Buffy: Season Eight: “Wolves at the Gate” (Issues #12-15)

by Teresa Jusino

The image of a giant Dawn rampaging Godzilla-style through the streets of Tokyo was probably too much for the team at Buffy: Season Eight to resist.  Who could blame them?  Look at the cover of Issue #14!  Come on!  It’s hilarious!  Yet, while Wolves at the Gate, a four-issue story arc from Drew Goddard and Georges Jeanty, has its moments, it’s not a very satisfying story.  Instead, it amounts to nothing much more than context for a visual gag.  

Issue #12

This issue begins at the Slayer Army headquarters in Scotland.  Renee and Xander are on the castle wall keeping watch and flirting intensely.  Renee gives Xander the green light to ask her out as a heavy fog rolls in and wolves approach the castle.  Meanwhile, Satsu and Buffy are naked in Buffy’s bed as we find them in the immediate afterglow of having gotten it on.  As this is going on, Willow is flying Andrew to the castle.  As she bids him goodnight, a mysterious, goth-looking woman named Kumiko attacks her from behind.

As Buffy and Satsu discuss how they’re going to handle their newly-complicated relationship (by keeping it quiet), Xander enters to tell Buffy about the wolves.  He is “blinded” by what he sees, beginning a chain reaction of sitcom-esque entrances into the room.  Renee, Andrew, Dawn, and Willow all manage to see a very embarrassed Buffy struggling to get her clothes back on, and Willow warns Buffy that she believes they are under attack.

We then see one of the wolves approach the armory door, dissolve into fog to seep under it, and reappear on the other side as a vampire.  He and a fellow vampire named Raidon defeat Buffy and steal the Scythe, transforming first into animals, then into fog.  

The Slayer Army meets to discuss the new threat, debating their motives and attempting to figure out how these particular vampires have such unique abilities.  All eyes turn to Xander, and he doesn’t seem terribly pleased with what their look means.

Later, Xander and Renee are in a helicopter landing in front of a different castle.  Renee has no idea why she was asked to accompany him, and hopes this isn’t his idea of a date, but Xander informs her that she’s there to make sure he doesn’t start acting “wonky” around the one the have come to see.  

They open the castle door, and are met by Dracula.  Dracula greets his manservant as Xander begrudgingly greets his master.

Issue #13

The issue opens with a flashback to Dracula fifteen minutes before Xander and Renee arrive.  His hair and beard are overgrown, and he’s apparently been sitting around in his room depressed, drinking, and wearing a vomited-upon bathrobe and not killing peasants.  The servants are concerned, and Butterfield tries to encourage him to get dressed and go out on a hunt.  At first, Dracula isn’t interested.  However, when he sees Xander’s helicopter approach, he brightens and asks Butterfield to fetch him his razor.  When Xander and Renee arrive, he is back to the Dracula we know and love (to hate?), feigning indifference to Xander’s arrival and referring to Renee as Xander’s “moor.”

Back at Slayer HQ, Andrew is giving the girls a lecture on Dracula, and not doing a terribly impressive job.  However, he does enlighten the girls on Xander’s history with Dracula and how they are actually friends, as well as Dracula’s powers, which the new threat seem to be exhibiting, including transmogrification into animals and fog.

The team gets word from their operative in Japan, Aiko, about a vampire named Toru, the leader of a vampire sect in Tokyo and the vamp with whom Buffy fought in the armory.  Buffy then decides to take the entire Scotland Slayer Army to Japan, accidentally belittling Satsu in the process.

Meanwhile, at Dracula’s castle, Dracula, his manservant, and his manservant’s moor have tea.  Renee gets progressively more annoyed as Xander and Dracula sit around flattering each other.  Finally, Xander confronts Dracula with the possibility that someone has stolen his powers.  Dracula, at first insulted by the idea, remembers something and says “They wouldn’t happen to be Orientals, would they?”

