In "Same Time, Same Place", Willow returns home from her education abroad with Giles... sort of. Willow is incapable of seeing her friends and vice versa. The gang is worried when Willow isn't at the airport and a body shows up at a construction site with all of its skin removed. Buffy believes Willow might have regressed back to the dark arts. In actuality, a demon named Gnarl with an appetite for skin is behind the body. Willow tries to hunt down Gnarl to clear her good name. The gang tries to follow the evidence as well to get to the bottom of it. With a little help from Spike and Anya, everyone converges on Gnarl. He traps Willow but the gang shows up in time and kills the demon. Willow figures out that she had accidentally placed a spell over herself because she was so scared of her friends rejecting her and not wanting to see her. She is now so powerful that this type of thing can happen. The gang welcomes her back with open arms.
After a slightly lackluster beginning to the final season, this episode feels like the show's starting to hit its stride a little bit. I enjoyed this one. We got a cool villain in the creepy Gnarl, some fun hijinks with Willow's disappearing act, and a decent amount of overall plot development. That's good enough for me!
With Willow's return, we may start seeing less of Giles again. Very unfortunate. I thought that we were going to get less of Anya too due to her no longer having a magic store or a place in the gang but she continues to wander in and out of the various plots thus far. We'll see if this continues in the future. I'm not sure what to make of Spike. One minute he's crazy, the next he's coherent. Maybe the writers aren't quite sure either. I hope they figure it out.
After a slightly lackluster beginning to the final season, this episode feels like the show's starting to hit its stride a little bit. I enjoyed this one. We got a cool villain in the creepy Gnarl, some fun hijinks with Willow's disappearing act, and a decent amount of overall plot development. That's good enough for me!
With Willow's return, we may start seeing less of Giles again. Very unfortunate. I thought that we were going to get less of Anya too due to her no longer having a magic store or a place in the gang but she continues to wander in and out of the various plots thus far. We'll see if this continues in the future. I'm not sure what to make of Spike. One minute he's crazy, the next he's coherent. Maybe the writers aren't quite sure either. I hope they figure it out.
