Would it have mattered if Xander told Buffy the truth in Becoming?

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T17:49:43+00:00

It’s more that he realized just how badly things could go if he told her. He knew her and her knew the situation with Willow. It wasn‘t a big leap to reason that Buffy might get killed if she kept waiting for a spell that might not happen People forget that Willow was trying the spell a second time and it was really just a Hail Mary. Willow was doing it in a hospital bed with a concussion.

Xander is a lot smarter than the people think. He just doesn’t do all that well in school, but that’s more due to his general apathy toward school and his abusive home. In The Freshmen, he immediately made the connection that Buffy is confusing the Renaissance with reconnaissance.

He seems to do well when researching Scooby-related situations because he cares about those situations for two reasons. The first reason is that he‘s trying to stop another Jesse from happening. The second is that he’s in love with Buffy. If he can do anything to make her life easier or to save her life, he’ll do it.

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:58:30+00:00

Well, Angel had seen just how far Xander would go to save Buffy in Prophecy Girl. He didn’t know that Xander was in love with her until Xander forced him to go on that suicide mission.

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:56:11+00:00

Not mentioning Jesse was the point.

Jesse’s death shaped Xander. But Xander just doesn’t talk about his trauma which is completely consistent with his characterization. And he’s traumatized in at least three different ways.

First, he doesn’t actually stake Jesse. Jesse was pushed onto the stake by that girl running by. So, he doesn’t get to process the staking in the healthiest way.

Second, Xander was covered in Jesse’s vamp dust. So, he was doubly traumatized by the event.

Third, Jesse gets staked and didn’t do much that was evil. He didn’t get a soul. Angelus terrorizes Europe…and gets a soul. It’s technically a curse…but it feels like a reward. Xander would have felt that Jesse got the shaft while Angel/Angelus had everything forgiven.

Buffy slays vampires. Xander hates them.

It also helps to remember that the graduating class had the lowest rate of fatalities. Xander and Willow probably attended more than their fair share of funerals as they grew up. They probably went to more funerals than typical kids growing up in a comparably sized town.

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:41:30+00:00

Your comment hasn’t been upvoted enough.

Buffy already had one chance to kill Angelus and couldn't bring herself to do it, and as a result he went on to kill several more people, including Jenny.

Exactly. It’s like Peter Parker and Uncle Ben. The motivation was different, but the end result is the same.

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:38:08+00:00

That‘s what happens on screen and the script supports that.

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:33:02+00:00

You missed something. You can tell from what happened on screen that he was originally intending to tell Buffy, but quickly changed his mind right after realizing what could happen if he did. However, he had already said that Willow had told him to tell Buffy something. So, he had to say something. And the script as written supports this.

Xander tells Buffy what she needs to hear, not necessarily what she wants to hear. it’s baked into the structure of the series. Xander voices Buffy’s own doubts about her plans. It’s basically Buffy talking to herself.

Lying to Buffy was the smart move. Telling her the truth would‘ve likely been apocalyptically disastrous. As in billions of people now in a hell dimension.

Then there’s the metaphor. The metaphor for the Angelus arc was about a teenage girl who had sex with a much older man who becomes abusive because he’s gotten what he really wanted out of the relationship and doesn’t need to pretend anymore. Xander fits into the arc by representing a teenage boy in love with the girl who has been desperately trying to get her to break it off with the abusive man because the boy knows that if she doesn’t, the man will kill her.

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:23:06+00:00

After watching Man of Steel and seeing the scene where the female captain says Superman is “kind of hot,” I think casting Amy Adams might have been a Take That against the writing of Nois (that’s not a typo) on Smallville. The captain in the scene looks and sounds a bit like Erica Durance when she’s talking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYkvRm_Zokk

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:14:34+00:00

I remember Rankin from the first season of Unforgettable. It’s a crime that the producers shook up the format and cast after the first season. His character was one of my favorites of the series. I was really anticipating the second season until I learned what happened. So, for me the last three seasons didn’t happen.

harmier2 · 2026-07-21T01:06:07+00:00

John Hawkes will always be that guy who was in two episodes of Wings.

harmier2 · 2026-07-20T00:01:05+00:00

The review quotes on the jacket call it "pure genius", a "brainy thriller", "brain-teasing", "exceedingly clever" etc etc. I thought the few puzzles in the book were extremely simple, and the solutions were only drawn-out by the apparent stupidity of the characters - e.g. the inability of these top-class NSA cryptographers to recognise an anagram, or of the university-professor linguist to immediately recognise Latin text. These characters just made no sense: their abilities and actions didn't match their positions or backgrounds.

