Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3, Led by Faith and the Mayor, Still Divides Fans 27 Years Later

Most great TV shows need a few episodes to find their footing, and some need a few seasons. Succession‘s first season was a slog. Parks and Rec‘s opening run is almost unwatchable once you know what comes later. The Simpsons didn’t get good until season 3.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed the same pattern. Its first season was mixed at best, as the cast and writers struggled to find their footing. Season 2 then delivered one of the finest batches of episodes in television history. Much of the credit goes to the arrival of vampires Spike (James Marsters) and Druscilla (Juliet Landau), and to Angel’s (David Boreanaz) transformation into the villainous Angelus.

So how did the writers follow that? By making season 3 even better.

October is almost over, but there’s time for one more spooky binge. Fire up Hulu, or pull out the DVDs if you have them, and spend the rest of the season watching Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the Scooby Gang take on the most terrifying villain they ever faced: a small-town politician.

Mayor Wilkins was a perfect Buffy villain, and so was Faith

Season 3 introduces two formidable antagonists. Faith Lehane (Eliza Dushku) lasts to the end of the series, finding redemption and becoming a hero. Mayor Richard Wilkins (Harry Groener) isn’t so lucky. The two characters could hardly be more different, yet the way they fit together shows the genius of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its problematic creator, Joss Whedon.

Faith turns up early in season 3 and quickly reveals herself as the new Slayer, after the last one died in season 2. (Buffy’s brief death in season 1 leads to two chosen ones for the rest of the show. Just roll with it.) Where Buffy is level-headed, Faith is pugnacious and unpredictable. She doesn’t only kill vampires to save lives. She seems to get a twisted thrill out of the hunt.

Mayor Wilkins, meanwhile, has lurked in the background of Sunnydale since season 2, with other local leaders mentioning him in hushed tones. The town sits on a literal portal to hell, so it’s no surprise that the mayor isn’t on the up and up. Thanks to a pact with an evil demon, Wilkins is over a century old. He has quietly spread chaos and death for years, building toward a ritual that will turn him into a giant snake monster and wipe out the town.

Groener plays him squeaky-clean and almost never drops his “mask” of smiling civility, even while threatening to kill anyone in his way. The performance turns what could have been a basic villain (Evil politician? We’ve never seen that before!) into a uniquely disturbing monster.

At first, Faith and the mayor seem unrelated. One is a dark foil to Buffy, the other is the season’s big bad. Their plotlines collide when Faith breaks bad and starts working for Wilkins. Her first mission is to kill Buffy. She sets out to do it by seducing Buffy’s boyfriend Angel, hoping to turn him back into an evil vampire. Buffy prevails in the end, but it’s extremely tough going for a few episodes. Even 27 years later, the arc is brutal to watch.

It worked so well that fans started harassing Dushku on the street.

“When I started being really naughty, some people were upset by my antics, and some fans started freaking me out. It was very real for them,” Dushku said in a 2018 interview. “People would call me by my character name like, ‘Yo Faith! Who do you think you are coming to Sunnydale and stealing Buffy’s boyfriend!’ They’d want to fight me on Santa Monica Boulevard, and I was just trying to get groceries.”

Honestly, I get it. If I saw Dushku on the street today, my first impulse might be to scold her publicly for treating Buffy so terribly. And if I ran into Groener, I’d probably turn around and sprint the other way.

That’s the power of Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 3.

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Source: Polygon