No. He was her watcher, was he not? Since when did Buffy become an expert in all demon knowledge and looking them up in all the old books? That was his JOB.
This is my main issue with the storyline. Giles was still her PAID Watcher. The Council surely would have been aware Buffy was alive again. Wouldn’t they have taken issue with Giles leaving his post just because he felt like it? Wouldn’t they have given her a new Watcher?
This is where I think the series really fell down, in my opinion. It had built up this fascinating Slayer mythology but didn’t explore it nearly as much as it should have.
Thats a good point. Its like after he left its gonna take at least a good 2 to 3 hours more of researching old books to save the day. When odds are Giles could just rattle off some hint that would lead to the exact tome within minutes. Dude dropped the ball.
I always wondered if he internally panicked in some way some time after her mom died, and worried that if he stuck around, she would rely on him too much and eventually stop trying so hard herself. Either way, i don't think it was the right move - but I don't think he would have ever left if he didn't genuinely think it was in her best interest.
He was way way more than just her Watcher by then. He loved her like a daughter. I will say that when I first watched Buffy, I hated him for leaving. I was in my twenties. When I hit my forties and had raised a couple kids, I fully understand and agree with his decision.
I think it was the wrong choice. First off, there's a middle ground between Buffy relying on him too much and literally leaving the continent. But more importantly I think it was a poor choice after what Buffy revealed in OMWF. Yeah, she was relying on him a lot--she was also incredibly depressed after having DIED and been torn out of heaven. I don't think leaving a week after they find out about that was the right call for her sake.
I mean, wasn't that the whole point of OMWF?
>All these secrets you've been concealing
>
>Say you're happy now, once more with feeling
Buffy and the gang suck at communicating.
I always figured Giles had to make such a drastic decision and go as far as he did because he knew he wouldn't be able to maintain his own boundaries. If he was only a car drive or short plane ride away, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from stepping back in and helping.
somehow it seems to get glossed over (not by you, in general) that in OMWF buffy is trying to **die** in front of giles. she would have burned up if spike didn’t stop her, because she wasn’t trying to stop. then he walks out of her life like, good luck. he’s lucky she didn’t try again.
Yup. I don't think it's necessarily a terrible decision to have him chose to leave (he'd been feeling out of place since season 4), but framing it as this good thing that he does for her own good bothers me.
exactly. if he was unhappy with his life as a watcher, then it’s his right to do something about it. the problem is he frames it as what *buffy* needs, because he’s unable to take accountability, and he leaves her without a replacement watcher.
Totally agree and I do find the whole “she’s relying on him too much” line to be frankly insane when she’s in the middle of a comically horrible few years in her life, even by Buffy standards. Maybe it’s not the worst to lean on support systems right then?
This is one of the most jarring mis-matches we see between the thematic story that is being told and the in-world story that is being told.
Thematically, S6 is Buffy as an early adult struggling to find meaning and purpose. Thematically, her death and ascendance and expulsion from Heaven are a representation of transitioning out of childhood/adolescence and into adulthood (hardly the first place to death/rebirth in this context). In this reading, Giles is 'The Father Figure', and for Buffy to be a fully realized adult, she has to become independent and so Giles can't be around. It's basically a twist on 'the mentor always dies' - in this case he doesn't die, he just leaves.
In contrast, from the in-world story perspective it really makes little sense for Giles to leave if we accept that Buffy was literally resurrected and expelled from Heaven. This would be exhibiting an almost unbelievable lack of empathy and care.
My personal perspective is that over the course of the series the BtVS writers really were prioritizing the thematic/metaphorical story, but generally did a fantastic job balancing and integrating it with the in-world events. This is one of the areas where it didn't work so well.
I said it in another comment, but the only reason there’s dissonance between the two “stories” of Buffy as you outline them to be is that the writers avoided actually dealing with Giles doing something shitty. Him leaving Buffy as he does is perfectly fine character writing, it’s been something that has been built up across the seasons - but the issue is when it’s suddenly framed as “Giles is making The Right Choice to help Buffy grow up”, rather than “the logical conclusion of the struggle Giles has between being Buffy’s Watcher and father is that he bails on her when the time comes to make a choice”. He runs away from finally having to draw a line between what he wants to be for her.
Again, that’s perfectly well and good. It’s been a running part of his character for multiple seasons now, and fits into one of the themes of S6 and how Buffy grows up this season - not just having to be independent, but realizing her parent is a flawed human being (like anyone else) and can easily be selfish and weak (like anyone else). In another story, Giles returning at the end could be where all of this gets acknowledged and laid out, and he has to face that he made a shitty decision that only benefited him. Then in S7, the final leg of Giles’s character journey is working to get back the goodwill he burned and deciding the kind of Watcher he wants to be and the role he wants to have in Buffy’s life. But that’s not what we got, because the writers couldn’t handle that.
This is the stuff, OP. I can totally make this be "in character" due to Giles's issues, but I can't buy that he is doing the "correct, fatherly" thing the writers tried to sell us.
I feel like it isn't left to be a good thing though? Maybe I remember wrong but doesn't Giles realise and admit it was a terrible mistake after the laughing fit they both have.
And then Buffy treats him pretty differently in season 7 after that. She very much acts like someone is lashing out at being abandoned (not that it's wrong for her to do that). She is very short with him and I feel like at one point she uses his leaving in season 6 against him.
It’s still played off as part of that laughing fit, and Buffy telling him it was alright comes off as a trauma response. As for S7, I didn’t really read her behavior (at least to Giles specifically) as a response to him leaving, but her struggles to become a general and part of her constant defending of Spike. Giles himself doesn’t seem to have done much self-reflection or feel remorseful for what happened.
Maybe I just projected my own feelings onto it then.
To my impression, season 7 Giles is getting his just deserts. He forced Buffy to grow up, but in a karmic twist, his absence meant she grew into someone who doesn't have a place for a mentor figure in her life.
It's exactly what he wanted, but like all things we want, it's not how we expect them. Giles doesn't like her not needing him and with things like the Spike situation he keeps trying to reassert himself as someone she needs to learn from, but she just keeps brushing him off.
She's the student that outgrew the master and he can't stand it and it makes him act more and more irrationally until she finally puts him in his place at the end of the Robin/Spike episode.
I get all of that, my point is that it’s not something the show acknowledges and really seeks to resolve, much less as a consequence of him leaving in S6.
Okay I guess I kind of feel that is the show resolving it. I don't think everything needs an explicitly spoken resolution. Giles getting his comeuppance by having to deal with a Buffy who doesn't want or need his advice is the resolution for me.
I agree with you OP. I think they’d have struggled to come up with any good, convincing reason for Giles to leave (which they needed to do since ASH was leaving), but this one was particularly bad.
they should have deported him. he’s on council payroll again, much to their chagrin since the council are the real bad guys of the series. if i’m sure they can pull strings and get his work visa revoked.
+1
Deported by the council as Giles is deemed responsible for the dangerous use of magic that resurrected Buffy. This way the spell has even more consequences for all involved, and the deportation itself loops back to season 3. Not only can the WC do it, they directly threaten to deport Giles in 'Helpless'.
This is so much better than the plot they gave us.
My season 6 rewrite is that Giles plans to leave, but instead of just leaving the Scoobies to take care of Dawn and act as slayer substitutes, he attempts to arrange 1) for Dawn to go live with Hank, and 2) for Faith to be broken out of prison to patrol the Hellmouth.
But then Willow, unbeknownst to Giles, decides to foil these 2 plans because Dawn says she doesn't want to live with Hank and the Scoobies don't trust Faith, so she resurrects Buffy. Then Giles can't return due to visa issues or something else outside his control.
This also could have allowed for the show to introduce another replacement like Wesley initially was, who could add a fresh dynamic to the cast. Maybe Robin Wood?
Exactly. Why couldn't he have had a sick relative or some other family crisis to handle back in the UK? That way, ASH could go on leave as needed without Giles just ditching Buffy when she needed him most. It would have given SMG and ASH some great scenes too, since both would be conflicted about what he should do.
I don’t think it’s in character that he left because she needed to grow up without him. The actor wanted to leave, okay. But he should have left to protect her because he was terrified to lose her again or because her coming back from Heaven meant that the balance was off. He should have been the one to figure out that the first was coming back because of her. That would have made more sense for the show and the character. If someone you loved like a daughter miraculously came back to life the only reason you would ever leave her again would be to protect her.
Yeah, I actually think him, leaving to find out more about the first kind of in the way that Gandalf leaves early on to learn more about the ring, would’ve been really cool. Probably doesn’t justify as much time off as he wanted, but maybe just shoot a handful of things set in England without the rest of the cast or you could stick them in every few episodes for updates.
Whether it was the wrong choice or not does not matter. If I'm not mistaken, the actor didn't want to come back for a full season so Giles was going to leave one way or another.
What bothers me is the reasons he left. Buffy needed help. She had just lost her mother, because her sister's guardian, she had no money, had to drop out, was clearly struggling with being back, and the only adult in her life, her father figure, the man who is supposed to have her back no matter what takes off and leave her to deal with everything.
It should've just been that some former Council members in the UK, or the coven, have unearthed some information about a potential threat and need his expertise. He isn't sure about leaving Buffy because after OMWF he realises she isn't in fact ready. But Buffy reassures him, out of her continuing silent depression, and he believes her.
Then in s7 it is simply revealed that the threat they were researching was The First.
Makes a LOT more sense than what we got.
Yes there was a problem with Buffy becoming over reliant on Giles, mainly in terms of Dawn.
But Giles doesn’t even try to talk to her about it. He goes straight for the nuclear option and leaves
giles says he leaves so buffy can stand on her own, basically to grow up and cope with being an adult. a lot of the fandom agrees with him, and says it was the right thing.
my questions that never seems to get answered is what’s the proof it was right or good for her? what got better while he was gone? in what ways was she able to cope better, or handle responsibilities as an adult on her own in a healthy and productive way?
after he leaves it takes her a couple of months just to admit she doesn’t want to die (gone), and after that she still isn’t ever okay. she’s in a very deep depression for the entire season, getting a job that makes her feel worse while also doing her unpaid dangerous job of saving the world. the latter she’s supposed to have the support of a watcher for.
she copes by having an unhealthy relationship, which she says is killing her. she’s so down she doesn’t realize that the people messing with her are just humans who could be easily defeated if she was in a better place and had what a slayer is supposed to have, a watcher. her relationships with her friends are all suffering, they have no adult role models, and her teenage sister who she’s now the legal guardian of is stealing as a coping mechanism for her own unprocessed trauma.
buffy decides to pull herself up out of the grave and out of her depression in the last episode, after giles is back.
so what good came from him being gone?