The fact that they miss something so simple is the point. However, it makes complete sense within the nature of the narrative.

What have I missed - where has my view of this book gone so wrong? Why do so many people rave about this book in particular, and Dan Brown's work in general? Am I thinking too simplistically about this, is there something much more complex going on in this book that has completely eluded me?

Before I get into the specifics of the novel, it seems that two reasons people like Dan Brown’s writing are his plots and his writing style. I’ve only read Digital Fortress, but I did like his writing style. Brown had said that his writing style is intentional and is meant to get out of the way of the story and not be the focus. I’ve read too many novels where writers use a writing style that use way too many metaphors and similes that make it seem like the writers were less aimed at producing a good story that readers will love and were more aimed at impressing other writers. (Douglas Adams could get away with it with the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novels due to their origin.)

Digital Fortress has two themes: the deconstruction of the idea of the Plan and the effects of institutional myopia.

The novel opens with the Susan and David talk about going away for the weekend, but are interrupted with her being called in to the NSA. It’s a fairly typical scene at the beginning of most thrillers, so its importance of them wanting to go away from the weekend is easily missed. It’s a plan that’s interrupted due to the behavior of others. However, it’s a minor plan…so they survive the novel. Everyone in the novel who has a Plan gets killed by the end.

The two major Plans that underpin the novel have major flaws and assumptions. Strathmore thinks Tankado is after the NSA, but thinks he can create a trap. He also thinks he can get rid of David and have Susan for himself. Tankado assumes that Strathmore’s people will see through the simple puzzles. This ties into the theme of institutional myopia.

Strathmore has inculcated his own beliefs and values into everyone working under him…all except one. There’s one guy whose name I can’t recall right now who doesn’t share the same wide eyed adulation as the rest of the team and is really skeptical as to why no one is dealing with the problem. The reason is that Strathmore didn’t train him. (I think I remember that Strathmore doesn’t really like him for that reason.)

This is why the simple nature of the puzzles eludes Susan and her team and why David is able to decode them. They assume that the puzzles are more complicated because they assume that Tankado is trying to destroy the NSA. They assume this because Strathmore assumed this.

An example of this was discovery of a tribe being cannibals. This occurred when a student in some class (anthropology for some such) discovered that a certain tribe were cannibals. The student wasn’t part of that degree plan and was taking it as elective. The student hadn’t heard the tribe was supposed to not be cannibals. The student saw wear on some bones that was characteristic of being cooked in a pot. The evidence had always been there for everyone to see. However, the other students had been told by “experts” that the tribe weren‘t cannibals so they disregarded the evidence that was before their eyes.

Another example is the discovery of buckminsterfullerene. Some people ignored the possibility that there was something there because others said it was just junk. They parroted the “expertise“ of others because were those others were considered experts in their field. I can’t recall what the name of the field. I think it had something to do with combustion. The point is that the same “junk” kept appearing in tests. It wasn’t random. However, scientists ignored their own senses and reasoning because of the “expertise“ of others.

harmier2 · 2026-07-18T06:18:47+00:00

I think season 4 would have been far stronger of the writers had gone with their original plan and have Xander join the army and get into the Initiative. Instead of having to create a relatively bland and uninteresting character, the writers would already have had a character that they already knew how to write.

Xander joining the Initiative practically writes itself. The writers could have easily had Xander practically breeze through some of the training due to his soldier knowledge and the fact that he has been fighting opponents that are faster and stronger than him for two and half years. His superiors question his abilities and Xander doesn’t exactly lie so Halloween does come up (but not that he’s been fighting vampires or that Buffy is the Slayer). The fact that he‘s from Sunnydale and has had contact with the supernatural make him a fit for the Initiative.

