That never bugged me. It felt like the sort of ending you see in an episode of a horror anthology series. We didn't need to see Buffy slay the new-born mantispeople; it wouldn't be important.

Invisible Green | September 15, 14:32 CET

I want to know what they did with April. We saw that they kept the Buffy-Bot, so where did they keep April?

I think that's why Joss loved TSCC, Cameron was April with a gun. And didn't smile as much.

zz9 | September 15, 14:44 CET

I agree Invisible Green. I think they just did that ending for "monster movie" style reasons and not because they were ever going to bring back Mantis women. So it didn't "bug" me either

But hey, it got Buffy on the list.

The Heroes one always bugged me a lot though. but without the writers strike we probably never would have gotten Dr. Horrible.

I forgot about that in 24. But I think it is explained by the simple fact that he is seriously injured and has no time to heal or die in the 24 hours that the episode takes place within. After that season, why bring it up again?

Jayne's Hat | September 15, 14:48 CET

I think the ending of Angel the series was the most maddening unresolved plotline myself. Yes it got resolved in the comics, but not on TV. MADDENING!

Jayne's Hat | September 15, 14:52 CET

Actually, the end of this episode irritated me, not because it was left unresolved, or even because I particularly wanted to see it resolved, but because you KNEW it would be left unresolved. I can excuse "It's not over" endings on shows like The Twilight Zone, because you know that it absolutely IS over...such is the nature of an anthology. But with Buffy, it didn't have to be, yet you knew it would be. Ah well, c'est la vie.

BAFfler | September 15, 14:58 CET

You know what be cool, if in between Season 8 and 9, Joss and Scott had some writers work on the dangling plotlines, which would include the mantis eggs through some One Shots, a Mini Series or Anthology specials.

I know there were a few other open threads that I wished they answered by the end of the series. I think I have a list written down somewhere, I'll look for it and post it.

Numfar PTB | September 15, 15:09 CET

I always wondered about the Doc/Spike plot from season 6 and whether they were going anywhere with it.

Simon | September 15, 15:14 CET

What about invisible Marcy from Out of Mind, Out of Sight in season 1? I seem to remember that she went to an FBI-type training school with other 'special' students (I can't remember if they're all invisible or if it's more of an X-Men type thing) at the end of the episode. I always thought they were going to go back to that.

Ildeth | September 15, 15:22 CET

Yeah, I always wondered about Marcy too. And is Amy's Mom still trapped in the statue? How about the vampire Sheila from School Hard or the last Gorch brother standing?

As for Angel, what happened to David Nabbit?

Also: Sadly, this fling is the apex of Xander's sexual competence throughout the entire series. I don't agree with that statement at all. Anya thought he was pretty damn fine.

menomegirl | September 15, 15:38 CET

Thought I was going to read about Firefly. HANDS OF BLUE?>!

FaithsTruCalling | September 15, 16:07 CET

I swear to God, if one more person brings up the Russian on The Sopranos...

UnpluggedCrazy | September 15, 16:09 CET

Yep. Mantis Lady Babies really doesn't matter to me. I care more about how Spike would've left Doc alive after what he did, I would see him hunt down that snake and kill him and the rest of Glory's worshipers. Marcy I always thought would be coming back, more so when Season 8 started. And David Nabbit's sudden disappearance without further mention bugged me, cause I liked himn (another Ats char was Lorne's friend who told him to go back home, I wished she had come back).

Also, Willy the Snitch. I always found him amusing - I would've liked to know where he went to!

Mirage | September 15, 16:20 CET

Maybe since the mantis people were hybrids, they take years to grow up. The kids were probably adopted by some unfortunate Sunnydale residents, and either moved away or were blown up along with the rest of the town. Either way, I never gave it much thought. Although I enjoyed it more than some of season one's eps, I didn't really care much for the storyline. Besides, assuming the only evils Buffy ever fought were the ones we saw is ludicrous. She probably did kill off the mantis babies, it just didn't warrant story-of-the-week treatment. I mean, taking the episode at face value, how much conflict could there be since Buffy already knew their weaknesses?

Deanna_Lynne | September 15, 16:21 CET

I never gave the mantis woman a second thought... When I saw this here I was thinking SHEPARD BOOK! It's been years and he still won't tell us for sure.

CinJudes | September 15, 16:35 CET

@FaithsTruCalling The blue handed men are dealt with (perfunctorily) in the Firefly comic that bridges the time between the show and the movie.

I think I recall invisible Marcy (not)showing up in the season 8 comics, did I just fantasize that?

phearlez | September 15, 16:37 CET

Yeah, I honestly didn't even remember the mantis ending. I was thinking of invisible Marcy as the major unresolved thread. (It seemed to be planting hints of something to come in the future... but then was forgotten.)

Firefly had too many dangling threads, because it got canceled. And I don't like how the blue hand men were dealt with in the comic, it was too short and kind of unsatisfactory imo.

