When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
1st Corinthians, 13:11
If we view the show as a metaphorical representation of Buffy’s journey into adulthood – with adulthood always bound to slayerhood – then this point in the series marks an interesting moment, as Buffy has completed the first step of her journey. In Season One she accepted her destiny. In Season Two she accepted the responsibility of making choices forced upon her by that destiny. She opens Season Three by passionately embracing her destiny – claiming both her Girl and Slayer halves as essential components in her self-identity. She is no longer a child in terms of mental maturity, and in nine episodes time she will no longer legally be one either. She is entering adulthood – or rather, much like Willow in this episode’s opening, she has been dragged into it. The question is no longer “will Buffy accept her metaphorical adulthood?” It is “what does her metaphorical adulthood mean to her?” It is “who is Buffy Summers, anyway?”
The show explores these, as it so often does, through another character. Characters on this show always exist in twofold – as themselves, and as metaphorical representations of Buffy’s component parts. The Heart; the Mind; the Child; the Shadow. Until now, the last of these roles has been filled by Cordelia. The Shadow represents temptations and suppressed desires, and so Cordelia, who represents the pre-Sunnydale Buffy, was designed for this role. She was a Buffy who ignored her destiny – a temptation that Buffy had been on a journey to resist. With Buffy having accepted her destiny – her Slayerness – Cordelia is no longer required in this role, and so will have only one more last hurrah of an episode in which she performs it. Buffy must gain a new Shadow.
And so here, in Season Three’s true premiere, She enters. She takes central position in this season, acting both as the arguable Big Bad and Buffy’s primary foil. She, unlike the slayer that preceded her, acts as a genuine challenger to Buffy’s position as Hero of this narrative, and will battle her for control. She is more than a Shadow. I have referred to her as Buffy’s ‘Prime Shadow’ before, but a better phrase may be Buffy’s Inverse. She is Buffy, filtered through another lens, and the show will make no subtleties of that fact. She exists to show us who Buffy is – to question who she could be. She is her mirror. Her twin. The photographic negative of her soul.
Her name is Faith.
Part One: Faith
If I had to use one word to describe Faith as a character, it would be this: dense. Not in any sense relating to her intelligence – but in the sense that so much development is packed into what really isn’t very much screen time. She appears in just 20 episodes of Buffy and a paltry 6 of Angel, and yet remains one of the most complex characters in either show, with a complete arc from hero to villain back to hero, and status as an important mirror to both protagonists. No screentime with Faith is wasted. Every line and every expression is meant to tell us something, meant to deepen our understanding of this character.
What this does mean is that Faith is often misinterpreted – both by fans and by characters within the universe. A common example is the reduction of Faith’s feelings towards Buffy as being motivated solely by jealousy – that she simply wants to be Buffy, and to have her life. Jealousy certainly plays a major part – and by her very existence Faith is an ontological threat to Buffy – but we should note that here in this episode, Faith displays no major signs of envy, and absolutely no wish to replace Buffy. Buffy’s fear of being “single white female’d” is – here – entirely based in Buffy’s insecurities. She has only just reclaimed her life and her protagonist position, and she is territorial over both.
On the other hand, Faith’s immediate instinct is to try and connect with Buffy. She’s impressed by her cool history of using rocket launchers. She asks her open-ended questions about her slaying. On patrol, she defers to Buffy and her experience. Her intention in coming to Sunnydale was to have strength in numbers. This desire to connect is evident, and not just this episode. Faith is consistent across the first half of season three in that she is constantly promoting the idea of her and Buffy as a team. She trains with Buffy, and shares slaying duties with her. She suggests they go to Homecoming together, as a duo. She grins enthusiastically at their “synchronised slaying” in Revelations. She coins the phrase “the Chosen Two”. Her final conscious words to Buffy this season are a regretful wish that Buffy had been there with her. The picture painted is clear – Faith does not want to push Buffy off her pedestal. She wants them both standing up there together.
“Should’ve been there, B. Quite a ride.”
Faith Lehane, 3×21 Graduation Day
And so why in Enemies does Faith, when queried on her motivations, only mention her jealousy, and desire to have what Buffy has? Because one of the most important things to remember about Faith is that she is a shameless, bare-faced liar.
