Season Four
A picture of Buffy being disconcerted when she was thrust into the new environment of college life
After the explosive
events of her graduation from Sunnydale High School, Buffy initially experienced
some difficulty adjusting to life as a college freshman at U.C. Sunnydale. She
encountered a group of on-campus vampires and got her arm injured while she was
battling their leader. She ended up coming off as insane to her friends when
she suspected that her overly compulsive roommate Kathy was a demon only to be
proven correct. Her freshman problems of doing her homework, end up studying
for exams, and going to class were made even harder by her Slayer duties and
her separation from Angel. When she shared what she believed to be a night of
emotional intimacy with fellow college student Parker Abrams only weeks after
meeting him in desperation for a relationship, she became depressed when he
neglected to contact her afterward and decided to brush her off.
Soon afterwards
Spike took the Gem of Amara and tried to kill Buffy at her college campus in
broad daylight. The two of them fought exchanging name calling and insults with
each other as they fought. Spike’s taunts towards Buffy finally made her see
red. She wounded up kicking Spike’s butt and stole the ring from him which
forced Spike to retreat into a nearby sewer to escape being turned into dust by
the sunlight. Giles wanted to destroy the Gem of Amara, but Buffy decided to
send the ring to Angel and she gave it to Oz, who had a gig in Los Angeles, to
take it to him for her.
As Buffy was
determined to have a normal and safe dinner at Thanksgiving, Buffy was forced
to deal with Hus, a Native American vengeance spirit accidentally released by
Xander’s construction crew. Buffy was secretly helped by Angel, who had
returned to town after one of his new friends had a vision that she was in
danger, though he made his presence known only to the other Scoobies under the
belief that he would distract and endanger Buffy if she knew that he was back
in Sunnydale. Spike came to Buffy and the other Scoobies for help after he had
been captured The Initiative who did experiments on him and ended up putting a
computer chip in his head that rendered him unable to hurt or kill humans when
he had managed to escape. Buffy and the other Scoobies defeated Hus, but Xander
ended up accidentally letting it slip to her that Angel was in town. Buffy felt
hurt that Angel let everyone but her know that he was back in town and it got her
to immediately travel to Los Angeles where she confronted Angel in his office
about it while she was also visiting her father Hank. Angel and Buffy had
agreed to just stay away from one another for the time being. Just as Buffy was
about to leave however, the two of them were attacked by a Mohra Demon. Though
the two of them succeeded in wounding it the Mohra escaped and Angel and Buffy
tracked it down in the sewers. The two of them became separated and Angel
seemingly killed the demon himself, though its blood mixed with his own blood
and turned him human again. The two of them reveled in finally being able to be
happy together, but Angel soon discovered that The Powers That Be had not yet
offered him forgiveness. When Angel was nearly killed by the regenerated Mohra,
Buffy managed to slay it with his help. Upon discovering that Buffy would die
much sooner if he was human he asked the Oracles to turn back time to make him
a “demon with a soul” once more and leaving
no one but himself with any memory of the incident and they contested to
his request of them.
A picture of Angel and Buffy realizing that they cannot be together with each other even if Angel was a human
Back at Sunnydale,
Buffy eventually attracted the sincere attention of the brown-haired and
green-eyed handsome and intelligent teacher’s assistant Riley Finn. She ended
up accepting Riley for who he was and caring about him and found herself
wondering how she would balance her Slayer duties while dating a
seemingly-normal guy. Buffy found herself engaged to Spike after Willow
inadvertently wound up making Spike and Buffy want to get married through her
“will be done” spell and Spike gave her a skull engagement ring, but the two of
ended up calling off their engagement after Willow broke the spell and Buffy
wound up dating Riley. While fighting the Gentlemen, however, Buffy discovered
that Riley had a secret of his own. He was in fact a member of The Initiative,
a U.S, government task force created to research demonic and mystical creatures
led by Buffy’s psychology professor Maggie Walsh. Buffy briefly joined forces
with the Initiative, but her relentless questioning of the Initiative’s
motivations and plans, as well as her relationship with Riley, began to
unsettle Professor Walsh, who tried to dispose of her by having her killed in
action. Afterward, Professor Walsh was murdered by his own creation, a monstrous
half-demon/half-human cyborg named Adam, who subsequently escaped and started
his own plan to create an army of similar super soldiers.
