Season 4, Episode 16 | Aired: 29 February 2000 | Written by: Joss Whedon | Directed by: Joss Whedon
Faith in Buffy’s body. The episode gives Eliza Dushku the chance to play Sarah Michelle Gellar playing Faith, and she’s extraordinary at it — the mimicry, the slippage, the moments where something underneath surfaces. Faith sleeps with Riley without telling him who she is. She saves a church full of people from vampires and has a breakdown about it in the mirror afterward. Real Buffy, in Faith’s body, is captured by the Watchers Council. The two switch back. Faith runs.
What Happens
Faith, as Buffy, tests what it’s like to be liked, trusted, cared for. She meets Tara. She has sex with Riley. She tells Spike “you’re nothing” and then is disturbed by how easily she delivered it. Saving the churchgoers from vampires is not planned — she’s drawn in, fights, and then is undone by their gratitude. Real Buffy, freed by Giles and Kendra’s Watcher, finds Faith and they fight. Faith beats herself, savagely, when she’s back in her own body. She gets on a bus to LA and keeps running.
Key Moments
Faith in the mirror, mocking Buffy’s face, saying “because it’s wrong” and then starting to believe it. And the final fight — Faith pounding her own face, the self-destruction fully externalised. Dushku’s performance across both episodes is the best work the show ever got from a guest performer.
Monster / Villain
Faith — but by the episode’s end, the show has made her so legible as a person in pain that the label doesn’t quite fit.
Notable Quote
“You’re nothing. You’re disgusting.” — Faith, in Buffy’s body, to herself. She means it both ways.
Where It Fits
Who Are You? completes Faith’s Season 3-4 arc and sends her to Los Angeles for the Angel two-parter Five by Five/Sanctuary. Her story isn’t over, but this is where Season 4’s version of it ends — with Faith beating herself in an alley and running.