History Headscratchers / BuffySeason3

** Willow might also be the type who's naturally gifted at writing essays and reports, and so can type up a really good essay in a short space of time. She might have a good memory and be able to pass tests and exams with minimal studying because she already remembers the facts. As mentioned above, she was nearly recruited by Microsoft the previous year and had a lengthy time where she was teaching a computer class at school. There's also her being assigned as Percy's tutor, which might also look good on her resume. And a slightly sadder possibility - maybe she was already testing the limits of her magic by senior year and that helped her standing?

** We don't know that all of Anyanka's wishes were made using that specific amulet. Perhaps their power fades over time, or they're only good for a certain amount of wishes, and Anyanka needs too keep using new ones. Indeed, since Giles got this info from a book, it's implied that this might have been done before.

* She also had no intention of killing Ben after getting him to promise to skip town, even though he certainly would've reverted to Glory and come back with a killer vengeance if Giles hadn't smothered him. Buffy is a naive moron who's way to trusting.

* A few things concerning Faith and Watchers don't really make sense to me. After Faith's Watcher died, why wasn't she assigned a new one? Gwendolyn Post came and everyone assumed that that was her new Watcher, but it turned out that she had been kicked out of the Council. So where was her real replacement and how come they never sent one? And for that matter, how did Gwendolyn even find out about Faith needing a new Watcher in the first place? And on the topic of Watchers, why are there so many Watchers to being with if there's only one slayer?
* A number of reasons seem perfectly logical. First as we learn in Season 7 there are at the very least dozens of potentials at any given point and there seems to be no reliable way to know who's next in the Slayer line. It's at least implied between Kendra and a few of the potentials in seven that Buffy is unusual in that she wasn't trained for years. Also research can get tedious and while on the show a band of teenagers and one experieced adult are always able within a few days to identify a demon or find a prophesy within a few hours, days at worst I imagine that in most cases a call back to England would be in order. As for Gwendolyn post there are seers in the world, that's how they tracked down potentials in Season 7. I suspect it works even better on slayers, like the difference between finding a cell phone and finding a cell phone that's transmitting. Word of two slayers probably got around really quick. The only real question is how did she know Faith was watcherless.

** As of the season 12 comics [[spoiler: The Mayor survived his explosive end, it just took a helluva long time to regen]] the body found in the volcano was probably discarded by the demon as lava flows tend to make the concept of regeneration abit painful and hard to move.

** Another part that doesn't make alot of sense is that in the wishverse, where was the mayor? Sunnydale was explicity built over the hellmouth to feed evil, and with that deal come the mayors ascension, with the population of sunnydale down to a fraction, and the masqurade well and truly broken, the Mayors plan to eat everyone and become a demon wouldn't work as well and I'm pretty sure the Master wouldn't want a pure demon ruling the town instead of him.

* In the episode where they steal the box of spiders that the Mayor needs for the Ascension and Willow accidentally is left behind and has the scene where she tells of Faith and socks her in the face, is their any non PlotArmor reason as to why Willow didn't lose as least a few teeth? Faith is very strong, Willow is not durable and it didn't seem as though Faith would hold back, of anything Willow made her more angry and she would punch harder than normal.

[[folder: Oz in Lovers Walk vs. New Moon Rising]]
* While I could understand that Oz was madder in New Moon Rising because his feelings for Willow were stronger at that point but if Willow affects his transformations then shouldn't seeing her cheating on him affect the wolf? Once again even if his feelings were lesser then he still cared for her strongly so if she does affect the wolf then shouldn't there have been something? Aside from either the writers hadn't decided that Willow could affect Oz like that or Oz transforming would have added chaos to a scene that was supposed to be emotional.
** New Moon Rising is specifically after he's gone off to learn how to control his transformations - until that point, he's bound to the moon cycle making him turn into the wolf. The trade off of being able to control the transformation and not become the wolf on full moons is that his emotions get heightened, like they did in his discovering that Willow and Tara were now in something with one another, and he loses that control and the wolf slips the leash.

** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E4FaithHopeAndTrick Faith, Hope and Trick]]" everyone liked Faith except Buffy.
** In "[[Recap/BuffyTheVampireSlayerS3E3BeautyAndTheBeasts Beauty and the Beasts]]" Faith was going to watch over Oz, who is highly offended and sees it as overreacting.