In Tokyo, Raidon and Toru discuss Kumiko and how she “wants the kill.”  Toru doesn’t seem to care what she wants.  They also discuss the fact that they notice Aiko trailing them.  They seem to respect her abilities as a Slayer…

Back at Dracula’s castle, Dracula’s pissed.  Racist epithets continue to fly out of his mouth as he curses those “filthy yellow swine” for managing to steal his powers from him, which troubles Xander.  Dracula makes it clear that he could care less about Xander’s cause, or Buffy and her army.  But, “nobody steals from Dracula.”  And so, they are off to Tokyo.

On the Slayer Army jet, Willow talks to Satsu about Buffy, trying to make sure Satsu has her head on straight about her one-night stand with Buffy.  She explains that Buffy slept with her because she is alone, and has the weight of the world on her shoulders – also, that she’s not a lesbian.  She advises that Satsu not get her hopes up.  Then she asks how Buffy was in bed.

In Tokyo, Aiko is still trailing the vampires.  She is lured into a dark alley, where she finds a mysterious ring with a red light shining in its center.  Suddenly, Kumiko appears, flying above Aiko with the Scythe.  Kumiko activates the ring with the Scythe, and suddenly the light shoots into Aiko’s face.  Toru descends, breaks Aiko’s jaw, and bites her neck.  But before he does, he says “I was hoping you’d tell me what it feels like to be a regular girl again.  Must be terrifying.”  Aiko not a slayer anymore???

Issue #14

The issue opens with a grizzly image – Aiko dead and strung up on the side of a building, graffiti written in her blood that says “Welcome to Tokyo.”   The slayer army gathers to bury her, and Buffy sadly considers her options.  Dracula, in his usual “charming” way, recommends the Carolina’s Grasp containment spell.

As the vampires prepare for an attack from the slayers, Renee, Buffy, Xander, and Willow lure one of the vampires into a park and contain him.  Buffy threatens to burn him and demands to know what Toru & Co. want with her Scythe.  He explains that Kumiko knows an incantation which, when used in conjunction with the Scythe and amplified by a giant lens, a larger version of the ring Aiko picked up, will take away all the slayers’ powers.  Buffy and the rest leave, but not before burning the vampire.  She’d never agreed not to burn him just because he gave them information, and as she said, “This is war.”

Later, Buffy tries to convince Satsu to stay with the slayers who knew Aiko as she goes into battle, wanting to leave them behind to give them a chance to mourn.  Satsu, however, doesn’t agree.  She knows she’s Buffy’s best fighter, and so she ignores Buffy’s orders and stomps off in a huff – which Buffy finds a little sexy.

After a touching kiss between Xander and Renee, the army goes out to war.  Buffy’s mission is simply to get the Scythe back, not to fight.  She needs a “really big distraction.”  Willow works her mojo and summons Dawn, who rampages, Godzilla-style, through the vampire minions.  Buffy and Co. enter the unguarded warehouse.  Buffy sees Toru with the Scythe and confronts him.  However, when she is able to stick her arm through him, she realizes that it isn’t Toru at all, and that they’ve been lured into a trap.

Toru enters from behind them, and fatally stabs Renee with the Scythe.

Issue #15

The opening of the final issue of Wolves at the Gate is heartbreaking, and we see Renee’s thoughts as she falls to her death; her love of Xander, her belief in their cause, her fear and lack of preparedness to die.  The fight is on, and as Xander cradles Renee, vampires and slayers clash.  Dracula orders Buffy to get Willow, saying that he can defeat the vampire hoarde, but he needs “the witch.”  

Getting to Willow proves difficult, however, as Kumiko has pummeled Willow through a window, and they both fall trying to out-spell each other.  Buffy jumps out after them, stabs Kumiko in mid-air, then clings to Willow, desperately trying to wake her so she can cast a spell that will save them from going splat.

Dawn has defeated the vampire minions, but as she triumphantly orders the slayer army to go into the warehouse to help Buffy, she is felled by an unexpected foe – a mecha Dawn.  Clearly, the vampires were ready for every possibility.

