Welcome to Rewatching Buffy, the part of the blog where I rewatch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each Tuesday evening, you’re invited to join me as I attempt to rediscover what made me love this show so many years ago.

Never Leave Me

• Dawn seems less than cool with Spike staying in their basement.
• Anya suggests stabbing him in the chest.
• Andrew wanders around Sunnydale alone.
• Well… not alone.
• Warren is still hanging around giving him orders, revealing that he cannot take corporeal form.
• Andrew is having second thoughts about killing more people.
• And Warren morphs into Jonathan to convince him it’s all okay.
• Andrew still doesn’t want to kill anyone else, so Jonathan just tells him they can work around it.
• Cut to Spike being tied up in a chair by Buffy.
• He tells her to make it tighter so the knots won’t give.
• He’s afraid that, if he gets out, someone will die.
• Buffy calls the Watcher’s Council and demands they help her find Giles since he’s not answering any of his numbers.
• Once Travers is off the phone with Buffy, he informs others on the Council that the girl knows nothing and they need to find Rupert Giles.
• Back in the school basement, Warren is trying to convince Andrew to slaughter a pig, but he can’t do that, either.
• So then he decides the butcher shop is the way to go.
• Which is where he runs into Willow, who’s there to get blood for Spike.
• Wait… do butcher shops really sell blood?
• She chases him out of the shop and he tries to convince her that he’s not bad anymore.
• “Then why do you need lots and lots of blood?”
• It’s kind of a hilarious stand off, each of them acting bigger and badder than they really are.
• Willow brings Andrew back to the house and they give him the Spike treatment.
• I mean… they tie him to a chair.
• Xander and Anya interrogate him, wanting to know why he’s buying blood.
• It’s a whole good cop/bad cop thing.
• Also hilarious, with Anya being the bad cop.
• After feeding on the animal blood, Spike is feeling a little better and tries to tell Buffy about what he knows.
• He can’t tell her much, since he basically blacks out when under the First Evil’s control.
• Then she asks how he got his soul back.
• In telling the tale, he explains how he understands the Slayer… how she ticks… why she used him last year.
• Xander heads back in and unties Andrew and gives him a glass of water.
• He talks to her about Anya’s vengeance demon activities.
• When she storms back in, Andrew is scared enough to tell him what they want to know.
• Buffy hears this going on from her room and leaves Spike.
• Which allows Not Spike to tell Spike they have a problem.
• When Buffy comes back, she can hear Spike talking to no one through the door.
• He acts like he’s fine, but then he breaks the chair, and breaks through the wall to pull Andrew through and starts feeding on the nerd.
• Just as Andrew was explaining all about the Seal of Danthomir.
• Buffy is able to save Andrew and knocks out Spike.
• Downstairs, Buffy explains that she had heard Spike talking to someone and heard him singing just before he went nuts.
• Xander figures out that the song is his trigger.
• Buffy’s got the team looking for what could be doing this to Spike.
• They still don’t realize this is the First Evil.
• Am I supposed to realize it’s the First yet?
• I mean… I know because I’ve seen it all before…
• But I also knew the first time I saw it based on the context clues related to the Season 3 episode “Amends.”
• At the high school, Principal Wood inexplicably heads down to the basement and discovers Jonathan’s body on the seal.
• Spike is chained up in the basement and he asks Buffy to kill him.
• He provokes her by trying to tell her about the horrible things he’s done in his life… how much he enjoyed it…
• Just as Buffy informs Spike that she believes in him, the house is attacked by the First’s Harbingers.
• Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Principal Wood buries Jonathan’s body.
• Buffy and the gang put up a good fight.
• Xander takes out one downstairs and Buffy kills two of the harbingers who are trying to kill Andrew.
• Once those two are dead, they realize there were more and they’re gone.
• They took Spike.
• Buffy takes a good look at the Harbinger downstairs and recognizes what it is.
• Now she understands what they’re really up against.
• Back in England, the Watcher’s Council is basically panicking… well, as much as they can.
• Travers announces that the First Evil has declared all out war.
• He says it’s time to mobilize… they need to get to the Hellmouth.
• As soon as his speech is over, the building explodes.
• No more Watcher’s Council.
• Not Spike watches as Spike is tied up and cut up by Harbingers.
• Not Spike becomes Not Buffy as the Harbingers hang Spike over the seal to let his blood pour out onto it.
• Not Buffy asks if he’s ready to see what a real vampire looks like.
• His blood has activated the seal, opening it to reveal a monstrous vampire-like creature with very little in the way of human qualities.
• Body count: Harbingers – 3; Humans – All of the Watchers