A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Storyline Deserved More

Because Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a “monster of the week” type show, there were plenty of characters and stories that would show up one week and then never get mentioned again. However, the show also had plenty of recurring characters and storylines that popped up, then went away for a while and then would come back either help or hurt Buffy and the rest of the Scooby Gang. The approach of characters and stories coming back after weeks, months and sometimes years helped the show feel more authentic and like action was floating around the small town of Sunnydale.

While the show was great at recycling various characters and stories, there was one particular plot ploint that Buffy the Vampire Slayer mishandled. The series mishandled it despite the fact that there were plenty of opportunities to call back to it. And the weirdest part was that it was the kind of plot point Buffy almost always found a way to point back to. Especially when Riley Finn, his buddies and his organization, the Initiative were introduced, “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” seemed like it was poised for a return, but it never happened, much to the detriment to the show and its fans.

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Marcie Had a Lot of Buffy The Vampire Slayer Return Potential

“Out of Mind, Out of Sight” was a first season episode where a young girl, Marcie Ross was someone who her Sunnydale High classmates ignored so completely that she felt invisible. And because this was Buffy the Vampire Slayer and dark magic was all over the school, Marcie feeling invisible eventually turned her invisible. And along with becoming transparent, Marcie became homicidal.

Throughout the episode, the Scooby Gang were investigating various attacks on students in Sunnydale High and for most of the run, it seemed like the situation was a ghost who had gone wrong. Later in the season, ghosts did wreak havoc, seemingly as a way to show that this kind of thing did in fact happen. However, as it turned out, it wasn’t the work of someone who was dead. It was just someone who was gone from everyone’s sight. And of course, it was someone who no one noticed was missing.

Eventually, Buffy did what Buffy always does and finally figured out what was going on, and they were able to figure out that Marcie was not a ghost but was just invisible, and after a brief fight, she was able to stop Marcie from hurting anyone else.

The twist was that at the end of the episode, because Marcie was apparently permanently stuck as an invisible girl, she was shipped off to some kind of government program where there were other invisible students all sitting in a classroom. The point of this room was to build a kind of army of people that no one could see. And because these people had become homicidal, they seemed happy to be learning techniques that would serve them out in the world. Despite the hint that Buffy the Vampire Slayer viewers might eventually “see” Marcie again, the storyline was dropped completely and the program was never brought up again, despite the Scoobies seemingly knowing it existed.

A Return Of The Initiative In Buffy The Vampire Slayer

In Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Initiative made an appearance and it was quickly revealed to be a massive operation dedicated to studying all the witches and warlocks and monsters and ghosts in the world and specifically that were in Sunnydale.

Considering this was a government operation dedicated to the occult, it seems rather odd that Marcie and her classmates were never mentioned. With a government program training these assassins, it looks like it’s a bit of a no-brainer that they wouldn’t be stored/learning at the underground facility where Riley and his friends operated. it was a real missed opportunity to bring back a quite interesting storyline, especially with the hints at the shady government organization involved.

Other Storylines Got Similar Unfinished Treatment

There are a couple of other stories from Buffy the Vampire Slayer that seemingly ended on a cliffhanger and were never discussed again. However, they were at least cleaned up a little. One such example was another Season 1 episode titled “Teacher’s Pet” where Xander gets into a romantic relationship with a substitute teacher named Ms. French. It turns out that Ms. French is actually a giant preying mantis monster that breeds with men and then bites their heads off.

Just before she could kill Xander, Buffy and the rest of the Scoobies rushed in and killed her, seemingly ending the threat. However, at the end of that episode, the camera pans over to egg sacks, and one of those egg sacks started to hatch. This kind of story was at least dismissable. However, there was a perfect chance for Buffy the Vampire Slayer to return to the story of “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” and it dropped the ball.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Release Date

1997 – 2003

Network

The WB

Showrunner

Joss Whedon

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  Sarah Michelle Gellar

  Buffy Summers

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  Nicholas Brendon

  Alexander Harris

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