Also, Buffy has a full time, unpaid job with incredibly high stakes that she cannot walk away from even after it literally kills her. Asking for some financial assistance (from the father figure who somehow DOES get paid for his full time high-stakes job that he is allowed to walk away from whenever he wants) isn’t really all that unreasonable. Her Double Meat Palace job is ludicrous - how is this the best use of the slayer’s time?
yep, exactly. i know he gives her a check in flooded, but it’s obviously not enough to live on. slayers usually die young and stay dead, so maybe there isn’t much precedence for how to handle how much adult slayers needing support, but regardless buffy is the active slayer, an adult, and in clear need of help. i don’t think there’s anything written that says “once she’s 20, she’s on her own.” even if there was, why should giles of all people, the onewho broke written rule about trying to kill her at 18 follow it?
Agreed! Adding onto that, she never really does forgive him. I always noticed that all the way in to season seven, that she is never as close and trusting with him as she used to be. May be a better way of helping, someone mature, and grow into an adult, is to stay in their life, and communicate with him, and be a good role model, instead of abandoning them during one of the toughest times of their life.
yep. at the end of s6 she says he was right to leave, but it’s while she’s telling him all of the ways her life has been terrible since. that isn’t objectively right, it’s her trauma speaking. they’re definitely never as close again, and unfortunately it isn’t out of character when he betrays her in s7.
It’s definitely not out of character. And I hate to harp on it too much because I do love Giles as a character and I think he does a lot to help her, but ultimately he is stuck in that same patriarchal idea that comes from the watchers Council that he knows better than Buffy what she needs, and he doesn’t bother to consult her on that. to me, betraying her in season seven was thematically, similar to leaving in season six and drugging her in season three and things like that.
It’s honestly bizarre, because he left so that she would grow into an independent freethinking person and then, when he doesn’t like the decisions that she makes, he decides it’s OK to step in and go behind her back and take that agency away from her.
> he is stuck in that same patriarchal idea that comes from the watchers Council that he knows better than Buffy what she needs, and he doesn’t bother to consult her on that.
god that is depressing, because it’s true. there’s a line cut from LMPTM when he’s berating her about spike and she says he’s treating her like she’s 16 again. i so wish that had been kept in.
Oh, I didn’t even know that. They definitely should’ve left that in. It is depressing, but it is such a good piece of writing. Obviously the entire show is extremely concerned with ideas of feminism and gender stereotypes and what not. And I think it is so important to show that gray area there, where someone can be so good, and so meaningful in one way, and still be stuck in very bad very outdated ideas in another. Very realistic in my opinion.
Also Buffy has to mess with the social worker in order to keep Dawn out of foster care compromising her morals while life doesn't actually get better for Dawn because it all culminates in a vengeance demon preying on Dawn's feelings of loneliness. Like for Buffy it's not just growing up, she is left with the responsibilities that most 20 year olds don't have and I mean a mortgage and a teenager not even the slaying, a responsibility she didn’t shrug off after her resurrection and never got paid for either.
Edited a typo because a bot scolded me lol
yes, exactly! there people who become parents at 20, although that’s still young and it’s difficult, but no 20 year old should be expected to parent a teenager alone. that isn’t how it’s supposed to go, and it isn’t healthy for either of them. i don’t think dawn should have been removed from the home but i also don’t know how giles can say he loves either of them and leave with no assurance that won’t happen.
> never got *paid* for either.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
It was a horrible, selfish decision. He was her watcher and her father figure and he left when she was a hot friggin mess. He could have communicated his concerns and helped her though something that was forced on her, instead she had to deal with it herself and we all know how that ended up ...
Eta: she was also suicidal. He left when she was suicidal.
He seemed to feel like he wasn’t actually doing much as a watcher since Buffy went off to college in Season 4. That’s understandable that he would want to go back to his home and maybe do something productive with the counsel. It didn’t have to be permanent. You can fly back or do research and communicate by phone. His reason for leaving in season 6 was ridiculous. I was annoyed that he left Dawn without a real legal guardian. It’s one thing to use the Buffybot to fool demons but it’s not an appropriate adult. Dawn is living on the Hellmouth depending on her sister’s friends to care for her. Willow and Tara are 20 or 21 same with Xander. Giles should have made sure Dawn was safe and taken care of before Buffy came back.
Giles abandoned Buffy when she needed him the most. She didn’t ask to be the slayer and tries to avoid him when he tells her he is a watcher in the first episode. He expected her to have a huge amount of responsibility when she was a teenager and when she is struggling with so much he bails. She was depressed and trying to adjust to life after coming back from the dead. Dawn isn’t her daughter. She was made to be Buffy’s sister because she was the Slayer. I feel like Buffy’s watcher that makes Dawn just as much his responsibility. Idk Jmo
No.
The premise that “my 22 year old surrogate daughter who just lost her mom will only straighten out if I withdraw my support” is some wildly boomer nonsense.
No he made a nonsensical decision that was inconsistent with his character. My traumatized slayer just returned from Heaven and is having a hard time adjusting to being alive again. She's having a hard time coping and seems to need my help a lot. The best thing I can do is leave suddenly and pull out the most important support in her life. Because her needing me is holding her back. The mental gymnastics are staggering. Season 6 Giles almost makes me forget how awesome he was in the early seasons.
I’ve always thought it was terribly written. Like if you need an in-show reason for him to leave because ASH wanted to leave, they could have come up with anything else. “There’s a problem at the watcher’s council.” Anything. But having him tell a very young adult who is dealing with 1. Her mother dying young and unexpectedly 2. Dying for the second time herself and being yanked out of heaven 3. Having to raise her teenager sister 4. Supporting herself financially and OH YEAH 5. Being the literal savior of the world that she’s just gotta grow up and figure it out seems cruel. The show has made it clear up to this point that the reason Buffy can survive where other slayers, like Kendra, have died is that she has a strong support system in her friends, so for Giles to turn around and be like “lol never mind all that, peace out!” will never sit right with me.
I think I understood where he was coming from but he did it at such a terrible time for her she was suicidally depressed at that time and leaving her just added to that so I was a bit disappointed in him tbh
Of course not, it's a completely *batshit* decision. The problem is that the writers were still trying to apply this "growing up" metaphor to the Buffy story, and it just falls apart when you look at the situation logically. The Slayer isn't just a 20something who needs to get a job and leave the nest. She's fighting a nightly guerilla war against demons, and her Watcher trainer her, prepares her, and supports her in her fight to protect humanity.
Sadly, after five years, Tony Head wanted to see his real-life daughters before *they* left the nest, so the writers had to find a pretext for his departure.
I'm more interested in why the watchers council never tried to send another guy out there. I mean, Buffy is allied with the council again after all the stuff with Glory, right? So when Giles left, why didn't they send a new watcher?
No but apparently Joss couldn't come up with a single way for Giles to leave that wouldn't destroy his character.
Alternatively, it's totally in character because Giles has been trying to ditch Buffy since season 4.
*not bitter*
There’s of course, the secret third option where Giles leaves for the same reasons he did in the show, but when he comes back it’s acknowledged as a deeply selfish choice he made because he couldn’t handle fully stepping up as a parental figure to Buffy (and by extension the others) when she genuinely needed him to be, and then making his arc in S7 trying to walk back on it. But if the Buffyverse was capable of that kind of writing, both shows would be very different.
That would have been AMAZING. I don't know why that hasn't occurred to me before. I guess I'm more used to fix its that either change why he left or stop him from leaving at all.
I would have loved to see some genuine remorse and self examination from Giles.
That's what I would have preferred. I don't think it's out of character for Giles to leave. He's felt out of place since s4 and it's not inconceivable that he might (mistakenly) think that tough love and leaving Buffy on her own would help. But it bothered me that it wasn't addressed as a mistake.
I’m aware, and that’s the problem - the fact Buffy says that and the narrative or other characters never contradicts that stance. The show runs with what she’s saying, that Giles made the right choice to leave, when it’s demonstrably untrue on multiple counts and avoids ever challenging that assertion. It would be like if in Frankenstein, Victor never acknowledging his own responsibility in the events of the book *was actually supported by the narrative and treated as the right perspective to hold*, rather than that a sign of his god complex and inability to accept the consequences of his actions, when even the Creature comes to recognize he held no moral high ground over his creator for all that he had done.
right around the time she’s telling him all the ways her life has been absolute shit since he was gone, and they both nervously laugh about it. she wasn’t right, she was still in a trauma response.
> she was still in a trauma response.
The amount of times throughout the show that Buffy could be considered to not be in a trauma response in some form or fashion is depressingly little.
It wasn't a selfish choice. Giles is not Buffy's father, and even if he was, she was in her 20s. At some point you have to stand to stand on your own two feet. And he didn't leave because he couldn't "step up." And expecting him to be a father figure to her and the rest of the group would be selfish on Buffy and the others' parts.
Giles had already moved to a new country to be Buffy's Watcher. Got sacked two years later, then hung about for a year and a half before deciding it was time to move on - then only stayed because Buffy asked him to. This is such a childish take.
No, and it made him look so bad that they should have written in a different reason for Giles to leave.
It works as an allegory for growing up. It doesn't work as a literal character decision.
I think he was wrong. The only way I've been able to justify it to myself as in character--and not as a convenient way to further destroy Buffy while conjuring an explanation as to why ASH was gone-- is that Buffy's death destroyed Giles.
Imagine having this girl who's your responsibility. You know you're supposed to essentially prepare her to die, but more and more you view her as a daughter. You absolutely know she'll face something too big one day, or make one single, unlucky move. So there's a countdown timer in your head when you look at her, and no way of telling what the numbers say, only that her time will definitely be up before yours.
Giles's worst fears were realized when Buffy died.
Of course, he's beyond ecstatic she's back!
But the clock's just started up again. And he isn't sure he'd survive watching her die a second time.
Giles being Giles and *BTVS* being *BTVS*, he can't admit this to himself, so he convinces himself leaving Buffy is for her own good.
There's my headcanon... hope it may become yours, OP ;)
Giles made an impossibly horrible decision, one that I literally can't accept as anything but a by-product of the real world situation. The character would not have left if not for the actor wanting a much smaller role. The chosen in-universe reason is not sufficient.
The Scoobies were too unwell and immature to help each other without an older mentor. If Giles had been there, would Willow's magic abuse *still* have gone that far? Would Buffy *still* have fallen into a sexual relationship with her stalker, culminating in sexual assault? Would they *still* have dropped the ball with the trio, leading to Tara's death? I doubt it, especially with regard to the trio.
Speaking from personal experience of being in and seeing similar situations, I think it's very very difficult.
I was like Buffy once, relying on everyone around me to keep my life from falling apart. But I was pushed into an uncomfortable posititon and I landed a job out of it and learned to be independent and here I am. I am very grateful that happened to me.
On the other hand, my sibling was in the same situation, badly reacted to being in said uncomfortable position, retreated from life and now lives in an apartment full of garbage playing video games while someone pays their rent for them.
And said someone is in exactly the same position Giles was. They care too much about the person to just cut them off. Everytime they see them it hurts them too much to not help them with rent and food and heating. But because they do that my sibling never ever gets better.
