I’m currently working my way through Buffy–just about to finish the third season. With the heightened role that the Watchers’ Council and watchers-other-than-Giles play in this season, I found myself pondering two related questions.
As I understand it, “into each generation a Slayer is born.” By rights, Buffy ought to be it, world-wide; the only reason we’ve had Kendra and Faith was her brief demise in season 1. So Buffy is in Sunnydale, which is admittedly a hotbed of supernatural activity–a good place for her to be, sure. But were I a demon, vampire, or any other nasty, I’d totally move to Cleveland. Are the good people of the rest of the world left to fend for themselves?
If there’s only one Slayer at any given time, what the hell do we need an entire organization of Watchers for? They would have to gt rather bored, hanging around the English Isle unable to perform their duty for the lack of Watcherless Slayers–or Slayers generally, really.
If either or both question is answered later in the series, just let me know and I’ll sit on it and find out in the due course of time.
Seriously minor spoiler that wouldn’t ruin anything except for the most delicate of panty bunched. It’s from a throwaway line of Giles’ that has no bearing on our series or on Angel:
We find out in the series finale that there is at least one other Hellmouth, located in Cleveland.
There is never an entirely satisfactory answer to your question, although it’s suggested that the Watcher’s Council has people who do some sort of patrol/takedown in cities where the Slayer isn’t. Plus, of course, there are always independent contractors like Gunn’s gang, Angel and even Whistler fighting the good fight with no help from the Council at all.
WhyNot’s “spoiler” is also mentioned in The Wish. But it is obvious that there are any number of other groups out there fighting. In addition to the ones mentioned above, there are various covens of witches, bounty hunters, just plain hunters, rogue vampire hunters and the like.
where Alternate Buffy was fighting demons and keeping a HellMouth closed when she was summoned to Sunnydale by Alternate Giles (at Cordelia’s insistance) which is why his throwaway line in the series finale is so funny
But in all seriousness, the existence of a single Slayer actually makes a lot of sense in the context of the time and origin of the Slayer lineage.
Spoilers for season 4, 5 and 7 follow:
The men who created the First Slayer were short-sighted and fearful. They wanted a champion and so they created one. It never occured to them in their world view that a single Slayer wouldn’t be sufficient. A small primitive tribe is not going to get that in a few thousand years there will be billions of people all over the world and that demons will spread with humanity. Short-sighted. They also wanted to exercise complete control over their champion because as Buffy so amply demonstrated, the “controllers” of the Slayers (by Buffy’s time the Watchers’ Council) need the Slayer much more than the Slayer needs them. Only creating one champion makes it more likely that the creators will be able to control her. Fearful.
They also collect, collate and dispense information on Demons and Demonic activity, they have to track down the Potentials (and, occasionally, look for a Slayer who was activated without previously being identified as a Potential), and they’ve been shown to have resources for dealing with Demons outside the Slayer.
And there are Demon/Vampire hunters that aren’t affiliated with the Watcher’s Council (see the puppet from season 1 (or 2), and the principal from the last couple seasons).
And, despite their attitude toward Angel for it, Demons and Vampires don’t seem particularly adverse to preying on each other, either in addition to, or instead of, humans.
IIRC, we also see some government-backed anti-demon organizations starting around Season 4. In Season 2, we also find out that at least the local government is entirely aware of what’s going on, and takes it’s own measures to promote its best interests, whatever they may be.
In Season 5 of Angel, we discover that not only has the US Government, among others (the Nazis) been aware of, and dealing with, vampires and other such creatures, but there are several other groups out there dealing with the problem (Wesley’s cyborg-dad, for example.)
Pretty much what everyone else said: there’s only one Slayer, but the Slayer isn’t the only superpowered good guy in the world. There are all sorts of other individuals and organizations around the world fighting demons and vampires and so forth. Buffy and Angel run into quite a few of them over the course of their shows, including (some spoilers here) a demon hunter magically turned into a puppet, a gypsy sorceress posing as a high school teacher, an order of monks dedicated to hiding a magical key from an evil goddess, an order of knights dedicated to destroying the key before the goddess can find it, a black op military organization disguised as a college frat, a werewolf hunter, a team of demon-fighting Mexican wrestlers, a rogue demon hunter, vampire hunting street gangs, a guardian demon protecting a pregnant woman, an extra-dimensional oracle, the living child of two vampires, a Hellgod in the process of reformation, and, of course, two vampires with souls. Also, never actually shown but strongly implied, would be any number of combat trained former potentials who have passed their sell-by date for turning into the Slayer. And I know I’m leaving a bunch of stuff out. There’s a lot of wierdness going on in the Buffyverse. We just got to see two small corners of it.
Actually, there was a thread a few years back about how we would re-write Buffy if we were in control of the franchise. I always thought the show would have been cool if they explored more of how the Slayer interacts with various other supernatural agencies. There’s a couple eps where Buffy refers to Sunnydale as “her territory,” and LA as Angel’s. I thought it would have been cool if there’d been some sort of formalization of this setup. Sort of a feudal patchwork, where various parts of the world are under the protection of a supernatural guardian or organization, with clashes between the organizations as they pursue their individual agendas. I wonder if that thread is still around. I really liked the idea I posted in it…
Not aimed at you specifically, a general reminder.
Oh man, they had slipped my mind! I got the last of the Whedonverse DVD sets for Christmas, I have to go waych that ep now.
I don’t read any of the associated canon or non-canon Buffy material (except the first “Tales of the Slayers” book) but I am given to understand that this theme has arisen in some of it.
