Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Episode Guide

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Welcome to the Hellmouth

Buffy Summers believes she left her life as a Slayer behind her when she moves to the small town of Sunnydale with her mother. She meets several new friends at her new high school, including Cordelia Chase, one of the more popular girls who is more than happy to welcome Buffy into her social group. She also meets Willow, Jesse, and Xander; a trio of social outcasts who also welcome her as a friend. This causes Cordelia to have second thoughts about being friends with Buffy, as hanging out with the geeks is not cool. Despite this, Buffy starts to feel normal again in her new home of Sunnydale. Unfortunately, she comes to find that Sunnydale is also the home of the Hellmouth, a literal gateway into Hell. She meets Rupert Giles, her high school librarian and new Watcher, who tells her that he must continue her training as she is still the Slayer. Buffy wants nothing to do with Giles and tells him she doesn't want to be the Slayer anymore. Buffy encounters a mysterious stranger named Angel who warns her about something called "The Harvest" and she soons come to terms with her duties as the Slayer. Finally agreeing to work with Giles, she comes to find her new friends Willow and Jesse in danger. She tries to help them but encounters a large vampire named Luke.

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Buffy successfully rescues Willow but Jesse is taken by the vampires. Xander joins Buffy as she journeys underground to find Jesse but find that he has been turned into a vampire. Escaping, Buffy learns more about "The Harvest" and finds that it is a ritual in which a vampire is used as a vessel for the Master, a powerful vampire who is imprisoned in an old church on the Hellmouth. The vessel drinks the blood of humans, thus powering the Master, giving him the strength to break free from his mystical prison. The Master's escape would also trigger the opening of the Hellmouth, allowing the demons to enter the Earth realm and conquer. The Master chooses Luke to be his vessel and sends him along with several vampire minions to The Bronze, a popular nightclub in Sunnydale. Buffy arrives just as the bloodshed is about to begin and is able to kill Luke before the Master is set free.

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Buffy tries out for the cheerleader squad, once again trying to go back to the way things were before she found out she was the Slayer. She meets Amy Madison, a girl who desperately wants to become a cheerleader as her mother had when she was young. Buffy and Amy only become alternates which doesn't bother Buffy much, but greatly angers Amy. After members of the squad suffer from a series of bizarre accidents, Amy quickly achieves her goal. Because of the nature of the accidents, Giles suspects that someone is using witchcraft to benefit their needs. All signs point to Amy which causes Giles to suggest a test be done to be sure. After Buffy performs the test, she finds that Amy is indeed the Witch. Unfortunately, Amy performs a spell on Buffy causing her to become very ill. The spell begins tearing away Buffy's immune system, and she only has a matter of hours till she dies. Racing to find a counter spell, Buffy goes to Amy's home where they meet her mother, Catherine. While talking to the frightened Catherine, Buffy soon realizes that Amy's mother is actually Amy herself. Wanting to relive her glory days as a cheerleader, Catherine performed a spell and switched places with her daughter. Using Catherine's spell book, Giles performs a reversal spell that saves Buffy and also reverts Amy and her mother back to normal. Back in her older body, Catherine attacks Buffy in anger. Buffy blocks a burst of mystical energy Catherine sends towards her with a mirror which bounces back and causes Catherine to disappear. Catherine is seemingly gone forever, but is actually in the hallway of Sunnydale High trapped as a cheerleader trophy in a trophy case.

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The new science teacher is sexy, beautiful, and deadly. Unknown to the teenage boys of Sunnydale High, Ms. Natalie French is actually a She-Mantis, a large insect who uses male humans to fertilize her eggs before biting off their heads. Xander becomes infatuated with Ms. French and gets invited to help her with an afterschool "special project". When Buffy discovers that the science teacher is a giant preying mantis, she races to save Xander and bring an end to Ms. French's reign of terror. Buffy kills the insect and saves the day, though is unaware of the batch of mantis eggs that were being kept in the school science lab.

