Bring on the Night (Buffy episode)
Encyclopedia : B : BR : BRI : Bring on the Night (Buffy episode)
"Bring on the Night" is the tenth episode of the seventh and final season of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. See also List of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.
Plot synopsis
Summary
"Bring on the Night" starts with the Scooby Gang recovering from the attack by the Bringers and the loss of Spike, who is still being tortured by The First in the guises of himself, Buffy and Drusilla. Spike, however, refuses to give in, telling The First that if Buffy believes in him, he can believe in himself, too.
Back at Buffy's house, the somewhat overenthusiastic Dawn and Anya help Buffy question Andrew, who leads them to the seal underneath the school. They find Spike's blood and cover the seal up again with shovels they find next to it. Still carrying the shovels, the leave the school, meeting Principal Wood on the way — who himself is carrying a shovel, too, from burying Jonathan in the previous episode.
Back at home, Willow's locator spell goes terribly wrong, with a demon — probably the First — taking control of her briefly. Buffy promises the panicked witch they will not call on her to use magic until they know what they are doing.
Giles suddenly appears at the door, bringing three potential slayers, the news that the Watchers' Council has been destroyed and information on the First. After assessing the situation, Giles tells Buffy that she is the only chance the Potentials and in fact the world have. The Potentials try to settle in, with Kennedy showing a definite interest in sleeping in the same room as the slightly flustered Willow.
Buffy and Giles go back to the Christmas tree lot where Buffy first found the Bringers in "Amends". She falls in a hole and meets the Turok-Han, and barely manages to escape alive after a spike to the "Übervampire's" heart fails to kill it. That night, the Scoobies prepare for an attack on the house by the Turok-Han. However, one of the Potentials panics, bolts, and is killed by the monster. Buffy is too late to save her, and again only barely survives the encounter.
So badly wounded her friends wonder if she will even survive, Buffy ends the episode with a rousing speech, telling her gang that they will win — and that the Scoobies and Potentials have just become an army.
Expanded overview
The gang research The First, but don't have much luck finding anything. Dawn grows impatient with Andrew's state of unconsciousness, but keeps researching at Buffy's request. Buffy asks for a book and her mother hands it to her. Joyce warns her that she needs to rest if she intends to defeat this evil, but Buffy knows the vision isn't real and then Xander wakes her up from her dream. The Ubervamp drags Spike further into a cave where the First has taken on Drusilla's form to watch Spike get tortured.
At the Summers house, Dawn and Anya secretly try to force Andrew to wake and he does as Buffy walks in the room. They begin to interrogate him again about the First, but he takes some prompting before he's willing to help them. Andrew leads the gang to the school basement where the seal is still exposed on the ground, but no Spike or First Evil to be seen. Although they don't know what the seal did or does, the gang grab shovels and cover it with dirt again. On the way out, Buffy and Dawn run into Principal Wood, also carrying a shovel. Buffy and Dawn try to explain Buffy's surprising recovery from being sick and their own possession of a shovel while the principal explains himself and asks Buffy to return to work soon.
At the house, Willow begins a spell to find the First, but it doesn't go anything like she planned. Explosive bolts send Anya and Buffy flying while Willow is briefly possessed by the First Evil. Xander smashes a bowl used in the spell which breaks the effects and sends Willow crashing. She's fearful of the magic and hurting people and begs Buffy not to let her hurt anyone with magic. Buffy starts to leave to find the First herself, but is surprised to find Giles standing outside her front door. With him are three young girls--Kennedy, Molly and Annabelle--who are potential slayers that he's trying to protect.
Giles informs the whole gang about the First's plans to destroy all slayers-in-training, their watchers and eventually the two active Slayers, Buffy and Faith. He breaks the news that the Council has been completely destroyed along with most of their records, except for the few books and references on the First he stole while there was still time. Giles goes over basic knowledge about the First Evil, explaining that it can only take on the appearance of the dead, but it's incapable of solid form. He informs Buffy that unfortunately, she's the only one strong enough to actually stand a chance of winning against the First. One of the Slayers, Kennedy, objects to the situation and wonders why they're hiding out on the Hellmouth of all places with only one person responsible for all their lives.
In the cave, the Ubervamp tortures Spike by dunking his head under water while "Drusilla" lectures Spike about following the rules. Kennedy helps Willow make the sleeping arrangements around the house and ultimately, Kennedy ends up staying in Willow's room. The girls convene in the kitchen and start eating cookies after Dawn burns the meal she was trying to cook. Buffy and Giles walk and talk together as they search for an entrance to the cave Buffy remembers from the first time she encountered the First and it's minions, the Bringers. Buffy unintentionally finds it as she falls through some old planks covering the ground. As she searches the caves, she's viciously attacked by the Ubervamp. She stakes the demon, but it doesn't kill him and he proceeds to beat her up badly. Buffy narrowly manages to escape the cave by climbing out and the vampire is kept at bay by the rising sun.
