"I'm Opening Up The Hellmouth..."

white avenger

white avenger

white avenger
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Every time that I watch this episode, one question keeps screaming in my brain. "WHY DOES BUFFY LEAD SUCH AN ILL PREPARED AND, MOSTLY, ILL ARMED FORCE INTO SO IMPORTANT A BATTLE?"

Okay, realizing the attitudes of Spike ("A Slayer has to reach for her weapon. I've already got mine.") and Faith, who almost always had to borrow Buffy's stake to finish off a vampire, that still left the other girls. If General Buffy didn't notice it, Giles or Wood almost certainly did. Some of those girls went into battle with no more than sharp sticks. Granted, a stake will kill a vampire, but, still, in a full fledged assault like that, they should have been better armed.

And don't even try to say that that's all the weapons that they had. Any hardware store or army/navy store could furnish more axes, machetes, knives, and lord only knows what other variety of edged weapons or blunt instruments than Buffy's little army could have carried. Wood had already brought up the issue of weapons to Faith, though that was so thinly veiled an attempt to be alone with her that even Faith no doubt saw through it immediately. (Not that she was about to object, what with the long sexual dry spell she had endured in prison), so the weapons shortage was already known.
 
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Rayne
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Jersh
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I completley agree but I thought it was kind of nice going back to basics since they were all just becoming slayers. It was good the way they didn't repeat things like rocket launchers and anything like that!
 
white avenger
white avenger
I hadn't even thought about the rocket launcher. That's a good point, though about returning to basics. I still think, though, that a few "basic" axes would have improved their effectiveness.
Totally agree. I always thought it was a big mistake on the writers' and Joss's behalf. A few flame units, scythes and things a bit more effective than just stakes would've preserved a lot of soldiers.
 
joshuaunderwood said:
It was a classic episode, all she needed was a stake.
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Agreed, all a slayer should LEARN to NEED is a stake... and with that note, what if their are no weapons? what then?
And although I also agree with being idiotic to lead a bunch of girls into a battle as such, you have to stop and think... Their were ALOT of girls. Who's to say theirs enough weapons?
 
complex said:
Agreed, all a slayer should LEARN to NEED is a stake... and with that note, what if their are no weapons? what then?
And although I also agree with being idiotic to lead a bunch of girls into a battle as such, you have to stop and think... Their were ALOT of girls. Who's to say theirs enough weapons?
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"All a Slayer should LEARN to Need is a stake." Even if all a Slayer ever fought was vampires, there are times when a sword or a crossbow is more desirable than a stake, especially for more than a single vamp (look closely when Buffy dusts a vamp, and you will notice that the stake sometimes dissolves with the vampire. That never happens when she beheads one with a sword.)

"What if there are no weapons?" The Slayer quite often dies.

"Who's to say that there were enough weapons?" Check the final comment in the original question. They could have raided the local hardware and military surplus stores for machetes, camp axes, hatchets, butcher knives, bush axes... Those stores should have been as open and accessible as the grocery store and the hospital. Weapons were readily available if they had simply gone to the trouble of looking for them.
 
Buffanator said:
Weeellll... in Buffy's defense, she has always done "the right thing" before... 😀
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But she didn't have a problem with Anya and Andrew raiding the hospital for medical supplies. And I'm pretty sure they raided the grocery store, too, if I'm remembering correctly.

So yeah, the weapons thing doesn't really make sense.
 
Yes, especially when you consider that (if I recall correctly) Buffy's high school graduation class was armed with more than just stakes when they fought the Mayor. I think Buffy's sense of virtue got in the way of her making a logical and more sane decision. Either that, or she truly didn't know whether or not any conventional weapons would kill the ancient vampires. So, she stuck with the stake, which is all that the first slayer would have had as a weapon. And also, since this was "General Buffy"'s first time leading her troops into battle, she probably (subconsciously, anyway) figured that there would be future opportunities to improve her battle strategies. These are all questionable decisions, but I suppose that Buffy decided that a firm decision was better than none at all.
 
I wanna say that there was no need for weapons cuz as we first saw the ubervamp, weapons were useless, so they needed to share the scythe, more emphasis on sharing.
 
"WHY DOES BUFFY LEAD SUCH AN ILL PREPARED AND, MOSTLY, ILL ARMED FORCE INTO SO IMPORTANT A BATTLE?"

Buffy is a reactive type of girl. She's had her epiphany about winning and she's taking the fight to them. She knows she's gonna win (at least until she acctually gets down there)
 
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BillyidolwannaB
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Lacrimosa
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On another note, I found it strange that they had not put more thought into which of the scoobs were going to be with who and manning what sections. They waited till they were there, and took about 2 seconds to decide who was with who and in what parts of the building. I mean what? They couldn't have discussed it on the way there? Don't tell me they walked the entire way there just looking like they're on a mission?

And why put Anya and Andrew together? Surely they could have put the strongest fighters with the weaker ones? And if I was concerned about keeping Dawn alive I would have put her with Wood, or at least Giles.

---------- Post added at 10:23 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:21 AM ----------

And actually why couldn't they have just blocked off the entry to the sewers? I'm sure Xander could have helped put together a cement blockage. But I guess it would have made for a pretty boring final episode just watching the vamps run into the school and think 'oh shit, nowhere to go' and then run back to the hellmouth.
 
Blow up the school again. Sunnydale is abandoned anyway. Then, as soon as the vamps emerge from the Hellmouth, it's dustville. Meanwhile, stuck below with nowhere to go, they'd be much easier to kill.
 
caitaintdead
caitaintdead
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caitaintdead said:
And why put Anya and Andrew together? Surely they could have put the strongest fighters with the weaker ones? And if I was concerned about keeping Dawn alive I would have put her with Wood, or at least Giles.
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The teams were pretty much paired with one strong fighter and one strong fighter, plus with someone who they had pretty much bonded with. Xander had become much closer to Dawn in this last season, Anya was pretty much the only one who would tolerate Andrew, and Giles and Wood were co-conspirators in the plot to murder Spike. And as things turned out, Xander and Dawn were the only team to come out of the fight pretty much unhurt. Anya got killed and Wood got at the very least badly wounded. I would say that the teams worked out pretty well. Anya protected Andrew and Giles protected Wood.
 
Agreed! The battle at the Hellmouth in the series finale, when you think about it logically was really just a suicide mission and they were really, really, really lucky only a few people died.

I would explain why it is was suicide mission for the people who still don't realize it, but I don't feel like typing all that out.
 
Lucky that Spike was there to save the world, as they would all be history!
It was a suicide mission no doubt about it, they were just real lucky.
 
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