The grimoire here turns out to have a lot more symbolic significance than actual plot significance. In our early outlines, that wasn’t necessarily so. The obvious route, which we did consider, would’ve been for E-Merl to find a spell in it that’d “bring back Rachel.” But there’d be a catch… and you know how this sort of thing goes. “People come back…wrong,” as Buffy put it. He might’ve produced Zombie Rachel, or Gigundus-style-puppet Rachel… or Rachyl-with-a-y who’d be very similar but just not quite right and have no memory of E-Merl or Peacemaker allegiance. The cycle of false hope and disappointment is worse than the grieving, sometimes.

Flo and I also discussed that the prospect of such a spell might lead E-Merl to take a few more steps toward Cultism, until Frigg shouted and clubbed him off that path. The irony of Rachel’s death driving E-Merl into the arms of the movement that killed her appealed to us, but that idea died after we realized something important. There’s no way E-Merl wouldn’t know the Cultists were responsible for her death after his scenes with Gravedust. And we just couldn’t see E-Merl ever being able to overlook that detail, no matter how desperate he got.

Free the spider!