Bring on the Night

"Bring on the Night" is the tenth episode of the seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and is the one hundred thirty-second episode altogether. It was written by Marti Noxon and Douglas Petrie and directed by Michael Grossman. It originally broadcast on December 17, 2002.

Buffy attempts to rescue Spike from The First. Giles arrives in town with three Potential Slayers and some unnerving news.

Synopsis
The Scooby Gang are recovering from the attack by the Bringers and the loss of Spike, who is still being tortured by The First in the guises of himself, Buffy, and Drusilla. Spike, however, refuses to give in, telling The First that if Buffy believes in him, he can believe in himself, too.



Back at Buffy's house, the somewhat overenthusiastic Dawn and Anya help Buffy question Andrew, who leads them to the seal in the school basement. They find Spike's blood and cover the seal up again with shovels they find next to it. Still carrying the shovels, the leave the school, meeting Principal Wood on the way. He is also carrying a shovel (from burying Jonathan in the previous episode).

Back at the Summers house, Willow's locator spell goes terribly wrong. Explosive bolts send Anya and Buffy flying while Willow is briefly possessed by the First Evil. Xander smashes a bowl used in the spell which breaks the effect and sends Willow crashing. Buffy promises the panicked witch they will not call on her to use magic until they know what they are doing.

Giles suddenly appears at the door, bringing three Potentials and the news that the Watchers Council has been destroyed. He also has information on The First's plan to destroy the Slayer line. After assessing the situation, Giles tells Buffy that she is the only chance the Potentials and in fact the world have. The Potentials try to settle in, with Kennedy showing a definite interest in sleeping in the same room as the slightly flustered Willow.



Buffy and Giles go back to the Christmas tree lot where Buffy first found the Bringers in "Amends". She falls in a hole and meets the Turok-Han, and barely manages to escape alive after a stake to the "Ubervampire's" heart fails to kill it.

Giles and Buffy return to the house to find the three Potentials hanging out in the kitchen. Giles tells them all about the vampire Buffy fought. He explains that the Turok-Han are part of a separate race of vampires that is far superior to and feared by the everyday vampires Buffy is used to. At work, Buffy researches "evil" on the Internet as Principal Wood stops to check on her. Again, in the cave, Spike is smacked around by the Ubervamp while Drusilla dances about and tries to convince Spike to decide to be on their side of the game. Spike doesn't fall for the mind tricks and earns himself more of a beating from the Ubervamp.



Buffy reviews her wounds as her mother pays her another visit. Joyce talks to Buffy about evil and its constant presence in everyone and about the pressure Buffy's feeling to deal with this evil. She wakes up to find that she's still at work and had been in the middle of a meeting with a student. The student walks off and Principal Wood watches on from his office as a very tired Buffy tries to deal with the stress. Later that evening, the gang prepares for sundown and the potential danger it brings to them. The Potentials get weapons while Andrew tries unsuccessfully to convince Buffy and Xander to untie him. As Buffy watches for the sun to set, Giles reminds her that she's the one being depended on and then Molly interrupts, informing them that Annabelle ran off.

Annabelle runs through the streets of Sunnydale until she's captured by the Ubervamp and quickly killed. Buffy shows up in time to find the dead body and be attacked by the Ubervamp herself. She is hurt and runs off in search of better fighting grounds and a useful weapon. Again, the vampire has the upper hand, but Buffy drops a bundle of heavy steel beams on the creature, smashing it to the ground. Practically unaffected, the Ubervamp rises from the mountain of beams and goes after Buffy again. He throws her around some more, finally tossing her through a stone wall where she's buried under rubble and steel on the other side.

The First in Drusilla's form gets angry with Spike as he continues to refuse to cooperate. Because of Buffy's faith in him, he feels strong enough to refuse. A terribly wounded Buffy sits alone at home as she listens to Giles and Willow talk in another room. They worry about Buffy's condition and their ability to fight this thing that seems so much bigger than them all. Buffy finally comes downstairs and gives an inspirational speech about this huge challenge before them that is bigger than any evil they've ever faced. She tells the group that she's more scared than ever, but she's not about to back down now. There's a new plan: They're declaring war on this evil instead of waiting for it to make a move.

Starring

 * Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
 * Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
 * Emma Caulfield as Anya Jenkins
 * Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers
 * James Marsters as Spike/ The First
 * Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg

Special Guest Starring

 * Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
 * Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers

Guest Starring

 * Tom Lenk as Andrew Wells
 * Iyari Limon as Kennedy
 * Clara Bryant as Molly
 * Courtnee Draper as Annabelle
 * Juliet Landau as The First/Drusilla
 * D. B. Woodside as Principal Robin Wood

Co Starring

 * Camden Toy as Ubervamp
 * Chris Wiley as Roger

Production

 * Joyce's appearances in Buffy's dreams are her last in the series.


