What I’d like to see in Season Seven…

Speculation & possible spoilers

Date Written: 16:05:35 07/20/02 Sat

Author: ZachsMind

I'd like to see the new season start on schedule on September 24th and the first episode written by Joss Whedon himself. I'd like to see the first episode titled "Lessons." I want to see the show start three months after the end of the last episode. We'll learn that Giles has taken Willow back with him to the coven in Devonshire, England. There she's been rehabilitated & trained to use her magic aptitude properly, to coincide with the forces of the universe rather than try to fight against it. I hope to see fans warm up to this new variant of Willow's personality. She'll still be moderately powerful but more like the Willow we all have come to know. Maybe we'll start calling her Willow Lite.

Back in Sunnydale, we'll learn that over the past summer Buffy has been training Dawn and she's been taking to the training well, but she's just a young human female with no special abilities. She's also concerned with school looming over her near future, and having to juggle school with her training mixes with her inner frustration over being trained by her own sister. There's conflict there. What little sister wants to be bossed around by her elder sibling?

Xander got a promotion again with the construction company for which he works. He's shown a unique affinity for understanding leadership roles & deciphering architecture blueprints. He's become quite a commodity for his company, and they put him in charge of part of the construction of the new high school. Xander takes over foreman duties from a man who has been working on it over a year, but disappeared under questionable circumstances. Xander suspects something strange about the design of the place but can't put his finger on it and is encumbered by a great deal of work. He puts his suspicions in the back of his mind and tries to get the job done under the deadline. Despite his efforts, the construction team is still working on the gymnasium, theater, and other extraneous portions of the new campus. Most of the classrooms and other vital day to day necessitites for a school are almost completed, so despite the opposition of some, including a community liason group similar to a P.T.A., the new principal of the school announces that they will be ready for students on time.

Dawn's not entirely pleased with this, but dutifully goes to school on its first day. She encounters two fellow students who fast become friends with her. A girl named Kit and a boy named Carlos. They get off to a rocky start at first but due to some curious goings on the first week of school, they quickly learn they can count on one another, and Dawn unwittingly creates her own Mini-Scooby gang.

This rocky start in the first week of school seems to have something to do with ghosts. Dawn, Kit, Carlos, and some others around the school begin to see people in crowds who really shouldn't be walking around any longer, but said individuals seem to disappear in the crowd under closer inspection. It's like everyone's seeing things. Then problems accelerate, Dawn finds herself & her new friends in trouble, and Xander & Buffy rush to her rescue. It turns out Dawn & her friends are seeing dead people's souls as they wander the halls of Sunnydale High School. One of those souls is Tara. However, though she looks like Tara she doesn't remember Tara or act like Tara in any understandable way.

Meanwhile, Anya's been spending the summer doing what vengeance demons do. She responds to scorned women and fulfills their wishes, but she finds she's doing little more than going through the motions, and occasionally trying to resolve the differences between these scorned women and their confused lovers. She operates more like a relationship counselor than a vengeance demon, and both Halfrek & D'Hoffryn encounter her trying to determine what her basic malfunction is. Deep down Anyanka just can't find the satisfaction in her work that she once had. Having been human, and having become a scorned woman herself, playing the role of vengeance demon leaves her feeling cold & empty. Her mind wanders and she thinks of Xander. Eventually she finds herself back in Sunnydale to fulfill the wish of another scorned girl. However, this becomes more of an excuse for Anya to see Xander again.

The scorned woman is Kit, who likes Carlos but he starts taking a shine to Buffy. Dawn's sister. Kit gets mad briefly and thinks a bad vengeancy thought. Anya picks up on it and rushes to Kit's side, thinking she's helping Kit but instead she only makes things worse. Fun hijinks commence and episode two will be akin to a Comedy of Errors.