A picture of Buffy proving to be both interesting yet annoying to the Initiative
A picture of Buffy in Faith's body
As soon as she
discovered that Faith had traveled to Los Angeles and she was attempting to
kill Angel, a furious Buffy used saving Angel as an excuse to go to L.A. for
vengeance against Faith. She ended up finding out that Faith had become
remorseful for her crimes. This put Buffy into direct conflict with Angel who
insisted that it was possible for Faith to be rehabilitated. Though
understandably unwilling or unable to believe that Faith was capable of
redemption, Buffy ultimately had no choice but to work together with her to
fight back against the Watchers Council Special Operations Team. Faith
subsequently surrendered herself to the L. A. P. D. and Buffy got into a heated
exchange with Angel, which climaxed when she used her relationship with Riley
to put Angel on the defensive. He harshly then reminded her that he himself was
unable to move on from their relationship and told her to go back to Sunnydale.
Angel subsequently returned to Sunnydale to apologize to Buffy and after he ran
afoul of the Initiative in the process, succeeded in mending things with Buffy,
with both of them admitting to each other that they were wrong.
Riley, who had been
torn between the Initiative and the Scooby Gang for some time, eventually
turned his back on the corrupt organization to join Buffy after he helped them
save Oz from the Initiative complex. Having been drifted apart for the previous
year, the existing tensions between Buffy, Giles, Willow, and Xander reached
their boiling point when Spike, who had been rendered unable to harm humans due
to experiments by the Initiative, exploited them to turn the gang against each
other as part of his new ally Adam’s plan. When Spike let too much information
about the plot slip during a subsequent encounter, however, the Scoobies
reconciled and set out to combine their essences within Buffy’s body, which let her destroy Adam. The Scoobies,
helped by Riley and Spike, subsequently helped save the Initiative’s soldiers
from the rampaging demon hordes within the complex. The Initiative was
subsequently closed by the United States of America’s government and Riley was
honorably discharged from the military. The four of them were later attacked in
their dreams by the First Slayer, who was offended by their use of the
adjoining spell to defeat Adam, but Buffy promptly rejected the First Slayer’s
insistence that the Slayer must work alone without friends to help her.
A picture of Buffy in her dream space
Season Five
A picture of Buffy meeting one of her most powerful foes in the Hell God Glory
After her
confrontation with the First Slayer, Buffy encountered the black-haired and
blue-eyed handsome, intelligent, and charismatic famous vampire Count Dracula
who had traveled to Sunnydale intent on making the legendary warrior his bride.
Buffy was at first left powerless to the count’s “thrall,” but she managed to
overcome his control and make him leave Sunnydale. She came to fully accept her
duty as the Slayer for the first time in her life from her encounter with
Dracula and she decided to have Giles train her more extensively in both mental
and physical ways. Dawn, a brown-haired and blue-eyed younger sister that Buffy
had, mysteriously appeared in Buffy’s household, with her existence seamlessly
integrated with the memories of Buffy, her mother Joyce, the Scooby Gang, and
Spike. Buffy ended up finding out that Dawn was not her sister, but rather a
ball of mystical energy known as the Key that was able to open up
inter-dimensional portals. Fortunately a group of monks had transformed the Key
into human form to hide it from an extremely dangerous and mentally unstable
being known as Glory and gave it to the Slayer to protect it because they knew
she would protect her little sister with her own life if she had to do so.
Having initially regarding Dawn as little more than a burden that was forced on
her against her own will, Buffy eventually accepted her role as Dawn’s
protector from Glory. Buffy had Spike at her request tell her in detail about
who he was and the two previous Slayers he had killed after she was badly
injured in a fight by a vampire. He informed Buffy on how and why he murdered
the two previous Slayers and he tried to kiss her, but Buffy shoved him to the
ground and told him that he was “beneath her” which visibly hurt Spike as that
was something that was said to him by Cecily Addams during his time as a human.
