Ending The Slayer Line

[white avenger]

Something just occurred to me while commenting on a different thread. Buffy, in having Willow activate all of the Potentials in the world, might just have done what the First Evil set out to do in the first place. If you consider that the Potentials, instead of being Called in the traditional way, simply had their latent power released by the Scythe spell, then they might not be actual Slayers, but just normal girls with Slayer powers. (A subtle difference, I know, but still a difference) That would mean that, if anything of a fatal nature should happen to Faith and Buffy, there would be no Potentials left to Call. No Potentials, no Slayers. The line ends, or at least becomes inactive, for a couple of centuries, and then along comes Frey.

 

[Lyri]

This had to happen for us to get to Fray anyway, but I do see where you're coming from.

However, Fray's existence tells us that there is at least ONE girl who still has the power to pass on the 'true' power of the Slayer, we just don't know who she is, out of the thousands of 'Slayers' out there. Could be Buffy, could be Faith, Leah, could even be Rona, who many believe would have been the next Slayer anyway, had the line continued as it was and Faith's death activated the next Slayer. (It has something to do with the Scythe and the Hellmouth)

The whole idea is that the 'last' Slayer uses her power to send all the demons and magic into, what? A vortex or something, right? Another dimension, ridding magic from this one. So, this, in all probability, killed that Slayer, but, as there are no more demons to fight, there's no reason for a Slayer, so the next Slayer to be called simply has no idea, and just goes about her normal life, until she dies of old age, or an accident or something. The power then passes to the next Slayer, and the process is repeated again and again until we get to Fray.

But then that raises another question: If the 'last' Slayer rid this world of magic, does that mean the Slayer's power goes to? Is the Slayer's power magic, or something else? And if it is magic, how did it back to this dimension?

I think I just posed more questions than I answered, lol.

 

[white avenger]

But if, as I said, with the death of the last "true" Slayer, be it Buffy or Faith, there was no one left to inherit that power in the traditional manner, then the Calling itself would go dormant until conditions (as in , demons and "lurks" coming back) re-activated it.

We have pretty much assumed that "the" apocalypse will be fought by Buffy and whoever is left at the end of Season 9, and will result in all of the demons and vampires being expelled from this plane of existence. If the Shadow Men's original spell was to create a line of fighters for as long as there were monsters to fight, then, with the ending of that final battle, the Slayer essence/spell/quickening/calling/whatever, being no longer needed, would go dormant, waiting for the time when it was again needed. Since apparently there were no demons or vampires on Earth between the end of the final battle and Fray's calling, there wasn't any need for a Slayer. Once the threat returned, a new Slayer was called, one single girl, the way that the spell was originally set up to work.

 

[Lyri]

Okay, I think I see where you are coming from now.

No one ever said that there were no Potentials left. There were no Potentials left at the end of 'Chosen' because they had all been Called by the spell.

But what about girls that had yet to be born?

There's been no evidence yet to tell us that all Potentials automatically become Slayers when they're born, or reach a certain age, and no one's said that there are definitely no Potentials left in the world.

Obviously, there's something in all the Potentials that MAKE them Potentials, and that's not going to disappear just 'cause Willow made all the existing Potentials into real Slayers. So girls will still exist who have the power to be the Slayer, hence Fray, and whoever came before her, because I doubt the 'lurks' just showed up one day when Fray was conveniently of age.

 

[Mumrik]

This has been partially adressed in S8, so, obviously, here be spoilers.

Spoiler

In issue 21, we meet a Slayer who gets her powers on her sixteenth birthday so apparently, there's still Potentials who now get their Slayer powers upon turning a certain age.

 

[nerd4hire]

In the Fray series, doesn't Urkon say there were still girls with the power after the end of magic and demons. It's just they were never called. They were never trained? In fact at one point the demon overlords, Vrill and Boluz, are discussing the viability of killing Fray, so they could train up the next slayer in the line for their purposes. I forget the reason they don't. It's either a lack of time, Urkon assures them he can get Fray in line, or a little of both.

It's actually too bad Joss left it like that, because if the line had just ended, I could say what if it's going to turn out Dark Willow rebooted the line to call Fray as a slayer - which would be cool, I think.

---------- Post added at 11:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 AM ----------

Oh damn. I should have spoiler tagged some of that. I didn't see we were in Season 7. Oops.

 

[Primal Slayer]

This has been partially adressed in S8, so, obviously, here be spoilers.

Spoiler

In issue 21, we meet a Slayer who gets her powers on her sixteenth birthday so apparently, there's still Potentials who now get their Slayer powers upon turning a certain age.

But she was already born when Willow did the activation spell. So we just know that any potential who wasnt "of age" at the moment will recieve the full package when they do come of age. But we still dont know what that means for any potential born after Willows spell. Will they just be normal potentials all their life until they possibly get called? Or will they automatically activate when they reach a certain age? I like to the think the first option.

As already stated though, basically with all of these slayers running around, the activation code is just going to keep jumping around them with noone knowing who until we get to the Fray era where its just back to one slayer.