Slayers and watchers

[bespangeled]

Kendra appears in this season, and she was taken from her parents and trained to be a slayer. I always wondered what would happen to a girl who was trained daily to be a slayer, and then never called. If we take Kendra as the norm, and Buffy as the outlier since she had no training, how many watchers are really out there training girls who will never slay? At what age are you no longer going to be called?

 

[Wesley Pryce]

Id say if you're not called be the age of 25 then you can forget it. Yes,I imagine most are like Kendra and are trained from their early years to be a slayer just in case she's indeed the one.

 

[white avenger]

Kendra appears in this season, and she was taken from her parents and trained to be a slayer. I always wondered what would happen to a girl who was trained daily to be a slayer, and then never called. If we take Kendra as the norm, and Buffy as the outlier since she had no training, how many watchers are really out there training girls who will never slay? At what age are you no longer going to be called?

It's been theorized that passed over Potentials are recruited to serve in various Watcher tactical teams (Travers mentioned "Tactical" (teams) just before Watcher Headquarters was blown up) It stands to reason that the Watchers wouldn't want to waste all the time and expense of training a Potential just to let her go back home and open up a Tae Bo center once she isn't eligible to be a Slayer anymore.

 

[bespangeled]

It's been theorized that passed over Potentials are recruited to serve in various Watcher tactical teams (Travers mentioned "Tactical" (teams) just before Watcher Headquarters was blown up) It stands to reason that the Watchers wouldn't want to waste all the time and expense of training a Potential just to let her go back home and open up a Tae Bo center once she isn't eligible to be a Slayer anymore.

But how do they know which ones to train, which to train and recruit, and which to ignore? I mean, Kendra was well trained from infancy and Buffy was chosen before her. Is the selection random?

Let' stay outside the circular argument - you've been chosen, you are the one....you are the one because you have been chosen....😉

---------- Post added at 07:37 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:35 PM ----------

Id say if you're not called be the age of 25 then you can forget it. Yes,I imagine most are like Kendra and are trained from their early years to be a slayer just in case she's indeed the one.

25 sounds right to me,too.

So - what chooses a Slayer? How can it be recognized? The Council did lose track of Buffy, or else decide she wasn't a strong enough possibility to bother training.

 

[Xin Rong]

The short answer is that we don't know what force chooses who will be the slayer and who won't, personally, I think it's just a random thing. Any potential within a particular age range can be the next slayer, and I think it makes sense for those girls who are trained and not called are retained by the council, possible as Watchers?

I think there are ways of detecting potentials, but it's not an infalible system, as we've seen with Buffy and season 7.

 

[white avenger]

But how do they know which ones to train, which to train and recruit, and which to ignore? I mean, Kendra was well trained from infancy and Buffy was chosen before her. Is the selection random?

Let' stay outside the circular argument - you've been chosen, you are the one....you are the one because you have been chosen....😉

I think it's safe to say that the Watchers have some way of identifying girls who are in the upper 1% (just for the sake of of picking a number) of all the girls in the world who have the highest concentration of Slayer essence, whatever and however that might be defined, and designate those girls as Potentials. Those are the ones who are selected for training by the Watchers, and there are, as Giles said in Season 7, only a handful of them in the world at any given time. No system is perfect, of course, and, occasionally, as in Buffy's case, the girl isn't identified until the moment that she actually is Called.

As to why there were so many more Slayers activated by Willow's spell, it wasn't in any way selective, and every girl in the world with any Slayer essence at all was Activated (as opposed to being Called)

That's my theory, anyhow.