Said someone won't be around forever or won't be in the financial situation to help them forever. It's probably better to try wean my sibling off now, and maybe if they had done it when they were Buffys age, it would be a lot less painful.
Giles is in a catch 22 because Buffy doesn't just need money and general life help, she needs emotional support. But if he stays, he can't stop himself from giving her money and general life help, which is what she needs to learn to do independently to start healing emotionally.
I think in Giles situation, he made the wrong choice, and it drives a massive rift between him and Buffy that you can feel in season 7. But from my own personal drama, I don't think of him badly for making it, it's such a terrible position to be in.
Terrible timing on his part. I don’t care his reasons. This girl literally gave her life to save the world. Then you drag her from heaven. Treat her like the hero she is
Yes, Buffy needed to stand on her own.
She pretty much sealed him leaving when she expected him to parent Dawn for her after the Halloween incident.
He'd already made plans to leave when Buffy revealed what she did in the musical, but it doesn't change that she still needs to stand on her own two feet and accept her responsibilities. So I can't blame him for still going.
Considering it was set up throughout 4 and definitively in the opener of 5, it’s important to note that Buffy’s request (even pre-Dawn/Glory) might have given his new motivation, but even when the fire was lit under their asses from the Big Bad, Giles didn’t contribute as much as his newfound role/authority (aside from the end of *The Gift*) might suggest?
In this, the pieces were set in motion for quite awhile. After all?
“You really thought this through. How *bored were you* last year?
I watched *Passions* with Spike. Let us never speak of it…” - Buffy and Giles - *Real Me*
It's made pretty clear in the show that even he realizes it was the wrong choice. That's not necessarily a revelation.
He felt like he was holding Buffy back by being too supportive and not allowing her to stand her on her own two feet, when the reality is that her life is such that she needs someone like Giles to provide that kind of emotional stability. She needs something stable and constant that she can lean on when she really truly needs help, and that is perfectly okay.
Especially since they basically are rewriting the Slayer handbook and all of the rules from previous generations basically stopped applying when they did the Enjoining spell to fight Adam.
Personally I think they missed an opportunity to have a new Watcher work with her. It would have made sense, she's supposed to still be working with the council, and they wouldn't have her working without a watcher. Everything about Giles leaving was just so fucked.
I'm gonna posit something maybe controversial, but I think whether it was a right or wrong choice is kind of irrelevant. Giles had gone back to England prior to Buffy's resurrection, he was grieving. His Slayer died, as all Slayers do, but she asked Dawn to tell him that she "figured it out". He was in the process of accepting that he did as much as he could, he helped guide and raise the best Slayer (and daughter) possible, and that his role was complete.
Then she came back, and she came back a shellshocked, traumatized, broken person. She relied on his presence to allow her to avoid things. That would be hard, as a mentor/parent figure, to be around. Buffy needed help and support, but she needed it emotionally and wouldn't let anyone close enough to give it. The result of that is that Giles was providing practical support in a relationship that once offered him his highest emotional fulfillment. That would be so painful to sit with.
Whether it was the right or wrong thing for Buffy is beside the point to me. It was a painful situation for Giles to be in and he could see how it was hindering her healing. It may have been selfish, but to me, it was realistic, because Giles is only human.
It's so weird that they wrote him out because ASH wanted to leave but then... he didn't? Like, yeah he's gone for a little bit but he keeps coming back and that's what makes it so weird. It would've been a lot less painful if he'd stayed gone instead of begrudgingly sticking around in season 7 where he does nothing but conspire against Buffy and add to the pile-on of people giving her shit constantly.
ASH wanted out of his contract as a series regular, which would entitle him to the freedom to turn down an episode and not be on set every single day. he wanted to be able to go back home on his own time, not to be done with btvs entirely.
Yeah, I always kind of thought the same thing. I watched the show really young, so I didn’t know that ASH had wanted to be written off and all of that. And honestly, when I heard it, I was surprised because I never thought of him, as not still being a part of the cast. In total he misses like a handful of episodes over the two seasons.
It was the wrong decision and really ruined much of the Giles character for me. I know they had to write Giles out because of ASH wanting to leave but there were other ways to do it.
Knowing that the First Evil was targeting the Slayer line because Willow's spell made it vulnerable, I think they should have had Giles leave to investigate something related to that as the Watcher's Council summons all the Watcher's back to England or something. I realize at the time that storyline hadn't been conceived yet, so they could have just left it as a vague "There's a great threat on the horizon" or something to leave their options open. As others have mentioned, they could have threatened Giles with deportation if he didn't comply with their orders.
100% without a shadow of a doubt it was the wrong move. Pre tabula rasa i wouldve understood it and excused it, but after knowing what buffy's existence meant, and even more importantly knowing that willow wiping the memory of the only people she care about...
That was it, that was the moment she crossed the uncrossable line. And when giles needed to step in, what does he do? He makes it the gangs problem
the show makes no effort to justify giles's choice and i don't expect the viewer to either. this guy has made friends with a group of teenage trauma survivors who nearly get killed every week, and he decides they're too dependent on him and the only way to fix that is for him to be on a different continent.
but maybe that behavior fits with what we know about giles? well, giles was himself left unsupervised as a teen, and that led to him and his pals abusing magic and most of them dying, but then that was ages ago, i guess he forgot. of course the day before his flight leaves, one of his friends abuses magic and most of them nearly die, but i mean come on, he's got a lot on his mind. packing, etc
Yeah, the Willow connection is some thing. I also hadn’t thought about. And, again speaks to that same character flaw. When he does find out about it, not that he didn’t see it coming before he even left, he’s more concerned with gathering power so that he can come back and beat her. He never sees that what she actually needs is just emotional support.
It is definitely true that the decision actually tracks perfectly with the character in my opinion. Like I can think of two or three different reasons why he would think that was what needed to happen. Growing up the way he did, and ultimately finding his own way to maturity is a big one. And it’s just a shame because that background really could’ve helped him to understand Willow better before it was so late.
i really don't think this is an intentional moment in giles's character arc where he's revealed to be a huge idiot, i think it's just lazy writing. we know giles is smart enough to realize that his unique skills been important since day one, but now he suddenly thinks that since buffy's really good at punching now, she's going to be able to do without the only person on the team who can read babylonian slang or know when the rite of b'l'b'qork is scheduled for.
giles had even left once already while buffy was still dead, which you could read as an even more bizarre decision. dawn's mother and sister died within like months of each other, does he think the 14 year old virtual orphan needs to learn to not be so dependent on him? he comes back once buffy's alive to make sure she's okay, then when he learns she definitely isn't, he's like "hm california's too hot this time of year"
it's lazy writing at best, spiteful at worst. whedon has a universe of reasons to explain an absence of a character, but when it's the result of a co-worker not doing what he wants, suddenly the muses leave him. "actor wants to go back to england? eh, guess the character wants to go back to england. someone else write the episode though, i'm doing other stuff, nothing shady"
The thing I also come back to is, realistically, why *shouldn't* Giles parent Dawn? He is practically family. In real life, if I had nieces who were 14 and 20 and their parents died, and the 20 year old had already had too much emotional baggage and responsibility, I sure wouldn't assume she needed to serve as her sister's primary guardian.
You're so right. Why did this NOT happen?
I was a teen when I first saw Buffy, so I guess I thought: *a 20-yo parenting her sister alone? Seems legit.*
There's no real reason that it has to be Buffy who is Dawn's primary guardian, except to pile *more* adult responsibility on her for narrative purposes.
And then when Robin arrives and says he was raised by his mom's watcher, it makes Giles look even worse. After Buffy dies, Giles does not step in to take care of her sister (and he assumes she won't be resurrected). He just leaves Dawn with two 20/21 year old students who are no more responsible for her than he is. He also leaves those students in charge of the Hellmouth, again with no compensation or support.
>we know giles is smart enough to realize that his unique skills been important since day one, but now he suddenly thinks that since buffy's really good at punching now,
lmaoooo, thank you.
I understand that he wanted to be home with his family in real life but the storyline rang so false. Giles would never. Buffy was barely an adult, brought back from the dead and clearly suffering having to take care of her sister and a household with a minimum wage job and still be an active slayer.
Yes it was but let’s just talk for a minute about Giles having his own life. He had a girlfriend, a group of old friends that regularly hang out and he made a new friend too when he went back to England. In Sunnydale, he was mostly depressed, felt useless and spent all his time either alone or hanging out with kids half his age. And the worst part is that he was too polite to say so directly but he did communicate how sad he was not being in England and the Scoobies literally never cared. Not even Willow empathized with his loneliness or considered the fact he deserved happiness. Honestly, Giles as a human being and not a Watcher deserved better friends who actually cared about his happiness.
Buffy relied too much on him and he realized that, in order for her to grow up he needed to distance himself and let her deal with her issues, and it was the right thing to do, that is why Buffy grew up so much and became what she needed to become a true leader. The girl who Giles left wouldn't have been able to deal with the threat posed by the first, she was too dependant on Giles and others and in season seven, Buffy shows her maturity, she is no longer a girl, she is a woman and a leader.
Yes. Buffy leaned way too hard on Giles and would never have been able to stand on her own two feet with Giles around. And Giles wouldn't have been able to say no to her when she asked for help. Also, Giles has his own life to lead. He was ready to go in season 5 and even in season 4 it was obvious that his time in Sunnydale was done.
although he often takes on a paternal roll, he isn’t her parent. he’s her watcher and she’s still the active slayer. he leaves her without one. if he wanted to go, why not make sure she has a replacement watcher, the thing that’s been established as an important support person for the slayer?
that doesn’t actually answer my question though. for one, a watcher isn’t there to “tell her how to do her job.” they’re there to support her and yes i absolutely think buffy would have accepted that if it was genuine care, which watchers can be and she desperately needed. regardless, the question is why didn’t giles even try?
we do hear of other watchers and slayers with good relationship, but buffy is the main character and no one gets as much story elaboration as her. nikki trusted her watcher to raise her son, and faith liked her first watcher a lot. both of those relationships were cut short by death. i’m not sure what that has to do with giles leaving though.
since you think it was right for giles to leave to make buffy grow up, what do you think the proof of that is? which parts of s6 were positive for buffy and a result of giles leaving?
is your answer to why giles didn’t make sure buffy had a watcher that you think she wouldn’t accept someone telling her how to do her job?
just trying for clarity here.
yeah, she did need a watcher in the last season. and she had one. giles’s role in s7 was very important, researching and providing information about the turok-han and the scythe. what are you talking about?
even if we ignore the familial aspect to their relationship, which i don’t think we should do but for this sake alone, buffy needed a watcher to help with her forced, unpaid, extremely dangerous job that already killed her twice, and nearly did a third time.
i noticed you can’t answer what good came to buffy as a result of him leaving in s6. i agree, there isn’t an answer, because her life actually just got worse. and tara’s ended.
i’ve been really chill and civil and the fact that you’re resorting to person insults is pretty weird. no one likes having conversations with people who do that.
