Buffy Season I Episode Guide: The Witch

It's time for the Sunnydale High Cheerleading Tryouts, and Buffy hopes to make the squad. However, at practice, the hands of a girl trying out suddenly burst into flames. Buffy puts it out, but nobody has a clue what happened. The next day at tryouts, Willow's friend Amy stumbles and knocks Cordelia over during the group performance segment of tryouts. Cordelia threatens Amy in the locker room for her clumsiness. When the squad list is posted, Buffy is listed as first alternate while Amy makes third alternate. This humiliates Amy, whose mother was a champion cheerleader when she attended Sunnydale High.

Cordelia undergoes a horrifying ordeal the next day. She loses her sight during Driver's Ed and crashes the car through the school fence. After she gets out, she is nearly run over by a delivery truck. Buffy saves her, but is startled when she discovers that Cordelia's pupils have disappeared. In the library, the gang determines that Amy may be behind the witchcraft that is terrorizing the cheerleading squad. They perform an experiment during biology class to test whether Amy is a witch or not. The test is positive, but upon the discovery, one of the cheerleaders who is also in the class starts mumbling in horror. Everyone steps back when they see that she has no mouth. Amy realizes that Buffy, Willow, and Xander are onto her, so she concocts a spell that puts Buffy in a drunken-like state the next day. Buffy throws one of the cheerleaders across the room at practice, and she gets kicked off the team as a result. This gives the open position to Amy. Buffy then discovers that the spell is deadlier than first expected. Within a few hours, Buffy will be dead. Desperate to reverse the spells, Giles and Buffy go to Amy's house to get her spell book. There, they meet Amy's mom, Catherine, who is apparently afraid of Amy. Buffy figures out the strange truth: Catherine is really Amy. It seems that Catherine switched bodies with her daughter so that she could relive her glory days on the cheerleading squad. They get the spell book and head back to school.

While Giles prepares the reversal spell, Amy is performing at the basketball game while Xander and Willow watch on, trying to keep her away from the science lab. During the spell, Amy realizes what is going on and takes off for the lab. Willow and Xander try to stop her, but she immobilizes Xander and knocks out Willow. Amy then grabs an axe and beats down the door to the lab. Just as she is about to strike at Buffy, Giles completes the spell. Amy, restored to her own body, is confused with the axe in her hand. Buffy, healthy again, hops off the table. Before they can collect their senses, Catherine tackles Buffy. She snatches the axe out of Amy's hand and threatens to put her in a place where she can't cause any more trouble. Buffy gets up and punches Catherine, sending her flying across the room. Catherine gets up and begins the spell to cast on Buffy. However, immediately after she unleashes the energy bolt, Buffy kicks out the support of the mirror that is positioned above the teacher's table. The mirror reflects the bolt at Catherine, who disappears from her own spell. The next day, everything is back to normal, but Amy and Buffy can't figure out what happened to Catherine. As it turns out, that place "where she can't cause any more trouble" is Catherine's very own trophy from her cheerleading days, and Catherine herself is trapped inside it.

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