 * Though not apparent when they first show up, the Potentials will redefine the nature of the series, in that the sheer amount of eventual Potentials represents a major shift in style for Buffy's seventh season: taking in account the eventual total number of potentials, in addition to the main characters, plus Giles, Faith, Principal Wood, Andrew, Caleb and the multiple manifestations of the First, the number of named characters grows to more than 20. This significant expansion of the cast means that screen-time is now divided among a great number of characters (some of which are excluded from some episodes entirely), where previous seasons were always mainly focused on the original Scooby Gang (Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles), with only a few more characters receiving notable amounts of attention.

Goofs, Bloopers & Continuity Errors

 * When the Scoobies and Andrew are inspecting the seal in the school basement, Dawn (seen from the back) has light, straight hair. It then cuts to a side view of her with a darker, curled hair.


 * The sequence of events in this episode is somewhat muddled. Buffy states that it is December, and The First as Dru indicates that Christmas is near. However, the episode "Conversations with Dead People" had a caption reading "November 12, 2002" and ended with Buffy learning Spike was siring vampires. The next episode, "Sleeper," picks up the same night with Buffy looking for Spike at Xander's. Buffy follows Spike into town the next night, Nov. 13, and the night after, Nov. 14, is when Spike takes her to the cellar where he buried his victims. This leads into the episode "Never Leave Me," which would take place Nov. 15, the date the Watchers Council HQ blows up and the Bringers kidnap Spike. This leads directly into the events of this episode, which would have to take place Nov. 16. The only possible gap in this sequence occurs during "Sleeper," between the scenes where Buffy wakes up Spike and where she's at home trying to prove his innocence. Logically, this scene would take place later that same day. Thus, the only way this episode could take place in December is if Buffy decided to wait more than two weeks to start searching for Spike's potential victims.
 * Near the end of the previous episode, Wood buries Jonathan. This episode begins later the same night the Bringers attacked the house, and continues into the morning, when Andrew wakes up. It is clearly daytime outside the window. Andrew takes Buffy, Xander and Dawn to find the Seal room at the school. Firstly, Dawn's hairstyle is completely different, indicating she changed it just before leaving the house. Buffy and Dawn also encounter Wood in the school basement returning the shovel he used to bury Jonathan from the previous episode. Buffy then tells Wood she'll go back to work, but then goes home, where Giles shows up later the same day. That night, Buffy and Giles go to the abandoned tree lot, and Buffy falls into the cave but doesn't emege until sunrise. That same morning, she goes back to work. So either a whole day is missing, or Buffy didn't bother to show up for work the day she said she was going to. Given the timeline illustrated above, Buffy would then be back at work at school on Nov. 17, which was a Sunday. The only way the timeline would make sense is if Andrew told the Scoobies about the Seal on Nov. 16 as established, and they waited until that night or the next morning to visit the school. That would give Dawn enough time to change her hairstyle, but means Wood waited more than a day without changing his clothes to return the shovel. But it would explain why Buffy didn't return to work the day she said she would, since it was the weekend, and push her return to work to Nov. 18, a Monday.


 * The First, in the guise of Drusilla, repeatedly refers to Spike as "Daddy." Drusilla viewed the group of vampires that sired her and she sired as a family and referred to them in such terms. Drusilla sired Spike, so it would make no sense for her to call him "Daddy."

Quotes
Buffy - "I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me. We're not ready? They're not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do. I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse? Oh, we'll give 'em one. Anyone else who wants to run, do it now. 'Cause we just became an army. We just declared war. From now on, we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them, and cut out their hearts one by one, until The First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself. There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil, and that's us. Any questions?"

Giles - "Sorry to barge in. I'm afraid we have a slight... apocalypse."

Drusilla/First - "And what makes you think you have a choice? What makes you think you will ever be any good at all in this world?" Spike - "She does. Because she believes in me."

Continuity

 * Buffy's final speech, as she asserts her own and her friends' confidence and acknowledgment of the severity of what they are facing becomes a recurring trait of season seven. In fact, in later episodes both Buffy and Andrew poke fun at this fact.


 * Xander refers to his repairing windows as a "loop", like the "mummy hand". He is referring to the mummy hand in the episode "Life Serial", which made Buffy complete a menial task over and over.


 * In this episode, the Turok-Han's blood is black but in the series finale, "Chosen", there is red blood on the weapons Buffy and the other Slayers use.