One of the more consistently interesting things BOOM! Studios’ The Vampire Slayer has done is to ask what Buffy Summers is without the powers that define her. The alternate-universe run by Sarah Gailey and Hannah Templer transferred the Slayer abilities to Willow early in its run, leaving Buffy without the enhanced strength, speed, and instincts she has carried since she was called. Issue eleven of the series finally brings the full weight of that question to bear, and Buffy’s answer is unambiguous.
The situation she walks into is not a gentle one. Willow — unable to manage the Slayer powers on top of her existing capacity for magic — has been consumed by them, becoming a dark version of herself that the Scooby Gang has been failing to contain. Faith has tried the direct approach. It has not worked. And then Buffy finds out, all at once, that her friends stole her powers without telling her, lied to her about it, and have been conducting the fight against Dark Willow while keeping her deliberately in the dark.
Any of this, individually, would be enough to derail a person. All of it at once, landing simultaneously, is devastating. Buffy processes it in what the issue describes as a matter of moments before setting it aside and focusing on saving Willow.
This is not presented as selflessness for its own sake. It is presented as character. The Buffy who responds to catastrophic betrayal by immediately formulating a plan to save the person who wronged her is demonstrating something that has nothing to do with Slayer powers: the particular quality of attention, the reflexive prioritisation of others, the refusal to let her own legitimate grievance get in the way of what needs to be done right now. She was always this. The powers were in addition to this, not instead of it.
There is also something worth noting about what this reveals of the friends who stole from her. In keeping Buffy powerless and ignorant, they denied her the chance to prove herself. They managed around her rather than with her, which is both a practical failure — they clearly needed all the help they could get — and a philosophical one. They underestimated her in precisely the way the world has always underestimated her, and they have had the specific embarrassment of watching her demonstrate why that was a mistake.
The Vampire Slayer has always been interested in what the myth of the Slayer costs the person who carries it. Issue eleven suggests something complementary: that the person who carries it is more than the myth, and that stripping away the supernatural elements does not diminish her. It clarifies her.
Buffy Summers is the Slayer. The powers are beside the point.
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