Buffy Season Finale, SPOILERS

Cafe Society
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My favorite part was when Buff was telling Dawn how tired she was about everyone being so unhappy. Couple that with Buff’s telling Giles the ludicrous litany of loserdom that had infected everyone, and it gave me hope that next season would not be as much of an unrelentingly downer as this one.

Minor question - was there any real explanation for when Willow’s eyes would be black? They seemed to go black predictably when she got a major fix, and most times of extreme anguish, but at other times she was doing some major mojo with normal eyes.

My favorite bit was when the first challenge began and Spike was talking tough saying “Let’s see what you’ve got.” And in response the other guy smacks his fists together and they burst into flames. I used to compete quite a bit in various MA, and let me tell you, that would really be a bummer if your opponent did that!

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For those of us - meaning me - who don’t speak acronym, does “MA” refer to “martial arts”? If not, what the heck does it mean?

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MAcrame.

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I’ve been reading spoilers all year, until this episode. I wanted to be surprised.

I thought it rocked. We had a houseful watching it, and we all screamed when Giles walked in. We all laughed when Giles started laughing. We all screamed again when Spike got his soul.

I’ll give these questions a whirl.

Jonathon said that Willow would need a recharge on magic. Buffy knew all about Rack. It was the first place I thought of, so I’m not surprised she thought of it. How she found Racks place? Slayer sense? Maybe Clem stepped outside? I don’t know.

pepperlandgirl already answered this above. I can mention that I also had the same question until I watched the tape again.

Joss has said that next season - the last season - would be very much like the first season. And I can see how everyone is somehow changed. Buffy is looking at the world like it’s a brand new place. Dawn is probably going to be learning some Sunnydale survival skills. Willow has got to be different after the experience that she had. After being the Zeppo for so long, Xander finally got to save the world. Spike - he’s going to be a whole new ballgame. (Almost) Everyone is starting over, in a way. It should be a very good year.

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Right on! Those flaming fists would really give your opponent an unfair advantage at searing the ends of their threads! :wink:

I was really hoping Clem would show his stuff - assuming he HAS some stuff. Does the canon provide for mope demons?

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Finally Buffy is back to being the great show it was prior to the Season of Depression.

Very impressive episode.

I too enjoyed the Dawn bashing Willow did. Also everything she did up to the end the world bit was spot on. The end the world bit was a bit over the top. I liked the Xander ending it part- that was fine. Although the Xander acting/motives/exposition was a bit heavy handed. Anya was very well handled throughout this episode. Nice to see Giles back too.

As far as Spike goes, oh boy. Saying he went there to get his soul back is simply wishful thinking which ignores all of the plot and scripting to the contrary. It seems clear that he wanted to be fully restored to Full-Vampire status to get back at Buffy through here friends, as she could and has taken him out in a direct conflict. However, this is BTVS, so no one gets what they want. I liked the “monkey paw” turn-about in giving him his soul back instead. Nice “be careful for what you wish for” reminder (again), and it satisfies the Spike fan club members to boot. Very neat.

Now it took Angel a very long time to deal with his feelings after he got his soul back, but I imagine Spike will be on the accelerated course. Still, it should make for some interesting developments under the “Spike as a human now” scripts. Also the development of Dawn as a mini-Slayer seems pretty obvious too.

Anya and Xander will probably be an ongoing plot point with a easy to guess result.

Still, all in all a great season ender, and promising start for next season.

-me

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My guess about Spike: I think every time he talked about Buffy “getting what she deserved” he meant that she deserved a lover with a soul, and he specifically asked the demon-guy for his soul back.

I assume if I’m wrong, it will be made clear in the next season, “bloody wanker! I just wanted the chip out!”.

I think he’s still a vampire, too, which kind of makes him an Angel-retread. If he was made human again, it would be different, but not as interesting, maybe.

Here’s a weird thought: what if Spike and Willow hook up next season? They’re kind of moving towards each other in the geek/bad guy scale. Actually, I guess Willow passed him.

