Power Surge.

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SlayerThe

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In Prophecy Girl, after Buffy is revived by Xander, she is immediately stronger.

This is one of the most unexplained incidents in the Buffyverse.

And after looking back at Season 1 compared to Season 2, Buffy is noticeably more powerful.

So did the drowning somehow give her more power, grab power away from the Master, some form of Slayer re-activation?

Also, since I do not have the DVDs, does the episode commentary say anything about this?
 
Didn't the same kind of thing happen in Chosen. She's struck down with what looks to be a fatal blow. The next thing you know she's rising with what looks to be more strength.

I heard someone say they thought she was just psyching the First out, but I don't know. She seems to rise stronger.

It definitely wasn't a psyche on the Master, and she definitely seems stronger.

Come to think of it what about Dracula when she drinks his blood and it cracks his mind control. Is that in some way the same kind of thing?

Does Buffy have hidden reserves of strength, or is it another power that watches over her and kicks in when she tastes death?
 
There is a theory that i've seen discussed at a couple of boards previously that this is related to the fact that the link to the slayer power has been changed at this point. Until Buffy died the flow of "slayer energy", for want of a better term, had been constant with one girl drawing on it at any one time.

With Buffy's death and rebirth however there were now two girls drawing on the energy of the slayer which meant the balance was forever lost and no longer consistent.

Personally though i can't really follow the logic of that idea. Surely if there were now two girls drawing on the same power source the result would be that both girls would be weaker as they were sharing the strength. I can't see any reason why they would be stronger because of that fact.

To me the best explanation is basic confidence. We didn't see any evidence that Buffy actually was stronger after she died in Prophecy Girl, only that she believed in herself a hell of a lot more.

When she first went to face the Master she did so with the certain knowledge she was going to die. However when she faced him on the roof of the library she had faced death and beaten it so naturally she would have felt so much more powerful and confident. This was where her increased strength came from. She wasn't physically stronger but she definitely was psychologically.
 
That's a good theory. It kind of makes the busting the Master's mind control make sense too.

If you see the mind control trick as kind of a Jedi thing that works on the weak willed, Buffy comes back with her will stronger, and therefore immune.

She did seem to come back physically stronger of course, but you can see that as kind of a Rocky thing. The more you knock him down and force him to find his inner strength, the stronger he comes back.
 
While I have to agree on the psychological aspect, I have to somewhat disagree.

I've assumed that their is huge well of slayer power existing somewhere. Since all those scythe activated potentials and Buffy and Faith were able to share the power and co-exist without any power shortages.

So since Buffy is THE slayer and the power flows through her, maybe she has some direct link to this source of power?
 
That's a good one too. I can't pick. Eeny, meeny, miney moe...

Oh another theory I don't hate, is the possibility there may be some kind of altruistic force that watches over champions like Buffy and Angel, and from time to time sneaks them a little extra juice, or makes it snow, or whatever.
 
nerd4hire said:
That's a good one too. I can't pick. Eeny, meeny, moe...

Oh another theory I don't hate is the possibility there may be some kind altruistic force that watches over champions like Buffy and Angel, and from time to time sneaks them a little extra juice, or makes it snow, or whatever.
Click to expand...

Good one.

I was thinking about that when I was writing my post. Although it seems trivial for them to do so, it makes some sense.

Especially because Buffy & Angel are massively outnumbered/overpowered sometimes.
 
See, the problem i have with that is we really can't say that she actually was any physically stronger after Prophecy Girl. It's not as though we really saw any tests or solid evidence that her strength had gone up at all, just that she used the power she had much more assuredly.

If you watch her during season one you usually see a young girl with super strength and ability but that is all she really thinks of herself as being. You can see it in the way she acts, the way she fights, the way she thinks, everything about her.

When she came back from the dead in Prophecy Girl she changed dramatically in attitude. You saw this immediately in the way she fought the Master but it continued into When She Was Bad and then on through the series. She didn't act like a school girl with super powers anymore, she acted like the slayer.

To me, the real difference in Buffy from season two onwards was that she believed in herself. This naturally came through into her ability as the slayer making her appear physically more powerful when in actual fact she was just more confident and professional. Basically she always had the increased power we saw her use in season two onwards, she just had to believe in herself to find it.
 
When I watch "I Robot You Jane", the part about Buffy having difficulty breaking down the steel door intrigues me. I begin to think "Season 2 Buffy could have so knocked that door down."

