Is(was) Giles in the Council?

Black Eye Guy

Black Eye Guy

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I am watching "Same Place, Same Time" as I type this and I just noticed something Willow picks up the phone and rings Giles, and the person on the other end says that he is in a council meeting. Now Giles was kicked out of The Council in "Helpless"(season 3). But wasn't one of Buffy's demands to the Council in "Checkpoint" that Giles gets reinstated and get paid retroactively from when he was fired (I could be wrong im working from memory) yet in the rest of season 5,6 and 7(except the start) he is referred to as fired, and in "Bring on the Night" he says he broke into the Council to steal books. Oh I just remembered something Quintin refers to Giles as a Former employee and he tells Buffy he does not keep track of him, So he was fired and was not reinstated, so why is he in council meetings?

So what is up with that?
 
Maybe Giles was a consultant in the council or maybe that council meeting was a meeting where they consulted Giles or Giles consulted them since The First was active then. But of course, that's only a theory.
 
Maybe he was in a meeting with the Council about borrowing some books and they declined, so he later had to steal them?
 
Maybe that was just a cover up by the council. If I remember correctly, there is one point during the season that Travers announces that they must find Giles... therefore, they don't know where he is.

Maybe the council doesn't want to look week and vulnerable (by not knowing where former employees are), so they just lie?
 
SpikedBuffy said:
Maybe that was just a cover up by the council. If I remember correctly, there is one point during the season that Travers announces that they must find Giles... therefore, they don't know where he is.

Maybe the council doesn't want to look week and vulnerable (by not knowing where former employees are), so they just lie?
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I don't really get the point where the council tries to locate Giles, I mean if you are fired, your former boss will not be interested in where you are or how you cope or anything. It is just done. My theory is that they did need Giles because they did know that the ending was near and wanted to gather as much allies as possible.
 
Hm, I always thought Giles was working for the council again. I mean he was supposed to be wasn't he..? And I will continue believing that he was, although this does of course sound strange, but I can't remember right now everything about it..
 
Perhaps this is a mix up? First off, we know that Giles does indeed work for the council, because he was reinstated, and there is talk that the council knows the seers that informed him about Willow in season six (right?)

So, this is very confusing. Maybe it is that he wanted to borrow the book, and the wouldn't let him, so he resorted to stealing.
 
Maybe he lost watcher status when he left buffy in series 6, i mean he was only reinstated because buffy wanted him to be, but if he left buffy then the council no longer had any need for him
 
That's not true... the Council has a big staff, and of all of them, only one gets to be an actual Watcher... I'm sure they'd have something for him to do.
 
I thinnk Giles was never 'reinstated' as a watcher but the coucil may have invited him to meetings and stuff to keep him on side, as Buffy quit the council, so Giles is the councils link to Buffy.

I think that makes sense. lol
 
My feeling is that Giles became more of a consultant to the Council, rather than an actual Watcher again. They probably kept him in the loop purely because that was the best way they had of keeping tabs on Buffy and the goings on in Sunnydale.

At the end of the day though, a lot could have been going on between Giles and the Council that we were never made aware of on the show so his status with them may well have been changeable. Maybe he went back to work for them to begin with, then quit later on once he had decided to leave Sunnydale and head back to England. All speculation, of course, but it makes sense that a lot could have happened behind the scenes.
 
I think he did become a watcher again. Well of course I don't know if they'd call him that or not, but he would work as a watcher for Buffy and be working for the council and that's the important thing.. Would make sense that he stopped being Buffy's watcher when she died though, seeing as.. well she died.. But I don't see why he should stop working for the council because of that (only reason might be that while he still thought Buffy was dead, he decided he didn't want to have anything to do with the whole slayer/council thing because it was too painful).
 
I got the feeling that he only went back to the Council in the first place for Buffy's sake (plus the back pay, of course, hehe). Given how they had treted him i really don't imagine that he wanted to remain a part of the Watchers just for the sake of it anymore and so once he felt he was no longer any use to Buffy then he probably felt he no longer had any reason to stay with the Council.

In fact, when you think about it, that adds a lot of weight to Giles' loss of personal direction in season six. Even back in season four he still felt that Buffy needed him, despite having been fired, so stuck around in Sunnydale, but once Buffy was gone (so he thought) and he no longer particularly respected the Council, everything he believed in must have seemed to have ended. Getting to Giles' age and suddenly realising that all you have dedicated your life to is no longer a part of who you are must be terrifying and so it makes sense that he would have wanted to return to England, his true home, to regroup and discover who he really was again.
 
Well, I guess you're right but at the same time.. I don't know but I feel like Giles more felt that he should want to go back to England. Yes, he had sort of lost himself "“ I don't think the Scoobies really realized how lost Giles must be without having Buffy to guide, and maybe Giles didn't realize it either until Buffy died. Anyway, he stayed in Sunnydale for a while, and I think he was in a way scared of going back to England, having to find his own life, without Buffy or the council or the whole slayer thing. In England Giles would be just Giles, and not Buffy's watcher, which is almost all we've ever seen him being.. So yeah, for him going back was probably the only option, I think he was really scared he'd end up a pathetic old man doing nothing otherwise, but I'm not sure he looked forward to it, or that he was really ready for it...
 
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