Spike went to her house to try to kill Buffy with a gun, but he wound up
comforting a distraught Buffy when her mother Joyce was admitted into the
hospital.
Her relationship
with Riley began to deteriorate as she failed to give him the emotional
intimacy that he craved from her due to her being occupied with her mother
Joyce’s brain tumor and her protecting Dawn from Glory. He started to visit
vampire brothels where he allowed himself to be bitten by the vampires there,
and when Buffy discovered this by Spike showing her this, they finally broke up
and Riley had gone back to the military. Returning to the issue of Glory, the
Watcher’s Council offered some vital information on her if Buffy passed a test
of theirs’ to see if she could be trusted with it. Since Buffy failed to meet their
standards to the test, a visit from Glory within in her house gave her the
confidence to stick up to the Watcher’s Council, believing that their deal was
so that they would get her help rather than vice versa. Through a rousing
speech, she convinced them to give her the information then and there as well
as reemploy Giles. She then learned from
them that Glory was not a demon, but a hell god.
As Buffy recovered
her break up with Riley, Buffy was disgusted to learn that Spike had come to
accept her for who she was, care about her, and deeply fallen in love with her.
Spike tried to prove his love to Buffy by kidnapping her to witness himself killing
Drusilla for her and he threatened to let Drusilla kill her if she refused to
give him any sign of them having a chance to be together in the future. His
attempts ended up to little avail and Buffy furiously punched him which
destroyed his shrine of her in the process. Upon discovering the full extent of
his obsession with her from the kidnapping, Buffy had Willow revoke Spike’s
invitation to her house (something that she had never bothered to do in the
almost three years since their alliance against Angelus) and she personally
alienated him from the Scoobies. Though she was depressed over having two
failed relationships to both Angel and Riley, Buffy, after an encounter with
April, a robot created by her former Sunnydale High School classmate Warren Mears,
realized that she was overly dependent on men and she decided to simply be by
herself for the time being. This decision she made proved to be greatly
fortunate as it made her reject the advances of Ben Wilkinson, a handsome and
intelligent medic who was actually the human counterpart of Glory, as she would
change into him and him into her from time to time.
A picture of Buffy and Dawn mourning their mother Joyce's death together
Buffy was
devastated when her mother Joyce, who had been experiencing health problems for
months and only recently received surgery for a brain tumor, died unexpectedly
from an aneurysm. She ended up taking up the role of Dawn’s legal guardian and
she was forced to drop out of college to look after her little sister though
she began facing continuing problems due to Dawn’s increasingly rebellious behavior.
Buffy struggled to fully understand what being the Slayer meant and Giles took
Buffy on a vision quest, where the Guide told her that death was her gift,
which was a message she found to be confusing and hurtful so soon after her
mother’s death. She discovered that Spike had forced Warren to build a sex-bot
in her likeness upon her return and it had resulted in him getting captured by
Glory’s minions who believed him to be the Key. Though despite her
understandable anger and disgust over the robot at Spike, Buffy saved Spike and
she subsequently discovered that he had endured intense torture at the hands of
Glory rather than reveal the identity of the Key, nearly choosing death for
himself in order to protect Dawn from Glory. This gesture of his moved Buffy,
who losing most of her disdain for Spike, rewarded him with a kiss and
reconciled with him, welcoming him back to the fold of the Scooby Gang.
A picture of Buffy finding a robot in her exact image
When Glory ended up
finally discovering that Dawn was the Key, Buffy immediately had the Scooby
Gang and her sister Dawn rushed out of Sunnydale in a Winnebago, having no
other option. This attempt came to shortly be shot down when the Knights of
Byzantium attacked her who was a militia intent on killing the Key to stop
Glory. Ben, who was called in to treat Giles who was injured in the attack,
unwillingly turned into Glory and she took Dawn away from them. Due to her believing that she failed, Buffy
retreated into her subconscious, where she battled with the guilt of failing to
protect her little sister Dawn from Glory. Via magic, Willow successfully drew
Buffy back out into consciousness. Though it was told that Dawn’s death would
destroy Glory’s plan, Buffy refused to kill her sister and said that she would
kill anyone who came near Dawn. She had the Scoobies attack Glory’s stronghold
in full force. Willow weakened Glory’s mentality, Xander hit her with a
wrecking ball, and Buffy repeatedly beat her with a mystical troll god’s hammer
before she reverted back to Ben. Not wanting to kill an innocent human, Buffy
allowed Ben to live, warning him not to go after Dawn again which he complied
to do so. Giles, however, knew that Glory would rise again and he killed Ben
with his own hands, thus destroying her for good.
