26 Years Ago, Buffy Rewrote Everything About Slayer History (And Also Introduced the Best Running Joke)
26 years ago, Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s smartest episode subverted everything we thought we knew about the Slayers – and set up some pretty incredible twists. The 1990s were definitely an age of “Chosen Ones,” with Buffy Summers set up as one of the best. According to the famous lines, a Slayer is born in every generation; “She alone will stand against the vampires the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.” But what does it actually mean to be a Vampire Slayer?
Buffy’s answer to that was never conventional. Most Slayers walk alone, but she refused to do so, insisting on maintaining ties with the real world and keeping her “Scoobies” around her. This culminated in Season 4, when Buffy’s friends gave her the power to take on the lastest big bad. Giles warned there could be “dire consequences,” but Buffy discounted them, figuring the Watcher says that about pretty much everything. And then, in an episode that subverted everything we expected, Buffy the Vampire Slayer unveiled the truth about the Slayer.
The First Slayer’s True Nature Revealed
The Buffy Season 4 finale, “Restless,” is one of the strangest episodes of the show’s entire run. When Buffy’s friends granted her power, they violated the very heart of the Salyer’s magic; the basic principle that a Slayer stands alone against the forces of darkness. The spirit of the First Slayer recoiled against Buffy, attempting to kill her and her friends in a series of trippy dreams that shone a light on the Scooby gang’s inner turmoil. Along the way, it dropped so many teases and hints – even foretelling the future. “You left before Dawn,” one scene notes of Buffy, hinting at the Season 5 introduction of Buffy’s sister.
“Restless” subtly hints at the truth about the Slayers. The First Slayer has “no speech, no name,” signifying that she has been stripped of her humanity and turned into a weapon. “I live in the action of death, the blood cry, the penetrating wound,” she speaks through another mouthpiece. “I am destruction. Absolute… Alone.” She represents everything Buffy has worked so hard to reject, and she’s furious because Buffy dares cling on to the things she has lost.
The foreshadowing goes even deeper, though. In another moment, building up to this, Buffy speaks with Riley and insists Slayers aren’t demons. He expresses surprise, as though aware of something she isn’t; and later, in Season 7, we’d learn the Slayers were created when men used dark magic on the First Slayer, graning her the power of demons to help her fight against the darkness. The foreshadowing is absolutely spectacular, especially accompanied by the repeated refrain that Buffy has no idea what she really is.
There Was Only One Way Buffy Could Ever End After Season 4’s Finale
After “Restless,” there was really only one way Buffy the Vampire Slayer could ever end: with a rejection of the terms imposed upon the Slayers, a refusal to let their voices be stolen and an insistence that Slayers were more than just killing machines. Buffy accomplished that in the end, with every potential Slayer in the world granted their power at once. In an instant, this meant the Slayer was no longer alone; she was part of an empowered community.
No doubt this would have caused problems for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer relaunch, but it was the right decision. Buffy is the Omega to the First Slayer’s Alpha, rejecting everything that was forced upon all previous Slayers. “Restless” makes this abundantly clear, with Buffy refusing to accept the basic principle that “the Slayer does not walk in this world.” “I walk,” Buffy insists. “I talk. I shop. I sneeze.” She refuses to be defined by the Slayer’s magic, which she clearly interprets as a curse rather than a gift, and insists she is so much more.
But Who Was the Cheese Man?
The dreams also featured another twist, though, which became a recurring gag: a mysterious cheese man who appeared in the dreams of Buffy and her friends. Joss Whedon later explained the so-called “Cheese Man” (as he’s named in the credits) was simply a joke, because every dream will inevitably have something that makes sense. In Whedon’s view, the very fact fans tried to figure the Cheese Man out showed he’d done his job well; everything else must work well enough for this one element to remain a mystery.
Original article at ComicBook