I wonder if Buffy is going to make Willow go to jail for killing Warren? As much as he deserved it, it was still a bit illegal for her to peel the guy.

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Hi Phil - I always thought that Xander was covering for Dawn. She stole the pendant and used it - summoning Hinton Battle without realizing she’d done it. Xander copped to it to take the pressure off her - back before anyone realized what a shoplifting little mess she was.

I loved last night’s episode, despite some of the plot holes. Giles, please stay!

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Weaknesses:[ul][li]Didn’t quite buy Willow’s leap from personal vengeance to MUST DESTROY THE WORLD. Joss is usually better at making an apocalypse convincing.[]The grave demons were kind of Star Trekky; too anthropomorphic. Should have been more elemental, in keeping with their willowgenesis.[/ul][/li]Strengths:[ul][]"–You cut your hair!"[]Andrew’s gayer by the day; hope we see more of him next season.[]After a 6-year running joke of Xander as the ineffectual underfoot wannabe, he gets to save the world! Yay Xander![]Spike’s got a soul . . . for now. (His doublecrossing reminds me a Margaret Cho line. Sloppily paraphrased: “I’m a fag hag. When I was young I prayed that someday I would be surrounded by gorgeous men. . . . I shoulda been more specific.”)[]Willow rules. She makes me wanna be a lesbian.[/ul]

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If Spikey had wanted the chip out, he would have gone to a surgeon. Not a demon who insisted on testing him first. What kind of tests do you need to get a chip taken out of your head? “Has he got a chip in his head?” “Yeah.” “Well, get it out!”

So, he may be human, he may be the Other Vampire With A Soul. But if he’s the latter… it’s not a curse. It doesn’t have the “perfect happiness” clause that gives Angel his broody moments. No strings attatched.

When I saw the “temple,” my first thought was: “They’ve run outta budget.” I was thoroughly amused that, on a Satanic temple, the plastic figures would modestly cover themselves up with snakes.

Overall, I liked it. Especially Willow ragging on Dawn, and Dawn’s “You think I never watched you?” line. It could be a really good season next year.

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Alyson Hannigan is a freaking babe, and I shall have words with anyone who thinks different.

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I actually contemplated not watching the finale – I’ve skipped the previous few episodes because I knew Tara was killed and I couldn’t stand to watch that.

Well, it was better than I thought it was going to be. That’s not saying a whole lot. The cast did a fantastic job rising above the substandard material they were given to work with (my god, even with cheesy makeup and her Darth Mook outfit, Alyson Hannigan can rock the house.) Only the on-screen talent pulled this mess out of the fire, so to speak.

ASH and SMG deserve kudos for making their laughing breakdown poignant instead of stupid and inappropriate. Nick Brendon actually made the Saga of the Yellow Crayon acceptable. Unfortunately, the Great Epiphany…sorry, even SMG couldn’t sell that one to me. A year we’ve waited…for this? Gah.

Unlike some of you, next season holds very little anticipation for me. They’ve killed off one of my favorite characters and shattered the other almost beyond repair. Frankly, only Spike’s Stone Soul Picnic might make me tune in. The Return of the Bloody Awful Poet.

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Thoroughly enjoyed almost everything about this ep. A couple of things didn’t ring true; for example, Anya’s explanation for how Buffy might be able to get to the jail before Willow. “A witch at her level” would go airborne to impress the locals? Except she didn’t go airborne, she teleported. And why would killing Jonathon and Andrew be “a line Willow can’t cross” while killing arren isn’t?

I thought the transition from vengeance to world destruction made perfect sense with the insane Willow-logic that was in play. She was in incredible pain (and all of her former self-esteem issues were activated) and by killing the trio was seeking to end it. When she siphoned Giles (and haven’t we all wanted to siphon Giles at one time or another? Growr!) she got in touch with the pain of everyone in the world and her human compassion reasserted itself, but in a completely twisted way. Fastest way to end the pain is to end the person. Makes sense to me. Remember too that Anya said that what Willow was feeling had gone beyond simple vengeance. I was wondering, though, if every one of those green balls Willow was pumping into the she-demon effigy represented a life. If so then she’s gonna be even more guilt-ridden as a mass-murderer.