Giles and Buffy return to the house to find the three potential slayers hanging out in the kitchen. Giles tells them all about the vampire Buffy fought, a Turok-Han. He explains that it's part of a separate race of vampires that is far superior to and feared by the everyday vampires Buffy is used to. At work, Buffy researches "evil" on the Internet as Principal Woods stops to check on her. Again, in the cave, Spike is smacked around by the Ubervamp while Drusilla dances about and tries to convince Spike to decide to be on their side of the game. Spike doesn't fall for the mind tricks and earns himself more of a beating from the Ubervamp.
Buffy reviews her wounds as her mother pays her another visit. Joyce talks to Buffy about evil and it's constant presence in everyone and about the pressure Buffy's feeling to deal with this evil. She wakes up to find that she's still at work and had been in the middle of a meeting with a student. The student walks off and Principal Wood watches on from his office as a very tired Buffy tries to deal with the stress. Later that evening, the gang prepares for sundown and the potential danger it brings to them. The potential Slayers get weapons while Andrew tries unsuccessfully to convince Buffy and Xander to untie him. As Buffy watches for the sun to set, Giles reminds her that she's the one being depended on and then Molly interrupts, informing them that Annabelle ran off.
The could-be Slayer runs through the streets of Sunnydale until she's captured by the Ubervamp and quickly killed. Buffy shows up in time to find the dead body and be attacked by the Ubervamp herself. She is hurt and runs off in search of better fighting grounds and a useful weapon. Again, the vampire has the upper hand, but Buffy drops a bundle of heavy steel beams on the creature, smashing it to the ground. Practically unaffected, the Ubervamp rises from the mountain of beams and goes after Buffy again. He throws her around some more, finally tossing her through a stone wall where she's buried under rubble and steel on the other side.
The First in Drusilla's form gets angry with Spike as he continues to refuse to cooperate. Because of Buffy's faith in him, he feels strong enough to refuse. A terribly wounded Buffy sits alone at home as she listens to Giles and Willow talk in another room. They worry about Buffy's condition and their ability to fight this thing that seems so much bigger than them all. Buffy finally comes downstairs and gives an inpirational speech about this huge challenge before them that is bigger than any evil they've ever faced. She tells the group that she's more scared than ever, but she's not about to back down now. There's a new plan: they're declaring war on this evil instead of waiting for it to make a move
Writing and acting
- Though not apparent when they first show up, the Potentials will redefine the nature of the series, in that the sheer amount of eventual Potentials represents a major shift in style for Buffy's seventh season: taking in account the eventual total number of potentials, in addition to the main characters, plus Giles, Faith, Principal Wood, Andrew, Caleb and the multiple manifestations of the First, the number of named characters grows to more than 20. This significant expansion of the cast means that screen-time is now divided among a great number of characters (some of which are excluded from some episodes entirely), where previous seasons were always mainly focused on the original Scooby Gang (Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles), with only a few more characters receiving notable amounts of attention. This leads to one of the fan community's main problems with this season: they feel it doesn't focus on its characters enough.
- Buffy's final speech, as she asserts her own and her friends' confidence and acknowledgment of the severity of what they are facing becomes a recurring trait of season seven. In fact, the series's writers would apparently eventually come to acknowledge them as excessive, as in later episodes both Buffy and Andrew poke fun at the fact.
Cast and crew
- Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris
- Emma Caulfield as Anya
- Juliet Landau as Drusilla
- James Marsters as Spike
- Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers
- Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg
- Anthony Stewart Head as Rupert Giles
- Kristine Sutherland as Joyce Summers
- Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers
Quotes and trivia
- Giles: "Sorry to barge in. I'm afraid we have a slight… apocalypse."
- Drusilla/First: "And what makes you think you have a choice? What makes you think you will ever be any good at all in this world?"
- Buffy: "I'm beyond tired. I'm beyond scared. I'm standing on the mouth of hell, and it is gonna swallow me whole. And it'll choke on me. We're not ready? They're not ready. They think we're gonna wait for the end to come, like we always do. I'm done waiting. They want an apocalypse? Oh, we'll give 'em one. Anyone else who wants to run, do it now. 'Cause we just became an army. We just declared war. From now on, we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them, and cut out their hearts one by one, until The First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself. There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil, and that's us. Any questions?" — which represents the season's tonal turning point.
- It is much debated amongst fans whether Joyce's appearance in Buffy's dream is either Joyce's ghost, the First as Joyce in Buffy's dream, or simply Joyce in Buffy's dream. Many believe it is the First trying to disrupt Buffy's research of the First -- "Sweety, you're working too hard. You must rest" -- and some believe it is Joyce's benevolent spirit showing compassion for her daughter from beyond the grave. Neither theory has ever been confirmed. Whatsoever, it is Joyce's last appearance in the series.
Production details
Translations
German title: "Wenn die Nacht beginnt" ("When the night begins")
Continuity
Arc significance
It is finally revealed what the Scoobies are up against and what the full extent of the threat is. The Potentials start arriving, changing Buffy's role from that of a lone fighter to that of a leader. Willow's powers are effectively neutralized for episodes to come by her fear of failure. It becomes more and more clear that Principal Wood knows more than he is letting on.
