The television show never had time for it — or perhaps never prioritised it — but the Buffy comics have given Faith Lehane a scene the series arguably owed her since 2000.
The moment occurs in Angel and Faith Season 10, in the arc titled “Lost and Found.” Faith has been hired by Kennedy’s Deepscan organisation — a private security firm staffed by Slayers — to track down a missing Riley Finn in the jungles of South America. The assignment is professional. Faith’s motivation is not.
In Season 4’s “Who Are You?”, Faith and Buffy swapped bodies. Faith, inhabiting Buffy’s form, slept with Riley. He had no idea who he was actually with. It is easy to overlook this in the larger catalogue of things Faith did during her villain era — it sits somewhere below murder in the hierarchy of her crimes — but it is still a serious violation. The show never really returned to it. Riley left. Faith went to prison. The thread was dropped.
The comics picked it up.
When Faith finally finds Riley and they have a moment alone, she apologises. She tells him she knows it isn’t enough but she wanted him to hear it directly. Riley’s response is the more interesting part of the exchange: he accepts it, then tells her that’s not actually what atonement is. Receiving absolution from the people you have wronged is not the same thing as changing. He says he hopes she figures out the difference.
It is the kind of thing a Watcher might say. There is something almost Giles-like about the way Riley phrases it — the careful, considered response to someone who wants forgiveness handed to them as a transaction.
What the comics understand about Faith that the series sometimes fumbled is that her redemption arc is not a destination. She does not arrive at being good. She is continually working at it, continually confronting specific things she did to specific people, in a way that is unglamorous, inconvenient, and exactly right. An apology to Riley Finn for a four-year-old crime, in a South American jungle, whilst still on a paying job, is not a dramatic confession scene. It is just what the work looks like.
Eliza Dushku played Faith as someone who desperately wanted to matter. The comics remember that, and have given her a place where mattering is incremental and earned, one difficult conversation at a time.
Angel and Faith Season 10 is available from Dark Horse Comics.
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