Twilight: An Effective Big Bad?

Cohen

Cohen

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Sineya
I'll admit, it's been a long while since I have read season 8. I read through once, upon initial release, and then pretty much never read it back again. I still have the original comics in my house, somewhere and I think it's time a brought them back out again. I made a comment in another thread making fun of Twilight, because I know this baddie gets a lot of hate on here. But I think it's time to revisit and re-analyze.

Was Twilight an effective Big Bad? If you were to rank Twilight with the other Baddies of Buffy seasons 1-7, where would Twilight rank? What makes Twilight effective or ineffective? Could the writers have changed Twilight to be slightly more effective?
 
I think Twilight would have been a better big bad if it wasn’t
Angel
. Having him backpedal on 8 seasons of character development through both shows and get to a point where he literally
kills Giles
is just stupid.

It’s been a minute since I read it, but as far as I remember, Twilight became a villain because he was encouraged to do so by outside forces? Granted, they did become big bads in subsequent comics, better ones might I add, but it feels weird that Twilight’s motivation is basically, “because I was told to do this thing, I’m doing it.”

S8 had a lot of problems, largely to do with the lack of restrictions, and Twilight is just one of the more apparent issues. If it was an original character or even somebody that was jilted by Buffy & co. in the past, then I’d be more on board. Having it be who it is was just a bad choice, though it did lead to a great series involving Faith drawn by Rebekah Isaacs, so sort of a small redemption? 😍
 
Okay so what if Twilight was Riley, having seen too much demonic trauma. Does this change Twilight for the better? Or does it only work if we would have had Twilight as an original villain?
 
I think Riley would be a better choice, and his military background would lend itself to having a large enemy force. Would be a good mystery too
 
Plasma said:
I think Twilight would have been a better big bad if it wasn’t
Angel
. Having him backpedal on 8 seasons of character development through both shows and get to a point where he literally
kills Giles
is just stupid.

It’s been a minute since I read it, but as far as I remember, Twilight became a villain because he was encouraged to do so by outside forces? Granted, they did become big bads in subsequent comics, better ones might I add, but it feels weird that Twilight’s motivation is basically, “because I was told to do this thing, I’m doing it.”

S8 had a lot of problems, largely to do with the lack of restrictions, and Twilight is just one of the more apparent issues. If it was an original character or even somebody that was jilted by Buffy & co. in the past, then I’d be more on board. Having it be who it is was just a bad choice, though it did lead to a great series involving Faith drawn by Rebekah Isaacs, so sort of a small redemption? 😍
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Twighlight also killed a lot Girls and Buffy and Joss (who was bored with them) and Twilight didn't seem bothered by that all only about Giles
 
Twilight doesn't work because it puts the villain acting out of character. It's just not believable. You can't just pick a twist because you think it will be shocking, it's got to make sense. Now, if they had actually made it make sense, then it would have been an okay turn of events. But because we've already seen him be the big bad, it's not that much of a surprise really. And we've seen this tale before, not just with him but with Willow, Faith, etc - it's like a crutch.
 
I agree, I thought the mystery of twilight was great at the beginning of the season and felt very Buffy. The placement of the twilight symbol in various places in the first few rounds of issues and trying to determine who it was. Even when you saw Twilight (before the “behind the mask” reveal), it wasn’t bad because you didn’t know who it was. But the twist was a bad call.
 
Sort of an addendum to my earlier post.

After starting to read the story again, I did want to give some actual praise to Twilight. I think the actual reveal and character motivations are poor, but the one thing I will applaud Joss for doing is making the Initiative work, basically.

At the core of the story, Twilight is just the Initiative with a different face and with better fleshing out. S4 is known to have stumbled because of production issues, but I feel like S8 was able to take the idea of “large force that wants to stop/control magical/demonic entities” and use it effectively. That was a thread that felt like it went nowhere in S4, up until someone rang the Initiative’s hotline and told them that they were the big bad of the season. With Twilight, it feels much more focused and the whole idea of a grand conspiracy works to its benefit.

I also wanted to say that the idea of there being too many Slayers and that tipping some cosmic balance is one that I actually really like. Had Joss given that sort of motivation to a more ethereal or powerful villain a la Glory or the First Evil, I think the story would have been better for it. Twilight is just too material of a villain for that thing to work. You need something that is far beyond the Slayers in both power and metaphysical presence.
 
VampireSlayer07 said:
So am I the only one who thought twilight might have been Buffy's dad? It would at least make more sense than Angel
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That would’ve been nice. He’s already a public menace because of his ghosting Buffy during her birthday event, lol.

I think you’re onto something here. One of the big problems with the Twilight reveal is just the fact that it’s you know who again. This character has been a long-term “villain”…what? Two-three times already? Tack onto that any number of episodes where they go bad as a result of some magic or pharmaceutical bullcrap (or even just to play a role), and you have at least a dozen-odd times that we’ve seen this story told.

Buffy’s dad was largely enigmatic on the show. Use him instead! Make it so that he has some magical affinity or something or he knows the truth about Slayers and wants the world to move beyond the magical mess it has become. You could’ve done something so interesting with that, but instead we get this tired reveal and concept.
 
VampireSlayer07 said:
So am I the only one who thought twilight might have been Buffy's dad? It would at least make more sense than Angel
Click to expand...

Plasma said:
That would’ve been nice. He’s already a public menace because of his ghosting Buffy during her birthday event, lol.

I think you’re onto something here. One of the big problems with the Twilight reveal is just the fact that it’s you know who again. This character has been a long-term “villain”…what? Two-three times already? Tack onto that any number of episodes where they go bad as a result of some magic or pharmaceutical bullcrap (or even just to play a role), and you have at least a dozen-odd times that we’ve seen this story told.

Buffy’s dad was largely enigmatic on the show. Use him instead! Make it so that he has some magical affinity or something or he knows the truth about Slayers and wants the world to move beyond the magical mess it has become. You could’ve done something so interesting with that, but instead we get this tired reveal and concept.
Click to expand...

Wait, this would have made so much more sense in the context of the story. Did Buffy at some point tell her father what was going on? She told her mom, so it kind of would make sense to also have told her father. At one point in the later parts of the comics, her father didn't want her to come to his wedding because she was a slayer. This would have worked better for Twilight, and how Twilight was using the government to disengage the Slayer army. Maybe he believed that all of his issues with his marriage to Joyce and his family happened because of the slayer thing. We see in Buffy's "Normal Again" world that sans her slayerdom, he was still with Joyce. This could have been more reflective of Buffy's internal fear that she caused her parents divorce, but it could also be reflective of what Hank feels. The buildup of this reveal could have allowed for backstory explaining why Hank was so absent after Joyce died and why he went to Spain. Building followers soon after the destruction of Sunnydale and the awakening of the Slayers. One of the issues with Angel as Twilight is the lack of time between the events of After the Fall and the supposed start of the Buffy comics, and how Angel was able to create such a grand army of henchpeople, even with magic involved. And don't get me started on the "creating a new magical dimension" storyline. Twilights aim of creating a new world without slayers would be a much better arc for season 8, as a response to the large Slayer army, than this (what feels like) tacked on idea to the end of the first comic season.
 
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