* In Harmony's first appearance in S4, and Angel S1, nobody knows she is a vampire. When the graduating year organised to take down the Mayor and his minions in the S3 finale, why did no one organise a post-battle roll call to see who was alive, who was dead (they should have decapitated the bodies just to be sure), and who was missing (presumably a vampire)? They just all get on with their lives, preparing for college, moving to California... Since they are not surprised to see her, it can be assumed she did not have a funeral. Was she just left dead outside the school or taken away by a vampire?

*** To understand how the Wishverse works with regards to Doppelgangland, you have to think about Anya's spell: a Temporal Fold. To access the Wishverse again, Anya has to be able to reach back through time to the point where she lost the power centre. The Wishverse still exists as undoing the wish doesn't rewind time, it just makes the effects of the wish reverse and everything go back to how it should be. The Wishverse directly replaced the 'Normal' universe for the episode as it was a play-out of the events that would have happened had Buffy not made it to Sunnydale, but in terms of the timeline, it still happened.

* Why did Buffy want to bury the demon at the beginning of 'The Wish'? It doesn't really make sense that she would deliberately ''go out of her way'' to maintain TheMasquerade.

* Okay, "Band Candy"... adults regress to age 16 on eating magic chocolate. Granted. So why does Giles become Ripper? He didn't become Ripper until he went off the rails as an undergraduate - given that he was take up to Oxford in the <quick calculation> Sixties (or earlier, depending how old he was meant to be) he would have needed to be a fairly well adjusted and studious public schoolboy.

In "Enemies", how did [[spoiler:Giles get the Mayor to call on a soul-stealing demon sorceror that owed him a favor, or contact the exact demon that the Mayor had called upon]]? The former would have been a huge GambitRoulette with some seemingly unaccessible knowledge, the second would be a huge coincidence with some seemingly unaccesssible knowledge.

* This is a minor thing but it always bugged me: if Jonathan was going up to the bell tower to kill himself in Earshot, why did he have that big, high-powered, rifle? It seem to me if someone (especially someone as short as Jonathan) tried to shoot himself with that gun, he'd bumble around, make a complete mess of the whole task, and most likely leave himself horribly maimed instead of dead.

*** In one of the Season 4 DVD interviews, the actor who plays Jonathan mentions that that character always tries to solve everything with 'one big gesture'...

** Fridge Brilliance; it could have been for this very reason; so that someone would care enough to stop him. As a suicide attempt, it's mildly clumsy, as a cry for help...

** Then again, Anya herself seems to have forgotten about that by the time we get around to "Selfless" in Season 7. Even according to D'Hoffryn, the ONLY way to reverse it is with the life and soul of a vengeance demon (maybe because he just wanted to get his own bit of vengeance on Anya, but that doesn't explain why she wouldn't already know).

** When Anya explains about how the troll is her ex-boyfriend she mentions that she turned him into a troll because he cheated on her, and ''then'' was offered the gig as a vengeance demon. She didn't use the power center to turn him into a troll, so losing it wouldn't undo the curse. She's implied several times that she used to do witchcraft but chooses not to any longer (also she seems to be quite bad at it, see Tabula Rasa).