Buffy faces another enemy that it seems she cannot beat, and develops a hardness that will put her into conflict with the others in the next episodes.
Timing
- Stories that take place around the same time in the Buffyverse:
| Location, time (if known) | Buffyverse: Fall 2002 - December 2002 (non-canon = italic) |
|---|---|
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.01 Lessons (Buffy episode)>Lessons |
| Mexico, 2002 | Buffy/Angel book: Seven Crows (Buffy/Angel novel)>Seven Crows |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.01 Deep Down (Angel episode)>Deep Down |
| L.A., 2002 | B7.02 Beneath You (Buffy episode)>Beneath You |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.02 Ground State (Angel episode)>Ground State |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.03 Same Time, Same Place (Buffy episode)>Same Time, Same Place |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | Buffy book: Apocalypse Memories (Buffy novel)>Apocalypse Memories |
| L.A., Las Vegas, 2002 | A4.03 The House Always Wins (Angel episode)>The House Always Wins |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.04 Help (Buffy episode)>Help |
| L.A., 2002 | Angel book: Dark Mirror (Angel novel)>Dark Mirror |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | Buffy book: Mortal Fear (Buffy novel)>Mortal Fear |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | Buffy book: Spark and Burn (Buffy novel)>Spark and Burn |
| Sunnydale, L.A., 2002 | Buffy/Angel book: Heat (Buffy/Angel novel)>Heat |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.04 Slouching Toward Bethlehem (Angel episode)>Slouching Toward Bethlehem |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.05 Selfless (Buffy episode)>Selfless |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.05 Supersymmetry (Angel episode)>Supersymmetry |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.06 Him (Buffy episode)>Him |
| L.A., 2002 | Angel book: Solitary Man (Angel novel)>Solitary Man |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.06 Spin the Bottle (Angel episode)>Spin the Bottle |
| L.A., 2002 | Angel book: Love and Death (Angel novel)>Love and Death |
| L.A., 2002 | Angel book: Monolith (Angel novel)>Monolith |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.07 Conversations with Dead People (Buffy episode)>Conversations with Dead People |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.07 Apocalypse, Nowish (Angel episode)>Apocalypse, Nowish |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.08 Sleeper (Buffy episode)>Sleeper |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.08 Habeas Corpses (Angel episode)>Habeas Corpses |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.09 Never Leave Me (Buffy episode)>Never Leave Me |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.09 Long Day's Journey (Angel episode)>Long Day's Journey |
| Sunnydale, 2002 | B7.10 Bring on the Night (Buffy episode)>Bring on the Night |
| Unknown, 2002 | |
| New York, 2002 | |
| Unknown 2002 | |
| L.A., 2002 | A4.10 Awakening (Angel episode)>Awakening |
External links
| Buffyverse | ||
| Main | Canon | Index Chronology: Ancient | Modern | BS1 | BS2 | BS3 | BS4/AS1 | BS5/AS2 | BS6/AS3 | BS7/AS4 | AS5 | Future | Flashbacks | |
| Buffy | Characters (main) | Characters (minor) | Episodes | Plot | Comics | Film | Pilot (unaired) | Promo: History.. | Novels | Promos: Pre-"Bargaining" | |
| Angel | Characters (main) | Characters (minor) | Episodes | Plot | | |
| Spin-offs | Comics | Fan made productions | Fray | Novels | Spike movie | Undeveloped productions Buffy Animated | Card Game | RPGs | Tales of Slayer (prose) | Tales of Slayers | Tales of Vampires | Toys | Video Games Upcoming: Blackout | | | | | | Portal Through Time | Spike vs Dracula | | |
| Powers | Angel Investigations | Circle of the Black Thorn | Order of Aurelius | The First Evil | The Initiative | Monsters | Old Ones | The Powers That Be | Ra-Tet | Scooby Gang | Senior Partners | Watchers' Council | Wolfram & Hart | |
| People | Adam | Amy | Andrew | Angel | Anya | Buffy | Caleb | Connor | Cordelia | Dawn | Darla | Doyle | Dru | Eve | Faith | Fred | Giles | Glory | Gunn | Harmony | Holtz | Illyria | Jasmine | Jenny | Joyce | Jonathan | Kate | Kennedy | Lilah | Lindsey | Lorne | The Master | Mayor Wilkins | Oz | Professor Walsh | Riley | Spike | Tara | Warren | Wesley | Willow | Xander | |
| Places | L.A. | Sunnydale Bronze | Caritas | Hellmouth | Hyperion | Library | Magic Box | Pylea | Sunnydale High | |
| Music | Complete Tracklist | Use of Music in Buffy & Angel | Dingoes Ate My Baby | Film | | | Once More, With Feeling | |
| Key Terminology | "Demon" | "Slayer" | "Vampire" | "Watcher" | "Werewolf" | "Witch" "Child of Senior Partners" | Shanshu | Sunnydale Syndrome | Tro-Clon | |
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.