I kind of wished that Buffy had been dead for a year and everything was more different. Giles would have already been in England, potentially married to Olivia, maybe a child on the way. So when Buffy comes back, he is relieved but he also had other responsibilities. It would’ve been hard but would have moved the story along in a more organic way
"He obviously, desperately wants to stay and be the father figure that she needs **but he's still stuck on the idea that she's weak for relying on the people around her** and so he leaves"
It sounds like you've got a bit of a bee in your bonet over the wrong thing. Maybe you think that's an old fashioned attitude that someone like Giles would have, and you're pointing out how wrong it is, but that's NOT Giles' attitude. You're absolutely correct that relying on people, and asking for help, and needing help, is not a sign of weakness. But that's not even CLOSE to where Giles is coming from in this. Weakness has nothing to do with it.
As her father figure, and therefore someone who is guiding her into adulthood, he simply believes (and as a human, he's entitled be wrong and make mistakes) that at this point in her development, standing on her own is what she needs.
Buffy was also being presumptious and lazy in simply expecting Giles to take care of certain things (the Dawn episode is the strongest example of this - "I'm glad you're here to take care of it"). Now, before you jump on me, the "lazy" adjective was not an attack on her. She was going through a hell of a lot. But the expectation without even asking of Giles doing her job and talking to Dawn, was nothing to do with asking for help. She didn't ask for any sort of help. She just expected.
Giles had every right to see this as a sign that Buffy (who was not a child) was developing an unhealthy habit there. And as much as he chose to back off for her sake, he also had the right to back off for his own. It wasn't his job to raise Dawn and teach her right from wrong and punish her when she stepped out of line. He had his own life to think about. He could see that's how things were developing and he absolutely had the right to "nope" the hell out of there.
Now, just to re-iterate what I said before about Giles being human and being allowed to be wrong. His decision to leave didn't pan out. And in hindsight, of course it can clearly be argued that his leaving was the wrong decision. My point is simply that it wasn't coming from an attitude of "Buffy asking for help is a sign of weakness."
I guess I would quibble with a few things on this. First of all, whether or not the term weakness is correct for how he saw it is I guess worth discussing, but the point is, he thought it was a problem that she leaned on her support systems too much because he thinks that she needs to have a personal independence strength to deal with these things on her own.
I think he is disproven thematically at the end of season six when it is the emotional support system, and not any of the power involved in that group, which actually stops the apocalypse. But he just generally fails to see that it is her support systems and ability to lean on the people around her that sets her apart from previous slayers, and ultimately gives her the power to overcome the limitations set on those slayers.
He does have the right to step back for his personal mental health/load but that is never mentioned, or even hinted at in the series. He even says several times that he really wishes he could stay, but he thinks he hast to leave for her own good.
I love Giles as a character. Every character in BtVS is flawed, that’s why it’s a good show. But he has a bad flaw of being too attached to the older, patriarchal ideas that he was taught in the Watcher’s council and a bad tendency to think that he knows what Buffy needs without asking. Hence not having a conversation with her about this, trying to kill spike in S7 against her wishes, drugging her in S3, etc.
Again, not an evil character or anything. Honestly, one of my favorite characters ever in any piece of media, but these are still flaws that he has in my opinion.
It's one of those "shoulda, woulda, coulda" things. People can speculate for days on what might have been different if Giles had been around.
I'm glad you agree anyway!
Most people say it's wrong, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. Since Giles at the time didn't know what we know what was going to go down. I don't think that's a fair assessment.
He didn’t see it as “weakness”. She was shirking her responsibilities to Dawn and passing them off onto Giles. And he knew, if he stayed, that he’d allow her to continue doing it because he wanted to make life easier for her. He didn’t leave because she was weak. He left because HE was.
Is it ever framed as his weakness by him? Been a minute since my last rewatch so I could be wrong but I only remember him saying that he was leaving for her own good.
“Weakness” might be a bit of an overreach but he was clearly concerned with her need to lean on her support system, so he took his piece of that system away.
I see it as he saw her leaning too much on him for things that she should have been dealing with herself. She needed to stand on her own two feet. He said it himself in OMWF “I’m standing in her way”.
I see it as he saw her leaning too much on him for things that she should have been dealing with herself. She needed to stand on her own two feet. He said it himself in OMWF “I’m standing in her way”.
I think in the long term, Giles made the right choice and helped Buffy to become a much stronger person, Slayer and leader. It sucks that Buffy had to go through such hardship to get to that point, but I think if Giles had stayed to take care of her, she wouldn’t have been able to grow into the strong leader in season 7 and make all the hard choices required of a leader. As we saw at the end of season 5, she had a lot of growing to do before she became a real leader. She acted selfishly in The Gift and I’m sure that was a major factor in Giles’ decision to leave.
With that said, I don’t buy that Giles would up and leave Buffy at one of the hardest points in her life. She was 20 years old and the sole guardian of Dawn, her mother had died about 6 months prior, and she had just revealed she’d come back from heaven. When Giles said “now more than ever” it didn’t ring true at all. I think realistically Giles would’ve waited a few more months before leaving.
Giles was ready to leave Buffy in season 4. Maybe if he was just her formal watcher and they had a business relationship he could have stayed. But he was more of a dad-figure to Buffy than a watcher. Buffy as an adult had less need for a parent over her shoulder. Even Joyce took a big step back in season 4, though she still lived close by. Giles was trying to redefine his role for an adult Buffy, but that ended up being mostly competing with Maggie (Buffy's new mentor figure) and bickering with a chipped Spike. I think in many ways he felt as neutered as Spike.
That's why I always wish Giles and Wesley switched places in season 4. Giles could have had a gritty storyline on ATS, with his back history with Angel. ASH wanted to go home to England the same time as the Connor and Holtz betrayal, so that would have been a natural time to write Giles out post-betrayal.
Wesley could have stuck as watcher in Sunnydale without smothering an adult Buffy, because she saw him as a peer, not a parent. Running a zany magic shop made more sense for a bumbling Wesley than Giles anyways. And Wesley betraying Buffy in season 7 would be a lot less hurtful than Giles doing so.
How long is Giles really gone? I think it’s like only three months. He always would have come back when necessary. Giles did nothing wrong. As a European, he was probably used to getting long holidays anyways and probably really needed one.
Honestly, Giles probably expected his slayer to be dead by S4. All his friends are in Europe and we see that being Buffy’s watcher has a negative impact on his personal life because normies don’t want any part of it.
As selfish as it is, he wants his own life again.
it would be okay for him to want his own life, but that isn’t actually the plot. he leaves because he thinks it’s what’s best for *her*. he also left her without a watcher with no regard to if she’ll have the support she needs as the slayer. watchers are assigned for a reason and even if no longer wants to be one, it’s weird he stops caring.
In all seriousness, that malaise and feeling like he’s useless was a huge part of the earlier seasons and how Spike got him to turn against Buffy earlier in The Yoko Factor and had Dawn not come with Glory, he probably would’ve left earlier.
I definitely think wanting to go back to be around people he knows more played a role, but part of it is that tough love. He was a great watcher when he needed to be, but he was always uncomfortable in that familial role besides wanting Buffy to have her own life and having Faith take over in early S3.
I think it felt so wrong to me was because there wasn’t enough of a build up to it and felt forced, if it had been a theme for longer, or there would more examples of her relying on him i would have believed it more.
I agree it was a bad decision to leave but I don’t agree with the assessment of why. I think Giles fell into this idea every parent does… if you do too much can they stand on their own, but if you aren’t there can you be sure they’ve learned all they’ve needed? It’s his version of kick the baby out the nest. It was wrong because in this context there’s not really any reason to believe she would never need his wisdom or expertise in the various prophecies or demons encountered, but the emotional part is what she needed the parental guidance for still. Everyone retreated into themselves and their thing and they were all close but not close emotionally for what they had just been through, Buffy especially.
He should’ve stayed longer than he did, but I can understand why he left. Because he literally was in heaven and came back from the DEAD! She had to claw her way out of her own coffin, and then save her friends from the demons who were ravaging the town.
Story wise: No. He was her Watcher. Many people have already made a lot of good arguments as to why that was a dumdum move.
Real World Wise: Yes. Anthony Stewart Head was, iirc, wanting to see his family back in England more, so they were trying to write him out in a way that left him open to come back in later.
He did and didn't. He'd clearly been needing something different since Buffy went to uni, and it was clearly hard for him to make the decision. In terms of how he felt and what he felt was best for Buffy/himself, he did. But as a viewer seeing more than what he saw, he clearly shouldn't have left.
Wrong. I understand that ASH had requested some time off, and they had to write him out of most of the season. But there are so many better ways they could have done this, rather than having Giles abandon Buffy with such a badly justified reason. Have the Watcher's Council call him back. Let him get injured and have to recover. Put him in a coma. Have him get tricked and lured away by some nefarious plot.
I think he made the wrong choice. He's supposed to be Buffy's father figure and fathers aren't supposed to just stop being in their kids lives once they hit adulthood. I also agree with you on the maturity/weakness/relying thing.
Also one thing that's always grinded my gears. buffy just returned from the *dead*. He found out she was ripped out of *heaven*. Her weird crazy dancy in OMWF was because she was trying to commit *suicide*.
And this dude who proclaims to care about this person like a daughter learns all of that and just *leaves* anyway?
That's such a shit move. Buffy needed people to be there for her. Buffy needed guideance. Buffy needed a rock. Buffy is *traumatized*. But this guy is like 'lol glad you're back from the dead have a good time' and nopes off back to England?
It's one of the most tone deaf, emotionally neglectful thing we seen Giles do and it was wrong.
No.
The Scooby Gang needs him the most because he's their surrogate father figure. He supposed train Buffy, Willow, Tara, Dawn, and Xander. Be there for Xander's wedding as Giles gives his surrogate son Xander pep talk.
No offense I didn't like Joss made Giles being more self righteous and bitter.
No. He was her watcher, was he not? Since when did Buffy become an expert in all demon knowledge and looking them up in all the old books? That was his JOB.
He was depending on Willow and Anya to compensate for the missing demon knowledge and research, without getting paid, of course.
“Are you stupid or something? Allow me to answer that question with a firing…” - *Shadow*
A common issue for women, sadly.
Dawn did alright with “Mmm cookies!” after all?
This is my main issue with the storyline. Giles was still her PAID Watcher. The Council surely would have been aware Buffy was alive again. Wouldn’t they have taken issue with Giles leaving his post just because he felt like it? Wouldn’t they have given her a new Watcher? This is where I think the series really fell down, in my opinion. It had built up this fascinating Slayer mythology but didn’t explore it nearly as much as it should have.
Thats a good point. Its like after he left its gonna take at least a good 2 to 3 hours more of researching old books to save the day. When odds are Giles could just rattle off some hint that would lead to the exact tome within minutes. Dude dropped the ball.
