Did You Miss It? Buffy the Vampire Slayer Quietly Fixed a Major Plot Hole After Fan Complaints
As a teenage soap opera, Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a lot of romance plots. It simply wouldn’t be the same if Buffy wasn’t falling in love with absurdly attractive men nearly every season. But there was one romance subplot from the Angel spin-off show that just never sat right with some fans. Fortunately, the Buffy comics perfectly explain why this romance had to happen.
After the end of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show, the series continued on in a series from Dark Horse Comics. The in-continuity Buffy comics went all the way up to season twelve before being rebooted, which gave the comics plenty of chances to retcon or add additional details to parts of the show that fans felt were lacking.
A relationship that plenty of fans thought was out of character for Buffy was retconned in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #1 by Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty. With one simple throwaway line about doppelgangers – and one who dated the Immortal instead of the real Buffy – Buffy’s entire relationship with the Immortal was fixed and ended up making way more sense for her character and the larger plot.
Plot Hole Officially Fixed: Buffy Summers Never Dated The Immortal
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #1 by Joss Whedon, Georges Jeanty, Andy Owens, Dave Stewart, Richard Starkings, and Jimmy
During the episode “The Girl in Question” from season five of Angel, it was revealed that not only was Buffy in Rome, but she was seemingly dating the Immortal. In the episode, both Spike and Angel get into increasingly absurd situations as they try their best to get Buffy’s attention. Angel hadn’t seen Buffy in several years, and the last time Spike saw Buffy, he was on fire and sacrificed his life to save the world. It’s unclear if Buffy was even aware that Spike had been brought back to life at that point.
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As Angel and Spike continually try to get Buffy’s attention, they are constantly foiled by the Immortal, who had been the rival of both Angel and Spike for hundreds of years. The Immortal had a habit of constantly one-upping the two vampires, doing things such as saving a group of nuns from Angelus, getting Spike arrested for tax evasion, and managing to have a threesome with Darla and Drusilla, something the girls never let either Spike or Angelus do. Now it seemed the Immortal had won Buffy’s affection as well.
Buffy Being with the Immortal Never Made Much Sense
It Wasn’t That Long Ago That She Told Spike She Loved Him…
Buffy has been with plenty of men over the course of the series, but her two greatest loves were always Angel and Spike. Buffy’s relationship with Spike is often praised as one of the greatest slow-burn romances in TV history, as they very much went from enemies to lovers throughout dozens of episodes. When Spike first appeared, he was a brutal vampire who was famed for specifically hunting down and killing slayers. That’s the entire reason he decided to go after Buffy, but their relationship grew into something much more than just vampire-and-slayer over the years.
Spike tried to kill and otherwise harm Buffy numerous times, but Spike was later captured by the Initiative, who planted a chip inside of Spike’s brain that prevented him from harming humans. This chip turned Spike pretty harmless, as he couldn’t even punch someone, let alone bite them, without suffering extreme pain. Because of his new, radically harmless state, Spike had to seek help from Buffy and her friends, and when Spike realized that he was still able to harm demons without any issues, he decided to continue fighting alongside them to simply have some way to hurt something.
Buffy’s final words to Spike were that she loved him.
From there, Spike and Buffy began spending more and more time together, which resulted in Spike falling in love with the slayer. While Buffy was initially disgusted by him, their feelings slowly became mutual. This romance culminated in Spike sacrificing himself to save the world and dying right in front of her. Her final words to him were that she loved him. With that emotionally brutal death scene in mind, it’s especially hard to believe that Buffy would be out partying and dating someone else less than a year later. It’s simply wildly out of character for Buffy.
This Buffy the Vampire Slayer Retcon Fixes Buffy Seemingly Not Caring About Spike
As Goofy as the Episode Was, It Didn’t Make Buffy Look Good
Buffy has always been incredibly loyal to the men she’s loved, and it’s never been easy for her to move past them. While she’s had flings here or there, her three biggest love interests have always been Angel, Spike, and Riley. When Buffy couldn’t be with Angel due to the curse he was afflicted by, it was devastating for her. It was only after being separated from Angel for a while, and accepting that she couldn’t be with him due to the curse, that she was finally able to move on and be with Riley. But Riley’s job in the military also ended up taking him away from Buffy. Once again, she was devastated.
The episode “The Girl in Question” is very funny; it has some great bickering between Spike and Angel sprinkled throughout the entire episode, and their shared hatred of the Immortal is fantastic. But the episode doesn’t make Buffy look very good. Being out in Rome and partying with someone she was apparently in a sexual relationship with a few months after Spike’s heartbreaking death id just an absurd thing to ask the fans to believe, even for the sake of a joke. When Buffy took so long to get over Angel, who wasn’t even dead, her willingness to move on from Spike after his sacrifice seemed wildly out of character.
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Dark Horse Comics published the official continuation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with season 8 onwards, posing some challenges for the reboot.
After the events of season seven, Buffy empowered every potential slayer on Earth to be an active slayer. She then became the leader of a new slayer organization, leading over two hundred other slayers. Naturally, her leadership made a lot of people want Buffy dead. To stay safe, Buffy had to employ doppelgängers who would be able to throw off her enemies. The reveal that the girl in Rome was simply one of Buffy’s many doppelgängers completely fixed her characterization.
Buffy Would Never Move on So Fast After Losing a Loved One
She Took Months to Get Over Angel When He Was Still Alive
Buffy is a complicated character, and she’s a lot of things, but one of the truest things about her is just how deeply she loves. She’s loved her friends, her family, and every man she’s ever been with. She’s never been one to quickly jump from one man to the next, not when there was a legitimately deep connection between them. The comic books are admittedly pretty wild, escalating the characters and plot to the point where Buffy was flying and invulnerable, but one thing they did right was retconning Buffy moving on from Spike way too quickly.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight #1 is available now from Dark Horse Comics!
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