Despite everyone’s efforts, Dawn’s blood was already used to open the interdimensional portal and chaos reigned on Earth. Buffy had ascended up to the tower where Dawn was kept and she killed Doc who had performed the ritual to open up the portal. Dawn offered to have herself killed so that her blood would no longer spill. It was at that moment that Buffy finally understood the meaning of the message from the First Slayer. Since she was Dawn’s sister and shared the same blood as Dawn, she sacrificed her own life, leaping into the portal, using her own blood to close it so that Dawn would not have to do it. Soon afterward Buffy was buried on the outskirts of Sunnydale with the epitaph, “She saved the world. A lot.” This meant she was finally able to rest so she ascended to heaven and found peace there.
Season Six
A picture of Buffy being brought back from the dead by her friends
Buffy was
resurrected by her friends months later who feared that her spirit may have
been trapped in a hellish dimension due to the mystical circumstances of her
death.
A picture of Buffy finding comfort in Spike
Buffy’s transition
back to being alive was difficult. She experienced an overwhelming sense of
loss after being ripped from heaven against her own will as well as the added
everyday responsibilities of cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, and grocery
shopping, making sure Dawn and herself had food to eat and clothes to wear,
paying bills, and raising Dawn. She fruitlessly tried to keep her problems
secret from her family and her friends not wanting them to share in her grief.
She had gotten herself to accept Spike for who he was, care about him, and
develop a friendship with him and she had confided only to him that she had in
fact been at peace while she was dead though the truth ultimately came out.
Buffy’s depression worsened when Giles left Sunnydale and returned to England
when she became overly dependent on him. Struggling to feel alive and seeking
someone who understood her, she began a violent sexual relationship with Spike
which left neither of them satisfied, keeping it secret from everyone, but Tara
out of fear of their reaction to it. She was forced to both fight Sunnydale’s
demon population and become somewhat of a vigilante crime-fighter when faced
with the ongoing efforts of the Trio, who were a group of nerds she had went to
high school with and had decided to take over Sunnydale though taking down
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was their top priority. To deal with her increasing
financial problems, Buffy started working at a local burger bar the Doublemeat
Palace, a job she found to be degrading and disturbingly mundane. With all of
these problems, Buffy sank into severe depression and self-loathing.
A picture of Buffy over the counter at Doublemeat palace
Meanwhile, Willow,
proceeding Buffy’s resurrection, developed an addiction to magic and began to
use it excessively, which Buffy, faced with her own problems, failed to notice
and largely ignored at first, even when confronted with evidence of it by Anya
and Xander. This climaxed when a spell cast by Willow went awry and erased all
of the memories of the entire whole Scooby Gang and Spike. When the spell ended
Tara dumped Willow which immediately caused Willow’s addiction to magic to
spiral out of control. Buffy ended up finally becoming aware of the full extent
of Willow’s addiction to magic when Amy Madison, having been transformed into a
rat for three years only to be finally changed back, and her, began making
regular visits to the home of Rack, a shady sorcery dealer, who only worsened
Willow’s condition. When Buffy made another trip to Rack’s place with Dawn in
tow, the two of them were attacked by a demon that Willow had unwittingly
summoned during her high and Willow’s carelessness caused a car accident that
left Dawn severely injured. Buffy and Spike arrived in time to save them and,
despite Buffy being understandably furious with Willow for putting her little
sister Dawn in danger, relented slightly when Willow desperately begged her for
help. With Buffy’s help, Willow renounced the usage of her magic altogether and
she was put on the road to recovery.
