“Graduation Day,” the two-part third season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, opens in a sea of red. They’re the graduation gowns, piled up on the table like lifeless husks. Cordelia’s unamused by the color choice, and I have to agree really, because my own shiny-plasticy, trashbag-chic gowns were maroon. It’s not a dignifying color, as Xander claims; it’s just depressed red. Either by morbid humor or bad fashion sense, someone thought to deck the seniors in blood; it checks out—high school is a bloodbath after all, and literally so in BtVS.
It’s the day before Buffy and crew are set to graduate, and, in the ‘Dale, no calendar-worthy event goes by without at least a ‘lil violence. Though they don’t know it yet, the Class of ‘99 is gearing up for battle. This week’s big bad? The patriarchy.
While Xander and Cordelia walk off together, Willow’s exchanging yearbooks; it’s only our slayer who comes into the shot alone. She joins Willow—in person but not in sentiment, because Buffy’s slayer duties mean she can’t afford to be nostalgic about high school—and sits dejectedly, thinking she’ll be spending gradu-ascension night saving the world alone. It’ll be the same through the whole episode: surrounded by friends, but still totally on her own, mentally and emotionally.
Even so, this isn’t the first time a slayer’s had to give up a “normal life” in the face of her duties to the world, and certainly won’t be the last—between Sineya’s kidnapping by the Shadow Men and Kendra’s parents giving her up to the Watchers, Buffy doesn’t seem to have it that bad. The (nearly entirely) male hierarchy that is the Watchers Council has no problem subsuming their slayers’ identities for the “common good.”
This episode is a rough one for our gals, and especially Buffy. She’s been planning to defeat Sunnydale’s mayor post-ascension and handling the emotional aftermath of her breakup with Angel, but she hasn't prepared to kill Faith. Faith, on the other hand, is dealing with the dissolution of her sense of self as a result of her attachment to mayor-dad Wilkins. Anyanka renounces being a vengeance demon and reveals her feelings toward Xander, and Joyce Summers essentially marginalized—an unimportant footnote on the edges of the episode’s narrative.
We first see Faith at Professor Worth’s house, sent on an assasination mission by Mayor Wilkins. When Worth feebly asks why the mayor wants him dead, Faith responds “I never thought to ask.” Wait, what? In “Bad Girls,” only seven episodes before, Faith’s accidental murder of the deputy mayor marked the first time she’d killed a human being. And his death so profoundly impacted her; thus the idea that she has now so easily slipped from vampire-slayer and human-slayer is even more disturbing. It’s weird because Faith is a normally a wildcard, and not someone to take orders without question. Her need for a father figure is fulfilled by working for the mayor, leading to Faith’s effective “taming” by a male-dominated power structure. In this way, Faith’s progressive loss of humanity seems to correspond to her proximity to the patriarchy.
The mayor praises Faith on killing Worth the next day, and she appears in a (very feminine and very un-Faith) floral dress. She’s being consumed by societal notions of female beauty, by the literally (pre-)demonic patriarchy. “It just isn’t me though,” says Faith, because she’d know best, right? The mayor replies: “Nobody knows who you are.” He doesn’t give her a choice—Faith’s identity is being rebranded, not just ‘feminized’ in a stereotypical and binary way. Her “edge” is taken off, which surprisingly serves to make her more dangerous to Buffy and crew rather than less. Not only that, but she’s infantilized. (“I’ll buy you an ICEE.” Mayor Wilkins offers with a fatherly grin.) She’s lost the core of her rebellious spirit, and given up her agency willingly in exchange for protection in the form of a patriarch.
Faith’s not the only slayer to have gained a “dad” in their mentor; Buffy has Giles. However, Giles’ aptitude as a father figure sometimes serves to highlight Joyce’s deficiencies as Buffy’s actual parent, especially in “Graduation Day.” In an unfair undercutting of Joyce’s character, this episode shows Giles as especially smart, capable, and supportive, as he shows his prowess with a saber, deduces which demon the mayor will turn into, and supports Buffy in her rejection of the Watchers Council. Meanwhile, Joyce is portrayed as the clueless and naive mom, becoming a liability at best and absurd at worst. She only appears for one scene, in which Buffy convinces her mom to leave town. Confused, Joyce jokingly asks: “What, is some terrible demon going to attack the school?” Unlike the viewers, Joyce is nearly constantly playing catch-up, and her realization is as painfully slow in comparison to what seems painfully obvious to us. “Looking back at everything that’s happened, maybe I should’ve sent you to a different school,” Joyce says to Buffy. And as funny as that line is, it only emphasizes her distance from Buffy’s daily life by showing her carelessness as a parent and a fundamental misunderstanding of her daughter’s duty as a slayer.