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Buffy makes a date with a seemingly nice boy named Owen but once again is forced to sacrifice her social life to act as the Slayer. Buffy learns that the Master is expecting the arrival of The Annoited One, a powerful vampire who was foreseen by the ancient prophetic vampire, Aurelius. The prophecy states that the Annoited One would rise from five, which points to an airport bus that was attacked by vampires in which five people died. Buffy cancels her date with Owen to stake out the funeral home the five were taken to. Unfortunatetly, Owen tags along seeking the thrill of danger. With Owen there, Buffy finds it difficult to successfully stop a psychotic vampire named Andrew Borba, who was one of the five in the airport bus. When Owen gets knocked unconcious, Buffy is finally able to use her Slayer powers freely, and kills Borba. Believing Borba to be the Annoited One, Buffy assumes she succeeded in her mission. The next day, Owen tells Buffy that he had the time of his life and would love to do it again. Buffy realizes that it would be wrong of her to keep seeing Owen, as his life would always be in danger and he probably wouldn't understand her role as the Slayer. She ends her attempted relationship with Owen, staying true to her Slayer duties and abandoning once again her dream of a normal life. Meanwhile, the Master welcomes into his lair the true Annoited One. A small boy who was also on the airport bus.

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While on a school field trip to the zoo, Xander stops a group of bullies from picking on a fellow student in a closed hyena exhibit. Unaware that someone was performing a ritual involving animal transpossession, Xander and the bullies become possessed by the spirit of the hyenas. Greatly affecting their behavior, Xander and the bullies form a pack of wild teens that tease and torture the weaker students of Sunnydale High. When Willow and Buffy see that Xander has changed they believe at first that he's acting out on built up emotions but soon realize, after Xander and the Pack eat the school mascot, that something supernatural has happened to him. Buffy locks Xander in the library book cage until they can figure out a way to reverse the possession. Meanwhile, the Pack attack and eat the school principal. Giles speaks to the zoo keeper in charge of the hyena exhibit who seems to know about the ritual that was performed. He asks Giles that the teens need to be returned to the place where the transpossession occurred. Xander tricks Willow into letting him out of his cage and he escapes with the Pack. Buffy lures them back to the zoo so Giles and the zoo keeper can reverse what has happened. Unfortunately, it seems that the zoo keeper was the one responsible all along. He was trying to envoke the animal spirits for himself but wasn't successful. It wasn't until the bullies and Xander performed an act of predatory dominance that the ritual actually worked. The Zoo keeper, having knocked out Giles, awaits Buffy and the Pack in the hyena exhibit. The Zoo Keeper performs an act of predatory dominance which causes the animal spirits to be removed from Xander and the other teens. Willow quickly subdues the Zoo Keeper and he falls into the hyena pit where he is eaten by the hyenas. Though Xander was possessed, and therefore not responsible for his actions, he feels bad for what he had done(knowing that you ate a live pig would kinda suck) and how he treated his friends and pretends not to remember any of it.

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After sharing their first kiss, Buffy comes to learn the truth about Angel, the mysterious stranger who has been aiding Buffy by providing information. She finds out that he is not only a vampire, but the most vicious vampire that ever walked the Earth. Buffy finds this difficult to believe. In actuality, Angel is no longer evil. It seems that Angel was cursed with a soul and is now trying to make up for what he had done in the past. Darla, the vampire who sired Angel tries to convince him to return to his vampiric ways but he refuses. Darla then proceeds to frame Angel by attacking Buffy's mother and leaving Angel to take the blame. Unable to explain himself Angel leaves. Buffy vows to kill Angel and sets out to find him at his home. Before she can kill him, however, she learns the truth about what happened. She knows that Angel is innocent and that Darla attacked her mother. Darla tries to kill Buffy but Angel kills his sire before she can. Buffy comes to understand Angel and what he is.

