Here's a thought....
When Willow performed her Great Working to activate all the Potential Slayers near the end of Buffy S7, we can probably assume, based on canonical evidence, that each new Slayer gets their own replacement from the Potential Pool when they die. But, I started thinking about the mathematics of this, and two items popped out at me:
Short term: what happens if too many Slayers die before the Potential Pool has a chance to regenerate? That is, if a Slayer dies when there are no current Potentials... what happens then? (And as a side note, with all of the Potentials either dead or activated at the end of S7, how long is it before new Potentials become available? Do the Scoobies have to wait for children born post-S7 to hit their teens? Or are there preteens who will gain Potential status in only a year or two?)
Long Term: Canonically, we went from one Slayer, to two, to a... (Mall? Ensemble? Band? Bouquet?). But, aside from certain special events, the number is always fixed. So... what happens once humanity really spreads out? Take Star Trek, the Honor Harrington Universe, the Vorkosigan Universe, whatever -- forget one Slayer per 5-10 billion humans, we're talking Slayer/Trillion ratios less than 1.0. Heck, what happens when you have more inhabited planets than Slayers?
When Willow performed her Great Working to activate all the Potential Slayers near the end of Buffy S7, we can probably assume, based on canonical evidence, that each new Slayer gets their own replacement from the Potential Pool when they die. But, I started thinking about the mathematics of this, and two items popped out at me:
Short term: what happens if too many Slayers die before the Potential Pool has a chance to regenerate? That is, if a Slayer dies when there are no current Potentials... what happens then? (And as a side note, with all of the Potentials either dead or activated at the end of S7, how long is it before new Potentials become available? Do the Scoobies have to wait for children born post-S7 to hit their teens? Or are there preteens who will gain Potential status in only a year or two?)
Long Term: Canonically, we went from one Slayer, to two, to a... (Mall? Ensemble? Band? Bouquet?). But, aside from certain special events, the number is always fixed. So... what happens once humanity really spreads out? Take Star Trek, the Honor Harrington Universe, the Vorkosigan Universe, whatever -- forget one Slayer per 5-10 billion humans, we're talking Slayer/Trillion ratios less than 1.0. Heck, what happens when you have more inhabited planets than Slayers?