AnotherFireflyfan | September 15, 17:11 CET

I think I recall invisible Marcy (not)showing up in the season 8 comics, did I just fantasize that?

Yeah, she's totally in every panel. How can anyone miss her?!

All of Firefly is a maddeningly unresolved plotline. Can we go back to throwing things at Fox? ;)

hacksaway | September 15, 18:00 CET

The Heroes one was annoying ("casualty of the writer's strike", Tim Kring said). It could've easily been explained in one little line, clip...there are plenty of deleted scenes on the Heroes DVDs, they could've filmed it just as a present to the fans. But I guess they weren't about to pay the actor to come back for one little phone call scene with Peter or something along those lines and Kring was so overconfident that the first half of Season 3 would improve on Season 2 that he wanted to forget all about it. Fans are left to either fanwank that anything time-displaced got put back where it started after the Virus timeline was destroyed/averted (so Caitlin would've reappeared in Montreal, where she and Peter followed notes from Adam), or if you want a nastier ending for her, she just died with the timeline. Stupid Heroes.

24's never occurred to me. There are often time jumps between seasons (anywhere from a year to 2+ years between seasons) and the gap between Seasons 4 and 5 was no exception. Would've been nice to have gotten a line about President Keeler, but I assume since they didn't mention him, he survived (his poor hot son didn't though--and I thought that was really cheap, introducing his son just to wring a little sympathy out of the character before crashing his plane--it worked for George Mason in Season 2 though). He survived but was too injured to take back his presidency during his term or something, or maybe he did resume his term after he recovered (if that's how it would happen in real life, I dunno), but Charles Logan got elected after Keeler's 4 years are up. Anyway, I'm really not sure that that's 24's biggest plot hole (assuming it has any remaining, they're pretty good at tying things up).

People bringing up The Sopranos one annoys me too UPC. In the Sopranos universe especially, not everything gets wrapped up perfectly and obviously. The Russian either survived and went away (a gunshot wound to the head may've given him amnesia for all we know), or he died somewhere in the barrens and fell down and got covered by the snow. Other viewers seemed to keep him in mind as a looming threat from that point in Season 5 forward, but I forgot about him pretty quickly.

Dangling plot threads + Buffy...the mantis eggs aren't the first thing that come to mind. Yeah, they either skittered off to terrorize the rest of the town in quiet (or other towns), a fitting horror/monster movie ending, or they were maturing in the school basement and got blown up with it. I assume the same for Amy's mom in the cheerleading statue. It got blown up and she was destroyed. If it got blown up and released her...wouldn't be a bad thing to use against Amy in the comic.

If I had still been watching Boy Meets World at that point (was a casual viewer for a while, then just kinda outgrew it), that would've pissed me off.

Kris | September 15, 18:08 CET

I assume the eggs died. When the entire flipping town is destroyed we can assume some monsters went too.

I want to know:

What happened to Glory's leprous hobbits?
Who was The Doctor? No, really.
What happened to Robin Wood?
What did Angel do when he heard Sunnydale had vanished?
Where did Clem go?

And lots more, which will never be revealed.

Gill | September 15, 19:13 CET

What do you mean, never be revealed, Gill?
We've seen both Clem and Wood in the Season 8 comics. And The Doctor was Spike, if I recall.

GreatMuppetyOdin | September 15, 19:43 CET

That's the point, GMO - Spike really wasn't ever going to be the Doctor. Hence the "No, really". And Season 8 is not a TV show. What about the other two questions, too?

Gill | September 15, 21:19 CET

As far as dangling plot threads to do with Buffy/Angel, I always wondered what happened to Whistler. Why introduce him for a short period, to further the plot, only to make him disappear?

And I've always wanted to know where Kate Lockley went. Does anyone know if its in the comics? I'm woefully behind.

~Tara ;)

TaraR16 | September 15, 21:43 CET

Trust me, if you suffered through After the Fall and Aftermath, you would probably have preferred that Kate's wherabouts remained uncertain.

David Nabit was a deus ex machina: too wealthy and powerful and manipulable to be left around with the Angel gang.

Amy's mom was probably destroyed at the end of either season 3 or 7 along with the high school and/or town.

jclemens | September 15, 21:54 CET

Gill, season eight may not be a TV show, but it's the continuation of the series. To say certain things will never be revealed, when they have, just because you might choose to not accept it, is the same as watching a series, skipping a few episodes that didn't seem that they would be interesting and claim the series didn't address certain questions. Love it or hate it, the comics are officially continuing the series that was seen on TV.

didifallasleep | September 15, 21:58 CET

What did Angel do when he heard Sunnydale had vanished?


Sunnydale didn't 'vanish', it was destroyed. Hence the huge crater.

The rest was addressed in Season 5 of "Angel". He was at Wolfram & Hart for good by then and had heard through his resources there (I'm assuming) that Buffy and the other Scoobies were scattered throughout Europe.

He said as much when Spike came back.

