Season Three
Episode #1: Anne
The show opens with a hand emerging from a grave. Above the grave stands a girl who, upon seeing the newly born vamp emerge, says, "Come and get it, big boy". Is it Buffy? No, it's Willow. She is promptly thrown aside by the vamp, and Oz and Xander try to stop him from escaping. Unfortunately, they fail miserably. They talk about how school starts the next day, and everyone wonders where Buffy is.
Buffy is on a beach, with the wind whipping through her hair. A beautiful man walks up behind her; it is Angel. He wraps his arm around her waist and tells her that he loves her and will never leave her, "not even if you kill me". She asks how he found her, and he tells her "If I were blind, I would still see you" (how romantic!). Suddenly, Buffy awakes.
Buffy is a waitress as Helen's Diner, and is going under the name of Anne. One day at work, Buffy sees a guy and girl holding each other in the booth. They don't have very much money, because, they just got matching tattoos: on each of their foreamrs, they have half of a heart with the other's name emblazoned upon it. The girl thinks she recognizes Buffy, and freaked out by the experience, Buffy goes home early.
Back in Sunnydale, it's the first day of school. Giles tells Willow he doesn't feel comfortable about the Slayerettes going out so unprepared at night, but Willow tells him "It's part of our mission statement: Don't get killed". Xander and Cordelia haven't seen each other since the beginning of summer, and both nervously await the arrival of the other. When they finally meet, they act ackwardly and stilted. Meanwhile, Oz shows up at school, although he was supposed to have graduated. This freaks Willow out, because he did not tell her he was coming back. She knew he had lots of incompletes in senior year, but she thought he would have gone to summer school.
Giles gets alead on Buffy, one of several that he has had throughout the summer, and goes looking for her.
Buffy is walking down the street in the urban city in which she is residing, and she is approached by the girl from the diner. She calls Buffy "Anne", but Buffy freezes when she yells out "Buffy". This girl, Lily, is really Chanterelle from the episode of last season, "Lie to Me". (Chanterelle was a vamp-wannabe, and Buffy saved her and her friends from Spike's army of vamps.) They talk, and Lily invites Buffy to a rave. Buffy tells her she just wants to be alone. Just then, an old man bumps into them, walks into the street in front of a moving car, and waits to die. Buffy dashes across the strret, and pushes the man away, getting hit by the car herself. She is dazed, and immediately surrounded by people who are worried about her. Though it is suggested that she go to a hospital, Buffy instead runs away. In her escape, she bumps into a man named Ken, who is the leader of a home called "Family Home" for runaways. He gives her a flier and tells her to stop by.
Meanwhile, back at the Bronze, Xander and Willow are lounging, and listening to depressing music. Willow is worried about Buffy, but Xander is too busy thinking about Cordelia, and how she probably is dating some cabana boy that she met during her trip to Mexico. When Cordelia walks in the door of the Bronze, Xander gets an idea on how to improve their slaying practices: make Cordy the bait.
Meanwhile, Giles has returned from his fruitless search for Buffy and is reporting the disappointing findings to Buffy's mom. It turns out that the girl fighting vamps was really a goth girl fightng with her vamp-wannabe boyfriend. Joyce is remorseful. Giles tells her not to blame herself, and she says she doesn't: she blames Giles. She says Giles' relationship with Buffy pulled Buff away from Joyce.
Buffy is back at the diner, and is approached by Lily, who say her boyfriend Ricky is missing. She enlists Buffy's reluctant help, and they go to some of the places Ricky would go. They start at the blood bank where he would go to get money and food. Buffy asks the nurse if Ricky had been there, and after consulting a clipboard, the nurse says no. However, as Buffy and Lily start to leave, the nurse makes a weird face like she knows something.
Buffy and Lily split up, and Buffy is walking through an alley when she sees a dead body. She identifies it as Ricky, because of the tattoo on the arm, but he looks as if he is eighty years old, and the life has been drained out of him. When Buffy cmoes back to her apartment to tell Lily, Lily refuses to believe that Ricky could be dead. She even blames Buffy for bringing a deadly demon with her. Finally, Lily runs out of the apartment. In the alley next to Buffy's building, she meets Ken, who says that he met Ricky adn that he knows where Ricky is. Lily follows Ken.
