Bring On the Night

As Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and the Scoobies recover from the recent assault on the Summers' house (see "Never Leave Me"), Spike (James Marsters) suffers at the hands of his captor, who appears in the form of his long-lost love, Drusilla (Juliet Landau). Dru brags about using Spike's blood to raise the Turok-Han, a monstrous bloodsucker who resembles an amped-up version of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, The Vampire, and who assists in Spike's watery torture. Just as Buffy is putting the pieces together and revealing to her friends that their foe is none other than the shape-shifting First Evil (see "Amends"), Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) arrives with three trainee slayers in tow. He confirms the threat of the First and reveals that his charges are among the final remaining bastions of the recently obliterated Watcher's Council. Buffy and Giles head to the abandoned Christmas tree lot where Buffy first encountered the robed Harbingers of the First. There, Buffy barely escapes the monstrous Turok-Han -- no thanks to Giles, who sits out the battle with no explanation. Emotionally and physically fried, Buffy nonetheless heads to her day job and encounters the enigmatic Principal Wood (D.B. Woodside) in the catacombs beneath the school. Meanwhile, everyone else uses the daylight hours to fortify the house against the über-vamp's inevitable after-dark assault -- an event that actually occurs when one of the trainee slayers freaks out and flees right into the monster's grasp. Too late to save the girl, Buffy gets a royal thrashing at the Turok-Han's hands. Nonetheless, she vows to stop cowering and start taking the fight to the First's own doorstep. That would probably be good news to Spike, who sees through the First's Drusilla drag but continues to suffer as the big bad's prisoner. Originally broadcast December 18, 2002, on the UPN network, "Bring on the Night" marked episode 132 of the cult-favorite series.