Season 3, Episode 1 | Aired: 29 September 1998 | Written by: Joss Whedon | Directed by: Joss Whedon
The season premiere picks up in the aftermath of Becoming — Buffy is gone, living in Los Angeles under the name Anne, waitressing and keeping her head down. Sunnydale carries on without her: the Scoobies are patrolling badly, Joyce is barely holding together, Giles is searching. The episode is quieter than most premieres, more interested in what it means to run away than in action.
What Happens
Buffy, calling herself Anne, encounters Chanterelle (Julia Lee) — a character from Season 2’s Lie to Me, now also running under an assumed name. Chanterelle’s boyfriend has disappeared after contact with a street preacher and a strange blood ritual that deposits victims in a Hell dimension where they are enslaved as labour and aged rapidly. Buffy intervenes, leads a slave revolt, and gets everyone out. She gives Chanterelle her “Anne” identity — a small, precise act of continuity — and returns to Sunnydale.
Back home, the Scoobies have been managing without her, badly. Cordelia has a crossbow. Oz is bitten. Giles is searching for Buffy overseas. Joyce is talking to a grief counsellor and blaming herself.
Key Moments
The Hell dimension sequence — the aged victims, the labour, the slaver demons — is the episode’s visceral centre, but the real scene is Buffy telling the enslaved workers “I’m Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.” It’s the first time she’s used her name in months. She means it again.
Monster / Villain
Lily’s Ken (Carlos Jacott), who runs a cult pipeline into a slave-labour Hell dimension. One of the show’s more understated hells — mundane cruelty rather than spectacle.
Notable Quote
“Hey, Ken. Want to see my impression of Gandhi?” [beat] “Gandhi?” “Well, you know, if he was really pissed off.”
Where It Fits
Anne is about the cost of what Buffy did at the end of Season 2. She saved the world and lost everything — her home, her mother, her friends — and she’s been paying for it alone for months. The episode doesn’t rush the reunion. It earns it.