First Quarter
With both Angel and Cordelia gone to L.A., Buffy and the gang must adjust to life after Sunnydale High. Buffy, Willow, and Oz enter UC Sunnydale, Giles gets some time to himself for the first time in a few years, and Xander has returned from a journey on the road, à la Jack Kerouac. Xander also has a new love interest when Anya, the demon-turned-mortal comes back and tells him that she can’t get him out of her mind (he took her to the senior prom). So they hook up, and Anya joins the gang (she’s hilarious as the former demon who can’t understand human emotions, even her own). Spike also returns to Sunnydale with the intention of trying to find an old ring that will make the wearer invincible (even able to walk in sunlight). He is stopped by Buffy, who then asks Oz to take the ring to Angel when he stops in L.A.
Oz returns having done his job (although, as seen on Angel, Angel nobly destroyed the ring as part of his penance), but starts to feel an attraction to a singer he meets. The attraction turns out to have a reasonable explanation – she’s a werewolf too. When Oz’s primal instincts take over, Willow is crushed. Buffy must do her best to console, but then Oz goes away, and Willow becomes even more distraught.
Buffy’s love life soon improves when her Psychology T.A., Riley, admits to Willow of his slayer crush. As their relationship develops, their secrets are slowly revealed. One night, after they are attacked by a demon, they become clued in to the fact that the other isn’t a typical college student. Turns out that Riley is part of something called the Initiative, a secret government military unit that specializes in trying to capture or kill otherworldly powers in order to harness them for military use. While Buffy and Riley seem to have a lot in common, she is reluctant to involve Riley in her life. Eventually, however, she can’t deny her feelings.
Still in Sunnydale, Spike gets captured by the Initiative, which places a behavioral chip in his head that stops him from being able to hurt innocents – like a modern equivalent to Angel’s curse, except Spike still wants to be bad, he just can’t. What he later realizes is that he can hurt demons, and reluctantly half-joins the Scooby gang in their fight against evil. Riley soon learns that the gang is “friendly” with Spike, and his confusion about how the gang can be working with Spike instead of trying to kill or capture him leads to a fight between he and Buffy. Buffy finds it difficult to convince him that sometimes there are gray areas when it comes to demons.
Riley introduces Buffy to the leader and his mentor, Professor Walsh, who also happens to be Buffy’s favorite Psychology professor. Professor Walsh is somewhat unimpressed with the old ways of slayers and watchers, which leads Giles to agree with Spike in his dislike and distrust for the group. Professor Walsh then sends Buffy on a mission as a sort of Initiative test, but the mission is actually intended to lead Buffy to her death. Buffy soon realizes this, and disappoints Professor Walsh when she survives. Professor Walsh is afraid that Buffy will disrupt her plans. Before she can do any more, she is killed by her own plans, called Project 314, to make a superior race of human-demon hybrids with supernatural strength and power. Her prototype, “Adam,” kills her as soon as he comes to life. The other members of the Initiative believe that Buffy is to blame for Professor Walsh’s death, and Riley is torn between his career and his love for Buffy. Eventually, he chooses to stay with Buffy and her gang, but remains with the Initiative in order to find out what Professor Walsh’s real plans had been.