Buffy, curious about what happened to Ricky, breaks into the blood bank. She find Ricky's file and sees a note in his file that says "candidate". The nurse sees her and ineffectually threatens Buffy. Buffy, royally pissed because she has to deal with the life she is trying to escape, demands to know what "candidate" means. The nurse, frightened of Buffy and her rage, tells her that "candidate" means a healthy homeless person. The nurse says she reports these people to "him".
Lily is with Ken, who told her to change clothes into a shapeless, colorless hospital-like gown. They are kneeling on the ground next to a murky hole, and Ken tells her that once she goes through the cleansing process and rids herself of sin, she will be able to be reunited with Ricky. Meanwhile, Buffy is at the door of the shelter, saying that she is so full of sin that needs to be cleansed. Realizing that her pretense was futile, Buffy kicks the two guards and goes looking for Lily and Ken. She arrives at the "cleasing" ceremony just as Lily's arms disappear into the black hole. Suddenly, Lily falls into the hole. Buffy tries to follow, but is restrained by Ken. Finally, Buffy reverses their momentum, and they both fly into the hole.
Back at the graveyard in Sunnydale, Xander and Cordy are arguing about their illicit, though imagined, affairs during the summer. A vamp is sneaking up on Willow. Oz, seeing his girlfriend being attacked by a vamp, jumps on the vamp and is thrown off onto the ground. Xander tries to stake him, but is pushed onto the ground with the vampire on top of his body. Cordy joins the dogpile, pshing the stake into the body of the vamp. Now, with the dust of the vampire settling around them, Cordy and Xander are placed in a compromising position. Their resolves melt, and they passionately kiss.
Buffy, Ken and Lily have fallen several feet into an underground warehouse. Buffy tries to usher Lily out of the tunnel, but she is hit in the head by Ken. Ken has removed his human-face mask to reveal an ugly, scarred creature beneath. His underground lair is filled with homeless slaves. The slaves are policed by ugly, scarred men with strips of skin sewed onto their faces and clubs in their hands.
After passing out from the blow, Buffy awakes in a cage with Lily. Ken is explaining how his slave system works. Homeless people are enticed to coming to the Family Home, and are subsequently thrown into the pit below. Their wills are broken and they become drones who work tirelessly until they die of old age. Ricky died of old age, although he was only missing for one day. This is because time passes more rapidly beneath the ground. Eighty years below is less than a day on the surface. Buffy and Lily are destined to become clones like Ricky was.
Along with several other slaves-to-be, Buffy and Lily are lined up for their first lesson with the drill sergeant. He tell them they are nobodies, and when asked, the slaves are expected to regurgitate this information. Buffy, however, clings to identity, and when questioned about her name, replies "I'm Buffy. . .the vampire slayer. . . perhaps you've heard of me?" She is about to be physically punished for her insubordination when she kicks the ass of her drill sergeant. When other troops come to subdue her, Buffy continues to fight back. Buffy tells Lily to take the rest of the slaves and get them back to the surface. She runs through the center of the warehouse as a decoy so the others can escape. Every time she is attacked, she successful defeats her attacker. Lily and the others are almost out when Ken grabs Lily, puts a knife to her throat and drags her over to where Buffy can see. Buffy stops fighting and is immediately surrounded by troops. Ken steps forward to attack Buffy with the knife, and in the process steps away from Lily. Lily kicks him over the side of the scaffold on which he was standing, sending him plunging 20 feet to the ground below. Buffy and Lily escape with the other slaves, and they come to a heavy iron gate. With her sheer strength, Buffy is able to lift the gate high enough for the others to crawl beneath. Just as Buffy is about to pass through, Ken comes behind her. She drops the door onto his legs, and the spikes of the door stab through his legs and hold him in place.
Buffy and Anne go back to Buffy's apartment, as Buffy has decided to go home to Sunnydale. She turns the apartment, her job as a waitress, and her name "Anne" over to Lily, so that Lily can start a new life.
Back in Sunnydale, Joyce is at home cleaning the kitchen when she hears the doorbell ring. Looking tired and defeated, she walks over and opens the door. Buffy, looking timid, is standing in the doorway. Not a word is spoken, but their eyes communicate their sorrow, regret, and forgiveness. They embrace and the credits roll.
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