Buffy Summers has just moved to Sunnydale with her mother. She wants nothing more than to make the right friends, and fit in with the right group. There is only one thing standing in her way. Her destiny.

In the second part of the two-part series premiere, Xander and Willow learn the truth about Sunnydale, and Buffy finds herself racing to rescue Jesse and stop a demonic ritual known as "The Harvest".

It's cheerleading tryouts, and Buffy can't resist. However, when the girls start getting knocked out of the competition, Buffy and the gang begin to suspect that someone may be behind these not so normal occurrences. Could someone be using dark magic in order to make the squad?

Xander dreams of greatness- in biology class; the teacher, Dr. Gregory, is eaten afterward and declared missing. Angel gives Buffy another cryptic warning and his jacket but no personal info. Substitute Natalie French continues the lesson on insects, her good looks guarantee volunteers after class, Cordelia Chase finds Gregory decapitated. To Buffy's surprise vampires flee for miss French, who wants hormones-impressed Xander to see her after class, and Blayne didn't return from his previous appointment. Xander refuses to believe his 'hot date' is a shape-shifting bug but is drugged and locked up after she resumes her mantis-form and caged with Blayne. Giles finds out it's a virgin-killer, Buffy the real miss French's identity...

Yearning for a normal life, Buffy agrees to a date with Owen. Giles discovers a prophecy of coming danger, but she chooses Owen over battling evil. When Giles goes out on his own and is trapped by a group of vampires, Buffy must figure out a way to balance dating and Slaying.

After an altercation in the hyena enclosure of the local zoo, Buffy and Willow notice Xander start to hang with a new group of friends, and take on a slightly more primal attitude, including a liking for rare meat.

Angel and Buffy's relationship is threatened by a dark secret he has been hiding from her. And when that secret puts the life of someone close to Buffy in danger, she must make a choice.

Willow meets a new friend, Malcolm, over the Internet. Meanwhile, a demon named Moloch has escaped from the book in which he was bound.

Mr. Snyder, Sunnydale High's new principal after the devouring of fatherly Mr. Robert Flutie, believes in order and discipline to instill school spirit, so he orders Giles to produce a talent show and punishes the absentee trio by forcibly enrolling them as candidates. Then dancer Emily is found with her heart cut out, but demons don't usually use a knife, yet one was found next to her, so the human student contestants are screened. The weirdest suspect proves to be gifted ventriloquist Morgan Shay, who treats his inseparable wooden dummy Sid as real, in fact takes orders from it in private, and if it is as Giles suspects one of seven demon who take possession of human bodies, anybody may be turned bad by it...

At the hell-mouth, the Master of evil explains to his boy heir Collin that fear rules people better then love or hate. He manages to use the young schoolboy Billy Palmer to make every student of Sunnydale High's terrifying nightmares come true, ranging from Xander appearing in class wearing only boxer-shorts to being chased by murderers, losing one's favorite abilities or poisonous spiders coming out of one's schoolbooks...

An invisible force is attacking the students and teachers at Sunnydale High. Buffy and the gang must find a way to stop this invisible menace, and determine why it seems to be centering its attacks on Cordelia.

In the first-season finale, Giles discovers an ancient prophecy which states that Buffy will face the Master and she will die. Upon hearing this, Buffy first denies her slayer roots, but when a small tragedy occurs at school, Buffy realizes she can't run from destiny, and decides to take on The Master.