#40: Reactions
You can find summaries at Whedonesque, also. My reactions are below the cut.
Note: They are positive reactions. Read at your own risk.
1. Willow/Buffy scene. There is a lot going on in their conversation. As we might have expected, Willow's not happy about having lost her power. She seems to have projected that on to Kennedy, preemptively breaking up with Kennedy before Kennedy can dump her for not being powerful. But it turns out that more importantly, Willow is in love with Saga Vasuki. That would make two loves that Willow has lost on account of Buffy. There's no open hostility from Willow, but an awful lot of issues are there ready to bubble up, in an interesting mash of mixed motives. Willow has a 'high' ground reason for disliking what Buffy did -- the world without magic has lost it's heart. That's a forecast of the dystopia we see in Fray. She has the immediate personal ground of not liking being powerless herself. And finally, she's got personal love issues in play.
There's a tired air about her, in the way she talks to Buffy. It's hard to describe. Buffy makes a cute witticism about her cheering for Kennedy, and Willow replies "You...you're never not you, are you?" That to me reads as distancing. Saying outloud something she'd think about Buffy, but not necessarily liking that Buffy is never not Buffy.
There's also another reference to Buffy/Willow, with Buffy assuming that Willow's reference to 'someone else' (Saga Vasuki) is a reference to her. Willow immediately corrects it, but it's interesting that the question has bubbled along pretty much since WatG.
2. Dawn is being supportive in a sisterly way. She sees that Buffy is stuck and is prodding her gently to get going. Buffy is a leader, she can't just not be a leader. Dawn doing loud sex noises to bug Buffy is a clever and sisterly way of getting Buffy off the couch and back to slaying. It's what Buffy needs, and Dawn does it in a way that also gets a dig in about Xander, maintaining her claim on him. I love the subtlety of how that all plays out.
3. Speaking of insightful ways of dealing with Buffy in a way that is helpful without her realizing it, Giles will is stunningly wise. It's perhaps my favorite thing in this issue. He's left everything to Faith. Buffy is devastated by that. But what Giles is up to is quietly saying that what got Buffy off track was all the power and money. So he's cut her off from that. What he leaves her is the one thing necessary. And (not coincidentally) it's the one thing Dawn is pushing her towards. He leaves her with the slaying (reprented by the first book he gave her). That's where Buffy will find her way. It's such an elegant switch on where things were in NFFY. Faith was poor but on mission. So Giles gives her the resources to live well. Buffy was rich and off mission. So Giles gives her the resource to plug back into her mission. It's so beautiful the way he loves them both and sees what they need. It made me tear up in a way that his death scene in #39 did not.
Sidebar: Jeanty captures SMG's hurt/crying expression very well in the panel of her reaction to Giles' will.
4. Faith's read on it is just off target the way Faith would make it off target. She reads it as Giles expressing greater faith in Buffy's strength. It's exactly the reverse, of course. Faith uses that explanation because for her the alternative is that Giles loves her more. That's not it either. As I said, it's that Giles loves them both very much and is giving them both what they need.
5. I love that Faith is the one who is going to help Angel. It's a call back to Angel's best moment (in my book) which was his willingness to take Faith in when she was a pariah. We get one panel of Angel looking appropriately horrified/shell-shocked. That's a good start for his story.
6. Where Buffy is at. She's trying to deal. She's got the waitressing job. Although she's camping at Xander and Dawn's apartment, she's not in a heap of self-pity/guilt. She knows she messed up and she's letting the world react to that, pretty much accepting the blame, and trying to go forward. It goes a long way towards making me feel better about her. Buffy knows there will be repercussions. The panels documenting that include Willow, and the fairy from the Chain, and Simone with her hit list, and a new guy who we'll meet next season apparently. Bufy says that there are many things she's done that could be called betrayal. She identifies the space sex as the main way she betrayed the world, but she's not limiting it to that. And despite all her failures, she instinctively does what Giles and Dawn wanted her to do. She goes out to slay. She wasn't able to change the world, but she's going to keep trying. Her "let's go to work" is much more powerful and optimistic than Angel's was in NFA. That difference is worth pondering.
***
The Buffy/Spike scene. It works just fine for me. He's the one who has her back, whatever that might be worth. He's the one who can see and understand why she made the mistakes she made. They have their banter back and forth. They can't make a move towards each other. Buffy can't hop into another relationship right now. Certainly not with a vampire. That's probably why he's not invited in. Spike takes it on the chin for Angel's sins yet again. But Spike seems to get that, or at any rate is able to joke about it. Spike for his part has his own gig. As he flies off in his bug ship, Buffy voices over about being alone. Every night. It doesn't have to set up for season 9 Spuffy, but it sure as heck keeps the door open.
I'll ponder over the next few weeks how I feel about the season now that all is said and done. But this issue affected me much more than I expected based on the early descriptions. It's richer than any summary could convey. The last panel has Buffy swooping down. It's a reminder of the opening panel, but with so much different. She's alone now. She's back to being armed with nothing but a pointy stick. But now it looks like she might have some idea about what the hell she's doing.
There's something in that closing panel that I love a lot -- something it captures about the whole season. There are a lot of criticisms to be made. But I am moved by the end.
(And am very excited about season 9).