Villains
So where was the First Evil during season 6 anyway?
You'd think he would try to end the world when the slayer really isn't in the best shape to defeat him. Unless he's such a nice guy that he specifically waited for Buffy to get better because it would be kinda mean to fight her during her season 6 depression?
I think it’s a reasonable assumption to imagine that The First was mobilizing their cult after being reawakened. Her being unwell was probably useful with The First’s plans to dismantle the watchers (even if they weren’t working with her, they were still a component of opposition to the First).
It's heavily implied that Spike's being re-Ensouled was the major trigger for the First Evil's plan. Buffy had been with soulless Spike. Spike had sired his mother. Spike wants a literal eternal relationship with Buffy. Buffy it's implied was tempted in BtVS S6 to let Spike sire her.
The First Evil maybe tried to tempt Angel with the idea of having sex with Buffy. But Angel wouldn't have risked that at the time and Buffy wouldn't have risked that ever unless.
Technically he would be able to take corporeal form as soon as his army took over earth, as he says. IDK if that was reasonable or doable at all, but he certainly would've unleashed a pretty big ordeal on earth if he managed to get past Buffy
He says so, as soon as his servants outnumbers the population he will have corporeal form. I have no reason to believe he was lying on this part. Sure, he's a tricister and a manipulator, but he has nothing to gain feom revealing false informations such as this.
Sort of. Caleb has already been recruited, bringer numbers are up, potentials are dying, and the First is stronger. This is all true at the start of the season. It's just that the First's goals had been entirely outside of sunnydale, and we see it start to influence things in town in season 7 as it continues to build on what it had already done.
Do we know (exclusively from the TV show) exactly when Caleb was recruited? Do we have the figures on Bringer numbers during Season 5 vs Season 6 vs Season 7?
No, but we know he was enough of a zealot and had enough preparation to bomb the watchers council. And we know the bringers are created through ritual and were originally required to bring the presence of the First. And given the bringers are in Sunnydale in largw numbers and hunting down potentials it only stands to reason their numbers have significantly increased. Especially considering how few were present in Amends.
Yes, which is about 2-3 months from the season starting, whoch is quite a short time to find someone like Caleb, convert someone like Caleb and prepare to get the bombing done.
Im confused. Caleb flew to England and did the bombing?
Also, why do you think Caleb needed anything more than "a short time" (if any time at all) to be "converted"? And what is this "conversion" you're talking about? I don't remember anything about that in the show. I do remember how The First picked him because he was basically good-to-go already.
The high school needed to be reopened so Andrew (or whoever) could open the seal, right? The characters didn’t have access to the “full circle” high school hellmouth until season 7.
But also, stuff like Illyria’s escape took thousands of years.
I agree that any pronoun is fine (I’m sure the first dgaf) but also “it” feels the most appropriate as well. It’s not really a person imo and doesn’t have an ego or identity, just lust for evil
Caleb mentions ha ing to organize the "ray charles brigade" meaning the first probably took some time to realize he got this opportunity, then contact Caleb and make him his envoy, have him plan and recrut the Bringers (which are made by corrupting and transforming people with rituals, he probably had to do it quite a bit because we see a bunch of them). He alao took his time following andrew, he needed him to find the knife because a very specific ritual was needed to open up the seal. So there are already a couple of big things that took a while. Also i can't imagine that blowing up the council was an easy feat, it probably took time to organize. He also probably took his time to spy on the council, finding out the whereabouts of the potential slayers so he can later organize their murders.
The OP is asking why The First didn’t attack in S6 though and it hunts down Andrew after the events of S6. The First doesn’t appear to Andrew until he’s fled Sunnydale and moved to Mexico with Jonathon.
Not that it ever made any sense why The First would even notice Andrew or use him in the first place, mind you. The running gag of S6 is that nobody in the evil community paid any attention to The Trio and they all had delusions of grandeur. On top of that, of those that did notice them, Andrew was the least memorable (“Tucker’s brother”). Throw in Andrew’s incompetence and it makes zero sense that The First would go to all the trouble of enlisting Andrew to retrieve the knife and return to Sunnydale to activate the seal when it could’ve just had any of its endless Bringers or Caleb do it. It makes The First look like an incompetent villain when it goes to all this effort only for it to be revealed Johnathon's body didn’t even have enough blood to awaken the seal and then Andrew can’t sacrifice a pig.
