Buffy: Most Unnecessary Lies The Scoobies Told

The ’90s cult-favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer featured the ultimate friend goals group the Scooby Gang. Originating with core members Buffy, Willow, Xander, and the Watcher Rupert Giles the group battled the supernatural forces of evil. Throughout the seven seasons, the team lost some of its Scoobies; Cordelia Chase went off to Los Angeles and teamed up with Angel, while Oz left to learn how to control his inner wolf and was replaced by the shy white witch Tara.

Despite their beloved status in the Buffy fandom, not every choice the Scoobies made was considered a good one, and often times their decisions were met with criticism.

10 The Frat Party

Feeling like she was under too much pressure with her Slayer duties, Buffy lies to Giles in order to get the night off and go to a frat party with Cordy in season 2’s “Reptile Boy.” While the lie certainly doesn’t seem like something that should have dire consequences, the night of partying ends up going south after Buffy and Cordelia are taken captive and almost become human sacrifices for a sadistic fraternity that worships a half-man half-snake demon called Machida.

Still, Buffy manages to save the day, and Giles admits he’d been pushing Buffy too hard and will be more reasonable about it in the future.

9 Xander’s Comment About Angel

In the season 2 finale, tensions were at their peak as Buffy prepared to battled Angelus and stop him from awakening Acathla and destroying the world. When Xander goes to visit Willow in the hospital she gives him a message for Buffy, however instead of telling the Slayer Willow’s message to stall Angel while she tries to restore his soul, Xander tells Buffy that Willow’s message is to “kick his ass.”

It’s debatable whether or not Xander did this for the right reasons. While Angelus had caused the Scooby Gang nothing but hardship and murdered Jenny Calendar, the argument can be made that Xander’s clear dislike for Angel and his crush on Buffy influenced this decision. Also not telling a best friend there’s a chance the person they love can be saved isn’t a great thing to do considering how much having to kill Angel obviously traumatized Buffy.

8 Hiding Angel’s Return

After the amount of pain and death caused by Angelus in season 2, it wasn’t exactly fair for Buffy to lie to her friends about Angel’s unexpected return in season 3. They even suspect that she’s seeing someone and when they pry Buffy says absolutely nothing about her former lover. In the season 3 episode “Revelations,” the Scoobies learn Buffy has been hiding Angel only after Xander spots the two of them kissing.

The group holds an intervention and shares their disdain for Angel and fear that he will once again cause chaos. Afterward, Giles reminds her of both her duty to protect the world as well as the fact that Angel physically tortured him, telling Buffy how her actions show she has no respect for Giles or his job. Though things are eventually smoothed out between the gang and Angel, this entire issue could have been avoided if Buffy had told the gang when he first returned.

7 Giles Plotting to Kill Spike

Giles’ distrust for vampires was no doubt reaffirmed after his trust in Angel led to Jenny Calendar’s death as well as his own torture. In season 7 after Spike falls under the control of The First, which uses a trigger to get him to commit murderous acts, Giles considers Spike to be too much of a liability.

Giles then teams up with Principle Wood who’s looking for revenge after finding out Spike killed his mother, the Slayer Nikki Wood. Giles is meant to distract Buffy while Wood care of Spike, but the plan fails when Spike manages to break free from his trigger and stops Wood from staking him. Even though Spike survives, the realization of what Giles tried to do behind her back changes the relationship between the Slayer and her former Watcher for the remainder of the series.

6 The Cruciamentum

The Tento di Cruciamentum was considered a rite of passage that the Watcher’s Council practiced on their active Slayers. In the weeks leading up to their eighteenth birthday, the Slayer would be unknowingly injected with an organic compound that would leave them as powerless as an ordinary human. The Slayer would then be taken to a location where she would be forced to battle against a dangerous vampire selected by the Council.

In season 3’s “Helpless,” Giles performs the ritual on an unsuspecting Buffy, claiming he has no idea about why she doesn’t have her powers until it’s almost too late. Despite eventually revealing what is going on to Buffy due to his fatherly feelings for her, Giles broke her trust at an extremely vulnerable time, as Buffy was already trying to process her own father breaking their traditional birthday trip. Though the bond is eventually rekindled, what Giles did obviously devastated Buffy and almost got her killed.

5 Tara’s Alleged Demonic Roots

Tara Maclay’s family raised her with the belief that the women in their family were a part-demon and that their demonic aspects would be revealed on her twentieth birthday. In the season 5 episode “Family,” Tara’s family is in town trying to scare her into returning home with them by reminding her her “demon side” will soon reveal itself. Out of fear that she will be rejected by her new friends, Tara reveals nothing about her supposed origins to the Scoobies and casts a spell to hide her “demon side” from them.

The spell ends up having serious consequences as the Scooby Gang cannot see a group of demons that comes into the Magic Box and attacks them due to Tara’s spell. Still, the issue is resolved, Tara and the gang confront her family and it’s revealed the supposed demon heritage the Maclays push is just a myth to frighten the women in the family and keep them subordinate.

4 Xander and Willow’s Affair

Despite being in relationships with other people, Xander and Willow give into temptation and cheat on their significant others for a period of time, lying to the group about their affair before eventually being caught in the act by both Cordy and Oz.

While Willow and Oz manage to eventually repair their relationship, Cordelia and Xander break up for good. Cordelia’s anger at being cheated on ends up attracting the then-vengeance demon Anyanka who grants Cordy a wish that transports her to a dark alternate reality where Buffy never moved to Sunnydale. In the Wishverse, Cordelia realizes Sunnydale was better off with Buffy as the Hellmouth there is open and the Master and his minions have full reign. In the end, the alternate-universe Giles reverses the wish.

3 Willow’s Magic

During season 6, Willow completely spiraled out of control with her magic use before eventually becoming Dark Willow and almost ending the world. As her friends became more and more concerned about her magic use, Willow lied to her friends as well as Tara about how bad things were getting.

It all became too much for Tara after realizing Willow not only lied to her but tampered with her memory and caused the Scooby Gang to fall victim to temporary magical amnesia in “Tabula Rasa.” Due to her dishonestly, Tara breaks up with Willow and moves out of the Summers house.

2 Being In Heaven

Buffy Summers loved her friends and always did her best to protect the Scooby Gang, sometimes to her own disadvantage. After Willow performs the spell that pulls Buffy out of heaven and puts her back into her body, Buffy hides the truth from her friends who believe she went to a hell dimension after jumping into Glory’s portal to save Dawn.

At first, she only reveals where she was to Spike, but eventually sings the truth to the others in “Once More, With Feeling.” Despite trying to prevent her friends from learning the truth, the Scoobies were very aware something was upsetting Buffy. However, she eventually comes to terms with being alive and back in Sunnydale by the end of the season.

1 Hiding Being The Slayer

Though the lies weren’t told to a fellow member of the Scooby Gang, Buffy keeping her mother Joyce in the dark about her secret identity only caused a number of problems for her in the long run. Before she finally revealed the truth to her mother at the end of season 2, Joyce Summers constantly worried about her daughter, thinking she was a juvenile delinquent at worse and an irresponsible teenager at best.

In season 6’s “Normal Again” fans find out Buffy’s parents put her in a clinic after she told them about vampires when she first became the Slayer; so it does make sense she would’ve been hesitant to mention it again. Still seeing how easily she proved their existence to her mother in “Becoming, Part 2,” it seems like she could have managed to do so during any of the many times Joyce thought the worst of her. In a pinch, she easily could have proved it with her super strength and had Giles or Willow back her up.

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