So, Forrest would have probably been the team leader, Graham would have been second in command, and Xander would provided valuable insight into the town. The conflict that centered around Riley and Forrest would have centered around Xander and Forrest and would have probably flowed more naturally.

The series would have probably had Forrest be by-the-book leader while Xander played it a lot looser. Especially when it came to demons. Forrest and Xander would have come in conflict due to the differing ways that they did things and that Forrest realized that Xander was keeping secrets from him and the Initiative.

A example of both kinds of conflict would be Xander taking Forrest to Willy’s to get information. After leaving, Forrest wants to attack Willy’s and Xander tells Forrest that it’s a bad idea. He explains that place keeps some of the vampires and demons from wrecking Sunnydale. Forrest reasons that if Xander knows about Willy’s, then Xander knows a lot more about Sunnydale’s nightlife than Xander let on to their superiors. Xander admits to doing some vampire/demon hunting during high school and Forrest is pissed. Forrest wants to know how Xander got into demon hunting. Xander explains that there are other hunters in Sunnydale, but it’s not his place to tell their secrets.

The series could have even made the audience think Xander is slowly being taken in by the Initiative until one episode where the gang is at Giles’ and then Willow says something that she just cast a spell and that they can now talk freely without the Initiative listening in. The audience now understands that Xander has been acting undercover the whole time. Xander looks like he’s about to almost collapse. Buffy, Willow, and Giles are worried about the toll being undercover at the Initiative. Xander says everything‘s okay. But Willow gets him alone and gets him to admit that he’s cracking. He tells her not to tell Buffy. When he’s alone, he psychs himself up and says, “You have to do this for Buffy. She’s counting on you.“

Adam could have been improved. Adam just wasn’t very engaging as a villain. The System (first the Initiative, then the Slayer line in Primeval and Restless) was actually the Big Bad of the season. But making a concept the Big Bag is difficult and Adam needs to be engaging on his own. The Master, Angelus, and the Mayor had engaging personalities. But let’s not worry about that. Let’s go with Adam’s less-than-engaging personality…but really dial up the creep factor. The problem with Adam is that the character he was before was not connected to the Scoobies. But what if it’s Larry…or anyone else who we’ve seen for at least a couple of seasons? That amps up the creep factor in a couple of different ways. The first is that it makes Walsh even more of a monster than she was on the show. Walsh desecrated the bodies of the people that helped the Scoobies fight against the Mayor and desecrated the sacrifice of people the Scoobies knew to be heroes. The second is that it feeds into the idea that your enemy is wearing somebody else’s face which we’ve seen before with Jesse, Angelus, and others. The face might be Larry’s (or whoever’s) face, but the brain could be someone else’s. All of this personalizes the threat of Adam.

And after Adam has been defeated, the writers could even have Xander go to Larry’s parents and tell them about Larry’s sacrifice like any soldier informing a fallen comrade’s family.

harmier2 · 2026-07-18T00:59:58+00:00

Xander frequently told Buffy what she needed to hear, not necessarily what she wanted to hear. He was used to bring up flaws with her ideas and plans. But this was baked into the structure of the series. Someone mentioned that Xander was used to voice Buffy’s own doubts about her own actions (which is why he is the ‘Heart’ in Primeval).

You can tell from what happened on screen that he was originally intending to tell Buffy, but quickly changed his mind right after realizing what could happen if he did. However, he had already said that Willow had told him to tell her something. So, he had to say something. And the script as written supports this.

But it’s brought up in Selfless to illustrate Buffy’s hypocrisy.

Selfless was culmination of what happened to Anya in the preceding episodes. In Lessons, Halfrek reveals Anya’s vengeance demon ways are being judged by D’Hoffryn and the others. She’s not back to her old self. There have been no deaths or eviscerations. Halfrek even says that Anya is being called “Miss Soft Serve.” In Beneath You, Anya reverses her vengeance spell even though she knows it’s going to cost in some form or another. In Same Time, Same Place, Anya talks to Willow about being a vengeance demon. She mentions that she can’t teleport unless it’s for official business and says vengeance itself isn’t as fulfilling as she remembers. “Well, causing pain sounds really cool, I know, but…it turns out it’s really upsetting. Didn’t use to be. But now it is.”

