Mallory Rubin

And so would certain tweaks like that on the timing front have made things more effective or impactful?

I think it's possible.

At the end of the day, I think...

think that this is just like not as compelling as the big bads who came before whether that's like something you know as wonderful as the mayor and everything that happens with faith or the master or of course angel into angelus and spike and drusilla and you know i i think that the beginning of these episodes that we're talking about today

something happens that is quite, I think, emblematic of this, right?

On the, like, this is intriguing and interesting.

Would it have been more effective over a different, like, if it had been dispersed over a different period of time?

I don't know.

Buffy going, like, kind of all in on the initiative and having these moments with Willow of, like, wait...

don't you think we should be asking more questions?

The Giles, don't you think we should be asking more questions?

Especially because part of what makes the end of season three such a absolute wallop in the best possible way is graduation in more than one form.

Buffy deciding to leave the Watcher's Council behind, right?

Like the idea that what Buffy is doing as the Slayer

what the Scoobies are doing as a unit, the idea of being a part of something larger is not the problem, but the idea of letting these kind of like shadowy power figures tell you what to do is in conflict in some way with how Buffy lives, which like we get to hear kind of brought to the fore again at the end in Restless when Buffy confronts the first Slayer and is like, I'm not alone, actually, right?

So I think there's something so tantalizing about putting Buffy right back in a circumstance in part because she's like, I'm interested in...

doing this with my boyfriend and Riley and I get to like kick ass together and we can be out there fighting demons together.

That's conceptually compelling.

But when Buffy was back there, I found myself so firmly rooted.

And again, it's like so quick that it all falls apart and the ComCam, like, you know, you don't know what a Slayer is moment is like, that happens really fast in these stretch of episodes.