Perhaps someone has suggested this before–in fact, all things considered, it’s almost a certainty–but as we start winding down to the end of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, I’ve been left to wonder about a possible ending for this series:
Do you think Buffy might wind up being turned into a vampire herself?
It seems to make sense as a “fitting” end for the story (whether she gets dusted at last or not). She does seem to have an attraction to that whole undead thing. And it would solve some of her issues regarding impossible feelings and/or her (unwarranted?) place on earth.
For me, contemplating this end to the Buffy saga has an even greater edge to it due to a dream I recently had–nightmare, really–in which I seemed to be watching (indeed, even acting as a participant in, a Buffy episode in which she was a vampire. I only remember it vaguely, but I can say it was extremely dark, grim and unsettling–I’m not sure she was going to make it out alive (unalive?) before I woke up. I don’t believe it was a premonition or anything, but as I said above, it does seem to jibe with the peculiarities and difficulties with her character.
I suppose if it does come to that, it would make for an “unhappy” ending to the whole thing, but I wouldn’t discount it just for that. After all, if you really think about it, pretty much everything in this world comes to a bad end–no point in expecting any more for our TV heroes.
I’m interested to see what others think about this. I will leave this for you to ponder for a while. Thank you for your attention.
She did turn into a vampire in a first-season episode where everyone’s nightmares were coming true (it was Giles’ nightmare that Buffy got vamped). Do you think that inspired you at all?
I think they’re more likely to have some sense slapped into her by all her friends. She keeps getting totally bound up in knots that she doesn’t get to have a real life because she’s The Slayer. Faith’s about to show up in Sunnydale, and current odds are on Faith taking over the Slayer franchise. Once she gets it through her thick head that she’s not The Slayer, but A Slayer (hey, the Slayer line doesn’t even continue through her; it’s Faith), she might wise up and take off for a while and, you know, get a life. She would then be available for the occasional guest starring, especially once she figures out that her movie career is likely to tank completely because, let’s face it, she’s no Meg Ryan.
I don’t know whether to cluck my tongue or applaud. The only film I think she was any good in was Cruel Intentions, which I admit most people didn’t like.
As for the end of the series, I really don’t care to speculate, but interviews with cast members have alluded to the fact that it may end in a way that will piss a lot of fans off.
As long as it’s better than the last episode of Sienfeld, I don’t care.
I have to admit, I’m glad they are ending Buffy this season. Not because I wouldn’t want to watch more new Buffy, I just don’t want it to turn into another X-Files, where the show goes on long past it’s prime. I’m not one to think that the show sucks this season, as I’m enjoying it a lot. Even if the ending pisses me off, as long as it’s a good ending that makes sense I’ll be happy.
Faith isn’t taking over shit. ED signed on for a new pilot, thus ruining JW’s plan for a spinoff, thus pissing off JW, and Faith is going to get punished for that. I think she’s going to die. I also don’t think Buffy will go off and have her normal life…
I do wonder about her being vamped though. That spec has been flying around for awhile, and I’m of two minds. On the one hand, I think that it would not be an empowering message, given the fact that vampires are supposed to represent everything that’s wrong with the world. On the other hand, I can see it being an empowering message if she chooses being vamped (Maybe they can say Slayers keep their souls upon turning or something) because she wants to keep up the good fight, she wants to see Dawn grow up, and she doesn’t have a death wish anymore.
It’s weird because I’m totally spoiled all the way up to ep 21 and I have no fucking clue what they are going to do for the finale. Usually there some sort of hints or something, but they have a ton to wrap up and only 42 minutes to do it.
Actually, no, I don’t think that was the inspiration. I thought about that as I was typing up the opening post, but the idea of Buffy getting vamped was probably more a reaction to the tenor of the overarching storyline rather than that one episode. (After all, Buffy being a vampire in that episode was more of a delusion, caused by the abused kid, than any reflection of a reality, if I remember correctly.)
As for the “empowerment” angle, I never considered it in such terms. I’m not really sure you can see it as inherently empowering or not. Perhaps the bottom line is, if Buffy becomes a vampire in the end, it would be in at least some respect an unhappy ending, and I guess that’s what I feel it’s headed toward (purposefully or just through the demands of the story structure).
Buffy will have a moment of clarity, stop acting like an arrested adolescent, realize that mooning after undead with a couple hundred years on her (and vice versa) is downright creepy, stop angsting in general, shrug as Angel and Spike simultaneously dust each other and several characters die without being resurrected, and become cheerfully businesslike about the whole Slaying gig?
