I’d say it largely works.
And not just because Nova wants to go to Cambridge.
(Early naming, later Rowan.)
One of the possible new Scoobies gets to spotlight the horror of the whole thing well.
“What are you?”
“You know.”
It does feel very much like part one of an intro two-parter. Basically a whole story but ending on an appeal to come back.
And it’s very much a sequel, which is cool for audiences like me but I can see concerns about getting new people. I’m sure they could have gotten the balance in time.
Sunnydale is treated like Roswell, with direct relevance, largely disbelieved but also tourist-trappy.
And also the New and Old division, West Side Story wrong side of the tracks as seen in the likes of Fear Street.
Vampires have been buried since the Hellmouth closed and only now rising as New Sunnydale is being built.
Nova coming to town and coming into her power just in time.
So no big slayer army to deal with in this episode at least.
That and the Hellmouth being shut for decades gets around Chosen without undoing it.
(And though it should be a buried horde of Ubervamps, I don’t mind going back to ordinary ones that can talk and stuff.)
Nova has more of a Willow style, bookish and new to this and self-conscious and needing to grow into the confidence Buffy had plenty of from the beginning, though moments of it shine through. “I qupped! Was that cool?”
The other neo Scoobies are fun, Gracie is a particularly interesting change on the Watcher role.
I especially like Nova’s talk with her protective dad, not quite saying what’s happened but making it clear she needs to fight more of her own battles.
My real issues come in the last couple pages, where we discover they misread the threat, which escalates problems but also makes them fail-y at the start, and where we get Buffy on page 59 of 59, which really feels like a misstep and was apparently addressed in later drafts.
No comments:
Post a Comment