access to the very people the First Evil was trying to kill. Again, Giles attempted to remove the trigger, and Buffy refused to allow him to do so, simply because it would cause Spike a little discomfort (And said discomfort only existed because he resisted in the first place), again Giles saw this blindness Buffy possessed, the unwillingness to realize the threat her precious Spike posed, and her refusal to cooperate when they tried to remove the trigger, and he acted the only way he could: To remove the threat, without Buffy's permission, as it was clear she would not see it. The advantages Spike brought to the table were nebulous at best at that point, as it was clear that Spike was to be a big player in the First's plans. Something they could not allow to happen. Giles took the right course of action, the necessary and pragmatic decision: The neutralization of a potential threat, when Buffy and the others were unwilling to. That Giles clearly recognized the severity of the threat Spike posed with his trigger intact speaks volumes about just how serious that danger was, as he had previously, as early as season 5, recognized the asset Spike could be when the chips were down. Now, here he was attempting to kill that same asset, because he recognized that things had changed, and said asset now posed an immense danger, even if Buffy was not willing to.

Potentials are useless
Everyone sucks but Buffy. She made her feelings about that very clear. If they are all going to die anyway how come Buffy doesn't just leave them to fight herself?

The Guardians
They're supposed to be a female counterpart to the Watchers...except that the Watchers are not in any way an all-male organization. Did Whedon just forget that female Watchers exist?
 * They are not the female counterpart to the Watchers. They are ones watching the Watchers and presumably have different goals that are more inline with the Slayer. Considering how poorly the Slayers are treated in general and how large a problem Glory for example presented I think its more likely that the Guardians along with that ? weapon simply didn't exist until Season 7.

Everyone's attitude towards Anya
Why is everyone so blasé about Anya being a practicing vengeance demon. Even if she didn’t kill anyone she still turned that guy from Beneath You into a worm demon and almost got him and his ex killed yet Willow is still friendly with her at the college. Even before the frat house murder why didn’t anyone ever say “Gee, maybe we should do something about her.”

Gather the Potentials? Really?
I don’t understand what the Watcher’s intended to accomplish by sending the Potentials to Buffy. There doesn’t seem to be a real upside to it. We’re told it’s so Buffy can protect them but she’s a single girl with one vampire, one Watcher and one admittedly powerful witch. There is no way that Buffy could have stopped the Bringers, Turokan or even a fairly determined group of vampires willing to set a house on fire to force the people inside to come outside, from slaughtering those girls had they been the primary targets. Throwing a bunch of innocents in for Buffy to actively protect actually makes her job harder, not easier. The girls also were obviously doing a decent job of staying alive on their own since so many show up, none show up with watchers of their own, several never had watchers which leads to the question of how did the council convince people from all over the world to move to Sunnydale? Either these girls had survived enough of an attack that the conversation they had with this man from an organization that they’d never heard of telling them that they were magical warriors that it sounded a little like this:

"Watcher: Hi. I’m from the Watcher’s Council and I need you to go to a place called Sunnydale and seek a young woman named Buffy. Girl: Is this about the eyes guys with wiggly daggers trying to murder me? Watcher: Yes."

Or there are some really gullible people in the Buffyverse. Worse since it’s clear the Bringers were having at least some trouble hunting these girls down already wouldn’t a smarter plan have been to get the girls to remote hiding places instead of gathering them at a single location near ground zero? They brilliantly send dozens of helpless girls very close to the very thing hunting them, putting them in a single easily assaulted area with at best three known defenders (Faith doesn’t show up until late in the season, and Robin was an unknown). Unless someone knew that the Potentials would become full blown slayers (which they may have and simply never told Buffy because the only people who knew got blown up) sending the Potentials to Sunnydale was amongst the most tactically stupid things they could possible do.
 * I think it was a function of Giles being voted 'the Watcher's Council member least likely to die' during the time period the Watchers knew they were being targeted.

Watcher's Council wiped out?
I know this is just how fiction works sometimes and I need to stop being annoyed by it but how did, as far as we can tell, the Watcher’s Council get wiped out? It’s the same problem I have with the Beast’s assault on Wolfram & Hart where everybody dies. It’s virtually impossible to take out everybody in any organization, doubly so with a single attack. I know there was a bomb but just like nuking Congress and White House wouldn’t get rid of the US government simply because a lot of fairly important people, to say nothing of the day to day people would simply be else where. If Giles and the Council Members who captured Faith are anything to go by there should be plenty of Watcher’s fully capable of fighting of a Bringer that didn’t catch them completely by surprise. Especially if any of them were on par with late Wesley’s pragmatism and thought that owning a shotgun is a perfectly acceptable method of dealing with the supernatural. Is it just that after HQ blew up that the survivors all just said screw it I’m done with this Watcher business? We know Wesley’s father survived, he didn’t think the end of the world was a sufficient reason to get off his ass and go meet that troublesome girl everyone’s been on about for most of the decade?
 * The real problem is that the Watchers Council organization has been blown up. Before that, they could probably communicate with each other, meet up with each other, or have a base to rally at. After this, they lost most of their members. And keep in mind, this wasn't a single bomb, before the Watchers Council in London is destroyed, there are reports of attacks on Watchers H Qs in other areas of the globe. Also, if Wesley's father is to be believed(even if it was a cyborg posing as him), the Watchers still exist, and are rebuilding. Their resources, presumably, are being used for that, while Giles and Buffy hijacked as many Slayers and other Watchers resources for dealing with the First. We know from Fray that the Watchers exist until the last one immolates himself in her presence, so they do survive, presumably Caleb's bombing of them was a crippling blow that they never recovered from.