* I've always felt that this episode was well out of joint with the rest of the series - it gave a DayInTheLimelight to a character who already spends most of his time in the limelight. The wierd thing about it was that in order to give Xander an heroic storyline, they had to start him in a place that several notches lower... Unfortunately they started him several notches below where he normally is for the series, geeking him and klutzing him to a point where, for the first ten minutes of the show he's nearly unrecognizible.
For every episode not named The Zeppo, not only is X usually to be found right by Buffy's side wherever trouble is, but Xand has even ''saved Buffy & Willow's lives multiple times'' (usually by simply being there and assisting in an escape - see The Harvest {pulling Buffy to safety}, The Pack {charging the zookeeper}, Phases {staking VampTheresa}, and GoFish {again pulling Buff to safety})Xander had never been a minor character -- yet the storyline of this ep seems to make use of him as if he were. Neither was he incompetant in crisis, but the rest of the Scoobies treat him as if he is, something they had never done before, and never do again. Now it ''is'' cool to see Xander captian his own adventure, and establish his tryst with Faith ... but it's normally best for the like minded to skip through the first few chapters of the ep ...
** I've always thought that about the episode. Everyone except Xander spends the ep acting quite out of character. Xander has been fighting alongside them for a couple of years now, through all of the Angelus saga and the last time the Hellmouth opened in 'Prophecy Girl'. All of a sudden in this episode, Buffy, Giles, Willow, Angel etc all act like Xander is in more mortal danger than them. It just doesn't resonate that Xander wouldn't be there with them as always, as USUAL. This sudden concern for his safety disappears in the very next episode. In the teaser, he isn't even injured, he just gets knocked about a bit and falls under some wreckage. The scoobies all suddenly look like superheroes compared to him. This just doesn't happen in other episodes, and is possibly more to do with the writers trying to show how Xander sees them rather than the way they see him. There are also no Scooby Gang meetings onscreen. This a departure for Buffy - at no point do they all sit together and discuss what's going on. Xander has to try and work it out for himself. Even when he sees Willow, she's so concerned with the Impending Doom that she doesn't even mention what it is, nor say 'hey, we might need some help, come to the library!' Xander is intentionally kept with the zombies and that uninteresting plot.

-> FAITH: Did you ever wonder if things would have been different if we'd never met? What if you had Buffy and Giles had been my Watcher? Think we'd still be here right now? Or would Giles be sitting in that chair? Or is it just, like, fate? There's no choice. You were going to be here no matter what... Not that any of this is your own fault... I feel it's kind of my duty to tell you that if you'd been a better Watcher, I might have been a more positive role model!...

* Just because Faith herself doesn’t seem to hold Giles at least partly responsible for her downfall (which I don’t believe was as inevitable as you describe it) doesn't mean he wasn't partially at fault in actuality. Certainly, Faith was screwed up long before she ever came to Sunnydale, but she wasn't completely shut off from people. There's no reason to suggest that Faith would have reacted badly to Giles taking an interest in her well-being. It's made fairly clear in the series that she didn't really have much of a problem with authority figures (beyond them ending up dead all the time), and in fact, she was looking for some adult guidance and support, even if she wouldn't admit it. When you consider the crap authority figures she’s likely had in the past and the fact that her one good authority figure was gruesomely murdered in front of her, it’s kind of amazing how fast she took to Gwendolyn Post and the Mayor. Post, in particular, is the best example here. She didn't shower Faith with affection and physical goods like the Mayor; she was strict and no nonsense and didn't take any of Faith's attitude, but she still expressed an interest in her, even if it was only as a Watcher. Faith might have grumbled about it, but she was still ready to follow Post's instructions (and I don't think it was simply because Post was playing on her fears). I think if Giles had taken a similar interest, things might have gone quite a bit differently. We can discuss how poorly the Watcher's Council treated Slayers and use that as one of the reasons Giles didn't step up to care for her more extensively, but that doesn't explain why we pretty much never see him acting as a Watcher in the most basic sense towards her. That was something that was his job. I find it understandable why he wouldn't get involved in Faith's life, and I really do understand that he had a lot to deal with regarding his own life and Buffy's life, and it's completely human for people to get wrapped up in their own issues. But I still think, if we go by what we actually see (or rather don't see) in the series, that he should be held ''accountable'' for his lack of action regarding Faith, whether it's understandable or not. Faith is ultimately responsible for the things she did, but other people, before and during her stay in Sunnydale, helped drive her to that point. I think Giles’ was one of those people not because of anything he did, but because of what he didn’t do. He wasn’t on Faith’s radar as someone to get back at because he didn’t do anything ''to'' her. For me, it's just as bad that he didn’t do anything ''for'' her either.

** Part of why Giles didn't offer more is because Giles is not a particularly nurturing parental-type. In the first season, he viewed all the teens with some irritation. When he got volunteered to run the talent show, he stated that he became a librarian specifically so he did not have to get involved with the students. Buffy, Willow, and Xander eventually grow on him, though, and they have demonstrated a sense of maturity that impressed Giles. Plus, the Scoobies never needed him to be a parent. They had their own parents, more or less, so he did not need to step into that role. So it might not have even occurred to Giles that he should look after Faith like an official guardian. There's no question Faith did need a parental figure in her life, however Giles had never been in that role before, so the idea that he would become that parental figure would have been incredibly strange to him at the time.