A picture of Buffy setting Willow on a path to rehabiliation after she becomes addicted to magic
In contrast to the
ruthless hell-god Buffy faced the year before, her newest “nemesises” consisted
of her old nerdy classmates that formed a group called the “Trio,” with the
intent of committing crimes and obtaining women. Due to them seeing Buffy as a
foil in their plans they proceeded with several minor annoyances against her
and she never had the interest in directly stopping them. One of their games
ended up accidentally turning Buffy invisible. Buffy enjoyed this new power at
first by tricking the mentality of a social worker that was unimpressed by
Buffy’s ability as Dawn’s guardian and by desperately going to Spike for sex.
Upon learning that if she were to continue being invisible for an extended
period of time her molecule structure would break down, Buffy still sought to
stop the Trio and try to make herself visible, since she did not want to die
despite her current grime state of lime. The Trio’s schemes finally reached the
breaking point when their leader Warren Meers accidentally killed his
ex-girlfriend Katrina after a mystical date rape attempt. With the use of magic
Jonathan Levinson and demon summoning from Andrew Wells, he manipulated events
to make Buffy think that she had killed Katrina. Convinced, that she did it,
Buffy was ready to confess to the police though this was thwarted when Spike
dumped the body to save her. In denial in her relationship with Spike and an
encounter of grief, Buffy beat him up severely. Luckily for her, Buffy
discovered that she was not actually the perpetrator of the crime and the death
was ruled as a suicide. Nonetheless Buffy realized that the Trio was becoming
too dangerous for her to ignore any longer and she resolved to bring them to
justice.
A brief reunion with Riley shocked Buffy into
finally breaking up with Spike as she admitted to him that she was just using
him and it was killing her to do so. Confused and deeply angry, Spike later got
drunk with Anya, who had recently been left at the altar by Xander and the two
of them had sex in the Magic Box, which the Scoobies discovered through bugs
that the Trio had planted in the Bronze,
Buffy’s house, and the Magic Box. Xander subsequently attempted to kill
Spike in a jealous rage, but Buffy intervened, revealing her secret
relationship with Spike in the process, though Anya, Dawn, and Willow accepted
it with relative grace, understanding what Buffy had been going through, Xander
reacted exactly as Buffy feared, though he eventually realized why Buffy had
kept it secret from them and apologized to her for it. Spike subsequently
cornered her in the bathroom and tried to rape her, but Buffy was able to fight
him off and Spike fled Sunnydale horrified by his own actions against Buffy.
A picture of Buffy in shock from a bullet
When Warren accidentally killed Tara in an attempt
to kill Buffy, Willow, enraged and grief-stricken, suffered a relapse towards
her addiction of magic and exacted blood revenge against him, flaying him alive
before the eyes of her horrified friends. Unable to condone Willow’s actions,
Buffy battled her best friend to stop her from committing more murders, but she
was promptly defeated by Willow before Giles came to her rescue. Willow then
tried to destroy the whole world to end everyone’s pain, which left Buffy and
Dawn trapped underground. Xander eventually got through to Willow in the end.
The trauma of Tara’s death and Willow nearly destroying the world finally
snapped Buffy out of her depression and forced her to realize that life was
worth living, and she promised to stop her self-destructive behavior to be
there for Dawn in the future. With this crisis resolved, Buffy was finally
ready to live again.
A picture of Buffy promising to show her sister Dawn the world
Season
Seven
A picture of Buffy as the new Sunnydale High School Guidance Counselor
As Dawn enrolled
into the recently rebuilt Sunnydale High School, Buffy was offered a job as
guidance counselor by Principal Robin Wood, which she gratefully accepted. She
found it to be an unfulfilling experience as she was unable to connect with any
of the students that came to her while others had trivial reasons at first, but
she got concerned when a girl with psychic powers, Cassie Newton who claimed
that she would soon die to her. Buffy first thought that she was suicidal, but
after learning it was an upcoming indefinite event she saved her from being
sacrificed by a group of demon-worshiping students where she discovered it was
actually due to congenital heart condition that Cassie would die from. While
Cassie was alive, she revealed several cryptic samples of Buffy’s near future.
Spike returned to
Sunnydale after regaining his soul in an attempt to prove himself to Buffy.