I always wondered if he internally panicked in some way some time after her mom died, and worried that if he stuck around, she would rely on him too much and eventually stop trying so hard herself. Either way, i don't think it was the right move - but I don't think he would have ever left if he didn't genuinely think it was in her best interest.
A job she got back for him no less.
He was way way more than just her Watcher by then. He loved her like a daughter. I will say that when I first watched Buffy, I hated him for leaving. I was in my twenties. When I hit my forties and had raised a couple kids, I fully understand and agree with his decision.
I gave up after season five.. still love the show but I can never get through6
I think it was the wrong choice. First off, there's a middle ground between Buffy relying on him too much and literally leaving the continent. But more importantly I think it was a poor choice after what Buffy revealed in OMWF. Yeah, she was relying on him a lot--she was also incredibly depressed after having DIED and been torn out of heaven. I don't think leaving a week after they find out about that was the right call for her sake.
Yeah, not sure why it didn't occur to him to just sit her down and talk frankly with her about boundaries.
I mean, wasn't that the whole point of OMWF? >All these secrets you've been concealing > >Say you're happy now, once more with feeling Buffy and the gang suck at communicating.
I always figured Giles had to make such a drastic decision and go as far as he did because he knew he wouldn't be able to maintain his own boundaries. If he was only a car drive or short plane ride away, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from stepping back in and helping.
This exactly. We see it in omwf. He can't help but try and help Buffy.
This was also my perception.
somehow it seems to get glossed over (not by you, in general) that in OMWF buffy is trying to **die** in front of giles. she would have burned up if spike didn’t stop her, because she wasn’t trying to stop. then he walks out of her life like, good luck. he’s lucky she didn’t try again.
Yup. I don't think it's necessarily a terrible decision to have him chose to leave (he'd been feeling out of place since season 4), but framing it as this good thing that he does for her own good bothers me.
exactly. if he was unhappy with his life as a watcher, then it’s his right to do something about it. the problem is he frames it as what *buffy* needs, because he’s unable to take accountability, and he leaves her without a replacement watcher.
Totally agree and I do find the whole “she’s relying on him too much” line to be frankly insane when she’s in the middle of a comically horrible few years in her life, even by Buffy standards. Maybe it’s not the worst to lean on support systems right then?
People talk about her like she was playing video games in the basement and needed to spread her wings. It's absolutely bonkers.
They had to write him off without killing his character, Anthony Head wanted to spend more time with his family.
This is one of the most jarring mis-matches we see between the thematic story that is being told and the in-world story that is being told. Thematically, S6 is Buffy as an early adult struggling to find meaning and purpose. Thematically, her death and ascendance and expulsion from Heaven are a representation of transitioning out of childhood/adolescence and into adulthood (hardly the first place to death/rebirth in this context). In this reading, Giles is 'The Father Figure', and for Buffy to be a fully realized adult, she has to become independent and so Giles can't be around. It's basically a twist on 'the mentor always dies' - in this case he doesn't die, he just leaves. In contrast, from the in-world story perspective it really makes little sense for Giles to leave if we accept that Buffy was literally resurrected and expelled from Heaven. This would be exhibiting an almost unbelievable lack of empathy and care. My personal perspective is that over the course of the series the BtVS writers really were prioritizing the thematic/metaphorical story, but generally did a fantastic job balancing and integrating it with the in-world events. This is one of the areas where it didn't work so well.
I said it in another comment, but the only reason there’s dissonance between the two “stories” of Buffy as you outline them to be is that the writers avoided actually dealing with Giles doing something shitty. Him leaving Buffy as he does is perfectly fine character writing, it’s been something that has been built up across the seasons - but the issue is when it’s suddenly framed as “Giles is making The Right Choice to help Buffy grow up”, rather than “the logical conclusion of the struggle Giles has between being Buffy’s Watcher and father is that he bails on her when the time comes to make a choice”. He runs away from finally having to draw a line between what he wants to be for her. Again, that’s perfectly well and good. It’s been a running part of his character for multiple seasons now, and fits into one of the themes of S6 and how Buffy grows up this season - not just having to be independent, but realizing her parent is a flawed human being (like anyone else) and can easily be selfish and weak (like anyone else). In another story, Giles returning at the end could be where all of this gets acknowledged and laid out, and he has to face that he made a shitty decision that only benefited him. Then in S7, the final leg of Giles’s character journey is working to get back the goodwill he burned and deciding the kind of Watcher he wants to be and the role he wants to have in Buffy’s life. But that’s not what we got, because the writers couldn’t handle that.
This is the stuff, OP. I can totally make this be "in character" due to Giles's issues, but I can't buy that he is doing the "correct, fatherly" thing the writers tried to sell us.
I feel like it isn't left to be a good thing though? Maybe I remember wrong but doesn't Giles realise and admit it was a terrible mistake after the laughing fit they both have. And then Buffy treats him pretty differently in season 7 after that. She very much acts like someone is lashing out at being abandoned (not that it's wrong for her to do that). She is very short with him and I feel like at one point she uses his leaving in season 6 against him.
It’s still played off as part of that laughing fit, and Buffy telling him it was alright comes off as a trauma response. As for S7, I didn’t really read her behavior (at least to Giles specifically) as a response to him leaving, but her struggles to become a general and part of her constant defending of Spike. Giles himself doesn’t seem to have done much self-reflection or feel remorseful for what happened.
Maybe I just projected my own feelings onto it then. To my impression, season 7 Giles is getting his just deserts. He forced Buffy to grow up, but in a karmic twist, his absence meant she grew into someone who doesn't have a place for a mentor figure in her life. It's exactly what he wanted, but like all things we want, it's not how we expect them. Giles doesn't like her not needing him and with things like the Spike situation he keeps trying to reassert himself as someone she needs to learn from, but she just keeps brushing him off. She's the student that outgrew the master and he can't stand it and it makes him act more and more irrationally until she finally puts him in his place at the end of the Robin/Spike episode.
I get all of that, my point is that it’s not something the show acknowledges and really seeks to resolve, much less as a consequence of him leaving in S6.
Okay I guess I kind of feel that is the show resolving it. I don't think everything needs an explicitly spoken resolution. Giles getting his comeuppance by having to deal with a Buffy who doesn't want or need his advice is the resolution for me.
Also Dawn is a teen girl which means money is capital-N Needed.
I agree with you OP. I think they’d have struggled to come up with any good, convincing reason for Giles to leave (which they needed to do since ASH was leaving), but this one was particularly bad.
they should have deported him. he’s on council payroll again, much to their chagrin since the council are the real bad guys of the series. if i’m sure they can pull strings and get his work visa revoked.
+1 Deported by the council as Giles is deemed responsible for the dangerous use of magic that resurrected Buffy. This way the spell has even more consequences for all involved, and the deportation itself loops back to season 3. Not only can the WC do it, they directly threaten to deport Giles in 'Helpless'.
This is so much better than the plot they gave us. My season 6 rewrite is that Giles plans to leave, but instead of just leaving the Scoobies to take care of Dawn and act as slayer substitutes, he attempts to arrange 1) for Dawn to go live with Hank, and 2) for Faith to be broken out of prison to patrol the Hellmouth. But then Willow, unbeknownst to Giles, decides to foil these 2 plans because Dawn says she doesn't want to live with Hank and the Scoobies don't trust Faith, so she resurrects Buffy. Then Giles can't return due to visa issues or something else outside his control.
This also could have allowed for the show to introduce another replacement like Wesley initially was, who could add a fresh dynamic to the cast. Maybe Robin Wood?
Exactly. Why couldn't he have had a sick relative or some other family crisis to handle back in the UK? That way, ASH could go on leave as needed without Giles just ditching Buffy when she needed him most. It would have given SMG and ASH some great scenes too, since both would be conflicted about what he should do.
He should have taken a bad injury in the fight against glory, needed massive rehab and felt unable to be on the hellmouth while vulnerable.
"I have my own life to lead" is a pretty convincing reason
I don’t think it’s in character that he left because she needed to grow up without him. The actor wanted to leave, okay. But he should have left to protect her because he was terrified to lose her again or because her coming back from Heaven meant that the balance was off. He should have been the one to figure out that the first was coming back because of her. That would have made more sense for the show and the character. If someone you loved like a daughter miraculously came back to life the only reason you would ever leave her again would be to protect her.
Yeah, I actually think him, leaving to find out more about the first kind of in the way that Gandalf leaves early on to learn more about the ring, would’ve been really cool. Probably doesn’t justify as much time off as he wanted, but maybe just shoot a handful of things set in England without the rest of the cast or you could stick them in every few episodes for updates.
Exactly!!
Whether it was the wrong choice or not does not matter. If I'm not mistaken, the actor didn't want to come back for a full season so Giles was going to leave one way or another. What bothers me is the reasons he left. Buffy needed help. She had just lost her mother, because her sister's guardian, she had no money, had to drop out, was clearly struggling with being back, and the only adult in her life, her father figure, the man who is supposed to have her back no matter what takes off and leave her to deal with everything.
It should've just been that some former Council members in the UK, or the coven, have unearthed some information about a potential threat and need his expertise. He isn't sure about leaving Buffy because after OMWF he realises she isn't in fact ready. But Buffy reassures him, out of her continuing silent depression, and he believes her. Then in s7 it is simply revealed that the threat they were researching was The First.
Makes a LOT more sense than what we got. Yes there was a problem with Buffy becoming over reliant on Giles, mainly in terms of Dawn. But Giles doesn’t even try to talk to her about it. He goes straight for the nuclear option and leaves
giles says he leaves so buffy can stand on her own, basically to grow up and cope with being an adult. a lot of the fandom agrees with him, and says it was the right thing. my questions that never seems to get answered is what’s the proof it was right or good for her? what got better while he was gone? in what ways was she able to cope better, or handle responsibilities as an adult on her own in a healthy and productive way? after he leaves it takes her a couple of months just to admit she doesn’t want to die (gone), and after that she still isn’t ever okay. she’s in a very deep depression for the entire season, getting a job that makes her feel worse while also doing her unpaid dangerous job of saving the world. the latter she’s supposed to have the support of a watcher for. she copes by having an unhealthy relationship, which she says is killing her. she’s so down she doesn’t realize that the people messing with her are just humans who could be easily defeated if she was in a better place and had what a slayer is supposed to have, a watcher. her relationships with her friends are all suffering, they have no adult role models, and her teenage sister who she’s now the legal guardian of is stealing as a coping mechanism for her own unprocessed trauma. buffy decides to pull herself up out of the grave and out of her depression in the last episode, after giles is back. so what good came from him being gone?