And I think it goes without saying that he kept an eye on her that way. So, I don't think he was that concerned; as he knew she was okay.

He even went to Rome (with Spike tagging along) later to try to catch up to her when he heard she was there with the Immortal.

So this was covered; as well as it could be with Buffy being off the air at the time (not to mention on another network).

~Tara ;)

TaraR16 | September 15, 22:15 CET

I think this can be retconned, from existing footage from season 1.

Take the ending scene, with the egg in the closet about to hatch... Then cut to Cordelia & Willow in the car, from the season closer, crashing into the school and running to the library. Cut it in such a way that it looks like the car took out part of the science classroom. THE END. (That would fit the shows sensibilities, that sometimes pompous set-ups can be undercut very quickly.)

OneTeV | September 15, 23:11 CET

There are a lot of open endings in Season 1 that can be annoying but you kind of chalk it up to them doing all the episodes at once and not knowing if they would be back for another season.

The one that always bothered me was how quickly Xander and Willow got over the loss of their friend Jesse (especially Xander, considering he staked him [in the clavicle]). I guess you can say that a weekend passed between the Harvest and them returning to school but there wasn't even a throwaway line about it.

E-Rawk | September 15, 23:58 CET

I would love to find out what happened to April-bot. I'm sure she couldn't support her own medium but i still miss her so. Someone please work her into a story somewhere please.

silent knight | September 16, 00:21 CET

TaraR16, I think Whistler was intended to show up as Angel's partner in AtS, but the actor who played him was unavailable for the part. When Glenn Quinn read for it they found his Irish accent so appealing they recreated the character as Doyle.

I did think Whistler ought be brought back at some point, though. Hmmm - maybe he's Twilight.

barboo | September 16, 00:46 CET

It is curious about the mantis eggs. Maybe they were duds because the Mantis LAdy had them with the science teacher and he might not have been a virgin. Just guessing ehre; who knows how long they took to hatch, so they could ahve gone blooey when the school did.

zz9 silent knight ; General consensus on a couple other boards is Warren recycled most of April 's parts to bod the Buffybuilt or whatever the words are. Logical in that he couldn't have ahd all that many spare parts lying around methinks.

menomegirl: Sheila, Lyle Gortch; two more vampires more or less wandering around among the 900,000 in the Buffyverse doesn't seem to much of a muchness just because we happen to have met these two by name, well, not to me. I guess you're more tender-hearted :-).

Mirage;Well, Willy didn't work there every night, he had other bartenders, so I guess he just left Sunnydale, a few days after everyone else had evacuated.

Kris jclemens menomegirl: We don't know much about the spell trapping KAtherine MAdison in the statue. For one thing, it's not impossible that the statue survived the explosion then the following demolition and dumping in a landfill intact. But even if it had been smashed, would that release her ghost, send her to a hell dimension, or just leave her trapped in one of the pieces. And even if she were released, would she be physical like before she was trapped, a disembodied spirit with powers, or a more or less powerless shade? (I had her spirit come back as the bad guy in a fic set in 2026 *grin called "Memories of Games Past" but it's not posted anywhere.)

DaddyCatALSO | September 16, 01:23 CET

The Btvs one that always got me was what did Principle Snyder actually know? What was his relationship with the Mayor? Was he hired specifically to come to the Hellmouth? ect. They never really explained that fully, we just got little scenes to show something fishy was going on. Then Synder looks concerned in Grad Day because he can feel that the Mayor is planning something.

Did Snyder actually know Buffy was the slayer? Or did he just know the Mayor had an interest in her. So many questions….

vampmogs | September 16, 03:25 CET

I want to know who the robot ninjas in Season 5 of Angel were working for.

Also, I want someone to mention poor Jessie. Just once. Like, "Oh, this sucks almost as bad as that time my second best friend got turned into a vampire and I had to accidently stake him."

RaisedByMongrels | September 16, 03:35 CET

I remember a rumor saying that for a time they were considering having Jesse visit Xander in Conversations with Dead People and if that were at all plausible that Eric Balfour could have played the character as a teenager again I would have really dug this idea. It did seem sort of weird that they reputedly had all grown up together I seem to remember.

Otherwise I swear there must have been more satisfying one-off endings on Buffy that could have been interesting plot threads for them to follow up on.

orangewaxlion | September 16, 04:06 CET

I did think Whistler ought be brought back at some point, though. Hmmm - maybe he's Twilight.


Now there's a thought!

Yeah, as much as I liked Doyle, I still would like to know what happened to Whistler as well.

*Ponders*


~Tara ;)

TaraR16 | September 16, 21:40 CET

I don't think they had any intention of having Xander in "Conversations With Dead People" (and as it stands it is the only ep of BtVS he doesn't appear in. It is mentioned on the commentary that they wanted to fit him in somehow but nothing made sense so they didn't at all) since it was 4 acts and each 'conversation' took up one act.

E-Rawk | September 18, 07:37 CET