I’m hoping that Dawn’s going to become an actual realized character now, building on both her willingness to go to Willow and her standing with Buffy in the grave. I’ll be really disappointed if she goes back to whiny girl next year.

Spike…well, who cares what’s going on with Spike as long as he continues to disrobe on screen?

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All in all a pretty good episode, with a few weak points.

-At the end, Giles said that his plan had worked, that the magic Willow took from him was pure and would bring out her innate goodness. So Giles’ master plan was to overpower Willow and then leave her unguarded, in the hopes that she would escape, defeat him, take enough power to destroy the world, and then hopefully run into someone like Xander? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to keep an eye on her until the coven could depower her?
His reappearance was definitely the high point of the show for me. I didn’t realize I’d missed his character so much until he came back.

-Dawn ruined her streak of two entire shows without annoying me. She was back to clenching her jaw and whining again. Buffy didn’t tell her Giles was back? Yeah, that should have been the first thing on Buffy’s mind, with end-of-the-world a close second. I’m also very nervous that Dawn’s swordplay was another step to letting her take Buffy’s place when SMG leaves. Shudder.

-Spike’s quest. There have been a lot of good theories posted that I hadn’t even thought about. My feeling was that he got exactly what he wanted, his soul in vamp body, but it will be interesting to see. I’m not entirely clear on the mechanics of being a vamp. From what I understand it is essentially a case of demonic possession. The demon takes over the human body, including the memories, but the human soul is kicked out. Does this mean that William is not going to have any idea what is going on? When Darla came back as human on “Angel” she seemed to have the memories of Darla the vamp, but that situation was a little different.

-What’s going to happen to Willow? By all rights she should go to jail, but I’m not even sure how that could happen. Go into the police station and confess that you magically tore the skin of someone? I guess they might come looking for her, since about twenty officers saw her tearing apart their station, but who knows if they recognized her. The police in Sunnydale seem to have a history of ignoring things. As a WAG, I’d say that she won’t go to jail, the coven Giles mentioned will succeed in completely removing her ability to do any magic, and that spell or it’s results will have some unexpected consequences.

-Anya’s powers continue to confuse me. I missed the episode where she re-demonized, so maybe there are more limits on her now, but in her earlier incarnation, she had the power to change all of reality. Would it have been that difficult to have someone wish for Willow’s powers to go away? And why didn’t she teleport out of there before Willow decked her?

-Xander saving the world. A little contrived, with his constant carping throughout the episode, plus if memory serves there was an early episode where he stopped an apocalypse, even if no one else knew about it. Still, I liked the way it was handled at the end. He didn’t seem to be doing it to be the hero, what he was saying really came off as sincere. There seemed to be some indications that with a bit of time it might work out for Anya and him.

Can’t stand the thought of many months of repeats, but it guess it will build the anticipation for next season.

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Ah, but with luck, one of the repeats will be Buffy: The Musical.

Can’t wait to see it again.

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I knew from the first time William (I don’t feel right calling him Spike anymore) told the Demon-guy, “I want to be like I was before so Buffy can get what she deserves” that he wasn’t going to get the chip out.

I figured, he was definitely going to get his soul back, possibly become human again.

My WAG, William is going to be a vampire with a soul and a chip in his head powerless to hurt humans (except for Buffy), but serious badss against demons, and real potential to be truly good, and therefore a worthy lover for Buffy.

Actually, I kind of like the idea of Buffy having a vampire lover- gives her a nifty emotional conflict. I saw a season 3 episode where she was grousing to Giles about not having a life of her own, and one of the points she brought up was “I have warm fuzzy feelings for a vampire I might have to stake.”

BTW, is it my imagination, or did that shadowy demon guy who put William through the trials bear a striking resemblance to the shadowy demon guy who put on a lightshow for the Mayor to trick him into thinking Angel had lost his soul again- to repay a debt of gratitude to Giles for introducing him to his wife?

