As far as the eye can see there’s nothing but corn. Fully fed after a home-made meal, husband and wife Samantha and Riley Finn are walking in fields full of bales, watching the dogs run around. A normal everyday couple, one would assume. Of course, these two are having a conversation that is far from normal.

Sam wants to know if he’s going to do it. She knows he’s going to do it, even if he doesn’t. He’ll say yes to her about saying yes to him. Riley says he’s thinking about it, but she knows him too well. “Wouldja listen to those crickets?” Riley asks, his vain hope to distract his wife. He needs to think about it.

As they arrive back at their mud-soaked truck, she tells him that it’s Buffy asking him to do something that will probably save the world. As they strap in, Sam reaching for the keys, he looks at her. “Sam, honey. We’re getting out of it, remember? That’s why we’re here.”

They’re here, he continues, to take over his parents’ farm, to try a new thing, their own thing. “Our own little homestead, corn and soybeans, maybe some pigs.” Sam remains unconvinced: “Planting corn, raising corn, harvesting corn, feeding corn to pigs…” Riley argues that she seemed to like the idea, when they were talking to his parents. She says she is into it. She looks down the dusty highway, fields everywhere. She has no idea where she’s driving to.

“Turn left,” Riley tells her, and she carries on. “It is amazing here, Riley, and I want us to try it, to be safe and… kids… but if Buffy needs you, then don’t you kind of need to save the planet so that we can put pieces of corn into it so we can take pieces of corn out of it?” Riley refuses: someone else can save the planet.

Sam reminds him that it’s easier to do that with a planet underneath them. Riley is beginning to get frustrated: “Most wives don’t”

“What? Don’t push their husbands at their exes? Baby, it means I’m secure. I know you’re mine.” He begs her to talk about this later: they’re here, at a missile silo, missile directly below them. As Sam ponders their way in, Riley nods over to the bunker: “Maybe the General will let us in.”

The General has the door to the bunker opened for them.

Elsewhere, in what appears to be an old crypt, Twilight strikes a match on a casket, lighting some candles. He asks, in that gravelly, distorted voice, “Are you here?”

His answers come quickly, a form standing in the shadows. “I’m here.” Twilight removes his mask, Angel’s charming face underneath, but the voice is not his – this is Twilight, exerting his influence. “I hate this,” he says, referring to the mask. His companion tells him that it’s needed, but Twilight, or is it Angel, tells him that he hates it all. He uses his name: Whistler.

There, Whistler, a demon with a connection to some higher power, who once found Angel on the streets of Los Angeles eating rats in 1996 and who first showed him Buffy’s calling that same year, stands before him, replacing his hat. Angel may hate this plan, he explains, but it’s the only one they have with a chance of working.

At the bunker, the General takes Riley and Sam deep underground, explaining that they didn’t really have a plan for something like this. It seems the missile is showing more active time than it should be displaying, which means the missile must have been in contact with a different computer – one not their own. Either that or it’s a glitch. But the program is decades old – nobody should know these missiles are even here.

As Riley approaches the missile he asks why they keep it loaded with fuel. The General says they don’t, but Riley confirms that it has been. An automatic mechanism has been activated which has fuelled the missile, as if ready for launch. Riley asks the General to let them work.

As soon as the General leaves, Riley revisits their earlier conversation with his wife. “You’re scared of quitting. Quitting this, the excitement of being the operatives who get called when a missile acts up.”

Sam stops before she responds, curtailing her temper. “I thought you said something else. I thought you said I was scared of quilting.” He joins her at her location studying the missile. “You got the answer?” Shaking her head, she tells him no, but she knows what the question is: why are there target coordinates already set on the missile?

Riley goes to another panel and successfully turns the targeting off. It then turns itself back on, resetting itself. Sam yells up at him, telling him that the missile needs to be disabled, but that would still leave Riley with questions, such as who’s on the other end of the commands.