Meanwhile, back in school, Anya and Xander are in class. In front of them, the teacher forebodingly plays hangman on the board. I’d really like to think this is some kind of nuanced interpretation of the effect of male authority, and about how a metaphorical noose is collectively tied around everyone’s necks—wherever the patriarchy arises, your voice is cut off—but it’s also just hangman so maybe nobody really cares.
Instead we have this: Anya awkwardly trying to ask out Xander. She’s no longer a demon exacting revenge on fuckbois and living her life as the Patron Saint of The Women Scorned, she’s a simple high school girl trying her darndest to watch sports with a boy. Later, Anya will try to convince Xander to leave Willow and Oz and get the hell outta the Hellmouth with her. Xander refuses, and Anya is vilified for attempting to break up the Scoobies. In this new, strange, patriarchal world, she no longer has power over others. She can’t adapt, and she suffers for it. Not even the writers take pity on her, making her ridiculous with some of her lines. (See: “Men like sports. I’m sure of it.” and, after arguing with Xander, “Aren’t we gonna kiss?”) In a way, she’s self-infantilizing; now that she’s back on the mortal coil, she’s taken to worn-out tropes about gender and heterosexual romance because of her immediate instinct that loss of her demonhood equates to loss of power as a female in the face of a patriarchical society.
Later, at night, Buffy is scouting the dead professor’s apartment for info about the ascension. Angel appears, despite having already broken up with Buffy, as “backup.” He takes a heavy crate of books from Buffy, but she’s still holding the emotional burden. From afar, Faith plays cupid’s evil twin, shooting a poison-tipped arrow into Angel’s back (just missing his heart) and forcing the two ex-lovers back together. When Faith reports back to boss/dad Wilkins, her t-shirt has a heart with a sword stabbed through it. (This slayer knows what she’s about, son.)
What Faith does is distract Buffy, and to drive her into neglecting her slayer identity to help another. Back at his apartment, Buffy tries to comfort the feverish Angel, forcing her to take on a stereotypically feminine caring role at the expense of her slayer duties and identity. She’s approaching the “selfless martyr” trope, and it’s played straight in one way (when she saves Angel by punching him into feeding on her, at her own expense) and subverted in another.
Wesley Wyndam-Price, Giles’ replacement and major wet-blanket, is unable to get help for Angel from the Watchers Council, and tells Buffy that she needs to follow orders (i.e. save the world, not your boyfriend). Buffy refuses, and renouncing the Council on the spot. “This is mutiny.” Wesley says. “I like to think of it as graduation.” Buffy replies. Unwilling to sacrifice her love for a “greater cause,” she yeets the patriarchal circlejerk that is the Watchers Council.
Ultimately, Buffy doesn’t have to choose between sacrificing the love of her life and her duty as a slayer, but that comes later. When Oz reads that drinking the blood of a slayer will cure Angel, Buffy sets out to kill Faith. Xander is afraid of losing Buffy, but not because he thinks that Faith’ll beat her. He’s right, in that part of Buffy’s identity includes the fact she doesn’t kill people. Murdering Faith wouldn’t be the same as staking a vampire: she’d both be fighting an alternate universe self, and sacrificing her morals for the benefit of others. While opposing the patriarchy in its extension of Faith, Buffy is also forced to subordinate her own wishes.
The Slayers prepare for their showdown. Buffy washes her face and looks in the mirror, maybe taking stock of her identity as a vampire-slayer one last time before she does something much more morally dubious. In a scene across town, Faith trains on a punching bag; it’s in her fight scenes that we remember she still has an independent identity of her own, rather than being an unthinking tool of the patriarchy.
Buffy shows up at Faith’s in a black leather jacket and red pants, a mirror to Faith’s getup. This is a change for Buffy, who rarely sacrifices her stereotypically ‘girly’ fashion sense, even when fighting the baddest of bads. Faith comments on this in a double entendre when Buffy insinuates that she’ll have no problem killing Faith: “Well, look at you. All dressed up in big sister’s clothes.” She recognizes that Buffy is trying on a new identity—one that is willing to kill another person. In a way, Faith is also calling Buffy’s bluff, since this is a radical departure from Buffy as she knows her. But when you carry the responsibility of the world on two petite shoulders, the world tends not to care too much about your individuality anyway.
Besides visual coding, her status as a lone hero(ine) is emphasized as distinctly unfeminine, and therefore un-Buffy. The slayers fight in the penthouse and then on the roof, and Buffy stabs Faith; it’s almost poetic, because the knife Buffy uses was a gift Faith received from the mayor. In this way, Faith’s trust in a male-centered power structure has been her undoing.“You killed me.” Faith grins, briefly reclaiming her sense of self before falling backwards, seemingly dead, onto a moving truck.
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