Discussion of 8.19 "Time of Your Life Part 4" - Released 11/26/08 (Dark Horse)

[Chase Summers]

Okay, so I got to thinking....if Fray is happy she still exists - and she does in fact still exist, then does that mean that the future can't be changed? Buffy and crew are still full steam ahead for the Dystopia world of Fray?

 

[nerd4hire]

No explanations.

No slayer line revelations.

Just a bunch of story threads and ideas left dangling.

So frustrating.

And yet I still liked it. Why did I still like it? It's season 7 all over again.

Lots to think about anyway.

 

[Tranquillity]

Got the very nice Willow cover

So all the time travel stuff was just so Buffy could kill FutureDarkWillow? And the green snake lady gave Willow the vision/information so that Willow would send Buffy into the futre to do it? Colour me a tad confused.

I'm sure it will all make sense in time...

I did really enjoy the bits with Amy/Warren/Twilight. That was funny. So now we know that Riley is not Twilight but he is working for him. I like that development - I hate that Buffy still got dressed up to go and meet him but I like that Riley's expressing his evil tendencies and is a double crossing bastard. I always suspected as much 🙂

nerd4hire said:

So frustrating.

And yet I still liked it

I concur.

 

[cranetimothyj]

I enjoyed it, I was half expecting none of the questions not to be answered any way. I didn't quite figure out it was Riely straight away, it's only because every one was already speculating it lol. I got a sniffle from Buffy killing DW. Ifelt like the big battle against Warren and Amy's army was made to be a bit more epic than what it really was but who could not love the line "Wiccans to the rear! Slayers F*%# 'em up."

 

[nerd4hire]

Everybody is saying the big reveal is Riley, so I guess it is, but you know what I thought when I first saw him?

Broken nose, tough guy speech patterns, muscle shirt - It's Pike!

I was wrong, of course, but I wish I wasn't. I prefer Pike to Riley.

 

[sosa lola]

I found this interesting post by Emmie at Dark Horse forums:

Ok, I have a whole jumble of thoughts I'm going to share about the issue. Which I thought was fantastic.

My take on this is that Willow had to live long enough to bring Buffy to the future, to show her the fall-out and then let her go back. That was her mission - to create the temporal fold and ensure that Fray's future *would* exist. That's why she lived on for over 200 years. To play her part in showing Buffy that the "'Fate of the world' made sense when there was only one". Which solves the troubling question of the time paradox. This temporal fold doesn't upset the future and the past, it is a part of how the future comes to be.

Time drudged on and Willow became weary, as immortals often do. The desire for rest grew and she wanted to die, but the only thing keeping her alive was Buffy's trip to the future. She held on, waiting. And eventually came the realization that after Buffy was sent back to the past, she (Willow) could finally be at peace. Lie down and die. The years also enlightened her to the fact that everyone dies, but the difference lies in *how* you die and *who* kills you. Willow lived for centuries to do this service for Buffy - it's only fair that in return, her best friend put her out of her misery.

J'adoube - I touch, I adjust. So Willow orchestrates her plan, manipulating Fray and Harth into a confrontation. Moving the players into place so that "Dark" Willow becomes a threat to Buffy. The intention was always to send Buffy back to the past after showing her the future. Willow just needed Buffy so pissed off that she'd kill "Dark" Willow before going back into the portal. And it worked. Mission accomplished, Willow. She sacrificed her life, sacrificed her time to be at peace, so that she could save the world and save the Slayer line - "She truly was the best of us".

_______________________________________________________________________

The temporal anomaly doesn't create a time paradox, but rather fulfills it's purpose in keeping the timeline on track. Future Willow is responsible for the temporal anomaly, which brings Buffy to the future and Present Willow brings her back. Future Willow already has memories of this temporal anomaly, it *already* happened in her past. She already knows that Buffy will return to the present because it has already happened just as both Future and Present Willow know that Willow is the one responsible for bringing her forward.

