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Buffy Season 8 #31 review

The nitty gritty: The war is currently at a standstill. The goddesses are still rampaging their way through Tibet, leaving a swath of destruction in their wake. Meanwhile, Buffy has new superpowers that she’s hiding from the crew. Where do we go from here? SWOOSH! WHAK! WHOOP!

Art: First thing to note, it’s pretty damn neat. Second thing to note, this would technically be a rush job of sorts, since Joss’ script was actually late in coming in, and Jeanty had to go from working on the “Twilight” arc to doing this. It may not be his best work to date, but it’s pretty solid throughout. Jeanty is clearly in his element here, drawing an intimate issue after the large-scale scope of the previous couple of issues. He absolutely nails the conversation between Buffy and Xander. Panel after panel of the two talking is conveyed with great attention to their facial expressions and body language. Everything is tenderly wrought, and plays out beautifully. The tenderness and nuance seen here is second only to their moment in #28 (which, IMO, was Jeanty’s best work of 2009).

On another note, I’m absolutely adoring Buffy’s sleeveless military-inspired vest. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Buffy in a cute outfit, so this just feels “right”. Also… probably good to note that he’s put Dawn back in outfits with numbers on them.

Writing: This is Joss. It’s so Joss. It’s so good to have him back at the helm again, for the second time in a couple of months. Whereas the writing in “Retreat” oft times felt a little off, Joss returns the series to grace by nailing every line. From the banter about the “Andrews Sisters” to the aforementioned sensitive dialogue between Xander and Buffy, everything just feels so effortlessly (deceiving, I know) Buffy. The conversation is written with wonderful sensitivity, even when Buffy is ribbing Xander about being a “disgusting paedophile” or a “cradle robber”. The meat of the discussion shows us how much Xander has matured over the years, shown by the way he deals with Buffy’s confession of her feelings for him. It would have been easy for this scene to go all melodrama on the reader, but Joss reigns it in just enough that we’re treated to another tenderly-written (tender is the word I intend to abuse for the sole purpose of writing this review) scene between Xander and Buffy. Xander is assertive without being condescending, despite the fact that he points out that Buffy “went – through gay – to [him]”.  Buffy on the other hand doesn’t come off as “the worst person in the universe”, despite her assertion that she is.(Highlight to read spoiler)Being Joss, he even manages to throw in a little Twilight foreshadowing (and Twilight reference) at the beginning of the conversation, having Xander mention that he was always Team Riley because he was her only “boyfriend who wasn’t a psychotic demon”.

As this is also a bridging issue between “Retreat” and the upcoming “Twilight”, Joss does deal with a few loose ends. Early on in the issue, Willow regains her powers from what she claims is the “fallout from some cataclysmic mystical event” that “hasn’t happened yet”. This isn’t the first time that Willow has demonstrated a sense of nonlinear time. The first instance of this was in “Anywhere But Here”, and it was implicit in her explanation about how the temporal anomaly worked in “ToYL”. More importantly, Willow’s magic returns to her in an explosion of yellow-green crackling energy. It would appear that the possible source of Willow’s returned magic is her death in the distant future, since her death was marked by similar crackling energy. If that is so, then it’s only fitting that Joss wrote this issue himself, as his last foray into the numbered issues of the season was in “ToYL”, in which he set up what I currently think are the game-changing events. For him to start paying off the seeds he had sown is rather poetic.

This of course has major implications for the Buffyverse. Willow somehow survives the magical purge, and becomes something not quite human. Her youthful visage some 200+ years into the future would suggest immortality. The cataclysmic explosion caused by her death would also indicate that although FDW didn’t have much magic per se, her entire self was magical. But is Willow merely a victim of fate here? I would argue that she isn’t. Willow has never been the fatalistic one, and if she had a mantra, it would be Sarah Connor’s “No future but what we make”. Against all odds, she brought her best friend back from the dead. Despite knowing what she knows about the laws governing death, she demanded that the gods return Tara to her. And in the Willow one-shot, she notes that her path is “where none’s beaten”. So no, Willow is not a victim of fate. She chooses her own path and her destiny. Willow is also highly intelligent. At the end of “ToYL”, Buffy says the following: “I’m cute and blonde and popular but I’m not stupid, Will. You dragged me here and then told me exactly how to get out. Everything, every lie, to get us here.” Why the deliberate positioning? Did Willow find a way to cheat fate again? If her death really is the game-changer, then the cataclysmic event allows present-Willow to regain her powers. Where this takes us is still anybody’s guess. Does Willow regaining her magic in the present help avert, or bring about the future with the magical purge? If it averts Fray’s future, does that mean that that particular future is now an alternate timeline?

Switching gears again, it’s important to note that Willow, even when fully powered is unable to handle the three goddesses, and suffers multiple punts from them. In his usual irreverent mood, Joss dispatches with the three goddesses in the simplest way possible: brute strength. Buffy deals with them the way Joss has often dealt with pesky plot devices: jam them into a hole of sorts. Willow believes that burying the goddesses will restore the Slayers’ powers. That remains to be seen. Buffy’s mysterious new powers, on the other hand… I can’t wait to finally understand what’s up with that. Willow doesn’t believe that it’s from the same event that empowered her.

An interesting tidbit: Buffy’s coming out as a Slayer was generally taken to be a metaphor for coming out of the closet. Joss revisits that here, when Buffy says: “It involves something I don’t really understand. That, honestly, freaks me out, and I was hoping not to mention”. Kennedy’s response is “You’re a dyke”. Can’t blame a girl for being on the nose.

On the Twilight front, he currently has an undisclosed number of Slayers, as well as Faith, Giles, and Andrew captive. A confusion spell is keeping anyone from missing them, but it’s a short term tactic to buy time. It seems that Twilight has something he wants Buffy to see, “if she is able to see at all”.  I’m just thankful that all the cryptic language will come to an end soon, and we’ll finally be able to see Season 8 in its entirety and make sense of it all.

Overall: This was quite an issue. Deceptively simple and linear, but with some things to mull over. More will become evident soon.