Meanwhile, Toru attempts to do the incantation with the Scythe himself, as Kumiko has not responded to their calls.  However, he is stopped by Dracula, who takes him down, allowing Satsu to grab the Scythe.  Retrieving the Scythe has stopped the vampires’ plan, but not their advantages in a fight.  To remedy this, Dracula gives his sword to Willow.  It is “one of the ancient relics, bound with demon spirit, like [the] scythe.”  He instructs her to use it to do a “reverse incantation of Augustine’s Curse” through the portal, which would take away the vampires’ special abilities.  She does so, taking away their advantage and allowing the Slayer Army to “do what [they] do.” 

Dawn and Andrew are still dealing with Mecha Dawn in the streets of Tokyo.  Andrew, using his incredibly nerdy skill, talks Dawn through its decapitation and defeat.

Back in the battle, Dracula gets his sword back from Willow and maims Toru, but doesn’t kill him.  He saves the honors for Xander, who kills Toru to avenge Renee.  The Tokyo vampires are defeated.

At the issue’s end, Dracula bids Xander goodbye as Xander prepares to pay tribute to Renee.  Xander also orders Dracula never to call him “manservant” again.  Meanwhile, Buffy and Satsu discuss their situation.  Satsu asks to remain in Japan to be the Tokyo Office’s field leader, because she needs distance from Buffy in order to fall out of love with her.  Buffy agrees, and apologizes for any hurt she might have caused Satsu.  They spend one last night together as Dracula boards his ship for home, Willow communes with another dimension, and Xander bids farewell to Renee’s ashes.

REVIEW:

This wasn’t a terrible story, and yet there was something about Wolves at the Gate that didn’t impress me as much as The Long Way Home, or No Future for You.  Perhaps it was the fact that the slayers going to Tokyo felt gimmicky to me and like an unnecessary divergence from the story of Twilight.  The Long Way Home (issues #1-4) set up the Twilight threat, while No Future for You (issues #6-9), even though it dealt primarily with Faith and her feelings about being an outsider, was connected to the Twilight story, because the villain of that story arc attempted to manipulate Faith and her feelings about Buffy to use the Twilight book and help him rid the world of her.  Wolves at the Gate ended up being four issues that had nothing to do with the main plot of the series.

Now, this is called Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season Eight.  It’s supposed to be another season of Buffy in comic book form, and as we all know, not every episode of a television show needs to deal with the main plot of the season.  However, that’s when we’re treated to a new episode every week.  In comics, that’s what standalone issues are for.  We’ve already had some wonderful, Joss-penned standalones in Issue #5, The Chain, and Issue #10, Anywhere But Here, and it is in standalones that the reader doesn’t mind taking a break from the story for a while.  However, if every story arc is an “episode”, and it takes 4-5 months for every part of an episode to be released to us, the sum of those parts better equal something more than just a fluff story.  

Buffy: Season Eight has always worked best when it focuses on character, and Drew Goddard deserves credit for the wonderful character moments in these issues.  The Buffy-Satsu storyline was interesting, because it allowed Buffy a tenderness she hadn’t been allowed to show in a long time (and with a human, no less!), and we discovered a wonderful character in Satsu, who handled her feelings for Buffy with maturity and grace.  Willow’s cautionary and curious involvement in the story was also a pleasure.  Xander and Renee were sweet to watch, and it was heart-wrenching to see Xander’s latest chance at love end so tragically.  Then there was Dracula, probably the most unexpected source of deep feeling, and yet his care of Xander was palpable throughout. Despite his history and his racist arrogance, he always acted in the best interest of Xander and his friends.

However, despite the humorous and touching moments scattered throughout Wolves at the Gate, this story arc seems to highlight what I’ve seen as a minor problem for Buffy: Season Eight before this; one that could get worse if they don’t nip it in the bud.  Comics aren’t television, and they can’t be paced the same way.  Four months is too long to wait for a payoff that doesn’t come.  Hopefully, Joss & Co will remember this in future, and save divergent stories for single issues, or two-part stories, leaving the major story arcs to propel the season forward.

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TERESA JUSINO was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so.  As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. Also, she has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan, which is now being rivaled by her burgeoning crush on Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man suit.

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