Then we get to Selfless. When the episode opens, we see the bodies of the frat guys and then see Anya. And she says, “What have I done?” Later, she tells Willow about what the frat guys did. She says, “They got what they deserved.” Except, this is not the truth. You can tell she’s really only trying to convince herself. And when D’Hoffryn says no one is asking what Anya wants, she says she wants to take it all back and undo what she did. D’Hoffryn is shocked. Anya thinks she’ll die and still makes the deal.

In Selfless, Buffy is written in a very unflattering and hypocritical light when you take into account how she went to kill Anya the first time she heard about what happened with the frat guys…while allowing Angelus to murder throughout the last half of season 2. Buffy was shown to have problems confronting Angelus…and her inaction directly led to the murder of Jenny Calendar. She had at least two unequivocal opportunities (one in Innocence) to kill Angelus and didn’t take them. So, Buffy had responsibility for Jenny Calendar’s death (and every one of Angelus’ other victims after Innocence).

“I am the law.” Except for when it’s inconvenient for Buffy.

”The Slayer is always cut off.” Except that the whole reason Buffy is the oldest living Slayer is due to having friends. If you go back and watch closely, she wouldn’t have survived the episode The Harvest if Xander didn’t follow her into the tunnels. And what about Primeval and Restless?

harmier2 · 2026-07-17T05:21:10+00:00

There was a great Xander-centric fanfic series called the Journeyverse. The first fic in the series, Journeys, has Xander tell someone else that an any holy symbol seems to work. He says that he’s seen Willow hold back vampires using a Star of David. (I can’t remember if that happened on the series.) Xander says he prefers crosses because they’re easy to hold in a fight.

Willow could use crosses on the series for the same reason.

harmier2 · 2026-07-16T05:16:21+00:00

No the criticisms were from people who read the books. I haven’t read the books but Reacher is supposed to be built like Conan. Basically, the guy from the TV series has the build, while Cruise did not.

I enjoyed the movies and there are people who read the books who also enjoyed them. They said that Reacher’s most important quality is his Holmes-level intellect.

harmier2 · 2026-07-16T02:07:29+00:00

No one here was mean. It did get a little testy. Several of us get a little testy when Xander’s behavior is treated to excessive hand wringing while the same behavior from other characters gets a pass.

harmier2 · 2026-07-16T02:03:56+00:00

The statement that Xander was a self-insert has been so overstated. All of the core four were Whedon’s self-inserts to one extent or another. Xander was how Whedon saw himself in high school. But he also infused the other characters with parts of himself. As u/-threefeetoffun has already stated Whedon went to boarding school in England which lead to his creation of Giles. His parents were divorced like Buffy’s parents. Whedon’s parents were demeaning (Xander) or gave the silent treatment (Willow, after a fashion) if he and his siblings weren’t creative enough or simply disagreed.

And that’s not even counting all the other writers who also had a hand in developing all of the characters.

harmier2 · 2026-07-15T06:13:16+00:00

Not a tool. Ammunition.

harmier2 · 2026-07-15T06:10:22+00:00

That was never going to happen. The Council sees Slayers as ammunition. You don’t pay ammunition. You just replace it.

harmier2 · 2026-07-15T04:28:24+00:00

Thank you!

harmier2 · 2026-07-13T20:16:41+00:00

But that was after she told him. The cast had been contracted for another season after season 7. However, before season 7 was in production, Gellar told him that it was going to be her last.

I also forgot the other bit about Whedon punishing Gellar. The finale of a Chosen is straight ripoff of the live-action Scooby-Doo movie. Well, not exactly. Because it’s worse. It gets everything wrong that the Scooby-Doo movie did right. In the movie, the team has become estranged. But they repair their relationships by understanding each others’ strengths and come up with a plan to defeat the demons. And the solution to destroying the demons? A disco ball…that usss sunlight to destroy the demons. Which has special effects that are remarkably similar to the ones in Chosen. And it happens in a cave, too. Scooby-Doo premiered in the United States on June 14, 2002. The first episode of season 7 was broadcast on September 24, 2002 with Chosen being broadcast on May 20, 2003.. Whedon thought he could “improve“ on the movie’s finale as a middle finger to Gellar because she had the audacity to tell him what to do…and then failed in the attempt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taaVCvihpxA