Willow doesn't want Buffy dead. She shows Melaka a vision that makes it seem like Buffy needs to die, then in this issue Willow reveals that she's "lying to someone. Would [Fray] bet her whole world" and let Buffy go back into the past, perhaps ending Fray's existence. This is the threat Willow uses to cause Fray to attack Buffy. Yet we learn that Buffy goes back to the past and Fray's world continues to exist. This shows Willow was lying to Melaka - Buffy's return to the present doesn't end Fray's existence and future.

Willow creates a situation that puts Buffy in slay mode. Willow lies to both Fray and Harth, manipulating them into an over-wraught situation - both Fray and Harth are attempting to attack, even kill, Buffy.

Willow stands in Buffy's path through the portal, forcing Buffy to attack her. Yet Willow makes no attempt to defend herself, merely lowers her head sadly and says "It's a long story." She stands there meekly and accepts Buffy's attack. The close-up panel of her eyes after Buffy stabs her with the scythe shows no surprise. She was *expecting* this to happen, anticipating it.

Saga Vasuki demanded that Present Willow promise to not look when she goes to bring Buffy back through the portal. The end result is that Present Willow doesn't see her future self dying. Vasuki was contacted by a "someone [she] trust" and this is how she knows the portal will reopen by itself. I believe this "someone" was Future Willow and Vasuki asks Present Willow not to look because she knows that Future Willow is planning to have Buffy kill her.


It really all boils down to two main points for me. Willow planned this for centuries, carefully and methodically. The end result is two-fold:

1) Buffy returns to the present without destroying Fray's existence.

2) Future Willow is killed by Buffy.

If all Future Willow wanted was to show Buffy the future, enlighten her and then send her on her merry way, there would be no need to involve Fray and Harth. No need for the elaborate lies and manipulation. The result of this manipulation is that it puts Buffy on her guard, makes her believe that she has to fight her way back "to save [her own world]." Willow's plan brings Buffy to the future and allows her to get back home, but it also manipulates everyone so that Buffy will kill Willow.

_______________________________________________________________________

I think the purpose of this arc was to validate Fray's existence and show that while that future is dark, the "fate of the world - made sense when there was only one" - I think this is a play on words meaning that it made sense when there was only one world to save, but that it also made sense when there was only one *slayer* to fight the forces of darkness. Buffy hasn't had her epiphany yet that so many slayers without proper guidance are a bad thing (i.e. Simone, Gigi), but future solicitations show that it's only going to get worse for the slayers (issues 21 thru 25). While Buffy isn't completely enlightened by her trip to the future, I think we the reader are supposed to begin to understand that it's leading towards taking the line back to one girl. That the events of Chosen and the consequences of the Slayer Spell have to be dealt with.

This arc actually accomplished what everyone was puzzling over - was Fray's future going to be erased? It shows us how Joss will presumably reconcile the events of Chosen with Fray's future world. I'm predicting the Slayer Spell will be reversed somehow (or at least the slayers will be reduced back to one girl, maybe two...) and this will reconcile the present with the future.

_______________________________________________________________________

Also, how BEAUTIFUL is that one close-up panel of Fray's face as she says "'Fate of the world. Made sense...when there was only one."

I loved how the Buffy/Fray fight played out. How Fray was stronger because it was her turf and her belief in what she was fighting for, but Buffy has the slayer line and the connection making Fray ulitmately "outnumbered". Loved how Buffy uses her ingenuity in fighting to slice open the water tower and take down Fray. That's classic fighting for the Buffster, making the most of her surroundings.

 

[nerd4hire]

I read that at Whedonesque. Emmie gets around.

I found it a little jumbled and hard to make sense of. I think I figured it out though. My problem was I didn't take time to think about the terminology. OK, let's see if I've got my Sci fi time terminology straight then.

Time Loop - Not mentioned here, but it's important one sees the difference between a loop and a fold I think. A time loop is a Groundhog Day style loop in time in which a past and future end point loops endlessly, or until the loop is broken, as we saw in the B-6 ep Life Serial.