Buffy recognized the difference in him and even when it seemed that he might
revert to a dangerous killer, she assured him that she believed in him. In case
it happened, Buffy had Spike tied to a chair in her bedroom and later chained
in her basement when he frenzied and gone on to attack Andrew Wells. It was in
the basement that he was kidnapped by the agents of The First Evil, the
Bringers. The Bringers started tracking down Potential Slayers to kill them in
an attempt to wipe out the entire whole Slayer line. These Potentials traveled
to Sunnydale to receive her protection and training at her home which quickly
filled up with teenage Potentials. Andrew, who had been under the influence of
the First and put into the Scooby Gang’s custody, led them to the area of
focus, the Seal of Danzalthar, gateway to the hellmouth which the First used
Spike’s blood to open. Investigating what had been released, Buffy encountered
one of an ancient and powerful vampire race known as the Turok-Han. Due to its
superior abilities along with her recent lack of rest, the vampire beat Buffy
to a pulp on two occasions where she was given no other option but to escape.
Buffy eventually stepped into a leadership role to the girls and worked to
ready them as anyone of them could follow her footsteps if she were to die. One
of these methods was by battling the Turok-Han vampire and after a vicious
battle, killing it in front of the potentials as a way of both education and
protection. After this, Buffy went into the First’s lair where she rescued
Spike who was tortured by the First and the Turok-Han vampire.
A picture of the Shadow men trying to force darkness into Buffy
Buffy later used
the Slayer Emergency Kit given to her by Robin Wood, whose mother had been a
previous Slayer herself. She used this to contact the Shadow Men for
assistance. They took her into another dimension and offered to increase her
strength via the essence of a demon in response to her contact of them. Buffy
refused to do so as she was unwilling to sacrifice her humanity in exchange for
power.
Meanwhile, a
reformed Faith, having escaped from prison to help Angel, traveled to Sunnydale
to aid the Scoobies in the battle against the First. Upon learning that the
First’s minion Caleb had something of hers, Buffy led the Potentials into
battle at a Vineyard to retrieve it, which resulted in the loss of several
girls as well as Xander’s eye. With this, the Potentials and the Scoobies,
having lost confidence in Buffy’s leadership skills and methods for quite some
time, held a mutiny, appointing a reluctant Faith their leader and forcing
Buffy out of the house. This made her alone and she briefly resided in a house
that was just abandoned by its owner.
Over time Buffy's destructive relationship with her former enemy Spike envolved between the both of them into genuine feelings of acceptance for who they are, care for each other, deep friendship, and love with one another
Only Spike remained
loyal to her and he searched for her where he found her at the house. It was
through him, Buffy, depressed and ending to be about to give up; found the
strength that she needed to keep fighting. Through quick maneuvers and witty
remarks, Buffy found the object that Caleb was keeping from her-an ancient
Slayer Scythe—and saved Faith and the Potentials after the latter led them into
a trap, earning back the gang’s loyalty and finally making peace with Faith
before revealing her plan to share her power with the other Potentials. With
the help of Angel, Buffy finally defeated Caleb and ended up cutting him in
half, killing the First’s leading enforcer and one of her greatest foes. The
First confronted her once more. The First’s ranting on how there was only one
Slayer made Buffy realize her revolutionary idea.
A picture of Buffy wielding the Scythe against the First's army
A picture of Buffy wielding the Scythe against the First's army
Willow used the
Scythe to perform a spell which activated Slayers all around the entire whole
world. This happened just as Buffy led an army of Slayers down to the Hellmouth
through the Seal of Danzalthar in the now abandoned Sunnydale High. A huge
battle was then waged between the Slayers and the Turok-Han Vampires. During
the fight, Buffy was struck down with a sword through her stomach and she was
taunted by the First while witnessing the loss of several new slayers. Buffy
ended up getting up and fought on. Just afterwards Spike sacrificed himself to
close the Hellmouth once and for all. Before he crumbled to dust, Buffy finally
confessed to him that she loved him to an unconvinced Spike, before she escaped
the ruins of Sunnydale with the other survivors.
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