Are You Ready to Know?

In my last blog I talked a little about how Buffy now finally has the ability to become a crone; she has a guide in the first slayer and in Giles’ willingness to begin the search for information, not as a watcher but as a friend. In season five that search is starting to begin; in fact, the search is almost forced on Buffy when, not once but twice, she is nearly destroyed, the second time by an ordinary vamp.

The question now remains, is she ready to know? Is Buffy ready to find out who and what she really is? Spike claims that the slayers death is her curiosity, her need to know. He thinks it is the need to know what it is like to die after having been surrounded by that death for so long. I disagree.

From what little Spike revealed about the other slayers and himself and from what we know about Buffy, I don’t think it is a need to know about death that drives their curiosity. I think it is a need to know about themselves and the line of slayers the follows before them. Those slayers are dead; the only way to discover fully what it means to be a slayer is to die yourself. There is no other way to achieve full knowledge of who and what you are, and eventually you’re going to want to know more than your watcher can provide you with, so they turn to the final source, death, the completion of their calling.

Spike thinks Buffy will be the same; it will only take her longer because she has attachments to friends and family. He doesn’t know, though, that Buffy has another option. She has access to the first slayer; she has Giles with a watcher’s knowledge and a civilian’s freedom. Dracula almost pulled Buffy in, but at the taste of his blood, she recalled these sources of information, and she was able to break his trance. Buffy doesn’t need death to answer her questions. This slayer just might have a chance to pass into the phase of crone while still in this life, and she is going to find the knowledge to gain her wisdom.