Time Fold - With a time fold, time folds from a future event to a past one initiating the time line from the future into the past a la Terminator. Time then continues onward from the future end-point. It doesn't stop at the end point, then continuously loop back like it does in a loop.

Time Paradox - The kind of conflict we see in Back to the Future where Marty has to make sure his Mother and Father get connected, or he won't exist. If they don't hook up Marty can't be born. That would be a time paradox.

Time anomaly - Rips in time, or what Willow calls a time rift through which one can pass from one time to another. We see these in Primeval.

OK so Emmie is postulating not a loop in time but a fold. Dark Willow wants Buffy to see Fray's future, so she creates a fold from Fray's future to Buffy's past. She brings Buffy forward in time through a rift, or anomaly to show her how awful it is in the future, or at least that's what Buffy sees.

Huh? Wouldn't that make Buffy want to do anything she could to avoid that future, starting with preventing Willow from going dark? I don't get the logic there.

What would make more sense is if Dark Willow was disappointed with the way things turned out the first time, so she wanted to alter them - thus the suicide. Maybe the way things unfolded this time is not the way Dark Willow remembers them the first time they happened.

What if the first time Past Willow came to get Buffy she did look, see Dark Willow, fight her, and die, thus not a time fold but a time loop caused by a time paradox would be created. This would offer an explanation to the twice quoted "it's not how you die, it's who kills you". When Buffy kills Dark Willow the paradox is resolved, and the loop is broken.

 

[Clem Rocks]

I still haven't read it yet, but from what you lot are saying, is it possible that FDW didn't have a greater plan in mind? That Buffy was just the only person she respected enough to kill her? Like how Lyndsey hated being killed by Lorne instead of Angel.
[br][/br]
Edit:
[br][/br]
Just read it, did anyone else actually laugh when Ken-Doll told Buffy she was watching where her hands were going? lol

 

[AndrewCrossett]

I think it would have been more powerful if Buffy had said "I love you, Will" to DW as she was killing her, and then repeated the same thing to Present Willow (as she did) after going through the portal.

 

[LorneyTunes]

I love it all and Fray to me really looks like Tank Girl which is kinda freaking oot . I love that Dawn is a centaur and am upset Giles hasn't been in it more 🙁 . I do like the dark Willow twist its very interesting to see what buffy will do . I still need to buy the new one 🙁 I will go to the town on Friday and buy it x

 

[Primal Slayer]

Everybody is saying the big reveal is Riley, so I guess it is, but you know what I thought when I first saw him?

Broken nose, tough guy speech patterns, muscle shirt - It's Pike!

I was wrong, of course, but I wish I wasn't. I prefer Pike to Riley.

Well hey I thought it was Angel at first...

But I think Joss has co. have probably forgotten about Pike.

 

[Chase Summers]

I read that at Whedonesque. Emmie gets around.

I found it a little jumbled and hard to make sense of. I think I figured it out though. My problem was I didn't take time to think about the terminology. OK, let's see if I've got my Sci fi time terminology straight then.

Time Loop - Not mentioned here, but it's important one sees the difference between a loop and a fold I think. A time loop is a Groundhog Day style loop in time in which a past and future end point loops endlessly, or until the loop is broken, as we saw in the B-6 ep Life Serial.

Time Fold - With a time fold, time folds from a future event to a past one initiating the time line from the future into the past a la Terminator. Time then continues onward from the future end-point. It doesn't stop at the end point, then continuously loop back like it does in a loop.

Time Paradox - The kind of conflict we see in Back to the Future where Marty has to make sure his Mother and Father get connected, or he won't exist. If they don't hook up Marty can't be born. That would be a time paradox.

Time anomaly - Rips in time, or what Willow calls a time rift through which one can pass from one time to another. We see these in Primeval.

OK so Emmie is postulating not a loop in time but a fold. Dark Willow wants Buffy to see Fray's future, so she creates a fold from Fray's future to Buffy's past. She brings Buffy forward in time through a rift, or anomaly to show her how awful it is in the future, or at least that's what Buffy sees.