Back in England, Willow continues her studies & Giles returns to visit her. While he is there, Willow suddenly is mentally overwhelmed by a series of premonitions which warn her about something terrible that is going to happen in Sunnydale. Some overwhelming evil which Willow herself had a hand in releasing. Willow is overcome with remorse & grief, and feels it's her duty to return to Sunnydale and right the wrongs or undo the damage she has caused, even though she doesn't fully understand what that damage is or how she can make things better. Giles insists she not rush off before her efforts are completed, but like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, Willow can no longer concentrate. She can't get the images of her friends in danger and pain out of her mind. She feels she has no choice but to return to Sunnydale and try to make amends before this great evil destroys everything she loves.

Spike returns to Sunnydale, but not to beg for Buffy's heart. He's almost unrecognizable. Spike's english accent is gone. His hair is unkempt & his dress is changed. He's still a vampire, he's still chipped, but he no longer refers to himself as Spike. He insists people call him William, and he warns Dawn that there are groups abroad who talk about a woman fitting her description calling her The Key. They don't know where she is yet, only that she's on Earth and they want her blood to open up some portal. Spike insists on staying by Dawn's side and protecting her. He even takes to hanging out underneath the newly built school. Xander discovers Spike under the school while on a routine construction check of the plumbing and electricity systems. When Buffy learns Spike is stalking her sister, she gets very upset. There's a confrontation, and there we learn that this new Spike is no longer in love with Buffy, but he remembers swearing a duty to caring for Dawn when Buffy died the second time. Spike/William is adhering to that promise. This new Spike's only desire is to take a bullet for Dawn, or otherwise cease to exist while defending her. Buffy's freaked out by all this but she doesn't understand why, and later on in the season it finally occurs to her that she's upset because Spike no longer seems to love her, and she kinda misses it because this new Spike is truly honorable & chivalrous & kind. She starts loving him but the love is not returned.

Now that Spike has a soul, he sees that all the relationships he had while soulless were self-impacted variants of hell. He was never able to win the love of Celia before he turned. Spike's loving Buffy was really an unconscious desire to win Celia. In short, soulled Spike is no longer love's slave buttmonkey. He's interested in more important things now like protecting Dawn from what she is destined to become.

And what is that? Well, over the course of the season, Dawn will realize that though this magic spell causes her to be a human girl, it's an illusion. She's always been just this floating orb of green energy, and that begins to make itself known. She is bitten by a vampire while trying to fight him, and when the vampire bites into her neck, he reacts as if he's swallowed a gallon of holy water. One mouthful of Dawn's blood kills any vampire from within, because coursing in her veins is that green energy. It eats at a vampire from the inside out like hydrochloric acid.

Also, in a moment of stress Dawn instinctively aims a hand and eye at a mean baddie and that baddie is struck by a bolt of green energy shooting out of Dawn. The baddie disappears, screaming in pain. We learn over the course of the season that Dawn's able to summon items from alternate realities, and send things to alternate realities. However she doesn't know how to control it. It happens seemingly randomly. Her kleptomania of last season was actually an unconscious yearning of trying to understand this ability. When she takes things from other realities, it's not unlike picking up an item from the magic shop & moving it to her own bedroom. Just on a much grander scale.

As the season continues, many of the baddies from past seasons appear to make returns, but when Buffy & the others start trying to investigate why this baddie is back, what they find doesn't add up. Glory makes a reappearance for an episode, but they all thought she was dead, and though this newe Glory acts like Glory she's not quite as powerful. It's easy to dispatch her but she doesn't die so much as run away. In another episode, The Master makes an appearance and they research his reappearance to similar discoveries. His explanation of returning doesn't add up. It doesn't make sense. Over time they learn that these different big bads of their past are actually the same guy. Some shapeshifting demon who borrows images from the minds of his intended victims, in hopes of eventually finding an enemy that will be able to overtake them.