The lies from her begin immediately. She lies about her watcher being on a retreat straight to Buffy and Giles’ face – and she does it extremely well. The casualness with which she references her missing watcher is stark, especially when we consider how the episode later shows her to have be attached to her, and brutally traumatised from witnessing her murder. She doesn’t even need to lie. Nobody mentions her watcher until Faith brings the subject up. Faith’s lies are instinctive and preemptive, indicative of somebody who has clearly felt the need to hide parts of herself her whole life. Someone who is, by her own claim, a great actor.
Yet she is not all dishonesty. Faith is somebody who oscillates rapidly between being extremely closed-off, and extremely open. When she does share a true part of herself, she shows it brutally – as raw and open as a wound. Her truth tends to come out either in uncontrolled emotional tailspins (see: Who Are You, Five by Five, her fight with the vampire in this episode), or framed as cutesy jokes. Her references to her abusive mother here and in Enemies are delivered as if they are funny stories. In Dirty Girls, she essentially admits to being a victim of CSA through an anecdote about a past kink adventure. Even early in this episode, she tries to jokingly compliment Willow and Xander, and they fail to notice her actual words. These words admit that she dropped out of education early, and never had friends as good as these people she’s spent maybe an hour with.
“You guys are a hoot and a half. If I’d had friends like you in high school, I… probably still would’ve dropped out. But I might’ve been sad about it.”
Faith Lehane, 3×03 Faith Hope and Trick
This leads to another major misconception about Faith that so many fans labour under – the idea that Faith Lehane is cool. She is not. She is, like the rest of our outcast heroes, a loser, merely cosplaying as a Cool Girl. She canonically had no friends in high school. Outside of Buffy, she has no friends in Sunnydale. She presents herself as somebody who goes out a lot; we rarely see her out, and when we do she is either with Buffy, or alone. She claims to have been invited to a “big party” in Amends – a claim that is quickly confirmed to be another barefaced lie.
The stories she tells the Scoobies in her post-intoductory scene – about naked priests and wrestling alligators – should be considered within this pattern (and indeed, within the context that she is canonically lying about why she is there, and the whereabouts of her watcher). Faith lies about being cool, for endearingly childish reasons. She wants to be liked. She didn’t have many friends before, and shows visible excitement at the idea here. She’s aggressively friendly to Buffy, all but inviting herself to dinner at her house. Faith often plays at aloofness, but deep down she wants what so many lonely children want – to be accepted. The First in Touched will later remind us of how core this fact is to her motivations. All she ever wanted was for this group of people – and Buffy in particular – to accept her.
We should talk about her name – it is the first thing she tells us about herself after all. “Faith” as a name is purposefully ironic. Faith has none – not in other people, and certainly not in herself. She is all hard edges, and would not risk her heart on anything so vulnerable as faith. She is faithless through and through- faithless in the sense of being one without faith, as one prone to lies, and, as we’ll eventually see, one prone to betrayal.
Her name contains an implicit link to religion. It’s always interesting when the Buffyverse bumps up against religion, and particularly Christianity, because while Christian iconography is used as a primary weapon against vampires and the protagonist canonically went to Heaven, the show always shies away from any Supernatural-esque explicit portrayal of the deific, and none of the characters demonstrate committed beliefs in the divine. We meet gods in this universe, but God remains an open question. “Faith” in the religious sense is invoked here because religion within the Buffyverse is not as much a set of beliefs as it is a weapon. Crosses, holy water, even the minor gods and goddesses that Willow invokes in her spells – they are all invoked in the name of battle. Faith, as the Slayer, is nothing but a weapon.
She shares this link to religion with just one other character: Angel. His name invokes angels of heaven (aka. Warriors of God aka. Champions), and, just like Faith, is purposefully ironic – him being a demon most unbeloved by God. This link within their nomenclature is an early clue, along with Faith and Buffy near word-for-word quoting a Bangel scene from When She Was Bad, that we are meant to connect Faith and Angel – to view them as, in many ways, the same.
“You’re not as strong as you think.”
Angel and Buffy Summers, 2×01 When She Was Bad
“You think you can take me?”
“Did I just hear a threat?”
Faith Lehane and Buffy Summers, 3×03 Faith Hope and Trick
“Would you like to?”
“Wow. Think you can take me?
Emily Adair, Insect Reflection, Chapter 13: You Walked Down The Steps And I Loved You (When She Was Bad)
For the third time in three episodes this season, Buffy has a dream that features Angel. Partially this is a measure to grant David Boreanaz his contracted episode quota, but it is also used to show Buffy’s lingering trauma over killing Angel, and her yearning for him. She dreams of him because she wants him. This episode, she dreams of dancing with Angel in the Bronze – her dressed in black and him in white (mourning colours and angelic colours respectively) – while the Scoobies look blankly on.