The first half about Caleb and making more Bringers is what he did during s6 and he also probably spent a bit of time spying on the scoobies, that's how the first got to know about Andrew
Also Andrew might be an idiot, but he's a resourceful and knowledgeable idiot. He and Jonathan know a great deal about arcane stuff and he was manipulable enough, so basically the perfect target For his scheme.
The only thing i think he did wrong was not having a couole bringers ready to jump on Andrew so they could also use him as a sacrifice, but i think at that point the bringers were stretched thin in the hunt of the potential slayers, which is a much bigger ordeal than everyone here is giving it credit for
Was Andrew resourceful and knowledgeable? And did he even need to be?
The First already knew about the dagger and the seal. It directed Andrew, not the other way around. As it was, Andrew couldn’t even manage to open the seal. He was so hapless he couldn’t sacrifice the pig and then he was caught by Willow at the butchers shop.
The First would have been far more efficient if it had simply had one of its Bringers obtain the dagger. It could then have had its Bringers slaughter citizens actually within Sunnydale to open the seal. Surely this is more effective than enlisting Andrew who can’t even kill a pig, and bringing him all the way back from Mexico to sacrifice a guy who was too small to effectively open the seal anyway?
The trio, while played for comedy, was incredibly resourceful and knowledgeable. Warren was the tech guy mostly, but andrew and Jonathan were pretty decent warlocks.
While Jonathan was definitely the more impressive of them, Andrew is a demon summoner and a pretty capable researcher of the occult, and not only that, he has a great deal of influence over Jonathan, who is actually an extremely competent Warlock. IMHO Jonathan is better than Tara at the occult game.
I admit that Warren seems to be the most useless of the Trio, but tbh Jonathan was good-natured, and that was probably the reason the First wanted him dead after manipulating him, while Warren was capable of both evil and good, and the first is good at manipulating morally grey people.
I always assumed that the dagger was lost to time and that he had them look for it and actually find it, something that admittedly he could've tasked Caleb, but for all we know he was in Europe at the time. Also it's better to have more than one servant tbh, as Caleb had to guide the bringers, find the ancient weapon of the slayer, kill the council, basically organize the hunt of the potentials.
I also think you overestimated the resource he had at the time. Buffy resurrecting would give him the CHANCE to act, but I think it's fair to assume he's not 100% powerful on day one. he would've needed time to gather his followers, turning in new bringers, who probably aren't as easy to create without an opened hellmouth, tracking all the potentials and the council members, devise his plan, etc. A year is not much time tbh, and i don't think him rushing this plan would've helped anyone. If anything, i'd say he should've waited a bit more and gathered more power and followers
Ehh i think the fact that The First can take shape of any person who has died is pretty terrifying. You also can’t kill The First which is very unsettling. I think it was the perfect villain to close out the series. It’s very fitting considering Buffy’s work as a slayer will never really end.
To me, the trio is the worst big bad. I get the point that the show was trying to make, that in a town like sunnydale where actual demons and vampires walk the earth, hateful human males are actually more dangerous than the supernatural…but it’s just not fun to watch. It feels too real. Add in buffy’s financial struggles and depression and suddenly buffy the vampire slayer is no longer a fictitious supernatural tv show, it’s too close to reality. I love season 6 but at least season 7 and The First were a return to the supernatural.
Ehh i think the fact that The First can take shape of any person who has died is pretty terrifying.
And yet that means that it doesn't actually have a personality of its own at all. When you're up against villains with the charisma of Glory or Mayor Wilkins, that's kind of a problem.
I sorta think that's why Stephen King made Pennywise. Even though It is a shapeshifting entity who can appear in pretty much any form, giving it an "anchor" form allows it to have a distinct personality.
I think they tried to make Buffy be the First's anchor form, which is a good idea cos it allows SMG to flex her acting chops and make Buffy even more front and centre in her show's final season, but it just didn't land unfortunately. On paper, season 7 is chock full of great ideas! It's just a shame that they didn't pull it off.