This entity's true form is elusive to it, because over a century ago it was someone called Proserpexa. A great evil demon who was trapped in the church on King Man's Bluff. The same church which Willow raised at the end of season six. Proserpexa is trying to find a shape that she can use to solidify into strong enough to finish the job that was started. Proserpexa is trying to bring herself back into existence. When she comes across the images of Tara in the minds of Buffy, Willow, Xander & others, she's able over time to take Tara's shape and hold it long enough to return to King Man's Bluff with some minions, and get her effigy. This plus a dramatic spell will return Proserpexa to her own shape, yet still retain the ability to change her shape to infiltrate the Scoobies.

Giles then returns to Sunnydale in the last half of the seventh season. His initial reason to return is to bring Willow back with him. Giles has learned that Willow's preminitions were not of horrors happening to their friends at someone else's hand. Giles believes Willow Lite may relapse into Dark Willow, and finish attempting to destroy the world. Willow Lite assures him that she's not ever going to do that again, and Giles also learns about the pieces of the puzzle that the other Scoobies have been experiencing. These big bads returning from the grave metaphorically then disappearing just as curiously. He sees all this from the outside looking in, and begins putting the pieces back together. It's Giles who ultimately figures out that it's Proserpexa's doing, but he learns this almost too late.

Meanwhile, Proserpexa has been making appearances to Willow in the guise of Tara, and winning her trust. Willow believes Tara is a ghost that has come back from the dead to love her again, but in actuality Proserpexa is trying to turn Willow Lite into Dark Willow, because she needs Willow to finish what she started so that Proserpexa can regain her strength and the world can finally come to the end she so craves.

Buffy's been visited by Tara too, but initially not in a way that Buffy could understand. The "real" Tara's ghost has been around since the season seven premiere, but she's not able to physically manifest herself because she's dead. Ghosts just can't do that. So when Buffy figures out that the ghost Tara she's been communicating with is not the same Tara's ghost that Willow has been communicating with, she deduces that Willow's Tara must be someone else, probably the same shapeshifter: Proserpexa.

Up until this point, Proserpexa's only been able to temporarily borrow physical manifestations from the memories and imaginations of humans. When she tricks Willow into completing the magicks that brought her back into being, Proserpexa will be able to physically steal the appearance of any living thing, and exist permanently in that state until she gets tired of it and steals again.

The final showdown in season seven deals with a confused but darkened Willow doing what her Tara's ghost tells her to do. This brings Proserpexa back to full strength. Proserpexa appears physically as performed by Amber Benson, but this is most certainly NOT Tara. Willow sees the error of her ways but too late to do anything, and all the premonitions Willow experienced begin to come true, as the new Proserpexa literally STEALS Willow's physical appearance, switching it with Tara's.

This is when things get confusing. From this moment on, Amber Benson plays the part of Willow. Alyson Hannigan plays the role of Proserpexa. Proserpexa takes Willow and puts her somewhere where she knows Buffy & the others will find her, making them think that Willow (who looks like Tara) is really Proserpexa. This is a trap. Buffy & the others rush in to battle Proserpexa. Willow (who looks like Tara) tries to warn them but they think it's a trick. They successfully take down Willow because she's not putting up a fight. She's not Proserpexa. Then Proserpexa's minions rush in and capture everyone except Buffy.

We hear Willow's voice: "She's mine!"

Buffy looks up to see who she thinks is Willow dressed up as Proserpexa and ready to do battle. During the battle, Proserpexa steals Buffy's physical appearance. NOW Buffy is played by Alyson Hannigan. Proserpexa is played by SMG for the remainder of the episode.

Eventually Buffy takes down Proserpexa, but in order to do so Dawn has to open a portal into another reality, and Buffy shoves Proserpexa into this portal, so that in theory, Proserpexa is forever lost to their reality.

Now imagine this image. Buffy (played by Alyson Hannigan) pushes Proserpexa (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) into a dimensional vortex created by a tearful Dawn. The end result is that Buffy survives the battle, but has forever lost her previous appearance. From this moment on, Buffy looks like what Willow used to look like, and Willow looks like what Tara used to look like.

Season eight starts with Alyson Hannigan playing the part of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Amber Benson plays Willow. Everyone else's roles are largely unchanged.

THAT's what I wanna see. =)

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