Season 4, Episode 12 | Aired: 25 January 2000 | Written by: Jane Espenson | Directed by: Michael Gershman
Ethan Rayne returns and turns Giles into a Fyarl demon. Giles, enormous and horned and able only to roar, enlists Spike’s help navigating Sunnydale. Spike, who can understand Fyarl, translates — for a fee — while Giles pursues Ethan. The episode is a showcase for Anthony Stewart Head’s physical comedy and a sharp observation about how the Initiative sees anything non-human.
What Happens
Giles discovers that the Initiative — of which he knew nothing — has been operating on his doorstep. He feels obsolete, overlooked, sidelined. He and Ethan drink too much and Ethan drugs him; morning brings Fyarl-Giles. Spike, delighted, agrees to help for two hundred dollars. Riley, seeing the Fyarl demon, hunts it as an HST. Buffy recognises Giles’s eyes. Ethan is captured by the Initiative. Giles is restored.
Key Moments
Giles-as-Fyarl charging Professor Walsh through the UC Sunnydale corridors. She deserves it. He is having, despite everything, a decent time.
Monster / Villain
Ethan Rayne (Robin Sachs) — chaos mage, old acquaintance, consistently cheerful about the damage he causes.
Notable Quote
“I’m a bad, rude man.” — Fyarl-Giles, approximately, via Spike’s translation. The Fyarl roar means something rather ruder than this.
Where It Fits
A New Man addresses Giles’s increasing irrelevance in Season 4 — his expertise doesn’t interface with the Initiative’s methods, and he’s struggling to find his place in a world that has moved past the structures he understood. The episode plays this as comedy and lands it.