Our introduction to Faith comes in an identical shot. A slayer dressed in black, dancing in the Bronze with a vampire dressed in white, as the Scoobies look blankly on.
This is likely an example of Buffy’s prophetic dreams – a cryptic suggestion of an incoming major life event – but it’s meant as part of this season’s mission to parallel Faith with both Buffy and Angel. Faith, Buffy, and Angel all form a trifecta, all blurred and paralleled together. Especially consistent is that the relationship between Buffy and Angel is always paralleled, and made equivalent to, the relationship between Buffy and Faith.
This is all just the beginning. Buffy’s admission at the end of this episode of what happened with Angel – that she kissed him and then killed him – is sledgehammer foreshadowing for how closely these parallels will remain until the end, and we will certainly track many more along the way. What we can note here is that dreams are important this season. Buffy stops having her wisftul dreams of Angel, as he returns to her. Amends is the only remaining instance of this motif between them, and there used as a reminder of the divisions between them. The climax of her arc comes in the form of a dream, shared between Buffy another. But by then, it will not be Angel she dreams of.
Part Two: Hope
The evocation of religion in Faith, Hope, and Trick does not stop with Faith’s name. This episode takes its title directly from the Bible itself – Corinthians 13 to be exact. A passage probably most famous for “love is patient, love is kind” – a quote permanently embedded in the canon of wedding cliches. It is also a simple description of the three characters introduced in this episode: Faith Lehane, Scott Hope, and Mr. Trick – and also, notable for its exclusion from the original quote of one very important word.
Let’s start with the man whose name is not actually in the original Corinthians quote. Mr. Trick is introduced here as a recurring villain – the Little Bad of the season. He is introduced much in the same way as Spike was at this point last season – as a cool, modern vampire, possessing of style and an eagerness to throw off dull, tired tradition. Kakistos is presented here as the traditionalist villain in the same manner as the Anointed One in Season Two, as a counterpoint to Mr. Trick/Spike’s modernity.
Spike’s entrance permanently altered the landscape of the show, and as fun as Mr. Trick is, he does not have anywhere near the same impact. This is partly because Spike was the first vampire of this type we saw, while Trick is merely another in his style, and partially it’s because of the series’ racism – a trend that the show notices through Mr. Trick, and yet does nothing about. Much as Faith benefits from the lack of care the show had towards Kendra, Faith and Spike are both allowed depth and focus that is not extended to Mr. Trick as a black character.
Outside privileges apart, Spike is a better character, because Trick lacks the defining features that make Spike such a profound character. His romanticism, his genuine affection, his humanity. His human weakness, you might say. Mr. Trick lacks this depth, because we do not see this human weakness from him. He must be replaced by a character who offers this.
After a brief spell on his own, Mr. Trick will join up with the season’s actual Big Bad and hold the position of his second-in-command, his Dragon – all the way through to episode 15, where he will be killed by Faith, who will then immediately take his place. This is why they are grouped together in the episode’s title – because Faith is destined to replace him. She is the centre prong that unites the other two titular characters by eventually subsuming both their narrative roles. She is worthy of it because of the human weakness at the core of her character. Like The Mayor, like Spike, Drusilla and Angelus, human weakness makes her a better villain than Mr. Trick.
“Look, I know you all think I’m a big square handing out leaflets about hope. But hope is a real thing, just like despair. And hope can fill up a part of you that’s missing.”
Ken, 3×01 Anne
“Hope” is a concept introduced to us early this season, held up as being the antithesis of hell, (and therefore, heavenly). It is opposite to the emotional hell that Buffy lives in, in which she cannot move on from the trauma she underwent with Angel. Scott Hope therefore could not be more appropriately named. He represents the possibility of moving on from Angel – the hope that things can get better, that not all of Buffy’s romances are doomed to end in tragedy, and that despite her pain, one day she can be whole again. This is obvious from his first scene, in which Cordelia reminds us how Buffy is permanently affected by her first boyfriend “turning psycho”, and expresses relief at Scott’s lack of attempt to slit their throats.
Buffy makes her own fears obvious when Scott hands her a gift of the same Claddagh ring that Angel gifted her in Surprise, and she experiences what is obviously a PTSD flashback, suddenly seeing herself stabbing Angel again. This is the fear that drives her – of history repeating itself, with no hope of any alternative.