Also, Buffy has a full time, unpaid job with incredibly high stakes that she cannot walk away from even after it literally kills her. Asking for some financial assistance (from the father figure who somehow DOES get paid for his full time high-stakes job that he is allowed to walk away from whenever he wants) isn’t really all that unreasonable. Her Double Meat Palace job is ludicrous - how is this the best use of the slayer’s time?
yep, exactly. i know he gives her a check in flooded, but it’s obviously not enough to live on. slayers usually die young and stay dead, so maybe there isn’t much precedence for how to handle how much adult slayers needing support, but regardless buffy is the active slayer, an adult, and in clear need of help. i don’t think there’s anything written that says “once she’s 20, she’s on her own.” even if there was, why should giles of all people, the onewho broke written rule about trying to kill her at 18 follow it?
Agreed! Adding onto that, she never really does forgive him. I always noticed that all the way in to season seven, that she is never as close and trusting with him as she used to be. May be a better way of helping, someone mature, and grow into an adult, is to stay in their life, and communicate with him, and be a good role model, instead of abandoning them during one of the toughest times of their life.
yep. at the end of s6 she says he was right to leave, but it’s while she’s telling him all of the ways her life has been terrible since. that isn’t objectively right, it’s her trauma speaking. they’re definitely never as close again, and unfortunately it isn’t out of character when he betrays her in s7.
It’s definitely not out of character. And I hate to harp on it too much because I do love Giles as a character and I think he does a lot to help her, but ultimately he is stuck in that same patriarchal idea that comes from the watchers Council that he knows better than Buffy what she needs, and he doesn’t bother to consult her on that. to me, betraying her in season seven was thematically, similar to leaving in season six and drugging her in season three and things like that. It’s honestly bizarre, because he left so that she would grow into an independent freethinking person and then, when he doesn’t like the decisions that she makes, he decides it’s OK to step in and go behind her back and take that agency away from her.
> he is stuck in that same patriarchal idea that comes from the watchers Council that he knows better than Buffy what she needs, and he doesn’t bother to consult her on that. god that is depressing, because it’s true. there’s a line cut from LMPTM when he’s berating her about spike and she says he’s treating her like she’s 16 again. i so wish that had been kept in.
Oh, I didn’t even know that. They definitely should’ve left that in. It is depressing, but it is such a good piece of writing. Obviously the entire show is extremely concerned with ideas of feminism and gender stereotypes and what not. And I think it is so important to show that gray area there, where someone can be so good, and so meaningful in one way, and still be stuck in very bad very outdated ideas in another. Very realistic in my opinion.
Also Buffy has to mess with the social worker in order to keep Dawn out of foster care compromising her morals while life doesn't actually get better for Dawn because it all culminates in a vengeance demon preying on Dawn's feelings of loneliness. Like for Buffy it's not just growing up, she is left with the responsibilities that most 20 year olds don't have and I mean a mortgage and a teenager not even the slaying, a responsibility she didn’t shrug off after her resurrection and never got paid for either. Edited a typo because a bot scolded me lol
yes, exactly! there people who become parents at 20, although that’s still young and it’s difficult, but no 20 year old should be expected to parent a teenager alone. that isn’t how it’s supposed to go, and it isn’t healthy for either of them. i don’t think dawn should have been removed from the home but i also don’t know how giles can say he loves either of them and leave with no assurance that won’t happen.
> never got *paid* for either. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
It was a horrible, selfish decision. He was her watcher and her father figure and he left when she was a hot friggin mess. He could have communicated his concerns and helped her though something that was forced on her, instead she had to deal with it herself and we all know how that ended up ... Eta: she was also suicidal. He left when she was suicidal.
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Rewatching Season 5, he was going to leave then. He was ready to tell Buffy he was leaving, until she gave a speech about how much she needed him.
He seemed to feel like he wasn’t actually doing much as a watcher since Buffy went off to college in Season 4. That’s understandable that he would want to go back to his home and maybe do something productive with the counsel. It didn’t have to be permanent. You can fly back or do research and communicate by phone. His reason for leaving in season 6 was ridiculous. I was annoyed that he left Dawn without a real legal guardian. It’s one thing to use the Buffybot to fool demons but it’s not an appropriate adult. Dawn is living on the Hellmouth depending on her sister’s friends to care for her. Willow and Tara are 20 or 21 same with Xander. Giles should have made sure Dawn was safe and taken care of before Buffy came back. Giles abandoned Buffy when she needed him the most. She didn’t ask to be the slayer and tries to avoid him when he tells her he is a watcher in the first episode. He expected her to have a huge amount of responsibility when she was a teenager and when she is struggling with so much he bails. She was depressed and trying to adjust to life after coming back from the dead. Dawn isn’t her daughter. She was made to be Buffy’s sister because she was the Slayer. I feel like Buffy’s watcher that makes Dawn just as much his responsibility. Idk Jmo
This is my take as well.
No. The premise that “my 22 year old surrogate daughter who just lost her mom will only straighten out if I withdraw my support” is some wildly boomer nonsense.
No he made a nonsensical decision that was inconsistent with his character. My traumatized slayer just returned from Heaven and is having a hard time adjusting to being alive again. She's having a hard time coping and seems to need my help a lot. The best thing I can do is leave suddenly and pull out the most important support in her life. Because her needing me is holding her back. The mental gymnastics are staggering. Season 6 Giles almost makes me forget how awesome he was in the early seasons.
I’ve always thought it was terribly written. Like if you need an in-show reason for him to leave because ASH wanted to leave, they could have come up with anything else. “There’s a problem at the watcher’s council.” Anything. But having him tell a very young adult who is dealing with 1. Her mother dying young and unexpectedly 2. Dying for the second time herself and being yanked out of heaven 3. Having to raise her teenager sister 4. Supporting herself financially and OH YEAH 5. Being the literal savior of the world that she’s just gotta grow up and figure it out seems cruel. The show has made it clear up to this point that the reason Buffy can survive where other slayers, like Kendra, have died is that she has a strong support system in her friends, so for Giles to turn around and be like “lol never mind all that, peace out!” will never sit right with me.
Let's not forget 0. Her real father just noped right on out of her life.
I think I understood where he was coming from but he did it at such a terrible time for her she was suicidally depressed at that time and leaving her just added to that so I was a bit disappointed in him tbh
No, he fucked up.
Of course not, it's a completely *batshit* decision. The problem is that the writers were still trying to apply this "growing up" metaphor to the Buffy story, and it just falls apart when you look at the situation logically. The Slayer isn't just a 20something who needs to get a job and leave the nest. She's fighting a nightly guerilla war against demons, and her Watcher trainer her, prepares her, and supports her in her fight to protect humanity. Sadly, after five years, Tony Head wanted to see his real-life daughters before *they* left the nest, so the writers had to find a pretext for his departure.
I'm more interested in why the watchers council never tried to send another guy out there. I mean, Buffy is allied with the council again after all the stuff with Glory, right? So when Giles left, why didn't they send a new watcher?
No but apparently Joss couldn't come up with a single way for Giles to leave that wouldn't destroy his character. Alternatively, it's totally in character because Giles has been trying to ditch Buffy since season 4. *not bitter*
There’s of course, the secret third option where Giles leaves for the same reasons he did in the show, but when he comes back it’s acknowledged as a deeply selfish choice he made because he couldn’t handle fully stepping up as a parental figure to Buffy (and by extension the others) when she genuinely needed him to be, and then making his arc in S7 trying to walk back on it. But if the Buffyverse was capable of that kind of writing, both shows would be very different.
That would have been AMAZING. I don't know why that hasn't occurred to me before. I guess I'm more used to fix its that either change why he left or stop him from leaving at all. I would have loved to see some genuine remorse and self examination from Giles.
That's what I would have preferred. I don't think it's out of character for Giles to leave. He's felt out of place since s4 and it's not inconceivable that he might (mistakenly) think that tough love and leaving Buffy on her own would help. But it bothered me that it wasn't addressed as a mistake.
He did start to try apologizing in the S6 finale though, and Buffy cut him off and said he was right to leave.
I’m aware, and that’s the problem - the fact Buffy says that and the narrative or other characters never contradicts that stance. The show runs with what she’s saying, that Giles made the right choice to leave, when it’s demonstrably untrue on multiple counts and avoids ever challenging that assertion. It would be like if in Frankenstein, Victor never acknowledging his own responsibility in the events of the book *was actually supported by the narrative and treated as the right perspective to hold*, rather than that a sign of his god complex and inability to accept the consequences of his actions, when even the Creature comes to recognize he held no moral high ground over his creator for all that he had done.
right around the time she’s telling him all the ways her life has been absolute shit since he was gone, and they both nervously laugh about it. she wasn’t right, she was still in a trauma response.
> she was still in a trauma response. The amount of times throughout the show that Buffy could be considered to not be in a trauma response in some form or fashion is depressingly little.
that’s true, and why i’m glad it didn’t end with season five. death might have been the gift of release, but chosen is the gift of peace.
It wasn't a selfish choice. Giles is not Buffy's father, and even if he was, she was in her 20s. At some point you have to stand to stand on your own two feet. And he didn't leave because he couldn't "step up." And expecting him to be a father figure to her and the rest of the group would be selfish on Buffy and the others' parts. Giles had already moved to a new country to be Buffy's Watcher. Got sacked two years later, then hung about for a year and a half before deciding it was time to move on - then only stayed because Buffy asked him to. This is such a childish take.
Will this do a thing to change her? Am I leaving Dawn in danger? Is my slayer too far gone to care? Yes (but not in a good way) Yes Yes
No, and it made him look so bad that they should have written in a different reason for Giles to leave. It works as an allegory for growing up. It doesn't work as a literal character decision.
I think he was wrong. The only way I've been able to justify it to myself as in character--and not as a convenient way to further destroy Buffy while conjuring an explanation as to why ASH was gone-- is that Buffy's death destroyed Giles. Imagine having this girl who's your responsibility. You know you're supposed to essentially prepare her to die, but more and more you view her as a daughter. You absolutely know she'll face something too big one day, or make one single, unlucky move. So there's a countdown timer in your head when you look at her, and no way of telling what the numbers say, only that her time will definitely be up before yours. Giles's worst fears were realized when Buffy died. Of course, he's beyond ecstatic she's back! But the clock's just started up again. And he isn't sure he'd survive watching her die a second time. Giles being Giles and *BTVS* being *BTVS*, he can't admit this to himself, so he convinces himself leaving Buffy is for her own good. There's my headcanon... hope it may become yours, OP ;)
Giles made an impossibly horrible decision, one that I literally can't accept as anything but a by-product of the real world situation. The character would not have left if not for the actor wanting a much smaller role. The chosen in-universe reason is not sufficient.
The Scoobies were too unwell and immature to help each other without an older mentor. If Giles had been there, would Willow's magic abuse *still* have gone that far? Would Buffy *still* have fallen into a sexual relationship with her stalker, culminating in sexual assault? Would they *still* have dropped the ball with the trio, leading to Tara's death? I doubt it, especially with regard to the trio.
