Reviewed by Sanguine

It's about power. Who's got it, who knows how to use it.
Buffy, Lessons

Last season we saw what can happen when Willow got her pretty little paws on absolute power. Well, duh. It corrupted absolutely. Yes, Dark Willow eventually became a study of how a good person can turn bad. Unfortunately, the season took a long and circuitous route through the nonsensical land of magic addiction before anything remotely interesting or nuanced happened and by that time many viewers had lost interest. Joss told his audience that he felt our pain and would remedy the errors perpetrated during the course of last season. With his opening episode he seems to be making good on that promise. Lessons, while not a perfect episode, immediately rectifies some of the more egregious wrongs of last season. Giles clearly tells Willow that magic "isn't a hobby or an addiction . . . It's inside you now. You're responsible for it." With one line Joss erases the ludicrous notion that magic could possibly be an addictive substance. Power, yes. Magic, no. So, as a newly reformed responsible adult, Willow will have to own her past actions. She will also have to be ever vigilant so she doesn't succumb to temptation and summon a hellgod to end the world as we know it.

Other errors from last season were also corrected. Depresso-Buffy is apparently a thing of the past. Dawn didn't whine once! And Spike (played wonderfully by James Marsters) looks like he's going to have some honest-to-God character development this season. Sure, Xander is still being rewarded for no particular reason and Anya is still miserable, but on the whole things are looking up. Going back to high school isn't as annoying as I thought it would be (although the denizens of Sunnydale are profoundly stupid). Most amazingly of all, we have a Big Bad lurking on the horizon who is creepy and disturbing and genuinely frightening. The last time that happened was Angelus. Colour me intrigued.

Drawing out the primary themes from last night's episode we have power, origins, and the nature of good and evil: weighty topics all. First to the issue of power.

In the opening sequence we see a young girl, presumably a slayer in training, fleeing from a monk-like attacker. She is slain. The action immediately cuts to another slayer-in-training. Buffy is giving Dawn pointers on the fine art of vampire dusting. In a line reminiscent of her speech to the Council in Checkpoint, she proclaims, "It's about power." And Buffy knows she has it. She may have felt powerless last season. She may have felt like a decomposing leaf torn apart in the rapids of fate (how's that for a simile!) but this season she's regained her agency. She's the slayer and she's in charge. After the requisite banter with the vampire and Dawn's display of her burgeoning fighting skills, Buffy shows the vamp who's got the power. And it's not him. So, the powerful Buffy wins and the powerless vamp loses. It's might in the service of right. Right?

We then travel to England where Willow's recovering from her attempt to wipe out life on earth. One usually has a rather serious hangover after summoning the forces of darkness and accordingly Willow still looks a bit worse for wear. But she's able to grow pretty little flowers from Paraguay, so she's definitely on the mend. Flowers, good. Satanic temples, bad. Willow talks about how everything is connected and other new age-y stuff. "The root system, the molecules, the energy . . . everything's connected." I have a feeling this is going to be important vis-ˆ-vis the whole good/evil dichotomy thing, but more on that later. Giles then says something rather essentialist and typically Calvinistic (after all, BTVS is one of the most Calvinistic shows ever. Buffy and the Scoobies are the elect. Vampires are not, particularly vampires of the soulless variety). Giles says, "In the end we all are who were are. No matter how much we may appear to have changed." So, ultimately our actions are meaningless? We can't better ourselves, because our essential identity will always make us revert to our "true" self? Yikes! Does that mean that Giles is still Ripper and his buttoned-down persona is just that--a false front to cover his own moral ambivalence? Hmmm. I don't know if I like this. Hopefully I'm reading far too much into Giles's statement. Indeed, other elements of the episode suggest we're moving beyond a Calvinistic worldview.

Two characters obviously subvert simplistic notions of good and evil: Anya and Spike. Anya's a demon again, but she no longer has a taste for vengeance. While Xander has made external changes (a new car, cool clothes, mucho dinero), Anya, new hair colour aside, still looks like Anya. But inside she's changed. Really changed. She's a vengeance demon who can no longer stomach vengeance. Hanging with the Scoobies for all those years really did change her moral code. Anya has power, but she's loathe to use it. And that's a good thing.

Likewise, Spike was profoundly changed by his love for Buffy. He made a horrible violent mistake and that prompted him to seek a soul, something a soulless vampire has never, to my knowledge, sought before. Indeed, Spike's been challenging clear-cut notions of good and evil for many years and his identity crisis is brought into even sharper relief now he's all soul-having. It would appear that Spike now has two personas cohabiting within the same frame: Spike, cocky vampire, and William, guilt-ridden mess. Spike has lines like, "Not ghosts. Manifest spirits, controlled by a talisman, raised to seek vengeance. A four-year old could figure it." William, meanwhile, is babbling about not being a quick study and dropping "my board in the water and the chalk all ran. Sure to be caned." Is the new Spilliam one of the elect, one of the chosen warriors on the side of righteousness? Should Spilliam be punished for Spike's sins? Should Willow be punished (an interesting question Pastoral!Giles asks)? And do traditional concepts of right and wrong, of the essential goodness of a person even work anymore in the new moral economy suggested by the closing sequence? Or does it really all come down to power: who has it and who knows how to use it?

The last sequence, while intriguing, presents a rather muddled moralistic view. I suppose this is to be expected, since it comes from the mouth of the shape-shifting Big Bad. Hopefully, Joss will sort out the convoluted moral perspective during the course of the season. Or perhaps Joss enjoys presenting a muddled moral worldview. I guess we'll find out. In any case, the sequence opens with poor Spike, cowering in a corner, listening to a derisive Warren and Glory. We then move to Adam, telling "Number 17" that he's right where he belongs (in the basement?--the moral equivalent of the ground floor? Stuck in amber, unable to emerge into the light?). The Mayor then appears, mocking him. "You probably thought that you'd be your own man. And I respect that. But you never will." The soul was supposed to give Spike agency, the ability to choose his own path. But, according to the mayor, his fate is predestined. No matter what Spike does, he's doomed. Dru then appears, re-articulating the Mayor's sentiments in her own inimitable, wacky way: "You'll always be mine. You'll always be in the dark with me." Is Spike really doomed to darkness? The Master seems to suggest that ultimately dark and light, good and evil, right and wrong are irrelevant. These clear-cut dichotomies have been gradually eroded on BTVS. Willow tried to destroy the world. A soulless vampire sought a soul. Buffy engaged in an abusive relationship. Xander left his bride at the altar and demonstrated his incredible self-involvement. A vengeance demon helped save the world.

The Master also tells Spike that they're going "right back to the beginning. Not the bang, not the word, the true beginning." What is the true beginning? Obviously, if we are to believe the Master, it's not the Big Bang--it's not a single cataclysmic moment from which all time, space, and reality was formed. It's not God the Creator ("In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made."--John 1:1-3). According to the Gospel of Joss, it's something else entirely. It's a tale of origins. A tale of power. A tale of how the Slayer and the Big Bad aren't so different after all.

It's a tale worth watching.