“What is Hell but the total absence of hope? The substance, the tactile proof of despair.”
Ken, 3×01 Anne
By the end of the episode (with some help from Giles) Buffy is ready to admit what happened with Angel, and put the past behind her. She is able to do this specifically because of Faith. Kakistos is the vampiric symbol of Faith’s past trauma. His brutal murder of Faith’s watcher evokes two tentpole events from last season – Angel’s murder of Jenny and subsequent torture of Buffy’s watcher. Buffy sees Faith running away from Kakistos, and in her sees a reflection.
This is a story about Buffy’s trauma, and there is no character more defined by this concept than Faith Lehane. We are not told all details of exactly what she has undergone in her life, but we are shown enough to understand that it goes far deeper than simply what happened with Kakistos. We are told (in another line framed as a joke) that she was beaten by her mother, now deceased. We are shown how she disassociates during violence – her screams of “you can’t touch me” as she wails on a vampire a sure symptom of her status as an abuse survivor. We are shown that she has no money, no friends, no support system. We are shown how she defaults to instigating a sexual dynamic with male authority figure when she meets Giles, a pattern she repeats with The Mayor and is another painful reminder of her implied history with CSA.
In short, trauma defines her. She is scar tissue. The tactile proof of suffering. The person that remains after pain. She is Buffy, if Buffy allowed herself to be ruled by her life’s horrors. We are reminded in The Wish, in Doppelgangland, and throughout the season really, that in another universe, Faith is who Buffy would be. We already see, underneath the surface differences, how much they are the same. Faith beats vampires bloody to work out her own issues, just like Buffy did in Ted. Faith tries to run away instead of facing her problems, just like Buffy did in Becoming and Dead Man’s Party. Faith shuts down when people try to reach out and insists she can fix things herself – a tendency Buffy is just as well known for. Faith unknowingly quotes Buffy in When She Was Bad word-for-word, and will again in Revelations These are just from this episode – we’ll see innumerable examples in the future. Buffy and Faith share many qualities, and top of that list is the identical ways in which they respond to trauma.
“You have to trust someone. You can’t do this alone.”
Angel and Buffy Summers, 2×01 When She Was Bad
“I trust me.”
I’m on your side.”
Buffy Summers and Faith Lehane, 3×07 Revelations
“I’m on my side, and that’s enough.”
Buffy is able to get through to Faith because she understands her trauma; understands her responses. She is able to inspire her to keep fighting, and destroy the symbol of her past trauma, the impediment to her having hope. She kills Kakistos (and the sexual symbolism should be noted here – Kakistos can only be killed by a big enough phallic object, i.e. metaphorical trauma is overcome via adequate penetration). In turn she can be inspired by Faith. She knows what Faith is going through, and so can be fully known by her in return. Faith helps her move on. Faith allows her hope.
So at the end of the episode she is able to give Scott Hope a chance, but it is not Scott who allows this. He is incidental. He is a figurehead, a cloth puppet. He possesses the name and idea of hope, but none of the substance. It’s Faith whose understanding of trauma is shown to be equivalent and equal to Buffy’s, and who actually helps her in overcoming it. It’s Faith who will repeat history, who will recreate the Buffy/Angel arc of S2 beat-for-beat, with herself in the role of Angel.
“I just don’t think I’m ready [to date Scott].”
“What’s stopping you?”
“Check out Slut-O-Rama and her Disco Dave.”
- Buffy Summers, Willow Rosenberg and Cordelia Chase, 3×03 Faith Hope and Trick
Faith’s introduction comes in the context of Scott, and of Buffy’s love life. Willow asks why Buffy isn’t ready, and then Cordelia turns Buffy and the audience’s attention to Faith. This is not an accident. This is basic question-and-answer editing, and it’s a fundamental practice in televisual storytelling. A character asks a question, and instead of that question being answered directly, the show will show us the answer, and let the audience make the connection themselves. We already know why Buffy can’t date other people – because she’s still hung up on Angel. We are, in her introduction, being invited to connect Faith to that idea.