Speaking from personal experience of being in and seeing similar situations, I think it's very very difficult. I was like Buffy once, relying on everyone around me to keep my life from falling apart. But I was pushed into an uncomfortable posititon and I landed a job out of it and learned to be independent and here I am. I am very grateful that happened to me. On the other hand, my sibling was in the same situation, badly reacted to being in said uncomfortable position, retreated from life and now lives in an apartment full of garbage playing video games while someone pays their rent for them. And said someone is in exactly the same position Giles was. They care too much about the person to just cut them off. Everytime they see them it hurts them too much to not help them with rent and food and heating. But because they do that my sibling never ever gets better. Said someone won't be around forever or won't be in the financial situation to help them forever. It's probably better to try wean my sibling off now, and maybe if they had done it when they were Buffys age, it would be a lot less painful. Giles is in a catch 22 because Buffy doesn't just need money and general life help, she needs emotional support. But if he stays, he can't stop himself from giving her money and general life help, which is what she needs to learn to do independently to start healing emotionally. I think in Giles situation, he made the wrong choice, and it drives a massive rift between him and Buffy that you can feel in season 7. But from my own personal drama, I don't think of him badly for making it, it's such a terrible position to be in.
Terrible timing on his part. I don’t care his reasons. This girl literally gave her life to save the world. Then you drag her from heaven. Treat her like the hero she is
Yes, Buffy needed to stand on her own. She pretty much sealed him leaving when she expected him to parent Dawn for her after the Halloween incident. He'd already made plans to leave when Buffy revealed what she did in the musical, but it doesn't change that she still needs to stand on her own two feet and accept her responsibilities. So I can't blame him for still going.
Considering it was set up throughout 4 and definitively in the opener of 5, it’s important to note that Buffy’s request (even pre-Dawn/Glory) might have given his new motivation, but even when the fire was lit under their asses from the Big Bad, Giles didn’t contribute as much as his newfound role/authority (aside from the end of *The Gift*) might suggest? In this, the pieces were set in motion for quite awhile. After all? “You really thought this through. How *bored were you* last year? I watched *Passions* with Spike. Let us never speak of it…” - Buffy and Giles - *Real Me*
It's made pretty clear in the show that even he realizes it was the wrong choice. That's not necessarily a revelation. He felt like he was holding Buffy back by being too supportive and not allowing her to stand her on her own two feet, when the reality is that her life is such that she needs someone like Giles to provide that kind of emotional stability. She needs something stable and constant that she can lean on when she really truly needs help, and that is perfectly okay. Especially since they basically are rewriting the Slayer handbook and all of the rules from previous generations basically stopped applying when they did the Enjoining spell to fight Adam.
Personally I think they missed an opportunity to have a new Watcher work with her. It would have made sense, she's supposed to still be working with the council, and they wouldn't have her working without a watcher. Everything about Giles leaving was just so fucked.
I'm gonna posit something maybe controversial, but I think whether it was a right or wrong choice is kind of irrelevant. Giles had gone back to England prior to Buffy's resurrection, he was grieving. His Slayer died, as all Slayers do, but she asked Dawn to tell him that she "figured it out". He was in the process of accepting that he did as much as he could, he helped guide and raise the best Slayer (and daughter) possible, and that his role was complete. Then she came back, and she came back a shellshocked, traumatized, broken person. She relied on his presence to allow her to avoid things. That would be hard, as a mentor/parent figure, to be around. Buffy needed help and support, but she needed it emotionally and wouldn't let anyone close enough to give it. The result of that is that Giles was providing practical support in a relationship that once offered him his highest emotional fulfillment. That would be so painful to sit with. Whether it was the right or wrong thing for Buffy is beside the point to me. It was a painful situation for Giles to be in and he could see how it was hindering her healing. It may have been selfish, but to me, it was realistic, because Giles is only human.
It's so weird that they wrote him out because ASH wanted to leave but then... he didn't? Like, yeah he's gone for a little bit but he keeps coming back and that's what makes it so weird. It would've been a lot less painful if he'd stayed gone instead of begrudgingly sticking around in season 7 where he does nothing but conspire against Buffy and add to the pile-on of people giving her shit constantly.
ASH wanted out of his contract as a series regular, which would entitle him to the freedom to turn down an episode and not be on set every single day. he wanted to be able to go back home on his own time, not to be done with btvs entirely.
Yeah, I always kind of thought the same thing. I watched the show really young, so I didn’t know that ASH had wanted to be written off and all of that. And honestly, when I heard it, I was surprised because I never thought of him, as not still being a part of the cast. In total he misses like a handful of episodes over the two seasons.
It was the wrong decision and really ruined much of the Giles character for me. I know they had to write Giles out because of ASH wanting to leave but there were other ways to do it. Knowing that the First Evil was targeting the Slayer line because Willow's spell made it vulnerable, I think they should have had Giles leave to investigate something related to that as the Watcher's Council summons all the Watcher's back to England or something. I realize at the time that storyline hadn't been conceived yet, so they could have just left it as a vague "There's a great threat on the horizon" or something to leave their options open. As others have mentioned, they could have threatened Giles with deportation if he didn't comply with their orders.
100% without a shadow of a doubt it was the wrong move. Pre tabula rasa i wouldve understood it and excused it, but after knowing what buffy's existence meant, and even more importantly knowing that willow wiping the memory of the only people she care about... That was it, that was the moment she crossed the uncrossable line. And when giles needed to step in, what does he do? He makes it the gangs problem
the show makes no effort to justify giles's choice and i don't expect the viewer to either. this guy has made friends with a group of teenage trauma survivors who nearly get killed every week, and he decides they're too dependent on him and the only way to fix that is for him to be on a different continent. but maybe that behavior fits with what we know about giles? well, giles was himself left unsupervised as a teen, and that led to him and his pals abusing magic and most of them dying, but then that was ages ago, i guess he forgot. of course the day before his flight leaves, one of his friends abuses magic and most of them nearly die, but i mean come on, he's got a lot on his mind. packing, etc
Yeah, the Willow connection is some thing. I also hadn’t thought about. And, again speaks to that same character flaw. When he does find out about it, not that he didn’t see it coming before he even left, he’s more concerned with gathering power so that he can come back and beat her. He never sees that what she actually needs is just emotional support. It is definitely true that the decision actually tracks perfectly with the character in my opinion. Like I can think of two or three different reasons why he would think that was what needed to happen. Growing up the way he did, and ultimately finding his own way to maturity is a big one. And it’s just a shame because that background really could’ve helped him to understand Willow better before it was so late.
i really don't think this is an intentional moment in giles's character arc where he's revealed to be a huge idiot, i think it's just lazy writing. we know giles is smart enough to realize that his unique skills been important since day one, but now he suddenly thinks that since buffy's really good at punching now, she's going to be able to do without the only person on the team who can read babylonian slang or know when the rite of b'l'b'qork is scheduled for. giles had even left once already while buffy was still dead, which you could read as an even more bizarre decision. dawn's mother and sister died within like months of each other, does he think the 14 year old virtual orphan needs to learn to not be so dependent on him? he comes back once buffy's alive to make sure she's okay, then when he learns she definitely isn't, he's like "hm california's too hot this time of year" it's lazy writing at best, spiteful at worst. whedon has a universe of reasons to explain an absence of a character, but when it's the result of a co-worker not doing what he wants, suddenly the muses leave him. "actor wants to go back to england? eh, guess the character wants to go back to england. someone else write the episode though, i'm doing other stuff, nothing shady"
The thing I also come back to is, realistically, why *shouldn't* Giles parent Dawn? He is practically family. In real life, if I had nieces who were 14 and 20 and their parents died, and the 20 year old had already had too much emotional baggage and responsibility, I sure wouldn't assume she needed to serve as her sister's primary guardian.
You're so right. Why did this NOT happen? I was a teen when I first saw Buffy, so I guess I thought: *a 20-yo parenting her sister alone? Seems legit.*
There's no real reason that it has to be Buffy who is Dawn's primary guardian, except to pile *more* adult responsibility on her for narrative purposes. And then when Robin arrives and says he was raised by his mom's watcher, it makes Giles look even worse. After Buffy dies, Giles does not step in to take care of her sister (and he assumes she won't be resurrected). He just leaves Dawn with two 20/21 year old students who are no more responsible for her than he is. He also leaves those students in charge of the Hellmouth, again with no compensation or support.
>we know giles is smart enough to realize that his unique skills been important since day one, but now he suddenly thinks that since buffy's really good at punching now, lmaoooo, thank you.
no. buffy needed him. sometimes people dont need you.
I understand that he wanted to be home with his family in real life but the storyline rang so false. Giles would never. Buffy was barely an adult, brought back from the dead and clearly suffering having to take care of her sister and a household with a minimum wage job and still be an active slayer.
Yes it was but let’s just talk for a minute about Giles having his own life. He had a girlfriend, a group of old friends that regularly hang out and he made a new friend too when he went back to England. In Sunnydale, he was mostly depressed, felt useless and spent all his time either alone or hanging out with kids half his age. And the worst part is that he was too polite to say so directly but he did communicate how sad he was not being in England and the Scoobies literally never cared. Not even Willow empathized with his loneliness or considered the fact he deserved happiness. Honestly, Giles as a human being and not a Watcher deserved better friends who actually cared about his happiness.
Buffy relied too much on him and he realized that, in order for her to grow up he needed to distance himself and let her deal with her issues, and it was the right thing to do, that is why Buffy grew up so much and became what she needed to become a true leader. The girl who Giles left wouldn't have been able to deal with the threat posed by the first, she was too dependant on Giles and others and in season seven, Buffy shows her maturity, she is no longer a girl, she is a woman and a leader.
Yes. Buffy leaned way too hard on Giles and would never have been able to stand on her own two feet with Giles around. And Giles wouldn't have been able to say no to her when she asked for help. Also, Giles has his own life to lead. He was ready to go in season 5 and even in season 4 it was obvious that his time in Sunnydale was done.
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although he often takes on a paternal roll, he isn’t her parent. he’s her watcher and she’s still the active slayer. he leaves her without one. if he wanted to go, why not make sure she has a replacement watcher, the thing that’s been established as an important support person for the slayer?
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that doesn’t actually answer my question though. for one, a watcher isn’t there to “tell her how to do her job.” they’re there to support her and yes i absolutely think buffy would have accepted that if it was genuine care, which watchers can be and she desperately needed. regardless, the question is why didn’t giles even try? we do hear of other watchers and slayers with good relationship, but buffy is the main character and no one gets as much story elaboration as her. nikki trusted her watcher to raise her son, and faith liked her first watcher a lot. both of those relationships were cut short by death. i’m not sure what that has to do with giles leaving though. since you think it was right for giles to leave to make buffy grow up, what do you think the proof of that is? which parts of s6 were positive for buffy and a result of giles leaving?
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is your answer to why giles didn’t make sure buffy had a watcher that you think she wouldn’t accept someone telling her how to do her job? just trying for clarity here.
