The four-book serial novel “The Lost Slayer” (August-November 2001) is one of the grimmest “Buffy” stories on record, oddly taking place near the start of Season 4, a relatively sunny point in the timeline. It’s ambitious, as Christopher Golden brings our favorite Slayer into an alternate future, thus allowing for narrative freedom not usually found in spinoff fiction. But it also seems to have been written too quickly, as it has an unusual amount of errors and oddities.
If you don’t mind getting wrapped up in something tonally akin to “The Wish” (3.9) for nearly 600 pages, “The Lost Slayer” – which includes “Prophecies,” “Dark Times,” “King of the Dead” and “Original Sins” — is an impressive piece of world-building. It reminds me of the recently completed “I, Zombie” Season 4, wherein Seattle is run by zombies. In a Sunnydale five years down the road from Season 4 (and therefore two years after Season 7 ends), Buffy finds herself in a cell where she has been caged in the intervening period. When she escapes, she finds that Sunnydale and the surrounding area is ruled by vampires under the command of their ambitious king, Giles.
Golden does a good job of explaining a bizarre situation: Buffy shares two sets of memories – that of the Season 4 Buffy who has jumped into this body, and that of the future Buffy who has been imprisoned all this time. (But he makes an error that’s compounded by how often he repeats it, using the terms “Buffy-at-nineteen” and “Buffy-and-twenty-four.” As “The Lost Slayer” is clearly set in early Season 4, before Oz has departed, Buffy is still 18.) Future Buffy is physically and emotionally hardened; I picture a cross between the body of Lara Croft in the new “Tomb Raider” and the weariness of Buffy from “The Wish.”
The hardest, and most intriguing, parts to read are when Buffy encounters Vampire King Giles. The TV show toyed with the idea of killing off Giles in Season 7 and having Anthony Stewart Head be one of the main actors to portray The First Evil. That didn’t happen, but “The Lost Slayer” gives us an idea of what it might’ve been like. Sure, it covers familiar ground where we ponder how much of a vampire is the person and how much is a demon, but we still feel for Buffy as she deals with her mentor-turned-vampire.
In other ways, “The Lost Slayer” is less dystopian than “The Wish,” because most of Buffy’s friends are alive. Golden wrote this novel when Season 6 was underway in the real world, and he nicely predicts what’s coming down the pike in the TV series and the subsequent Season 8 comics: Willow’s magic ability, Xander’s military leadership skills, and the notion of our heroes teaming up with a wider army of allies (in this case, operatives from the Council). Drawing from “Angel,” Golden shows us the increased bravery of Wesley, who is the Watcher of the Slayer who has followed in the line of the deceased Faith.
(Interestingly, Giles has kept Buffy alive in part because he thinks if she dies, a new Slayer will be called. Readers know that’s not how it works, because Faith is the only Slayer recognized by the magical line of succession. However, none of the characters in this world learn that fact until the second time Buffy dies, at the end of Season 5.)
Oz’s ability to morph between man and wolf, revealed in Season 4 and explored in Golden’s own “Oz” comic shortly before he wrote this, plays a key role. The most intriguing future relationship is between Oz and Willow. They are no longer a couple; he had to dust Willow’s parents after they were turned into vampires, causing strain with their relationship. But he loyally stays by her side, utilizing his werewolf skills in the ongoing war.
“The Lost Slayer’s” thematic idea of Buffy wanting to keep her friends out of the Slayer part of her life is oddly positioned here. Buffy ultimately learns her lesson – that she must rely on her friends, for all of their sakes – in this novel, yet she’ll need to learn it again as the central theme of Season 4 (and again in Season 6, as it pertains to Dawn).
Weirdly, Golden has an out, but he doesn’t embrace it. Buffy’s memories from this adventure could fade (similar to how her memory is erased in the “Angel” episode “I Will Remember You”) – but the author doesn’t make it explicit that her memories of her time in the future will fade. They should, in order to explain how this dire experience doesn’t seem to weigh on her too much in early Season 4, and to explain why she has not learned her lesson.
Other things that make me think “The Lost Slayer” was rushed: Olivia is visiting Giles when the story begins, but she disappears from the narrative without explanation. We learn that she is a skeptic toward the supernatural, and after Giles gets kidnapped and turned into a vampire, it might’ve been interesting to see how Olivia views this situation and how the Scoobies deal with her. Later, a battle takes place on the border of the Giles-ruled territory; Buffy is attempting to reach a restaurant on the other side of the border where she will be extracted by Council operatives. But since it’s not a magical border nor a militarily enforced border, it’s inexplicable why both sides agree this is the border.
Buffy is wielding a sword left to her by the vampire Giles. Later on, Golden reveals that this is the sword she killed Angel with in Season 2, as if he thought of it later because it would tie in nicely with Buffy’s reunion with Angel. And we learn the vampire god Camazotz is 11 feet tall in the final showdown; he’s not described as being unusually tall prior to that.
Aside from the messy details, “The Lost Slayer” is an engaging off-the-beaten-path read. Like “The Wish,” it allows us to appreciate the relatively happy lives of our Scooby Gang friends by showing a bleak alternative, and it’s neat to see Golden’s on-point foreshadowing of what’s in store for them down the road.
Click here for an index of all of John’s “Buffy” and “Angel” reviews.