It’s Faith who instantly does what Scott was unable to do – get Buffy up on the dance floor. He is mistaken when he interrupts her, believing that she is coming to find him, when actually she is going to find Faith. This happens twice – later in the episode, Scott interrupts Buffy to ask her out when she is on her way to see Faith. Buffy only begins to display any desire to date Scott after she sees Faith flirting with him. Scott may be the person in front of her, but it’s Faith driving her motivations in all instances
The last time we see Scott Hope will be in Homecoming, in which Faith literally takes over Scott’s role as Buffy’s date to the Homecoming dance, and this emphasises the truth – Scott doesn’t matter. He never mattered. His only role ever was to be subsumed by Faith. It is Faith who, just as she killed Trick to replace him, excises Scott from the narrative by humiliating him in front of his date, in order to take his symbolic role.
Buffy ends this episode full of hope. She places the Claddagh ring on the spot where Angel died, and walks away. This is another absolution for Buffy. Through faith and through hope, she starts to believe in her future, and completes her arc nineteen episodes early.. She has broken the cycle, pushed this heavy boulder to the top of this emotional hill, and is ready to rest. She has done what she needs to do. The scene softly fades to black. It’s over.
And then, it’s not.
The rock rolls back down the hill.
Last season, Angel represented the danger of romantic allure – of Buffy becoming so swept up in youthful passion that she fails to grow up. This season, he represents stagnation. The danger of being trapped in a cycle of trauma, being in a relationship that cannot move forward, but will forever be in unsatisfactory stasis. Buffy has two options – stay with Angel, and live life on endless repeat, or leave him, and move forward with hope that she can find someone else to love.
There was another path for Buffy here. If Angel had stayed dead, then she could have moved on. She could have found someone else. His return ensures that this is impossible. Literally, her attempts to keep seeing him and keeping him secret will cause the dissolution of her alternative romance. She is trapped in the cycle, and will be until Angel walks away from her.
The tragedy is that by that time it’s too late. The cycle will repeat. She has to undergo everything that happened with Angel – falling for him, seeing him turn. Seeing him kill. Kissing him, and then killing him. Scott represented a hopeful future at one point, but he is irrelevant by season’s end. He was excised in Homecoming, by the character who replaces him in this symbolic role, and is already displacing him here. This was never a story about Scott. It’s a story about hope. It’s a story about faith.
Part Three: [REDACTED]
“It all comes down to love.”
The First as The Mayor, cut line[1], 7×20 Touched
With all this density within Faith’s character, all the thematic purposes and structural roles swimming around within her, it can take a while to unpack her. She is written as a guarded, secretive, and habitually dishonest character, always hiding and suppressing her real feelings. Her true face is always hidden. This is a major part of her appeal as a character. Every scene with her is not merely enjoyable on the surface, but a challenge. We are asked to peel away a piece of her, study the clues beneath each layer, and discover what lies at her core. What, on a fundamental level, does Faith Lehane want?
To speak of Scott one last time, it’s time to consider the elephant in the room. Scott is positioned as a potential love interest for Buffy, but their relationship was always going to end badly, Angel or no Angel, because Scott… is gay. We are explicitly told so in Conversations With Dead People. The very last thing we hear about him is that he’s gay, and that he spread rumours at the time that Buffy was also.
We are not privy to this information now during season three, but as this is a retrospective, we should consider it. The Buffy/Scott arc is not a heterosexual romance, though it may initially seem like one. It is a story about a gay person hiding their sexuality. From Scott’s point of view, it’s a story about repression. This fact from Season Seven recontextualises Season Three events, and retroactively queers it.
Not that we’re lacking in queerness currently. The show is choosing to use Slayerhood as a consistent queer metaphor. It rings this gong over and over, without subtlety. If Joyce’s lament that Buffy ended up a Slayer because she lacked a strong father figure in Becoming didn’t tip you off, or the walking-on-eggshells navigation of her daughter’s new life in Dead Man’s Party, then her reference to the “Slayer Pride Parade” here will still knock you off the wall. There is no subtlety here. Being a Slayer is made the same as being gay.
Faith enters here as an out and proud Slayer. She loves being a Slayer. She clocks Buffy as one immediately, and invites mutual recognition. She expresses an understanding about her sexual desires that nobody else picked up on. She is vocal about who she is, and doesn’t hide this part of herself to anyone. Joyce (our resident deliverer of queer metaphor apparently), notices this, and compares Buffy’s pessimism over her Slayerhood to Faith’s positivity. Faith will continue in this season-long mission to make Buffy admit her true desires – to take Pride in who she is.
