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The Children of Solace make their move and drain Candy of her powers. With Brian gone and Candy a normal girl again, the under-strength Slayers East call in all the help they can for a final confrontation - which puts Candy's mother Meryll and new sort-of boyfriend Nick in terrible danger... (Air Date: 13 May, 2001)

Regulars:

• Candy
• Cynth
• Zak

Other Characters:

• Meryll Stevens-Knight - Candy's mother
• Alison - Candy's watcher
• Lolly - Bossy mean girl
• Stephie - Lolly's mean sidekick
• Max - friend of the Slayers East, Cynth's love interest
• Nick - cute guy, but son of a bad man!
• Sophie - young associate of the Slayers
• Troy and Alister - amusing weirdo kids
• Zion, Cain and Lilith - the Children of Solace
• Allois Gardiner - ghost of a slave girl
• Solace - old and powerful vampire

Episode Synopsis:

Candy is suddenly popular. Old crush Christian asks her out on a date, but she shoots him down. Sophie has something to show her, and later she has a study date with Nick. Cynth is left to fall by the wayside, but Max is there to hang out with her, not quite so clueless now.

Sophie shows Candy a haunted cave. Candy recognises it from a vision she had. The cave has a ghost - a woman, Allois, who was an escaped slave, and whose baby's cries alerted those hunting her. The hunters killed both her and her baby. Candy and Sophie find, secreted in the back of the cave, a small figurine that belonged to Allois, and a dagger.

Meanwhile, Zak is horrified to see the Children of Solace kidnap Meryll! Candy left Nick behind to rush home, but Meryll was returned safe with a message. Candy had to get out of town by midnight, or the Children will take it as a declaration of war. But Meryll had kept her wits about her, and knew where the Children were hiding - beneath the swimming pool at a gym...

Alison and the others performed a spell to contact Allois' ghost. The spirit revealed that the figurine represented a folk heroine who should have helped Allois - the one who walks with mothers - Solace... Allois no longer believed Solace was the help of mothers - she had been revealed as nothing but evil. The dagger was magical, imbued with Allois' curse against Solace for failing her.

Brian contacts the group from overseas. The Watcher's Council had revealed that they had made a deal with Solace, believing that Solace's love for her children made her better than other demons, but the love was nothing, it was empty. The children do not recognise it, though. Their whole existence is founded on their belief in her love...

Midnight. En route to the gym, Candy and Cynth and Alison and Zak. Max comes too, being forceful in his determination to help, and finally making Cynth catch her breath. Then a shock, as Candy's power saps away. A ritual by the Children of Solace has struck, and Candy has lost all her fighting instincts and slayer power. She is nothing but an ordinary little girl...

Under the gym, the group was forced to split up. Zak and Max faced Lilith, who told Zak an unpleasant prophecy from Solace - that when Candy dies, it will be his hand on the dagger's hilt... Zak talked to her, and forced her to recognise that the mother she had loyalty to had died when Solace became a vampire. Freed of her loyalty, Lilith fled.

Cynth and Alison faced Cain, and Cynth worked on Cain's inferiority complex, convincing him that he owed his mother nothing. Cain lost his nerve for a moment and Cynth seized the opportunity to stake him.

Candy, meanwhile, was facing Zion. Candy was weak, and Zion led her to Solace, the dark mother of the vampires. Candy got Zion to stop fighting and leave by convincing him his mother had made him a slave.

But Candy was too weak to take on Solace herself. She was overwhelmed by the old vampire, and would have died if Alison, Cynth, Zak and Max hadn't come in at the last moment to save her. Together they overcame Solace, and staked her, reducing her to dust.

The threat of the Children of Solace was at an end. The Watcher's Council got in touch about the loss of Candy's power. It was truly gone. She was no longer a Slayer Potential. Her responsibilities to her power were at an end. But, they could use another ritual to restore her status, if she chose. It was up to her - did she want a normal life?

Trivia and Notes:

• Pre-production notes for the episode (.pdf file, 135K)
• The Children of Solace are dealt with in this episode. It's a break with tradition, similar to the contemporaneous end of Buffy Season 4, which also got it's big bad done in the penultimate ep and devoted it's last episode to a weird head-trip.
• Max finally gets some respect from Cynth this episode. Such a satisfying moment.
• A whole bunch of thought went into the subtext of this episode, a culmination of this season's 'mother' theme. This is all discussed in the pre-production notes described above - of interest if you want to see what was going on beneath the surface here.
• "I still don't have my birthright back and I feel so different. Mom reckons I shouldn't try and get it back, that I should just be an ordinary girl. I don't know what I want. I want to be ME." - from Candy's diary