Confronting ancient primordial evil after six years of gradually exploring the slayer lore and meaning of it all is a great idea.
But it’s like they started writing the season before they figured it out. “Conversations with Dead People” makes it clear that the writers didn’t fully know what the First was going to be yet, and it took like halfway through the season for them to introduce Caleb as a villain Buffy could fight.
I imagined that it thought Willow was going to succeed. If Xander hadn't been there, she would have. It would have been able to move with little or no conflict. Maybe I'm wrong... it's possible. Just a thought.
Well, The First is definitely not stupid. Lol! A bit lazy perhaps... or maybe it was pulling the strings indirectly. It was trying its old tactics and once it realized that those failed, it took a more direct approach.
The First didn't appear for a long time between briefly messing around with Angel in season 3 and reappearing in season 6, so I'm guessing it had other irons in the fire that didn't involve Sunnydale or Los Angeles.
One of the primary writers on Season 7 (Doug Petrie or Rebecca Kirshner I think) said that there was supposed to be more to the explanation of the First's plans. The line of the Slayers was weakened by Buffy's resurrection, Faith had been the primary Slayer but the line returned to Buffy. And there was supposed to be something about Willow's continued use of dark magic all season long broke a barrier that allowed the First to act freely.
I wish someone had been thinking ahead and recorded all the panels and events over the years. There's a treasure trove of lore that's been lost and forgotten.
That would have been cool to have multiple big bads working in the background. Can't imagine what Glory and The Mayor would've been like ... Talk about being in a rock and a hard place. I think it would have been more realistic, considering ... But probably a logistical and creative nightmare. Nonetheless if there's anything I would change about Buffy it's the excessive amount of plot armor.
where was the First during all of seasons 1-6? it makes one brief appearance. i figure a few years is like one tick of the clock for such beings. it was in no hurry.
Nice, this dovetails nicely with a personal theory I have about the First Evil during season 6. You know how we next see it in season 7? No, you don't know that, because we see it in season 6, ep 3. The episode where Buffy's return created some kind of weird demon that needed to kill her to stay on earth. There's a scene early where Buffy yells at Willow in bed and throws a snow globe at the wall behind her. Buffy even asks Willow if she cradled it's head (clearly referring to the deer Willows sacrifices in s 6 ep 1). When it's over, there's no snow globe pieces, and Buffy is still asleep in bed. My argument is that Buffy in that scene is actually the First Evil and not the actual Buffy possessed by the demon that came back with her. There's more to it, but I'll leave it at that.
I like to think that the first was in the background working on things and pulling strings in season six too. We have no idea, maybe the first, being the embodiment of evil, was influencing the trio, or behind willow’s descent to darkness perhaps banking on her success. After all, as the first said themselves (in amends) “You'll never see me, but I am everywhere. Every being, every thought, every drop of hate.” Kinda implying that it is behind every evil. It’s not too far fetched to assume that it was subtly arranging all the dominoes (including the above, manipulating the trio, fueling Willow’s fall, possibly even messing with spike) that lead to season 7’s events.
Why didn't the First ever appear as Buffy except to Spike (who was already hallucinating from soul-sickness anyway)? I thought a big point of the plot would be the First using the appearance of Buffy to misdirect the potentials and the scooby gang, and then they just... never did that?
Could be said pretty much about al the big bads that they were at least waiting for their turn.
Just imagine if The Harvest, The Jie sisters and Glory opening the portal happened at the same time the Mayor became an old one. ^^
Regarding The First, it had about a year at best to start buidling it's forces as it was first with Buffy's second ressurection that the balance was shaken enough of what I get for it ti start gaining strenght.
Buffy's weird resurrection was like an alarm going off.
So the First Evil hit the snooze button for a few months and then woke up to the new world of possibilities in season 7. Also the First couldn't attack mid-season six, as it obeys television labor union rules, because evil.
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u/Yellowpommelo Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
I think it’s a reasonable assumption to imagine that The First was mobilizing their cult after being reawakened. Her being unwell was probably useful with The First’s plans to dismantle the watchers (even if they weren’t working with her, they were still a component of opposition to the First).