Buffy cannot admit her desires – queer or otherwise. This is a season of sexual repression. Her nightmare first-time with Angel has left her unable to open herself up to anyone else, and the curse prevents her from indulging in any desires she has for Angel. She cannot have what she wants with Angel, so she locks herself out of it in any other instance. This is why she cannot take any pleasure in fighting (despite just two episodes ago declaring that it “was fun”), why she deflects at Faith’s suggestion that slaying makes her hungry and horny (despite the end of the episode making it extremely clear how true this suggestion is).
“You hungry?”
Buffy Summers and Faith Lehane, leaning against a wall, stealing glances at each other and panting heavily 3×03 Faith Hope and Trick
“Starved.”
Food is made central to this episode, and is always linked to both violence and sex. Beyond the obvious hungry/horny thread, we see Mr. Trick kill a fast food worker (after declaring that he’s hungry), and a pizza delivery man (after declaring the arrival of dinner). Buffy enters this episode surrounded by food (that she notably does not eat herself, but only provides to others, again not indulging her base desires). Vampires have always conflated sex, feeding, and violence through the act of blood-drinking, and this episode lends concrete proof that Slayers are prone to the exact same conflation.
Buffy is not ready to admit this. She cannot admit this truth about herself, and instead armours herself in feigned innocence, even down to her clothing. Gone are the leather jackets and baggy checked shirts. This season is constantly putting Buffy in soft pastels, conservative skirts, floral patterns and butterfly clips – a far sartorial cry from the styles we have seen Buffy in before.
“Look, I’m not trying to snare Scott Hope. I just want to get my life back, you know, do normal stuff… date and shop and hang out and go to school and save the world from unspeakable demons. You know, I wanna do girlie stuff!”
Buffy Summers, 3×03 Faith Hope and Trick
We can see this as Buffy engaging in a kind of performative femininity – dressing as inoffensively and gender-appropriately as possible while acting as a pre-prison-Martha Stewart housewife to her friends. She may have accepted her Slayer side, but she is hiding it under a layer of domesticity and aggressive femininity, while running a mile from the sex, violence, and consumption that misogyny would declare unacceptable for a woman to desire. The queer subtext creeps in here (there are few things that mainstream society deems more unacceptable for a woman to desire than another woman), but this fact exists outside of subtext: this is a story about Buffy’s repression. It’s about her hiding her true face.
The counter to all this repression is Faith. The clothes, the food, the slayerhood – Faith knows the truth about Buffy in all these instances. She knows what Buffy desires. She has to, because as Shadow she is a part of Buffy. She represents her hidden desires. Her words about what Buffy wants – who she is – must always be tinted with truth, because that is her narrative role. And so Faith will carry on as this figure of temptation, always driving Buffy towards these things, and in doing so revealing her desires. She wants Buffy to have all these things, and what Faith wants of Buffy must be what Buffy wants, because they are meant as the same.
This algebra of Jungian symbolism must make us realise that the question of “who is Buffy Summers?” has the same answer as another question: who is Faith Lehane? What does she want? Faith exists as a character beyond her symbolic representation, and so it is not enough to notice that Faith wants these things of Buffy – we must ask Why. Why does she want to counter Buffy’s repression so badly? Why does she encourage her sexual desires, and then act so agressive to the men that Buffy desires sexually? Why does she centre herself around this relationship and position herself so much in relation to Buffy? Why does she do any of this?
There are many answers here, but we know the true one, because it’s obvious. It may seem taboo to speak the word – and certainly was to anyone with any say in Buffy’s future in 1998 – and yet, it is there and undeniable. It requires no wishes nor imagination, but is told to us in plain english. It is told to us by The First, with a line in Season Seven that recontextualises our understanding of Season Three events. It is told to us by Faith herself in Enemies. It is the quintessence of Faith’s motivations – the one thing she ever wanted, driving all her key relationships, breathing greater meaning into her character. It is here, all along, in the passage that inspires this episode’s title – hidden in plain sight, implied by its absence, shaping everything we must understand about Faith, her relationship with Buffy, and the human weakness at the core of this season’s story.
And now these three remain:
faith,
hope,
and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
1st Corinthians, 13:13
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References:
[1] Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Touched: Shooting Script, http://web.archive.org/web/20030620161711/http://www.studiesinwords.de/shooting/touched.html, archived June 20th 2003
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Thank you to juanabaloo on Tumblr for her help proof-reading this essay.
Insect Reflection 
I love reading all your posts, but this one may be the very best yet. Thank you for the extremely insightful and amazingly well articulated arguments here.
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