Fate and Faith

[Allan]

I was thinking about this earlier today.

Buffy became the Slayer back in LA, and once the did her thing at Hemery High, she was drawn to Sunnydale by fate - because that's where the Slayer was "needed".

With Faith, one would assume that she was also drawn to Sunnydale after her earliest adventures, because thats where she was needed. However, while in Sunnydale, she fell in with the Mayor, who manipulated her and brought out her dark side.

The question that this is bringing me to, is were other forces at work here? Was Faith required, for some reason, to turn to the dark side? Was she needed to help the Mayor? Did her working with him somehow give Buffy the edge required to finally stop him? And okay, that was three questions.

And then, Faith travels to LA to collect a bounty on Angel. She is still evil, however, during this period, Angel manages to "get through" to Faith and redeem her, before she turned herself in.

So, do people think that fate was responsible for Faith's fall and rise? Or was it just responsible for getting her to Sunnydale? Or, did it get her to Sunnydale and after she went "bad", did it simply send her where she needed to be to find redemption?

So, does anyone have any thoughts or ideas about this?

[Kana]

Well we have to be careful with fate because then it sometimes mutes the responsibility of the individual.

In the Verse anyone claiming absolute free will is sadly deluded. They are products of the who or what they are with their impulses and automony playing a wretched game with paths of our favourite heroes and foes but I'm not sure about an ulitimate plan because the legitimize the theory we at least need a reason. Did Faith have to go through all that to become redeemed? Did she have to cross over to the darkside? If so why? Can all the pain and suffering be justified in the hands of Fate?

Personally I think Faith's path was mostly self defined. Her quandary about fate and free will actually plays into the idea of her 'evil intention'. It was like an unconscious or possibly conscious effort to reconcile herself with her actions. So in short, she chose the commit her acts and then she chose to commit herself to redemption. Lorne implies that there are different paths to people's journey and so nothing 'needs' to happen. Faith didn't need to kill to be a good Slayer in the end, it just turned out that way.

This may also lead onto Spike and Angel's journey. With all their Shanshus and such there are many forces trying to entice them on their side and serve their agenda, perhaps the side they choose is fated but if so can we actually reconcile a world of free will and predeterministic world? Hmmm, bit of a noodle scratcher that one but I vote for free will.

[Laura]

I believe that fate brought Faith to Sunnydale, but that's it. After that I think she made her own decisions, even though some were twisted.

However, it could be said that she was needed to join the Mayor, since the knife and the fact that Faith told Buffy to play off his human weakness, is what caused Buffy to be able to lead him into the fire trap.