Buffy Season 8 Recap - Wolves at the Gate - Part 1

We start with Renee looking through binoculars at wolves in the near by forest, they seem to be staring back at the castle and there are more arriving she tells Xander. Xander can’t use the binoculars properly due to him only having one eye so he has to trust her judgement. It is made clear that they are now dating to some extent, but they are unsure what “it” is right now, all Xander knows is that it’s a beautiful night and he cant see why anybody would want to be alone.




Willow and Andrew are flying together much like Willow and Buffy did a couple of issues ago, Willow is impressed with Andrew’s confidence and wonders why he hasn’t freaked out like other people have while flying e.g. Buffy. Andrew says that he has taken some Dramamine to calm his nerves. Willow sets Andrew down and wishes him goodnight, she believes that they deserve a quiet night after the past couple of weeks. As Andrew enters the castle we see an Asian woman appear silently behind Willow in a puff of smoke, she grabs Willow and shields her mouth so she can’t scream then she disappears taking Willow with her.








We then see what Buffy is doing on this “quiet night”. She is naked in bed with Satsu clearly having just had sex. “Wow” Buffy tells Satsu, they take a moment to enjoy each others company then Buffy explains that tomorrow they should act like nothing has happened, she makes it clear that it was a one off and Satsu gets up to leave. Buffy says sorry, she doesn’t mean it like that, she can of course stay the night and enjoy the rest of the night together. Buffy explains that while she isn’t ashamed of this, she believes it is better if its kept between them two. Suddenly Xander walks in to tell Buffy about the wolves outside but mid sentence shields his eye and exclaims that he didn’t see anything, Renee then walks in and asks Xander if they should sound the alarm, they both look at Buffy and Satsu and Xander tells Renee that he wasn’t aware there was an alarm for this, but yes, they should sound an alarm. Andrew then walks and turns the light on, he tells everyone that while the Dramamine may have him hallucinating, he is pretty sure a dozen wolves just ran down the corridors of the castle. Andrew looks at Buffy and Satsu in bed “hi Buffy, hi nude Asian girl…” he then mutters to himself that he must have taken too much Dramamine because he is clearly hallucinating. Buffy quickly tries to get dressed as the situation gets more and more embarrassing but falls over due to the rush, then Dawn’s giant eye comes to the window “Buffy?? What are you doing??”, Xander claims to Renee that this must be a dream, he has had similar dreams before so he is just going to sit down and wait for Willow to arrive. Willow then crashes through the ceiling, her face is bloodied and beaten, “we're under attack” she tells Buffy, then she looks up in shock “why are you in bed with Satsu?”. Buffy is really annoyed at these wolves, if it wasn’t for them this situation wouldn’t have happened, she pulls on her jacket and asks to be taken to these wolves.

We see a wolf walk up to Buffy's armoury, it disappears in a cloud of smoke and reappears as an Asian vampire on the other side, he picks up the Scythe and one of the other Vampires then enters too, the leader is named Toru. Buffy then opens the armoury door and tells Toru that she really hates it when people touch her stuff, she hits him to the floor, he gets back up and hits her to the floor, his vampire team mate turns into a panther and Toru places the Scythe into its mouth. The panther runs off, through a window and then throws the Scythe towards the witch that attacked Willow earlier. Toru then disappears in a cloud of smoke leaving Buffy severely confused.

Buffy and the others are debating how the vampires could have such extraordinary powers, vampires cant usually transform into other animals, or even disappear into smoke. In fact there is only one vampire that has ever been known to do that, Willow and Buffy look at Xander who doesn’t understand what they mean. “Aw crap” he says as he realises who they mean. Xander and Renee are flying in a helicopter, he makes a joke about this being their first proper date but he tells her that he will make it up to her. They land and Xander warns Renee that he has to keep an eye on him as he sometimes acts weird around this guy, she asks what he means by “weird”, the front door opens and there stands Dracula, “Hello manservant” he says to Xander, “hi” Xander replies “master” he says looking down as he realises that Dracula still has a persuasion over him.


Questions left open:
Why did the group of vampires want the Sycthe specifically?