On the air transport home, Sam asks him how him going to help Buffy would work: what would it entail? Riley tells her that “I’d have to go back to this Twilight guy and I’d have to say I decided to take his offer. And hope that nothing I have to do to preserve the cover will cost my eternal soul.” Sam tells him she loves his positive energy. He retorts by tidying her collar up.

Riley doesn’t believe that Twilight would except him as an ally. Sam asks why not: he came to Riley after all, and it’s a war on magic. She can see why he’d fit that outfit. By the sounds of this ‘Twilight’ guy, he’s already surrounded himself with men who feel threatened by the Slayers, so he’s probably convinced all men are on his side.

Riley says that he’d want some kind of gesture. He’s worried that he’d have to kill someone innocent, and he can’t do that. Sam tells him that he’s selling himself short: he’d do anything for Buffy. Riley tells her not to joke, puts on some goggles and asks her if she’s ready.

Sam has already jumped out of the plane, parachute unfurled. While Riley lands in water and scrambles into their raft, Sam doesn’t miss a beat in their conversation: ” I would do it if I were you. That’s all.”

He asks her that if the call from the Government came then she’d take it, wouldn’t she? If they asked her to do something urgent, or even something that wasn’t, she’d take it. Samantha doesn’t respond. “And if I do this, then you can justify that decision whenever it happens down the line,” he adds. Again, Sam stays silent and looks away.

In the crypt, Whistler asks Twilight what he needs. Angel insists to his former mentor that he needs a new path, but Whistler tells him they’re already on this path now: the costume, the army, working with Buffy’s ex.

Angel throws the mask down. “She should be the most powerful player in the game. Not a piece on the board. This is wrong.”

Whistler tells him: “You know the answer to that, Angel. If you tell her, it doesn’t happen. She needs to feel powerless in order to find the ultimate power. You can do what she’d want, or you can do the right thing. Torture the former cheerleader, save the world.”

He pours the last of a wine bottle into his goblet and swigs it down. Is the agent going to sign up? Twilight ensures it. “Riley Finn is no fan of magic. Very humans first. I don’t get what she saw in him,” he concludes as the meeting ends.

At the co-ordinates the faulty missile was targeting, Sam and Riley don’t find anything out of the ordinary. Sam starts to explain that she wouldn’t need his permission to return to duty, but before the discussion can continue, the couple are alerted to a sound in the sky above them: it’s the missile, the same one they disabled, coming straight at them!

As it comes for them, it opens up, containing smaller artillery missiles inside. They shower on the position, never once hitting land, and avoiding Riley and Sam. Sam thinks they should check out the island they clearly circled for them. As they approach the shore, pulling their raft onto the beach, another General appears before them.

Above the crypt, Whistler tells Angel that there are many possible futures and some of them aren’t very lucky. Him and Buffy falling in love, that was one of those possible futures – a longshot that paid off. “And now,” he says, “there’s this prophecy, the biggest one the Powers have ever seen. So that’s messing with the math, killing off timelines.”

He says he’s seen some of these futures, some of which he and Buffy battle side by side – but in every one they’re together, they die together. Very romantic, but not good for the planet. “Oh, you can save the world together. But only if you’re not together. You have to decide where your loyalty lies. With the girl or with the world.” And just like that, Twilight vanishes.

On the island, the General leads Riley and Sam to a cave. Whilst he’s not answering their questions directly, he assures them that someone is waiting for them inside.

As they enter, their conversation starts again, but Sam tells him that this is not the time, they’re in absolute darkness. Riley thinks it’s the perfect time. Fine, she states, giving in. She would want to go if the Government called her, and yes, his helping Buffy would make her feel better for that, but she knows her husband, body and soul: he wants to help Buffy. Riley rejects her theory: if he was to go, he wouldn’t feel like the Finns anymore. Like they’re not tied together.

Sam tells him that they’re together because they want to be. It doesn’t matter to her: he can go and help the girl, like she knows he will. Silence follows. After a few seconds Riley asks her if she really thinks someone set this all up just to get them here? Sam doesn’t think it was them specifically, but she’s interrupted by Twilight’s gravelly voice, echoing through the cavern: “No, it was pretty much about you, specifically.”