Huh? Wouldn't that make Buffy want to do anything she could to avoid that future, starting with preventing Willow from going dark? I don't get the logic there.

What would make more sense is if Dark Willow was disappointed with the way things turned out the first time, so she wanted to alter them - thus the suicide. Maybe the way things unfolded this time is not the way Dark Willow remembers them the first time they happened.

What if the first time Past Willow came to get Buffy she did look, see Dark Willow, fight her, and die, thus not a time fold but a time loop caused by a time paradox would be created. This would offer an explanation to the twice quoted "it's not how you die, it's who kills you". When Buffy kills Dark Willow the paradox is resolved, and the loop is broken.

Maybe Buffy's actions to avoid the future are what insure that this future takes place. Kinda tragic if you think about it. Almost like Oedipus trying to avoid his fate?

Surprisingly, Emmie's explantion makes a ton of sense for me.

 

[Clem Rocks]

Did that underwater creature's flying fishmobile look familiar to anyone else?

And for all you talking about how Riley's turned evil, i think he hasn't, it's just Twilight's symbol carved into him that's making him obey Twilight.

 

[UnKle]

Got the issue, inhaled it in 2 minutes, and as a result I'm confused. lol :confused3

But, the end of Buffy grabbing Willow and telling her she loves her was a good one. I got the tiniest bit sniffly at it, and I had to flip back and see everything happen again, then her run into Will's arms again. Then flip back one more time. I guess it just wasn't sinking in, or it was so shocking that I was numb about it, or some sort of denial...

Could this really be all of the arc? I mean honestly... loose ends city. No explanations for why Willow did any of this. No explanations for why Buffy and co. were completely erased from future history. What was the deal with Willow needing Fray to attack and restrain Buffy? Or needing Harth doing... whatever he was doing, working against Fray? It doesn't make sense.

I guess maybe a big part of the reason that it doesn't make sense to me is that I am reading the issues too fast, and expect too much out of just a few pages of pictures and a little bit of text. I guess I need to read more comics or something so I can find the cadence and start marching in step.

The guy that I guess is Riley doesn't look a whole lot like Riley, but doesn't look a whole lot not like Riley. So I guess it's Riley. Only Riley would be dumb enough to fall into line with some militant anti-demon, anti-magic organization and paint everything black and white. Or maybe he just got reprogrammed, which might account for the goofy, spaced-out look and the body mutilation.

Did not care for in the issue: the whole fantasy forest creature thing, and Xander with a coconut helmet. WTF. Please save that badness for the Angel comics.

/rant

I feel better now. 🙂

 

[La Luna Unita]

I liked what Emmie had to say - she reflected some of my own conclusions, but I decided to read the comic again before posting anything. I'm slow. 🙂

Things I noticed:

Repetition of GW/DW's "So close..." line with a panel similar to the one in #18. No idea what that means or why, but it was noticeable.

The destruction of Fray's scythe (already mentioned).

That dude is SO totally Riley. I guess I'm still slow, but I found it a delightful and shocking reveal.

The scene with DW is not as abrupt on a second read. Tie in Buffy's unanswered questions with the statement "It's who kills them," from earlier in the issue, and I'm led to ponder whether Buffy is the only one who can kill DW - or perhaps it's the scythe that must do it, since Willow had a past connection with the thing.

I think on the whole that the effect on Buffy's time can stay up for debate and that's probably what the writers want. I liked Emmie's take on things and I liked N4H's objections, too. However, I think there's another side to the coin: what are the effects of Buffy's visit on Fray and her world?

I haven't read the Fray series, but here in Buffy she's portrayed as someone of power but small effect. Similar to Buffy in her first few seasons. I'm sure lots of viewers went week to week thinking "This show is great! But she's only killing vampires in one town. What about the rest of the world?" BTVS answers that question over the course of seven seasons. Buffy apparently introduces that concept to Fray over this arc, summed up: "It's call the fate of the world, Short View."