A few eps. back, that oracle said that the Slayer energy is all messed up, divided because Buffy came back to life again (why only this time and not the first time is beyond me.) But anywho, my guess is that somehow, Buffy will “give up” her Slayer power. Willow will find some spell that lets Buffy give it all to Faith. Faith becomes super-Slayer, and The First takes a hike upon realizing that the very thing its plan depended on is gone. Either that, or she dies for good.
That’s setting the bar pretty low, isn’t it? Watching test patterns is better than the Seinfeld finale.
Getting back to the OP, the conclusion of Buffy “suffuses me with mortal dread” to steal a line from the Master out of context. I’ve liked “Angel” from its begining and hopefully that show will survive, but the lack of “Buffy” will create a hole that cannot be filled. Until Joss gets another show on the air, I suppose.
I remember one episode a while back that suggested that Buffy was really a headcase, locked in an asylum. The plot suggested that this was due to some weird magic from a demon or something, but the ending of the episode was extremely ambiguous.
Personally, I can’t think of an ending that would piss more people off than learning that the entire show was nothing but the deluded ravings of a loony. However, I would also like to see it end like this, in a weird, perverted kind of way.
Mind you, I don’t know how it would explain “Angel”…
Xander comes home from a hard day at the construction site. His wife, Willow, asks him how his day was. He says it was fine, and then asks about their mentally handicapped daughter Buffy, who sits motionless on the floor looking at a snow globe with little vampires inside and the word “Sunnydale” in it …
<< Do you think Buffy might wind up being turned into a vampire herself? >>
Actually, I thought that was a very real possibility at the end of season I and before Season II. You’ll recall, the Master bit her and she fell dead into a pool… and then Xander resuscitated her. It was a perfect set-up that she’s a vampire.
The episode you refer to is one in which a demon’s poison makes Buffy slip into a reality in which she’s really a crazy teenager in Los Angeles in an asylum. Her mother is still alive, and still married to her father. Dawn does not exist. The doctor and Buffy’s parents are delighted to see that she’s come out of her comatose state, and try to convince her to stay in “reality.” (They mention that she came out of it once before for a long period of time, fitting in nicely when Buffy died.) To do this, she will need to kill off her friends in the Sunnydale world. She almost does it, but decides she’d rather stay in a world in which she’s a super-hero, rather than a nobody in a nuthouse. She says “Goodbye,” to her mother, and then slips back into catatonia where she saves her friends and drinks the antidote to the poison. The episode ends with her mother weeping in Buffy’s asylum room, and the doctor sadly intoning, “We’ve lost her.” It * is * very ambiguous.
I remember discussing this in another thread with Buffy fans who said that to have the series end with Buffy waking up in an institution would make them want to break their televisions. It is a possibility, however. I’d almost like it better than having Buffy vamped or dead.
The last episode of Buffy should have been when she did the swan dive off the tower at the end of Season Five. The last two years have not been worth watching.
The last episode of Buffy should have been when she did the swan dive off the tower at the end of Season Five. The last two years have not been worth watching.
The episode referenced above, about her delusion of being in an insane asylum, is a prime example. During this episode, Buffy confesses to Willow that when she initially became a Slayer, she told her parents about the vampires and stuff. Thinking her crazy, they took her to a clinic, and she nearly was confined to an institution before she said “Sorry, just kidding, I’m just acting out teenage angst.” Willow is horrified – “You’ve never told me this!”
WHHHAAAT?!??! You mean during all the sturm und drang when Joyce found out about Buffy being the Slayer at the end of Season Two, neither one made any reference to the “clinic” episode? “Buffy, dear, this isn’t like that time you told your father and me…oh, shit. I nearly stuck you in the Rubber Ramada Inn!”
Continuity? Characterization consistency? Letting the characters drive the plot instead of the other way around? Never heard of it in Season Six or Seven. Boy, you switch networks, and everything just goes to crap…
Excellent, excellent point. Let us also not forget, if we’re talking about continuity of characterizations, dear, dear Xander. You remember how, way way back in season 2, after accidently casting a spell to make all the women in Sunnydale become obsessed with him, after realizing what was up, he immediately went to Giles, 'fessed up, and asked for help?
And yet…by season six, his character had regressed to the point where he would keep a very similar mistake tightly under wraps through the entire episode, and yet his deceptiveness skills had mysteriously progressed to the point where he would betray not a hint of his culpability for what was going on in his many conversations about it with his friends.
Even during his singing, he has a perfect poker face. “I have a theory, it could be witches…”
When he “confessed” at the end, it made me want to put my fist through the tv. This seriously maimed what was otherwise a surprisingly enjoyable episode.
