"Time of Your Life" meta
I've been reading old reviews of Buffy Season 8, pondering the season and re-evaluating the story, and once again "Time of Your Life" has me wondering.
Spoilers for all of Season 8
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Spoilers for all of Season 8
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Comments 44
It's such an elaborate script Willow's created to emotionally manipulate Buffy. I suspect that's the ultimate point. Willow is trying to make Buffy feel.
It seems like Joss has this feeling that the personal connection is always the most likely site for getting back in touch with the moral center, and that, in contrast, it almost always slips away when our attention turns to the big picture. Your meta makes me think of the Dollhouse ep "Needs," and strategic manipulation in that vein.
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It seems like Joss has this feeling that the personal connection is always the most likely site for getting back in touch with the moral center, and that, in contrast, it almost always slips away when our attention turns to the big picture.
It is an idea he returns to, isn't it? I love how you connected this to Dollhouse!
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BUFFY/WILLOW OTP FOREVER
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I pretty much agree with your interpretation although I can think of other possibilities too. I've tended to see the importance of TOYL more from Buffy's perspective - how much of a radical change it marked in her story, and how much it influenced her actions in the second half of the season. Not only having to kill her best friend, but learning that ultimately, she failed - her grand experiment in creating the Slayer Army would come to nothing. Hence, perhaps, her willingness to grab Angel with both hands when he offered a different solution ( ... )
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This is the thing about ToYL that makes it so enjoyable for me, but it's also really frustrating for a lot of people. We're grasping at straws for specifics when it comes to the questions I posed. I think we have to interpret a lot and that gets dicey.
I pretty much agree with your interpretation although I can think of other possibilities too.
So can I. This was what my gut + brain was telling me last night. :)
It's quite possible Future!Willow was manipulating events 200 years in her past because she needed Buffy to do something differently, or be in a different frame of mind. The other alternative is that her plan had nothing to do with our own time except tangentially - she needed Buffy for her own purposes.
Scott Allie suggested that Willow, after 200 years, simply wanted to die and wanted Buffy to be the one to kill her.I didn't mention Willow wanting to die, but I actually think that's also a huge motivation here. I just think there's more in play ( ... )
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I feel like Willow living for 200 hundred years alone and then manipulating her best friend to kill her is already so OMGTRAGIC that I have trouble imagining Joss would also make her plan hopeless and ineffectual. He veers towards the dark, but the purpose has always seemed to be to starkly contrast that one remaining flicker of hope that remains strong enough to once again blaze bright. (I was reading Beer Good's meta on Whedon's use of Shakespeare and a comparison in comments was about how Whedon's more hopeful than Shakespeare; his tragedies aren't as tragic as the Bard's.)
My reading? She had the last of the world's magic carefully saved up inside her body, and being killed with the Scythe allowed it to flow back into the Earth to restore it to how it was before. With the magic leaving her body, she can die as a normal woman againAh, yes! I'd ( ... )
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Willow's "It's a long story" to Buffy's "why?" makes me think that it's just a beginning of something epic.
By the way, what do you think about the event that sent ripples around the timestream - was it space-frak, Willow's death, the destruction of the Seed or something else?
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Stormwreath actually addressed that in his comments above! The theory goes that Willow dying in the future caused the ripples that returned Willow's powers in the present.
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I flat out love the idea that Willow is forcing Buffy into an emotional connection. It actually connects closely with Willow encouraging Buffy to go after Xander in Retreat (undercut by her knowing that Xander and Dawn were in love in Turbulence, granted).
And I think what works well about it is that I don't think Future Willow failed. Narratively, I don't think it can work all that well if FDW had a plan she didn't tell anyone about, and it didn't succeed, off screen; certainly Joss makes narrative decisions that are less than perfect sometimes, but it does seem like a rather surprising way to go. Either her motivations would become clear, or she will turn out to at least partially succeed.
So the idea that what she wanted is to restore Buffy's ability to connect is very nice. What's interesting is we can also read it almost the opposite way. Willow gets Buffy to relive the way she killed Angel, in a sense (ala Becoming). Of course, Buffy tries to kill Angel in Twilight and can't -- and the fact that she can't ( ... )
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Choices is the follow-up to Doppelgangland and features the gang that Will Not Let Willow Die!!! for abstract future innocents; Buffy's in a much different place in ToYL -- especially in terms of her relationship to the abstract innocents.
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I wonder if Joss does it deliberately or if his mind works in these patterns -- not a formula, per se, but just this is how it snaps into place for him.
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I have some ideas about Willow/Angel paralleling in Choices, actually -- or rather, I think the two are on opposite paths in Buffy's life; Willow the one Buffy can't kill and who stays, Angel the one Buffy did kill and who leaves. The roles get swapped in season eight, which is I think about the difference between the relative importance of Buffy's "human" and "slayer/vampire" connections...and also Willow's increasing power putting her into a new category.
Anyway, I guess Doppelgangland has just been on my mind lately, for some reason!
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