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Moloch the Corruptor was a demon who was known for charming impressionable minds to do his bidding before ultimately killing them. Sometime in the dark ages, a ritual was performed that bound Moloch into the pages of a book where he would remain trapped until the day someone read the pages out loud. The pages went unread for centuries before coming into the hands of Willow. Helping Giles by scanning pages from his books onto a computer, Willow inadvertantly sets Moloch free, his demonic essence invading the computer. Able to travel through the internet, Moloch manipulates several people to act has his minions. He has them build him a robotic body that resembles his true form. Moloch also communicates to Willow under the name Malcolm, posing as a friend over the internet. Unaware that her online boyfriend is really a demon, Willow agrees to meet Moloch. Luckily, Buffy comes to rescue Willow from the robotic demon. With the help of Jenny Calendar, the school computer teacher and self proclaimed techno pagan, Buffy banishes Moloch from the internet and traps him in his robotic body. In a rage, Moloch attacks Buffy but ends up destroying himself in the process when he punches into an electrical box.

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A series of grisley deaths just before a school talent show lead Buffy to discover that someone is harvesting organs at Sunnydale High. In her search to figure out who is behind the murders, Buffy is attacked by a ventriloquist dummy named Sid. Buffy believes that Sid is the culprit she was hunting but Sid is also searching for the organ harvester and the two come to realize that they are on the same side. Sid is, in actuality, a human soul trapped in the body of a puppet. Once a demon hunter, Sid was cursed by one of the demons he pursued, resulting in his present form. The only way to lift the curse is to successfully eliminate the brotherhood of seven demons. Once the seventh demon is killed, Sid's soul could finally rest in peace. It seems the seventh demon is the someone in the talent show that has been harvesting organs. The demon needs the organs in order to maintain its false human appearance. When the night of the talent show finally arrives, Buffy discovers the demon when its true form is revealed. Buffy defeats the demon and allows Sid to perform the kill. As the demon perishes, the curse is lifted. With his mission finally over, Sid's soul vacates the puppet rendering it lifeless.

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After spending the summer vacation with her father, Buffy returns to Sunnydale to continue her job as the Slayer. Willow and Xander notice a difference in Buffy's behavior, however, and are confused when she starts treating them rudely. As Buffy pushes her friends away, she learns that the Annoited One, now heir to the Order of Aurelius, is planning on performing a ritual that will resurrect the Master. Requiring the blood of those who were near the Master when he died, the vampires kidnap Willow, Giles, Jenny, and Cordelia. Buffy rescues them of course, staking the vampires and bringing to an end any chance the Master had of being resurrected by crushing his bones with a sledgehammer. It seems Buffy's behavior was the result of psychological trauma and anxieties she gained when the Master killed her. Smashing the Master's bones into powder helped Buffy work out her issues and she apologized to her friends.

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Anne / Dead Man's Party / Faith, Hope, and Trick / Beauty and the Beasts /
Homecoming / Bandcandy / Revelations / Lover's Walk / The Wish /
Amends / Gingerbread / Helpless / The Zeppo / Bad Girls / Consequences /
Dopplegangland / Enemies / Earshot / Choices /
The Prom / Graduation (part one) / Graduation (part two)

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The Freshman / Living Conditions / The Harsh Light of Day / Fear, Itself /
Beer Bad / Wild at Heart / The Initiative / Pangs / Something Blue /
Hush / Doomed / A New Man / The "I" in Team / Goodbye Iowa / This Year's Girl /
Who Are You / Superstar / Where the Wild Things Are / New Moon Rising /
The Yoko Factor / Primeval / Restless

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Buffy vs. Dracula / Real Me / The Replacement / Out of My Mind /
No Place Like Home / Family / Fool For Love / Shadow / Listening to Fear /
Into the Woods / Triangle / Checkpoint / Blood Ties / Crush / I Was Made To Love You /
The Body / Forever / Intervention / Tough Love /
Spiral / The Weight of the World / The Gift

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Bargaining (part one) / Bargaining (part two) / Afterlife / Flooded /
Life Serial / All the Way / Once More, With Feeling / Tabula Rasa / Smashed /
Wrecked / Gone / Doublemeat Palace / Dead Things / Older and Far Away / As You Were /
Hell's Bells / Normal Again / Entropy / Seeing Red /
Villains / Two to Go / Grave

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Lessons / Beneath You / Same Time, Same Place / Help /
Selfless / Him / Conversations with Dead People / Sleeper / Never Leave Me /

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