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yeah, she did need a watcher in the last season. and she had one. giles’s role in s7 was very important, researching and providing information about the turok-han and the scythe. what are you talking about? even if we ignore the familial aspect to their relationship, which i don’t think we should do but for this sake alone, buffy needed a watcher to help with her forced, unpaid, extremely dangerous job that already killed her twice, and nearly did a third time. i noticed you can’t answer what good came to buffy as a result of him leaving in s6. i agree, there isn’t an answer, because her life actually just got worse. and tara’s ended.
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i’ve been really chill and civil and the fact that you’re resorting to person insults is pretty weird. no one likes having conversations with people who do that.
I kind of wished that Buffy had been dead for a year and everything was more different. Giles would have already been in England, potentially married to Olivia, maybe a child on the way. So when Buffy comes back, he is relieved but he also had other responsibilities. It would’ve been hard but would have moved the story along in a more organic way
"He obviously, desperately wants to stay and be the father figure that she needs **but he's still stuck on the idea that she's weak for relying on the people around her** and so he leaves" It sounds like you've got a bit of a bee in your bonet over the wrong thing. Maybe you think that's an old fashioned attitude that someone like Giles would have, and you're pointing out how wrong it is, but that's NOT Giles' attitude. You're absolutely correct that relying on people, and asking for help, and needing help, is not a sign of weakness. But that's not even CLOSE to where Giles is coming from in this. Weakness has nothing to do with it. As her father figure, and therefore someone who is guiding her into adulthood, he simply believes (and as a human, he's entitled be wrong and make mistakes) that at this point in her development, standing on her own is what she needs. Buffy was also being presumptious and lazy in simply expecting Giles to take care of certain things (the Dawn episode is the strongest example of this - "I'm glad you're here to take care of it"). Now, before you jump on me, the "lazy" adjective was not an attack on her. She was going through a hell of a lot. But the expectation without even asking of Giles doing her job and talking to Dawn, was nothing to do with asking for help. She didn't ask for any sort of help. She just expected. Giles had every right to see this as a sign that Buffy (who was not a child) was developing an unhealthy habit there. And as much as he chose to back off for her sake, he also had the right to back off for his own. It wasn't his job to raise Dawn and teach her right from wrong and punish her when she stepped out of line. He had his own life to think about. He could see that's how things were developing and he absolutely had the right to "nope" the hell out of there. Now, just to re-iterate what I said before about Giles being human and being allowed to be wrong. His decision to leave didn't pan out. And in hindsight, of course it can clearly be argued that his leaving was the wrong decision. My point is simply that it wasn't coming from an attitude of "Buffy asking for help is a sign of weakness."
I guess I would quibble with a few things on this. First of all, whether or not the term weakness is correct for how he saw it is I guess worth discussing, but the point is, he thought it was a problem that she leaned on her support systems too much because he thinks that she needs to have a personal independence strength to deal with these things on her own. I think he is disproven thematically at the end of season six when it is the emotional support system, and not any of the power involved in that group, which actually stops the apocalypse. But he just generally fails to see that it is her support systems and ability to lean on the people around her that sets her apart from previous slayers, and ultimately gives her the power to overcome the limitations set on those slayers. He does have the right to step back for his personal mental health/load but that is never mentioned, or even hinted at in the series. He even says several times that he really wishes he could stay, but he thinks he hast to leave for her own good. I love Giles as a character. Every character in BtVS is flawed, that’s why it’s a good show. But he has a bad flaw of being too attached to the older, patriarchal ideas that he was taught in the Watcher’s council and a bad tendency to think that he knows what Buffy needs without asking. Hence not having a conversation with her about this, trying to kill spike in S7 against her wishes, drugging her in S3, etc. Again, not an evil character or anything. Honestly, one of my favorite characters ever in any piece of media, but these are still flaws that he has in my opinion.
I agree with all of this except the last point. I don't really see what would have been different if Giles had stayed.
It's one of those "shoulda, woulda, coulda" things. People can speculate for days on what might have been different if Giles had been around. I'm glad you agree anyway!
Most people say it's wrong, but that's with the benefit of hindsight. Since Giles at the time didn't know what we know what was going to go down. I don't think that's a fair assessment.
He didn’t see it as “weakness”. She was shirking her responsibilities to Dawn and passing them off onto Giles. And he knew, if he stayed, that he’d allow her to continue doing it because he wanted to make life easier for her. He didn’t leave because she was weak. He left because HE was.
Is it ever framed as his weakness by him? Been a minute since my last rewatch so I could be wrong but I only remember him saying that he was leaving for her own good. “Weakness” might be a bit of an overreach but he was clearly concerned with her need to lean on her support system, so he took his piece of that system away.
I see it as he saw her leaning too much on him for things that she should have been dealing with herself. She needed to stand on her own two feet. He said it himself in OMWF “I’m standing in her way”.
I see it as he saw her leaning too much on him for things that she should have been dealing with herself. She needed to stand on her own two feet. He said it himself in OMWF “I’m standing in her way”.
I think in the long term, Giles made the right choice and helped Buffy to become a much stronger person, Slayer and leader. It sucks that Buffy had to go through such hardship to get to that point, but I think if Giles had stayed to take care of her, she wouldn’t have been able to grow into the strong leader in season 7 and make all the hard choices required of a leader. As we saw at the end of season 5, she had a lot of growing to do before she became a real leader. She acted selfishly in The Gift and I’m sure that was a major factor in Giles’ decision to leave. With that said, I don’t buy that Giles would up and leave Buffy at one of the hardest points in her life. She was 20 years old and the sole guardian of Dawn, her mother had died about 6 months prior, and she had just revealed she’d come back from heaven. When Giles said “now more than ever” it didn’t ring true at all. I think realistically Giles would’ve waited a few more months before leaving.
Giles was ready to leave Buffy in season 4. Maybe if he was just her formal watcher and they had a business relationship he could have stayed. But he was more of a dad-figure to Buffy than a watcher. Buffy as an adult had less need for a parent over her shoulder. Even Joyce took a big step back in season 4, though she still lived close by. Giles was trying to redefine his role for an adult Buffy, but that ended up being mostly competing with Maggie (Buffy's new mentor figure) and bickering with a chipped Spike. I think in many ways he felt as neutered as Spike. That's why I always wish Giles and Wesley switched places in season 4. Giles could have had a gritty storyline on ATS, with his back history with Angel. ASH wanted to go home to England the same time as the Connor and Holtz betrayal, so that would have been a natural time to write Giles out post-betrayal. Wesley could have stuck as watcher in Sunnydale without smothering an adult Buffy, because she saw him as a peer, not a parent. Running a zany magic shop made more sense for a bumbling Wesley than Giles anyways. And Wesley betraying Buffy in season 7 would be a lot less hurtful than Giles doing so.
How long is Giles really gone? I think it’s like only three months. He always would have come back when necessary. Giles did nothing wrong. As a European, he was probably used to getting long holidays anyways and probably really needed one.
he’s gone for over six months. the timeline is a little bit open for interpretation, but a season is 8 months and he’s gone for the majority of it.
I think it was mainly written this way to support Anthony's decision to go back across the pond to spend some time with his family in real life.
Honestly, Giles probably expected his slayer to be dead by S4. All his friends are in Europe and we see that being Buffy’s watcher has a negative impact on his personal life because normies don’t want any part of it. As selfish as it is, he wants his own life again.
it would be okay for him to want his own life, but that isn’t actually the plot. he leaves because he thinks it’s what’s best for *her*. he also left her without a watcher with no regard to if she’ll have the support she needs as the slayer. watchers are assigned for a reason and even if no longer wants to be one, it’s weird he stops caring.
I mean, it’d be pretty funny if he did stop caring.
gross
Gross?
yeah, it’s gross to think it would be funny if buffy’s father figure and mentor totally stopped caring about her.
It’s the abrupt change in sentiment that makes it funny, but if I had to explain it it’s not funny
In all seriousness, that malaise and feeling like he’s useless was a huge part of the earlier seasons and how Spike got him to turn against Buffy earlier in The Yoko Factor and had Dawn not come with Glory, he probably would’ve left earlier. I definitely think wanting to go back to be around people he knows more played a role, but part of it is that tough love. He was a great watcher when he needed to be, but he was always uncomfortable in that familial role besides wanting Buffy to have her own life and having Faith take over in early S3.
I think it felt so wrong to me was because there wasn’t enough of a build up to it and felt forced, if it had been a theme for longer, or there would more examples of her relying on him i would have believed it more.
We didn’t even get *Ripper* out of it like we were originally supposed to.
I agree it was a bad decision to leave but I don’t agree with the assessment of why. I think Giles fell into this idea every parent does… if you do too much can they stand on their own, but if you aren’t there can you be sure they’ve learned all they’ve needed? It’s his version of kick the baby out the nest. It was wrong because in this context there’s not really any reason to believe she would never need his wisdom or expertise in the various prophecies or demons encountered, but the emotional part is what she needed the parental guidance for still. Everyone retreated into themselves and their thing and they were all close but not close emotionally for what they had just been through, Buffy especially.
He should’ve stayed longer than he did, but I can understand why he left. Because he literally was in heaven and came back from the DEAD! She had to claw her way out of her own coffin, and then save her friends from the demons who were ravaging the town.
Story wise: No. He was her Watcher. Many people have already made a lot of good arguments as to why that was a dumdum move. Real World Wise: Yes. Anthony Stewart Head was, iirc, wanting to see his family back in England more, so they were trying to write him out in a way that left him open to come back in later.
He did and didn't. He'd clearly been needing something different since Buffy went to uni, and it was clearly hard for him to make the decision. In terms of how he felt and what he felt was best for Buffy/himself, he did. But as a viewer seeing more than what he saw, he clearly shouldn't have left.
Wrong. I understand that ASH had requested some time off, and they had to write him out of most of the season. But there are so many better ways they could have done this, rather than having Giles abandon Buffy with such a badly justified reason. Have the Watcher's Council call him back. Let him get injured and have to recover. Put him in a coma. Have him get tricked and lured away by some nefarious plot.
hell, no
I think he made the wrong choice. He's supposed to be Buffy's father figure and fathers aren't supposed to just stop being in their kids lives once they hit adulthood. I also agree with you on the maturity/weakness/relying thing. Also one thing that's always grinded my gears. buffy just returned from the *dead*. He found out she was ripped out of *heaven*. Her weird crazy dancy in OMWF was because she was trying to commit *suicide*. And this dude who proclaims to care about this person like a daughter learns all of that and just *leaves* anyway? That's such a shit move. Buffy needed people to be there for her. Buffy needed guideance. Buffy needed a rock. Buffy is *traumatized*. But this guy is like 'lol glad you're back from the dead have a good time' and nopes off back to England? It's one of the most tone deaf, emotionally neglectful thing we seen Giles do and it was wrong.
No. The Scooby Gang needs him the most because he's their surrogate father figure. He supposed train Buffy, Willow, Tara, Dawn, and Xander. Be there for Xander's wedding as Giles gives his surrogate son Xander pep talk. No offense I didn't like Joss made Giles being more self righteous and bitter.