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Spike can’t be a vampire with a soul. For one thing, it’d throw off all the prophecies that they keep citing on Angel: The Series, and, for another, if it was that easy to get a soul that doesn’t go away when you boink someone you love, Angel would just have gone there, kicked some ass (Does anyone doubt that Angel can kick Spike’s ass?), gotten a perma-soul, and lived happily ever after with the Buffster. So, yeah, put me in the “Spike is William again” column. I saw that coming when they re-introduced Cecily/Halfrek to the series.

Giles rocks!

Er, oh, yeah, so does Willow!

I’m totally confused about Anya’s powers, though. From an earlier episode, we know she can’t use magic unless someone else wishes for her to do so, but she’s teleporting all over in this episode! Speaking of teleporting, did it strike anyone as odd that TWO seperate people used this heretofore-unheard-of-in-Buffy power? Plot contrivance, anyone?

Still, no cheesy “ascent to a higher plane” thing like on certain other Joss Whedon season finales, so I’m thinking I liked it. I actually felt a tear come to my eye during the climactic Xander-Willow confrontation.

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Well, as a vengence demon, someone would have to wish to get revenge on her for Anya to be able to do anything. Maybe she could have asked Andrew… Anyway, I think Willow had significantly more power than Anya, and probably could have prevented her wish-powers from effecting her. As for her power to change all of reality, I don’t think that’s what she did way back when she was introduced. I think she moved Cordelia into an alternate reality which coexsisted with this reality. This is why she was later able to bring vampire Willow into this reality. It’s still pretty powerful, but not world-bending powerful.

It’s your imagination. The demon guy who owed Giles a favor had blue skin, yellow eyes, and wore a turban. Shadowy soul dude had a weird cone-shaped head and green eyes. Still, it would have been neat if it were the same guy.

Apparently, she can’t affect other people with her powers, but she can use them on herself. Also, teleporting is not unheard of in Buffy. Willow did it to Glory last season, although it knocked her on her ass and gave her a nose bleed. Also, Halfrek, Anya’s vengance demon buddy, did a lot of teleporting when she was on the show. Xander’s ability to teleport, however, remains inexplicable. (How the hell did he get from the forest to the police station so fast? And then from the graveyard to the demon temple?)

I’ll have to watch my tape again to be sure, but I think in the scene where Willow was firing green energy into the statue, that there was a spreading patch of destruction at her feet. I think the balls of energy was some sort of “life force” that she was leeching out of the grass around her. Eventually, of course, it would have spread to include humans and other animals, but she didn’t get far enough.

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I can’t imagine what Willow will go through after this. After the events in “Something Blue,” she made cookies for everyone as a way to relieve her guilt, but no amount of cookie dough can possibly make her feel better for almost destroying the world. If I were in her place, I would have to take off and hide to avoid ever looking anyone I knew in the face again.

I liked that Buffy informed Jonathan that they were under protection for Willow’s sake, not their’s. They might not have actually pulled the trigger, but they helped create the circumstances where it happened.

Overall, I really liked this episode. Willow apparently picked up some of Buffy’s fighting skills just as Dawn did. Xander redeemed himself for his recent jerky behavior. Giles’ laughing fit was priceless.

I was also surprised that the satanic temple a) was allowed to exist at all for any amount of time in a small town in the thirties in the USA and b) covered the effigy with strategic snakes. Apparently, someone said “We can destroy the earth, but let’s make sure no kiddies see boobies.”

Does anyone have issue with “witch” and “Wiccan” apparently being used interchangably? Willow referred to herself as a Wiccan in this episode, and last week’s episode had a teaser asking something along the lines of “What happens when a Wiccan is pushed over the edge?” I don’t see the terms as synonyms.

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I was going to have an issue with “witch” and “wiccan” but then I figured “screw it. In Buffyverse they are apparently synonyms.” Works for me.