First Date (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"First Date" is the fourteenth episode of seventh and final season of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode aired on February 11, 2003 on UPN.

Buffy accepts a dinner invitation from high school Principal Robin Wood, making Spike wistfully jealous; Anya expresses more aggressive jealousy when Xander has a date; and both first dates provide revelations about the First Evil.

Plot
Giles leads Buffy and the Potential Slayers in a night-time cemetery tour, during which he tells how he survived the Bringer attack several weeks before by overpowering and decapitating the Bringer. He is suddenly attacked by Spike, who is surprised to learn that Giles is corporeal and not the First Evil. When Giles is confused at how Spike can no longer feel pain, Buffy admits that she persuaded the Initiative to remove the chip from Spike's head, much to Giles' consternation.

At work, Buffy tries to hunt for clues in Principal Wood's office as to whether he is good or evil. When she is about to open a cabinet, Wood finds her and asks her out to dinner. After Buffy leaves, Wood opens the case, displaying a large collection of blade weapons, into which he places a bloody dagger. Back at the house, Buffy expresses mixed feelings about the date, and is unsure whether she is interested in him. Willow suggests that it would be good for Buffy to move on (from Spike, presumably). Xander enters and reveals that he too has a date that evening, with a young woman, Lissa, he met at a hardware store. Upstairs, Buffy is getting dressed for dinner when Spike appears in the hallway, and tells Buffy that he is fine with her having a date with another man, although Buffy can tell he is jealous.

On Buffy's date with Wood, they are jumped by a group of vampires. Buffy slays most of them, and thinks that Wood has set her up until she sees him take out two of them. At the restaurant, Wood reveals that he is a "freelance" demon hunter, and tells her about his mother — a Slayer who was killed when he was four years old, after which he was raised by her Watcher. Meanwhile, Xander's date appears to be going well until he learns that she is a demon working for the First. She ties him up above the mystical Seal of Danzalthar in the high school basement, and cuts him so that he will bleed onto it and cause it to open.

In the house, the First appears to Andrew in the guise of his murdered friend Jonathan, and orders him to kill the Potentials by trapping them in the basement, using the gun that Willow brought to the house while she was possessed by Warren. Though Andrew says he is committed to helping Buffy and her friends, he reluctantly retrieves the gun for the First and asks why not convince Spike to kill the Potentials; to which the First replies it is not yet time to use Spike. When Andrew asks the First questions about its intents and potential weaknesses, the First realises that Andrew is wearing a wire that Willow has set up and that she, Dawn, Amanda and Kennedy are listening to their conversation through Willow's headphones. Angered, the First appears to the girls in the guise of a horribly maimed Jonathan, threatening them before disappearing.

Soon afterwards, Willow receives a text message with a help code from Xander. Spike goes to fetch Buffy, finds her with Wood at the restaurant in a slightly romantic moment, and they all rush out to rescue Xander, driving in Wood's car. When they get to the seal beneath the school, they fight and kill Lissa and find Xander not too badly hurt. They prevent the seal from opening again, but during the course of the fight, Wood finds out that Spike is a vampire whom Buffy cares about deeply, making him uneasy.

Back at the house, Spike tells Buffy that as the First has plans for him that could endanger others, he will leave town to prevent this. Buffy tells Spike not to leave, "'Cause I'm not ready for you to not be here." In Wood's apartment, the First appears to Wood in the guise of his dead mother (Nikki Wood) and leads him to conclude that it was Spike who killed her in 1977.

Casting
Actress and stunt double April Weeden-Washington, who played the original "Subway Slayer" Nikki Wood, told an interviewer, "I received a call from the casting director at Buffy saying that they were bringing the character back. I was told to come in and audition on September 13 [2002]. I thought I was a shoo-in because I had already established the character. There weren't many lines. Then I got a phone call from casting stating that there was 'a certain maturity' about me now, and that I didn't get the part. It was a blow for me not to get called back. I do kind of understand, seeing that the Slayers are teenagers, but the character in "Fool for Love" was older than that." The actress K.D. Aubert replaced her in the role.

Reception
Vox, ranking it at #123 of all 144 episodes on their "Worst to Best" list, writes, "Traditionally on Buffy, there’s a major twist right around this point in the season: Angel loses his soul, or Faith kills a guy, or Buffy and Spike have sex. Season seven eschews that structure, which is partly why it feels so monotonous, but this quiet episode has its charms. It brings back a little of the Scooby camaraderie that made the early seasons so fun: There’s Willow and Xander sweetly teasing Buffy about how Principal Wood is way too young to be her type, and Anya struggling fruitlessly for someone to talk to about how jealous she is of Xander’s date with Special Guest Star Ashanti — who, as stunt-casted celebrities goes, does not embarrass herself."

In 2023, Rolling Stone, ranked this episode as #99 out of the 144 episodes in honor of the 20th anniversary of the show's ending.

Reviewer Billie Doux comments, "This week's moral lessons are: redemption's a bitch, and never date during an Apocalypse... Buffy thought her date was evil, while Xander didn't have a clue — and it turned out to be just the reverse, with Xander once again proving that he is a demon magnet."

Mark Oshiro wrote a mixed review, finding some of the jokes cheap, particularly the "continuation of the joke that only demons are interested in Xander" and the character of Chao-Ahn, "an awful, gross stereotype taken to extremely racist/xenophobic ends." While he liked the appearance of Ashanti as Lissa, he asks whether "this episode sort of criticizes itself?"