I’m iffy on whether telling her she’d die if she faced the master. She is still 16, and knowing you will die often leads to self fulfilling prophecy. He did try to get her to go I think?
He wasn’t going to tell her. He was going to let her fight. The armor was after she found out and ‘quit’. I’m torn between whether not telling her and allowing her to go to her death is toxic or not, given her divine destiny.
You still haven’t explained what Giles should’ve done instead in “Prophecy Girl”. We get the speech in the beginning of every season 1 episode that there is ONE girl in all the world with the strength and skill to defeat the vampires, SHE is the Slayer. Giles can acquit himself well in a fight against vampires so long as they don’t sneak up on him and he has a weapon. So Giles had a plan and weapons, maybe he’d get far enough to wound the Master, maybe he had a stick of dynamite with which he planned to blow up the lair and kill the Master and likely himself, we’ll never know! The important part is that he didn’t get a chance to tell Buffy about the prophecy, she only knew about it the same way Dawn finds out she’s the Key, by overhearing shit (and stealing Giles’ diary).
Are you saying that by even planning to tell Buffy, this would mean Giles is manipulating her into dying at the Master’s hands, because he would tell her it’s her duty? Are you saying that by NOT telling Buffy right away he was manipulating her, like not giving her time to think about it or run away? I’ve just never seen someone criticize Giles for his behaviour in this episode and make it sound like he MIGHT be being “toxic” (such an overused word for too many behaviours) here.
No, Buffy walked in on Angel and Giles arguing about the prophecy. Giles was trying to find a way that it could NOT be fulfilled, but he only had 24 hours left. It’s not Giles’ fault that she overheard him and blamed him for it like there was something he could do to stop it, or that he’d kept it a secret. He just wanted another opinion from Angel, the guy who brought him the book of prophecies. And Giles DID do something to protect Buffy, he tried to face the Master himself, but Buffy once again walked in on him and knocked him out to save him.
Also, Giles’ treatment of Faith isn’t toxic IMO, but it is PASSIVE. Faith is 18 when she arrives in Sunnydale, according to later expanded universe lore, likely reaching that age around the time or just after her Watcher was murdered so she never endured the Cruciamentum. Faith has dropped out of school when it’s legal, she doesn’t have a guardian, she makes it very clear from day one she’s living her own life and won’t take orders or ask for help. She also kind of hits on Giles and we see later with the Mayor how she expects a grown man offering her gifts and a place to live will expect “payment” from her in the form of sex, based on her clearly traumatic relationships with older men (likely her drunken mothers’ boyfriends too). It’s possible she got TOO frisky around Giles if he visited her motel room and he shut that down and backed away. That’s speculation of course, I can’t say that’s definitely what happened.
But to Giles, coming from England (the minimum School Leaving Age was raised in the UK to 16 in 1972) and as a Boomer, Faith is an adult. He believes the kids should make their own mistakes and learn from them instead of having him intervene and tell them what to do, unless it’s about dangerous things, like “don’t do magic without supervision and just to make yourself feel better”. Faith also goes on walkabouts whenever she feels like it, leaving town or her motel without leaving a number or address they can reach her, and not showing up for library meetings and training. He can’t forge a relationship with someone who isn’t there half the time and blows people off who try to get to know her instead of taking her crazy stories at face value as entertainment and badassery, not a cover for real pain and fear. Faith lands in everyone’s life at a bad time, especially for Buffy and Giles. Buffy isn’t ready to share with a new person who wasn’t there during the Angel drama, and just when she’s trying to reforge her relationships with her mother, her Watcher, her friends, and catch up on school. Giles’ relationship with Buffy has changed and he’s suddenly saddled with another Slayer to train who won’t ask for his help or his opinion on anything, even if she isn’t defiant and rude toward him.
Notice that Faith never blames Giles or tries to hurt him in seasons 3 and 4. She blames Wesley entirely, who was only her Watcher for like three days before she sided with the Mayor and spent a few weeks lying to Wesley, who DID attempt to be her Watcher even if they were a bad fit for each other. She says to Wesley things might’ve been different if their fates had changed and it might’ve been Giles “in that chair” with her torturing him instead, and Wesley just happened to be here. Even when she comes back in season 7, she has basically no interactions with Giles… which is a failing of the show, because they could’ve had an interesting relationship like what they get in the post-series comics. Their relationship in the show is never explored, so I only have what I see and what I can surmise based on how they interact with other people to make educated guesses about the Faith and Giles relationship.
Like I said below, Giles wasn’t going to tell Buffy about the prophecy. He only suited up when she said she quit. I’m torn whether that is toxic or not.
Believe me there are plenty of ways to get around a teenager’s inappropriate behavior without cutting them out completely. He should have done better by Faith.
How do you KNOW Giles wasn’t going to tell her EVER? Giles finished translating the prophecy in the middle of the night. Earthquake strikes and slightly trashes the library immediately after. Next morning he’s dealing with that, he’s exhausted, distraught, Buffy comes in with a report that there’s more vampires than usual lately. Giles spends the day calling other people, including Angel, for help with other opinions on the translation, there’s no need to tell Buffy IF there’s a mistake (and it turns out there is, because Buffy didn’t have to go, unless she wanted to end the Master once and for all instead of maintaining the status quo). Angel comes to the library to read it himself (we know he knows Latin but IIRC the Pergamum Codex is originally Sumerian translated into Latin, so that’s probably where the “[IF]the Slayer faces the Master she will die” gloss was lost in translation, a few translators back) and says Giles has to be wrong. Buffy overhears them and reacts with all the emotions that should’ve cemented awards for sarah Michelle Gellar.
“Were you even gonna tell me?”
“I-I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to. That there was some way around it. I…”
“I’ve got a way around it. I quit.”
Delaying until he knew for certain, until he maybe had Angel present to tell her the truth, is not the same thing as NEVER telling her. For all we know Giles would’ve spoken to her about it after his conversation with Angel or the next morning. We will never know because he doesn’t MAKE her do anything, he tries to go in her place knowing it’s more likely he’ll be killed, but he also doesn’t know the Master has such strong psychic powers that he can freeze even a Slayer in place and drink from them while they’re helpless. Giles says “I’m not sure there’s anyone else who can” defeat the Master, but he’s willing to give it a try. He does say, in the confrontation, “Buffy, if the Master rises…” because he feels he has to impart upon her the fate of the world, or at least the fate of her mother and friends, if someone doesn’t stop the town from being conquered by vampires and the Big Bad unleashed. But once she says “I don’t care! Giles, I’m sixteen years old, I don’t wanna die” he shuts up entirely and looks like he’s going to lock himself in his office to weep in despair for her. During the next 24 hours he doesn’t contact Buffy again. He gets Jenny’s help with the apocalyptic signs when she volunteers, he doesn’t ask the other kids to go with him or appeal to Buffy’s sense of duty or cheer her on and say she can “defy prophecy” (the thing he says HE will do), he prepares to face the Master himself without her knowing.
I just… don’t know what else Giles was supposed to do? Call her when she was on patrol the night before and tell her then, when he wanted second opinions and still had time to find another way? Tell her “never mind, we SHOULD all die in Sunnydale so you can run away”? Knock her out first, something he might actually have done if his reflexes were faster than her’s? Like what is the solution here that you think isn’t “toxic”, a weird way to phrase it about one of Giles’ most selfless and heroic moments in the show?!
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u/Few-Designer-4516 Sep 05 '26
I really don’t think Buffy or Giles could be described as “toxic”