Halloween

"Halloween" is episode 6 of season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Plot
Buffy and Angel finally agree to a date, but Buffy is delayed at Pop's Pumpkin Patch by a vampire. Another vampire films from hiding. While Angel waits at The Bronze, Cordelia shows up. When Buffy finally arrives, she is turned away by Cordelia's sharp tongue. Cordelia continues to hit on Angel, unaware of his history.

The next day, Principal Snyder forces Buffy and her friends into chaperoning small children while they trick-or-treat. Buffy would rather take a break during the only slow night for vampires. Later, Larry the school bully threatens Xander while asking him about Buffy, who smashes Larry into a soda machine. Xander is angered by the damage that does to his reputation.

The gang has to dress up for Halloween. They head to Ethan's Costume Shoppe, where Willow gets a ghost costume and Xander buys a toy gun to go with his army fatigues from home. Buffy and Xander make up, but then she spies the most beautiful 18th-century pink dress -- one that matches what she has spied from Giles's Watcher files on Angel. Ethan Rayne appears and makes her an offer she cannot refuse.

Spike is reviewing Buffy's fight. Drusilla comes to tell him that someone will make Buffy weak on Halloween night. Meanwhile, Ethan is chanting to a statue of Janus in the back room of his shop.

On Halloween night, Buffy manages to convince Willow to wear a black mini-skirt and a long-sleeved crop shirt. Willow is very shy and tries to hide it with her ghost costume. The doorbell rings and Willow takes the opportunity to cover her skimpy outfit with the ghost costume. While taking the children trick-or-treating, people start turning into their costumes' personae: Willow becomes a real ghost (wearing a skimpy outfit), Xander a soldier and Buffy an 18th-century girl.

Willow convinces Xander to stop shooting at people in the street. They find a disoriented Buffy, who is frightened and confused by the modern world. Willow rushes them to Buffy's house, where her mother is conveniently not home. Outside, Cordelia screams and Xander rushes out to save her. They find that Cordelia has not changed into a cat, like the costume she is wearing. Willow goes to Giles for help. While Cordelia searches the house, Angel shows up and takes Buffy into the kitchen. As Angel tries to kill a vampire that has sneaked into the house, he reveals his vampire face. Buffy is horrified and runs from the house.

At the library, Willow and Giles realize Cordila rented her costume as a different shop and only the people in costumes from Ethan's store are changing. They head to the shop, where Giles reveals that he knows Ethan. He orders Willow to leave and physically persuades Ethan to tell him how to reverse the spell.

Spike is looking for Buffy, who enters an alley and meets Larry, now a pirate. Xander arrives to beat up Larry while Willow shows up to warn them of Spike. The gang tries to barricade themselves inside a warehouse, but Spike's gang breaks in. Just as Spike is about to kill Buffy, Ethan reveals the secret to ending the spell and Giles throws the statue to the floor, smashing it to pieces, breaking the spell. Buffy recovers to defeat Spike and he flees.

Willow wakes up on the porch where she "died", now wearing the ghost costume again. She takes off the ghost costume and confidently walks across the street in her mini-skirt and crop top. Unbeknownst to Willow, Oz drives by at that moment and admires her from his van.

Buffy admits to Angel that she was trying to impress him. He tells her that he hated those people back then. The women were dull. He wanted someone exciting. They kiss. The next day, Giles returns to the store to find a note. Ethan has promised to return soon.

Starring

 * Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
 * Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
 * Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
 * Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia Chase
 * David Boreanaz as Angel
 * Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles

Guest Starring

 * Seth Green as Oz
 * James Marsters as Spike
 * Robin Sachs as Ethan Rayne
 * Juliet Landau as Drusilla
 * Armin Shimerman as Principal Snyder

Co Starring

 * Larry Bagby as Larry Blaisdell

Trivia

 * Costume designer Cynthia Bergstrom picked Halloween as her favorite piece of the series.


 * There is a black and white oval sticker labeled by the letters "WP". The letters stand for the southern jam/rock band, "Widespread Panic." It can be seen in number of places in this episode; on Oz's locker door (near Cordelia when she's dressed as a cat and talking to Oz), on a bulletin board (on Willow's right when she walks into the library as a ghost), on the bathroom wall (behind Buffy's right shoulder when she and Willow are looking at the book). The same sticker appears in a number of episodes; "Inca Mummy Girl", "Bad Eggs", "Surprise", "Phases", "Bewitched", "Bothered and Bewildered", "Becoming (Part 2)", "Dead Man's Party", "A New Man", "Wild at Heart", "The Yoko Factor", and "The Replacement".


 * The costume Willow wears is described as "Hot Rocker Chick" in the script which is read by the network's censors.


 * There's a reference to the cult sci-fi series "Xena: Warrior Princess".


 * Willow's line, "Wild on me equals spaz" was cut when the episode was shown on the BBC; because in the UK, "spaz" is an extremely offensive term often used to describe a handicapped or disabled person.


 * “Halloween” pulled in an audience of 3.7 million households on its original airing.

Continuity

 * This is the episode where Xander is turned into a soldier and acquires a store of military knowledge, a theme that reappears several times in the series, most notably in "Innocence" and "Graduation Day, Part Two".


 * This episode marks the first appearance of Ethan Rayne in the series, who will show up as a minor antagonist at several points in the future.


 * This is the first hint at Giles's past, more of which is explained in "The Dark Age".


 * The two faced statue Janus used by Ethan Rayne in this episode is later seen in "Tabula Rasa" behind Giles when he finds his airline ticket in his pocket. In ancient Roman mythology, Janus was the (literally) two-faced god of gates, of doors, and of beginnings and endings, and was worshiped at harvests, marriages, births, and other kinds of beginnings. (The month January is named after him, as it is the "door" into the new year.) It might be speculated the statue in "Tabula Rasa" symbolizes Giles leaving Sunnydale and going to England.


 * This episode is shows the first interaction between Willow and Oz. (They bump into each other but he doesn't recognise her in her ghost costume).


 * Despite not being corporeal as "Ghost" Willow leaves the costume shop you see her brush against a curtain.


 * In this episode, while Willow and Buffy are looking up facts about Angel, they come over a drawing of a woman, dated 1775, and Willow states that "Angel was 18, and still human", while on many other occasions, it was stated that Angel was born in 1727, and turned in 1753, making him 48 years old in 1775.