* Actually, Buffy is also pretty responsible as well. Faith was clearly desperate for a family and to be included, but Buffy is, as mentioned above, selfish, possessive, and jealous. We're meant to sympathize with Buffy feeling like Faith is pushing her out, but how petty was Buffy really being? Faith was making friends with her friends, and getting attention from her Watcher (who, let's not forget ''really was'' Faith's Watcher too). Buffy's reaction was "Oh no, Faith's taking the spotlight away from me!" I would argue that Faith was just being a little sister and trying to be a part of Buffy's life, but Buffy has never been the best big sister (even with Dawn, she was never very sisterly for long--note the episode "Potential" for proof long after the whole Key business/back-from-Heaven depression has worn off). If Buffy had tried harder to make Faith be part of the family, maybe Faith would have started following Buffy's example instead of being the bad influence on Buffy.
** This. Watch 'Faith, Hope and Trick' back again and you see that Buffy reacts terribly throughout the episode. Faith's personality clearly grates on her and she hates how much her friends like her. Buffy even threatens her in this episode, when Faith essentially calls her out for acting like a jealous bitch just because a new Slayer has turned up in town and she gets along with ''her'' friends. Buffy starts off not particularly liking Faith, but does try to reach out in later episodes. What really damages their relationship permanently is the Faith/Buffy fight that results when she goes to slay Angel. She's betrayed by who she thinks is her new Watcher in that episode, and also battles Buffy, believing Buffy to be protecting a vampire who should be slain. Buffy reaches out again at the end of 'Revelations', but it's clear Faith isn't feeling particularly friendly by that point.

Apparently, after Buffy teamed up with Spike and thus had to invite him to her house, she didn't perform that ritual that revoked the invitation. Are you kidding me? I thought it'd be like a requisite, like washing your hands after you come home from a hard day of garden work! What, just because he promised to skip the town they suddenly decided it wasn't worth the trouble?

* Spike said he was skipping town with Dru, and it did sound like he wasn't coming back. While he IS a vampire, he did make it clear that he's not stupid and he's not suicidal like Angel or Dru, trying to bring the world to an end. He's looking out for himself, and picking a fight with the slayer isn't normally a good idea. Besides, Buffy didn't come back to her house after that; after saving the world, she skipped town and didn't come back for months, as shown in the Season 3 premier. I think it's excusable that with all the stuff going on, the fact that she had invited Spike, who's seemingly a non-threat at the time, into her home just slipped her mind.

** Spike sneaks up behind Joyce in "Lover's Walk" so there goes that idea. But there is the possibility that Buffy just ''forgot'' to perform the ritual. Directly after she kills Angel, she packs her things and leaves Sunnydale. She's incredibly distressed over her mother seemingly kicking her out of the house and having to kill Angel. By the time she gets everything sorted and returns home, she's just forgotten that Spike can enter her home. And after he leaves in "Lover's Walk", she has a lot of drama to deal with, issues with Angel and being there for her friends after their relationships with Oz and Cordelia ended. She just forgets about it because it's not a pressing concern (Spike says both times he's leaving and not coming back) and she has other things on her mind.

Why didn't Buffy just say "it wasn't Angel that did those horrible things, it was Angelus"? Angel wasn't himself, literally. He IS his soul, and his soul was removed, leaving only the demon Angelus that tortured Giles and killed Jenny. While I forgive Xander and Giles for not being too friendly towards Angel after that, why did no one remind them Angel now has his soul and he's a good guy again? I guess Xander was still being a petty, jealous loser and Giles did sorta lose his love interest to him and got tortured by him, but still, they should've realized earlier that the Good!Angel was back.

** The real headscratcher is why they (especially Xander) don’t apply the same courtesy to Anya, probably a much worst source of suffering and pain and for much longer time than Angelus. And, unlike Angel, she doesn’t show any remorse at all.

