Save the World?

[ptnewell]

Buffy Anne Summers 1980-2000
She saved the world. A lot.
(Buffy’s gravestone)

How can it be that humankind survived for hundreds of thousands of years without Buffy, but now is so imperiled? Let us count the saves.

These are the seven major apocalypses in BtVS:
Season 1: The Master escapes from beneath Sunnydale
Season 2: Angelus looses Acathla to pull the world into a demon dimension
Season 3: The mayor of Sunnydale transforms himself into a giant killer snake
Season 4: Adam, a mix of demon, human and machine, creates more such
Season 5: Glory tries to destroy barriers between dimensions
Season 6: Dark Willow decides to destroy the world
Season 7: The First Evil unleashes an army to conquer the world

Seasons 1, 3, and 4 really seem to be more a matter of saving Sunnydale than the world. The Master, for example, does not appear to be any tougher than Spike or Angelus when Buffy final fights him. Also, we see in Doppelgangland that, although Sunnydale is rather in a bad way without Buffy, the world endures.
That leaves “just” four world saves. That is still a lot of world-in-peril. Where did those four threats come from in such short order?
From Buffy and her friends. Angelus had been gone for a century. With Angel a recluse, things were pretty sure to stay that way. Of course Buffy had no way of knowing what would happen if she made Angel perfectly happy (really, the gypsies who sent Ms. Calendar to keep an eye on Angel should have been more explicit in their instructions – both Buffy and Angel would have been responsible if they had known). Still: No Buffy, no Angelus, no threat to the world.
The other threats all flow from Buffy’s determination to protect the former mystical ball of energy currently known as Dawn. The resulting loss of life has been mind boggling. First, the Knights of Byzantine were determined to save the world by killing Dawn (Glory could not bring down the barriers between dimensions without the Key). Buffy killed a number of the Knights – human lives, with human souls. The Knights are too self-righteous to be at all sympathetic. Still, they were willing to lay down their own lives to save the world. If they had managed to kill Dawn, the world would have been saved.
In Season 6 the Scoobies save the world from – well themselves. Why did Willow turn dark? The proximate cause was Warren’s shooting at Buffy and hitting Tara. It seems likely that without Buffy, Giles would never have come to Sunnydale, and Willow would never have studied magic at all – she previously had been a science nerd. But the connection is more immediate. Willow’s turn to darkness really started when she decided to bring Buffy back from the grave. This involved using magic to bring a fawn close, then slitting its throat. The innocent blood that spilled on her then, and the use of magic for luring the fawn in, was clearly portrayed as a dark turn, likely to have future repercussions.
If Buffy had not protected Dawn at the expense of her own life (and many other lives), Buffy would not need to be called back from the grave, and Willow might not have turned to dark uses of magic.
The First Evil has been around longer than mankind. Why is it a threat now? We are authoritatively told that it is because bringing Buffy back from the grave muddled the lines of the Slayer descent. (Logically Kendra and now Faith hold the key to Slayer lineage, but let that pass.) So once again, it all comes back to Buffy and friends (and to events traceable to protecting Dawn). Of course Sunnydale was partly empty when it collapsed, so the loss of life was mitigated. Still, many potential Slayers and many Watchers around the world died because the First Evil was let loose by the Scoobies messing with the proper Slayer succession.
Here is a more accurate gravestone for Buffy, should it be needed:

Buffy Anne Summers 1980-1996. 1996-2000. 2000-?
She never quite destroyed the world. She saved Sunnydale three times (and only destroyed it just that once).


Buffy and her friends have made our world (the real world) a more interesting place to live. But are the denizens of the Buffyverse better off?
(Yes, I am being provocative. Yes I do admire Buffy.)


(Patrick Newell, May 2009)

[gumgnome]

Interesting points you make, most of which i would agree with. There are some things you have missed though:
The Master's plan is not just to rise, but to open the Hellmouth, releasing all the nasty old demons into the world. This represents a threat to more than just Sunnydale i would say.
The Key is only turned into Dawn because of Buffy - not in spite of her. If she were not there, who knows what the monks might have turned it into. There is no guarentee that the Knights of Byzantium would be able to destroy it and save the world as you postulate.
Very interesting though, i will think more on it.

[iamthewalrus]

what about that little apocalypse in The Zeppo?

[ptnewell]

You guys know your Buffy. I swept a couple of points under the rug and got called on them.
As originally presented, the Master needed Buffy to go down after him to carry out his evil plans (transcript of "Prophecy Girl"):

Master: You tried. It was noble of you. You heard the prophecy that I
was about to break free and you came to stop me. But prophecies are
tricky creatures. They don't tell you everything. (whispers) You're the
one that sets me free! (gloats) If you hadn't come, I couldn't go.
(whispers) Think about that!

Buffy is frozen with fear. The Master waits a moment longer and then
bends down and bites her at the base of her neck. He drinks a few sips
and lets her go.

Master: Oh, God! The power!

...
So here we already see the pattern that Buffy inadvertently creates (or makes worse) the problem she ultimately solves. I don't think that this version as originally presented, is consistent with Doppelgangland, the story of what happened if Buffy never came to Sunnydale. The Master is easily the lamest Big Bad (I personally favor Glory as the best), so I prefer to regard the Doppelgangland version as correct. But we can go with the original (season one) version, and say it is another case of Buffy almost causing the apocalypse before preventing it.
The Zeppo is another issue I kind of glided past. It is really the story of Xander. We see in detail how he saves the HS from blowing up (and possibly most of the gang with it). We see almost nothing of the apocalypse that Buffy, Willow, Giles, and Angel prevent. Notice that ALL the instances of saving the world sound pretty good, until you get a close look at the details. Since we really don't see anything (it is just the backdrop to Xander's story), I think it is fair to not count it. Incidentally, although I am not a Xander fan, I find the ending of Zeppo very cool (where Xander is able to brush off Cordelia's sarcasm without saying a word, because he KNOWS he has done something and doesn't have to convince anyone else).
Finally, the Knights tracked the Key around the world without knowing what form it would take. I'm guessing they were going to find it, if Buffy had not stopped them.

