Buffy: Why was Faith never "Helpless?"

Warning: supreme geeky speculation follows.

The first time I saw Season 3, I ran with the entirely natural assumption that Faith was younger than Buffy. I assumed this for two reasons:

• I thought it would make sense for them to call a younger Slayer
• Eliza Dushku is younger than Sarah Michelle Gellar, and in my opinion visibly so

However, especially in the next episode I have to review, Faith definitely acts like Buffy's cool big sis.  Or if you prefer, that friend who's slightly older than you and can thus buy you beer.

In "Graduation Day, Part 1" (3.21), Faith says Buffy is "all dressed up in big sister's clothes."

There's also no hint that, when the legal system finally gets its hands on her, she was a juvenile when she killed three people in the spring of 1999 (and Angel is certainly enough of an "adult" show to at least bring the issue up), suggesting that she was born no later than the spring of 1981 (though it seems she only gets convicted of one of the murders; N.B. the Buffy wiki seems to have gotten "Murder Two," i.e, second-degree murder, confused for "two counts of murder," so take what it says with a grain of salt). This gives her a very narrow window as far as being younger than Buffy, who was canonically born in January 1981, is concerned. So it's more likely that she's older, if only slightly.

The finicky issue: to the best of our knowledge, Faith never undergoes the trial Buffy is subjected to in "Helpless," the trial that, supposedly, every Slayer goes through on her eighteenth birthday.  If she were younger than Buffy, this would make sense, seeing as how Faith turns evil about two months after Buffy's birthday (although that would mean that her accidental killing of the deputy mayor would occur while she was still a juvenile). Otherwise...


Some possibilities come to mind.

1) Faith turned eighteen around the time Kakistos killed her Watcher
and the Council couldn't exactly ask, "hey, did your Watcher give you the kryptonite treatment before she died?" This would make Faith pretty much the only teenager in the Buffyverse who's actually older than her actress. It would also mean that she was called at something like seventeen-and-three-quarters, which seems odd given that Buffy was almost three years younger. (Let's face it, any way this gets sliced, the age gap between Buffy and Faith at the time of their callings is a bit odd. Call it Rule of Drama and move on.)

2) Faith did it, under Giles's supervision, at some point between "Revelations" and "Bad Girls"
Which would explain a) why she's emotionally distant between "Revelations" and "Bad Girls" and b) why, as soon as Buffy passes the test (or, dare I say, "graduates"), Faith tries to initiate her into her way of Slaying. She can't have done it under Giles's supervision prior to "Revelations," because she's only absent for one episode between her debut and that one, and that episode happens to be "Band Candy," in which Giles is in no condition to administer anything - although this could be epic fanfic fodder. She's absent in "Lovers Walk," which features very little Giles, "The Wish," which features very little anyone (from this universe, at least), "Gingerbread" and "Helpless." In the middle of those four episodes is "Amends," where she initially blows off Buffy's invitation, before changing her mind and accepting. Was she initially afraid of not being a superchick around her erstwhile friend? And then she blows out of town for "Gingerbread" and "Helpless," because she knows that Buffy's turn is about to come? (Remember: Faith believes in the Ubermensch; she's not going to stick around and watch Buffy be a shell of her normal self.)

3) Faith did it between "Consequences" and "Enemies" (or to put it another way, during "Doppelgangland")
Again we're back on hazy ground here, because the implication is that she was still seventeen when she killed the deputy mayor. Still... Faith's turn at the very end of "Consequences" struck me as a bit of a sour note the first time I saw it. I wonder if that last scene actually takes place, say, a week later, after Faith has found one more reason never to trust the Council? (Of course, then you'd have to rejig the chronology of "Doppelgangland," since she does appear in one of the first scenes of that episode, moving into her new, Mayor-sponsored apartment. No, this theory requires too many liberties, doesn't it?)

4) The Council dropped the ball (again)
Let's recap. Nobody bothered to tell Giles that Kendra had been called. Nobody bothered to tell Kendra's Watcher that Buffy was back and still active in Sunnydale. Nobody bothered to tell Giles that another Watcher, one who happened to be assigned to the only other Slayer on the planet, had died. Nobody bothered to tell Giles that a Watcher had turned evil. And that's just off the top of my head. It's like they can only keep track of one Slayer at a time.