A few things concerning Faith and Watchers don't really make sense to me. After Faith's Watcher died, why wasn't she assigned a new one? Gwendolyn Post came and everyone assumed that that was her new Watcher, but it turned out that she had been kicked out of the Council. So where was her real replacement and how come they never sent one? And for that matter, how did Gwendolyn even find out about Faith needing a new Watcher in the first place? And on the topic of Watchers, why are there so many Watchers to being with if there's only one slayer?

Buffy didn't come to Sunnydale until she was in high school, and from the sound of it, there wasn't a Slayer there until she came. The hellmouth's been there forever, why wasn't the town already the disaster that it was in the Wishverse? You'd think that without Buffy there, chaos would have reigned much sooner. Unless the Wishverse was the sole result of the Harvest being successful (interestingly, no Luke in the episode, but that's probably because they couldn't get the actor again or something) and nothing else, but still, Sunnydale seems like it should have been far worse if it's been plagued with vampires and demons since way before the Slayer came to protect the town.

Not sure if this belongs in Headscratchers or Fridge Logic but, did anyone else notice that the solar eclipse in the season finale apparently lasted for the rest of the day?

* So. the mayors brilliant plan was to ascend to a super demon. A super demon that is really large and noticeable, and not stealthy in any way. A super demon that can be killed by explosives. What on earth was the mayor thinking? That he'd muck around and kill a few hundred people before the army noticed and shot him with a missile launcher? How on earth was this a benefit over being completely invincible?

** In ''Faith Hope and Trick'' everyone liked Faith except Buffy.
** In ''Beauty and the Beasts'' Faith was going to watch over Oz, who is highly offended and sees it as overreacting.
** In ''Homecoming'' Faith was going to go with Buffy, but joins the others in trying to get her and Cordelia to make up instead.
** ''Revelations'' has Faith's watcher trick her, leading to a confrontation with Buffy over Angel. For Willow's part she is more concerned that Buffy kept Angel a secret.
** After ''Lovers Walk'' Willow has far more important things to worry about than Faith's loss of...ah faith in humanity.
** As far as I know Willow's feelings towards Faith do not come up again until ''Bad Girls,'' when she feels Buffy is rejecting her because she has a new Slayer girlfriend.
** From ''Consequences'' onward, things really go downhill. Willow learns of Faith trying to frame Buffy for murder, and sleeping with Xander. This was also the episode that had Faith's infamous attempted rape and murder of Xander, which may or may not be known about.

* Why would Faith attempt to kill Angel with a poison to which the only antidote is the blood of a Slayer? She ''is'' a Slayer. I suppose it could just be explained by Faith being too cocky to consider that Buffy might be able to hurt her, or just too reckless to bother seeing if there was an antidote, but surely the Mayor would have checked these things even if Faith didn't. When Buffy's LoveInterest is being slowly and painfully killed by a poison which can be cured by killing her nemesis's [[TheDragon Dragon]], what did they ''expect'' to happen?

The Mayor was invincible, alright, but he didn't seem to possess any other supernatural abilities, like strength or speed. When he tried to kill Buffy in the hospital, Angel easily tackled him. So why didn't they subdue him, take away and imprison until the time for Ascension is gone (or hell, forever, if that's what it takes)? Sure, abducting a prominent political figure couldn't be easy, but worth a try with the world at stake, especially since he didn't wary of visiting them alone.

Granted it wasn't cold but Buffy and Willow both knew that he was sleeping outside to avoid his parents' drunken fights. Willow at least had a romantic reconnection with Oz planned and having Xander anywhere near that is going to ruin it (she's lucky that Oz was cool getting back together with her still spending most of her time with Xander) but what about Buffy? She invited Faith over and Giles was only not invited because Joyce still felt awkward about the Band Candy sex. She didn't even seem to suggest having him over.