[snizapman6294]

I, personally, don't count season 4 as an apocalypse... Adam had no end game. he just was, for lack of a better term, a killing MACHINE. he didn't have the final plan like other Big Bads:

Master: Wanted to unleash the Order of Aurelius on the world
Angelus/Drusilla/Spike: Acathla would end the world
The Mayor: Ascension, i believe, would affect the entire world, but would start with Sunnydale
Adam
Glory: Hell Dimension anyone?
Dark Willow: Ending the world yada yada yada
The First: Wanted to end the slayer line, which in the Jossverse, would most likely turn the entire world into vamps.
Twilight: Wants to end magic, which would end Buffy's world at least.

[gumgnome]

I think discounting Adam is fair, but only if you discount the Mayor as well (as much as it pains me to say). He is turning into a demon that has been unleashed on the world previously and the world survived that time, so i would say The Mayor could be defeated without Buffy even, before the world were destroyed.
I don't think it is necessarily fair to discount The Zeppo just because we don't see all that much of it. After all, the narrative style is deliberately trying to play down the all-consuming evil, not because it isn't really a major threat, but because we are seeing everything from Xander's POV (from the sidelines). The fact that the threat is so big is what makes it so funny and poignant.
Also the one that nobody has mentioned yet is Doomed, where the three demons try to open the Hellmouth. I imagine you would discount this for the same reason as The Zeppo i.e. we get very little coverage of it. But just because the events surrounding it are shorter and told in less detail than the major season arcs is no reason to discount them imo. An apocalypse is an apocalypse, no matter how much attention it receives.

[Wyndam]

Yeah I was going to mention Doomed as well. That was a near Apocalypse that Buffy stopped. I would count The Zeppo as well.

[iamthewalrus]

i was going to mention Doomed but i couldn't remember if it was actually really world apocolyptic or not

[hitnrun017]

I loved how pointless and dumb the apocalypse in Doomed was, that was truly edge-of-your-seat terrifying. At least in The Zeppo it worked really well, probably one of the funniest gags in the entire series.

I don't like to count the Ascension as an apocalypse. It's basically the same thing as The Judge, we have better weapons now. Just call the military, fire a missile, HOORAY!

[Wyndam]

I agree about The Mayor. I would only count these as real Apocalypses:

Season 1
Season 2
The Zeppo
Doomed
Season 5
Season 6
Season 7

So if you look at it that way, Season 3 and Season 4 still had their Apocalypses, just not because of the Big Bads.

Season 4 and Adam are still debatable though, because Adam's plan was to replace the current human population with his human/demon/machine hybrid race. Whether that was possible, is what makes it debatable seeing as he was more of a physical, tangible threat instead of a supernatural one. The military may have been able to put a stop to him rather quickly.

[gumgnome]

Yeah, it's fair to say that with current technology, most of the physical threats to the world, like Adam, The Mayor, could potentially be stopped by conventional means. It's hard to judge for Season 1/The Zeppo/Doomed because we see so little of what could theoretically come out of the Hellmouth. I'm guessing that if it were opened, the kind of chaos that would emerge would be world-destroying, but that is just my opinion. The only ones we can be really sure of is where the threat will literally change reality just by its very nature, rather than by force, such as the dimensions bleeding together in The Gift, or total evil dominating the world, like in Chosen etc.

[ptnewell]

Well, I'm sure you are all right that it is a better world with Buffy in it (Buffy's world, not just ours). Thinking on this some more, I think the answer might go like this. Buffy doesn't follow the rules, and she has stirred things up a lot. Breaking the rules does cause problems, but in the end, the result is usually better.
This is how it worked before Buffy: A young girl is Chosen to be Slayer. She operates isolated from friends and family, obeying a Watcher. She lives a brief, violent, isolated life. And dies fast. Kendra the Vampire Slayer was the perfect example. She had the Watcher Guidebook, quoted it all the time, and was technically proficient in fighting. But she died less than a year after being activated. So that is how the world works following the Watcher's rules. A young very inexperienced and isolated girl follows rigid tradition, accomplishes little and dies young.
By having friends like Angel and Willow, Buffy did create problems (Dark Willow and Angelus) but in the end we have two mighty champions for good. In fact instead of one champion for good (a young isolated slayer) we have several, with at least two teams, all tracing back to Buffy (sometimes indirectly).
Going back to the Glory instance, the Watchers might have been happy to let the Key be killed (actually even Giles seemed to be leaning that way). But there is no way a single Slayer acting alone could take down Glory for good. Buffy's way increased the danger short term (by keeping the Key around). But Buffy's way also ended the threat for good, with GLory's death.
I suppose that the way Buffy does not follow the rules does make for a more dangerous situations short term. But following the rule book is really a dead-end plan. One short-lived isolated Slayer like Kendra after another following the Watcher's rules was never going to be able to do more than tip-toe around the serious problems. Basically, it is just hoping no serious evil stirs. Buffy stirs things up, including sometimes evil, but then (precisely because she does things differently) Mankind's Champions are strong enough to kick evil's rear end.