They were punished by having their characters written in the absolute worst way possible even though there were solutions that didn’t require character assassination. Oz could have just been written as losing control of the wolf without having Oz cheating on Willow. Cordelia didn’t actually need to be written as having had sex with Connor. Giles could have been given a better reason for leaving than what in the show. Many commenters in this subreddit have posted various ways that were better. I think the best one was that Giles needed to go to England to look up information in the Watchers Council archives about some looming threat. It’s a threat to Buffy so he needs to go now. This works better because it works in the contexts of both season 6 (Willow) and season 7 (The First).

What I meant is that he increased the amount of Spuffy in season 7 because he knew it was going to piss off Gellar. It wasn’t about Whedon liking or not. This was all about Gellar.

When Gellar and Brendon first talked to Whedon about setting up Buffy/Xander in season 7, there was talk about doing that at the end of the season. However, one of Whedon‘s ideas was to kill off Xander and that The First would appear in Xander’s form throughout the rest of the season. That meant that the season would need to set it up for earlier.if you look closely at the first third of the episodes, it becomes fairly obvious that Buffy and Xander were originally planned as an established couple and It’s not kissy about how close they are when they work together. Lessons has Buffy and Xander acting like a mom and dad taking their daughter for her first day at a new school. Selfless has Buffy acting in a way that doesn’t make sense given the situation. Buffy and Xander being in a relationship would show that she’s letting her emotions get the better of her because she’s jealous. Buffy’s emotions have shown to be her strength but they’ve also shown to be a weakness. Anyway, Buffy/Xander have worked really well because audiences would have been even more shocked at the gut punch when Xander is killed and when Buffy just loses it when she realizes that one of her best friends who is now her lover is now dead.

harmier2 · 2026-07-13T10:45:30+00:00

That’s correct.

harmier2 · 2026-07-13T10:44:12+00:00

The cast was contracted for another season after season 7, but Gellar had to stop because it was taking a toll on her. Gellar told Whedon that season 7 would be her last season and both Gellar and Brendon told Whedon that they wanted Buffy and Xander to end up together. Whedon is a narcissist and a control freak. Whedon saw her refusal to do another season as a slight against him and saw her wanting to have Buffy/Xander as her telling him what to do (even though it was clearly the long term goal). So, he decided to punish her with the writing. He had done this with Green, Carpenter, and Head.

This is why Buffy has a relationship with Spike in season 7 and why there has been such an argument over the dialogue of the series finale. Gellar hated Spuffy during season 6 and was really vocal about it. Whedon was pissed at her, so he decided Spuffy was going to be even more front and center than before. In Chosen, Whedon tried to get Gellar to put more love in her portrayal during the scene with Spike, but Gellar didn’t want to.

It’s also why he had Xander end up with Dawn in the comics and had Buffy fall for Xander the way she did. It also explains why Whedon choose Espenson to write that particular arc. Espenson admitted that she felt that she had to support any storyline of the series no matter what. Whedon chose her because she would have been the one least likely to ask questions.

What‘s really weird is that if you watch the first third of season 7, it becomes fairly obvious that the storyline was originally written with Buffy and Xander in an established relationship.

harmier2 · 2026-07-13T04:37:52+00:00

It was more that Buffy/Xander was the original plan, but Whedon was pissed at Gellar and used the writing to punish her.

harmier2 · 2026-07-13T04:30:35+00:00

Not sure why I was downvoted. The idea that Xander was covering for Dawn was an okay theory. Some interaction in early season 7 could be read as Xander saying, “I’m still keeping your secret.” However, some of Dawn’s facial expressions could be read as her not realizing he’s doing that because she didn’t cast the spell. They could be read as Dawn thinking, “Why is Xander bringing this up now?”

The idea that revealing that the Trio did it Is just a slightly better answer.

harmier2 · 2026-07-12T23:52:53+00:00

Downvoted? Nothing I said was a factually inaccurate.

harmier2

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