Maybe you can chalk it up to attitude or increased power with time, but something just screams to me that she had some intervention and received more power. I'd even go as far to say that maybe she was re-activated. She went back to the slayer cookie jar and grabbed a few extra slayer cookies.
 
Slayer said:
She went back to the slayer cookie jar and grabbed a few extra slayer cookies.
Click to expand...

What is it about slayers and cookies that makes for so many analogies? 🙂

As for the power increase, it's at least possible you are correct and that she did get extra "cookies" but without anything official i tend to go with my original confidence theory.

Just to use your I Robot example to try show you what i mean, a regular guy can be trained to punch his hand through a concrete block, with enough mental discipline he can do it. However to do so he has to absolutely believe that he can make it through. Any self doubt and he will pull back at the last second and more than likely break his hand in the process.

The same applies to Buffy. In I Robot she still didn't know what she was capable of and so didn't have the strength of will to kick that door down, a year later she would have had no problem kicking exactly the same door off it's hinges because she would believe she could do it.

Whether you are talking a regular human or a slayer a lot of the power comes from the mind.
 
Hey you know what? I just thought of something. Wouldn't this make an interesting poll?

Something like...

Buffy comes back from the dead stronger in Prophecy Girl because...

A) She has new found inner-confidence, Inner strength, Inner strength of will and it made her stronger.

B) Buffy has touched and called upon the souce of her slayer power by briefly touching death.

C) There is another force in the Buffy/Angelverse we never actually see that is responsible for stuff like this, or the snow in Amends or Cordy in You're Welcome. It infused Buffy with added strength.
 
Yeah why not!

You're going to alter this thread rather than start a new one i take it?
 
i agree, that would be very interesting to develop different takes on this case.
 
Pagan said:
Yeah why not!

You're going to alter this thread rather than start a new one i take it?
Click to expand...

Well I don't know. It's SlayerThe's thread. It's up to him. I'm not sure if it can be done, but I'd try it if he wanted.

It might be OK to post a new poll on this subject to a different thread. I'd have to check with the mod of this particular forum to see how they felt about it.
 
Maybe she overcame the fatal blow in Chosen is because of all the crazy Slayer power that was going on then, Willow had just completely thrown any kind of Slayer mojo off balance so maybe it was bouncing around? I dunno.
 
IMO, it's all about the power of suggestion. The Master's never shown any telekenetic ability (unless you consider the earthquake his), but it's often suggested in vampire stories that they have telepathic abilities. I've been hypnotised, and I broke it, simply because my rational mind intruded to remind me that there was no reason for me to do what he was telling me. The Master's mind control thingy loses it's hold on Buffy because she no longer believes, on any level, that it can.
 
I'm going to go with the self-confidence theory.

At the beginning of S4, Buffy seems noticably weaker (i.e. fighting Sunday/Kathy). I think it has a lot to do with her lack of confidence in that time period in her life. Much like her renewed confidence/inner strength after having tasted death at the end of S1, Chosen, and Buffy vs. Dracula...
 
I just thought of another option. What if it's a little bit of all three.

Take the seemingly fatal blow at the end of Chosen. That's a bad wound.

Inner confidence will take you a long way, but will it allow even a Slayer to jump up after a wound like that, and fight even stronger than she was before.

So what if just as she did when she saw Angel's sword coming for her in Becoming 2 she called on the inner reserves of strength that lived in her through slayer power, and she also reached that hidden reserve of power people call upon when they pray, and this combination of power allows her to find another level of supernatural strength.

I can't pick yet. I just know when Buffy reaches what would be a normal person or slayer's limit she reaches down and finds something extra.
 
that makes a lot of sense, especially if you consider the words angelus said to her. he stripped her off of everything that made her buffy, of all her ties to the world and her answer was - what left is me. so yeah, it's very possible that once you take everything away from her, she reaches into herself, into the very core of the slayer's power. and once again, that makes buffy stronger because while an ordinary slayer has only that to rely on, buffy has that as a "last resort", her true power doesn't lie there.
 
I was thinking of something else too.

Is this something we've only seen in Buffy?

Is it the same thing we see in Faith when she rises to stake the post through Kakistos.

I don't know. Somehow Buffy seems to draw more juice or something. Maybe it's just because it's her show, or maybe it's because they're trying to tell us something. I don't know.
 
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