Fray comes back with, "'Fate of the world.' Made sense...when there was only one." Thanks to the insights of others on this thread, I finally looked at this line with "one" referring to worlds, not Slayers. Ha, oops. In that moment, Fray's fight with Buffy takes on the tone of saving her own reality. Awesome. She's learning outside the classroom.

Anyway, by the end of the battle, she's been beaten in classic Buffy "pull out the stops at the eleventh hour" style, her scythe destroyed and her paradigms shifted. Here's my conclusion: rather than Dark Willow attempting to change the future by changing the past, I think perhaps she tries to change the future with a lesson from the past - namely, Buffy. Willow's always had total faith in Buffy. If she found herself in a world with half a Slayer who has no clue what came before and no one to help her utilize her true strengths, it makes perfect sense to try to help her with the best Slayer Willow ever knew - Buffy.

And Fray has changed. Anything she was dependent on before - her brother, her scythe, even DW - they're all gone now. Buffy went 6 years as a Slayer before finding that weapon; work can be done without it. Fray has a fresh start and a new understanding of what being a Slayer means. I think DW has provided hope for the future's future and maybe that's all she wanted to do.

P.S. I loved Leah's line... best moment in the whole issue for me.

 

[Clem Rocks]

"Chase Summers agrees: In order to summon Twilight they gotta bear his mark though right?"

From Warren's comment in part one of this arc about the symbol, it sounds to me as if Twilight has some kind of control over those who have it carved in them

 

[nerd4hire]

Am I mixing up Leah, and Rowena? Because if I'm not, others seems to be. I've got it as Leah being the red-head with the scottish accent. I thought Rowena was the blonde with the backwards baseball cap. Rowena is the one who says "Slayers! #%ck em up", isn't she?

 

[AndrewCrossett]

Am I mixing up Leah, and Rowena? Because if I'm not, others seems to be. I've got it as Leah being the red-head with the scottish accent. I thought Rowena was the blonde with the backwards baseball cap. Rowena is the one who says "Slayers! #%ck em up", isn't she?

Yes, Leah is the one with the big red hair and Rowena is the blonde with the ballcap.

Interesting how Rowena's German(?) accent seems to have disappeared since the first couple of issues... or maybe they realized it looked kind of silly when written out phonetically ("Dat vent vell.")

 

[sosa lola]

Reviews on the last issue:

StephenT - (Review) BtVS 8.19 'Time Of Your Life' Part 4

aycheb: BtVS S8.19 Time of Your Life (part IV)

 

[AndrewCrossett]

Reviews on the last issue:

StephenT - (Review) BtVS 8.19 'Time Of Your Life' Part 4

Ah, yes, Stormwreath... one of the sharper Buffy-related minds out there in Internet land. Great fanfic writer, too.

This review (haven't read the other one yet) raises some fascinating points. It never occurred to me before that the "someone I trusted" who misled Saga Vasuki about the temporal rift was Willow herself, sending a message from the future ("So close...")

The comments about Willow's motives for doing what she did seem very insightful and quite plausible. Neat, in fact.

I've seen a few comments in various places that this issue seemed rushed and didn't really do justice to the story built up in the previous 3 issues, but I see more and more depth to it every time I re-read it and every time I see commentaries like this. It's very unusual to see a mainstream comic that even bears such close analysis, much less requires it.

As for the Riley factor -- the triple-agent theory holds a lot of water, I think. So Buffy met with Riley when they were in New York, perhaps over dinner -- that's why Buffy was late for the fateful rooftop meeting, and why she was dressed up. She knows Riley is a member of Twilight's group and believes that he is going to act as a spy for her (her "inside man"). But Riley's conversation with Twilight indicates that he's actually double-crossing her.

Since he's assured both parties of his loaylty, it's just a question of which one he's actually playing.

(If the Twilight tattoo really does grant Twilight some kind of mystical control over his its wearers, that could spell trouble for Buffy -- but have we seen any evidence that the tattoo is anything more than just a tattoo, like a gang insignia?)