** In season three the cast are in their final year of high school making them seventeen or eighteen and Buffy turning eighteen led to Helpless. Xander doesn't have to be honest with his parents about where he was going if he thought they would react badly and given how neglectful they were they might not have even minded. But if Joyce was that concerned about Faith being alone in a motel on Christmas do you really think she would have told Buffy that no she couldn't have Xander over and he would have to just sleep outside to avoid his family's drunken fighting because there was the slight possibility that she'd have sex with the guy she's never been interested in but who at least is human and not a vampire while her mother is in the house? Maybe the Joyce of the first two seasons wouldn't have allowed it but after finding out about the Slaying I can't imagine why she would suddenly start insisting that Buffy can't have a platonic guy friend spending the night because of Sex. Since Buffy can literally be gone at any hour without being all that specific because of things like patrol or vampires, she could easily be getting up to all kinds of sex every single day so there's actually less chance of it happening there at home. And the fact that Xander makes something rather horrible seem like just a casual tradition of his adds to the horror because it's so normal to him.

After Buffy fought the demons that imprisoned and enslaved the teens in Los Angeles she saves just like half a dozen of them, the rest (and seem to be a big number) remained behind and the inter-dimensional door is closed. Yes, she killed the leader and a large number of the demons, but some should have survived (some were just hit, not stabbed or anything like that). But even if all the demons were killed, did all the other human slaves just get trapped forever in that dimension?

Why didn’t Buffy try to follow or track down Faith when she jumped off the roof in “Graduation Day”? She should have been able to see that she landed in the back of that truck. Even if we assume that Buffy wasn’t feeling strong enough to climb off the roof and follow it, she could have at least tried to see the license place (or to find some security footage showing the license place from a nearby building, which wouldn’t be hard to break into with slayer strength). Even if she didn’t, it was a pretty good guess that if someone discovered Faith’s body in the back of their truck they would either take her to the hospital or, if she was dead, call the cops. Either way, with Willow’s hacking abilities there was a pretty good chance they’d have been able to track her down from either hospital or police records and not only would there be guaranteed enough blood to save Angel but Buffy would have been at full strength for the fight with the Mayor. I understood there were time constraints, but given how desperate she was to save Angel it just didn’t make sense that when Faith jumped off the roof Buffy seemed to immediately accept that she was gone forever.

* Angel's soul is not his personality, it's his conscience. Angelus is present all the time, lurking just beneath the surface, and the only thing stopping Angel from succumbing is the presence of his soul, which knows right from wrong and makes him capable of remorse. Consider the human beings in the Buffyverse who do horrible things, all while having souls; Angel doesn't do good because he's an... well, angel inhabiting the body of a beast, he does good because his conscience got forcibly reinstalled after over a century of murder and sadism, and with it came a guilt trip that's going to last for the rest of his life, however long that may be. The creature that tortured Giles in his basement, thus, didn't die when Willow did her hospital bed mojo. Giles finds it pretty unsettling and doesn't want it in his house.

*** That's because Xander's hatred of Angel grew out of jealousy that Buffy was in love with him. For the whole of Season 1, Xander wants to date Buff and has a major weakness for her for the rest of the series. When Anya comes along, he never mentions her past, her murder of probably far more people than Angelus. At the very least, Anyanka has to have ruined more lives in over 1,000 years than Angelus ever did in only ~150 (the rest of Angel's life having been spent ensouled).

** Here's how he could do it without it being a GambitRoulette: [[spoiler:Giles being the smart guy that he is, he has a lot of connections that just seem to keep popping up that are well outside of what the Watcher's Council apparently has access to. He probably starting keeping his ear to the ground for anything the Mayor might be planning regarding Angel after Angel came back, since he knows when Angel is Angelus that's really bad news for everyone. As soon as he heard the Mayor was looking to flip Angel or something similar he called in the favor of the soul-stealer to offer its services to the Mayor.]] Which also makes the whole episode one of Giles' [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Crowning Moments of Awesome]].

* Angel's soul is not his personality, it's his conscience. Angelus is present all the time, lurking just beneath the surface, and the only thing stopping Angel from succumbing is the presence of his soul, which knows right from wrong and makes him capable of remorse. Consider the human beings in the Buffyverse who do horrible things, all while having souls; Angel doesn't do good because he's a good fairy inhabiting the body of a beast, he does good because his Superego got forcibly reinstalled after over a century of murder and sadism, and with it came a guilt trip that's going to last for the rest of his life, however long that may be. The creature that tortured Giles in his basement, thus, didn't die when Willow did her hospital bed mojo. Giles finds it pretty unsettling and doesn't want it in his house.