Janes (a True Stan) and Nerdy Spice (a New Fan) are watching all of Buffy together and comparing notes. Warning: May contain spoilers for later episodes.

Episode 21 “Two to Go”

So when we left off, Willow had skinned Warren alive. I guess we know who’s not the Final Boss of this season? Jonathan and Andrew, the other two of the Three Nerds, are alive but in jail, so Buffy, Xander, and Anya go there, knowing Willow’s going to come after them next.

The three most powerful women on the show are now in competition: Willow, who materializes in a literal black cloud of grief shortly after Anya; Anya, who doesn’t seem to be able to do much other than teleport; and Buffy, who has to go on foot, so she arrives last. She beats Willow to the boys because Willow is busy dramatically pulling each brick out of the wall before she flies up to get the boys (seems like there was probably a more efficient way she could’ve done that?). Xander rescues Buffy and the Nerds in a stolen cop car. Go, Xander! For once you’re being useful! You’d think they wouldn’t stand a chance once Willow starts to follow them, but it conveniently turns out she’s “draining,” or losing energy, and manage to escape.

So Willow finds Rack and drains his power, just as he seems to be winding up to extort her for sex (it’s as gross as it sounds). Then Dawn arrives with Clem, who she recruited to help her, and tries to talk Willow down. “You’re back on the magics,” she says. “No, honey, I am the magics,” Willow says condescendingly. Hee! “Did you kill that guy?” Dawn then asks. “It was an improvement, believe me,” Willow says coolly. OK, um, I love this iteration of Willow? She’s hilarious. THEN she tells Dawn her whining is annoying and adds, “It’s time you go back to being a little energy ball.” At which point my love for Dark Willow is sealed for all eternity.

The Scoobs try to find Willow, with the two remaining Nerds in tow, by doing some research at the Magic Box. Buffy’s still determined to stop Willow from crossing a line by killing any more humans. (Side note: I agree murder is bad, but I feel like you can’t call it “crossing a line” when she’s already tortured, flayed, and set fire to a human being — at this point it’s more like “continuing on the path that took you across the line.” Which I admit is less catchy.) An ungrateful Andrew tries to convince Jonathan to use the resources in the Magic Box to escape and become an Evil Duo together, but Jonathan’s conscience finally acts up. He stops Andrew from trying to escape because the two of them need to pay penance for what they’ve done.

Buffy tries to talk Willow down from her ledge by reminding her she’s still Willow. But Dark!Willow says old Willow was a loser, only ever good for Tara. She says that Buffy hates living in this world too—as she’s shown us over and over in season 6, bearing out the theme of this season, “the hardest thing in this world is to live in it.” Now we get to see how far Buffy has recovered, because Willow’s arguments don’t work on her and she’s not willing to give up on the world anymore.

Finally Willow transports everyone to the Magic Box and tries to kill Jonathan, only to realize that there’s some protection spell on him. It’s Anya, chanting softly in a corner. Willow makes herself stronger, and starts fighting Buffy. Xander takes the Nerds and Dawn out, but Anya heroically stays back to keep casting the spell, which I guess due to not being super powerful at magics she can’t just cast once but has to keep casting? Buffy and Willow have an epic fight. Then Willow notices Anya in the corner murmuring her spell and chokes her. She throws Buffy to the ground for the umpteenth time and brags that no one can stop her…

Until Giles shows up, literally bloodies her nose, and says quietly that he’d like to test that theory. Whoa! I was holding a grudge against Giles for earlier this season, but I love him at this moment. Although it’s kind of annoying to see Giles saving Buffy in a fight, but I guess once in six years is acceptable.

And just to recap the B-plot, Spike is in some cave facing a test in the form of a giant, muscular man who it turns out also has fire hands. I’ll hand it to Spike, that does seem like an unfair fight! Spike wins, not without incurring some gnarly wounds, only to find out that it was only the first stage of his trials.

—Nerdy Spice

Notes from a New Fan:

• GILES IS IN THE PREVIOUSLIES! I can’t believe I’m actually excited to have Giles back.
• Anya calls Andrew “What’s-his-face.” Word, Anya. It took me the season to be able to remember his name. Most of my notes for these recaps just referred to him as the “Third Nerd.”
• The coffee cup in some cop’s car rattles when Willow arrives, like she’s the T-Rex in Jurassic Park or something.
• Spike has, for some reason, stripped to the waist in order to pass whatever test he’s being set. And here I thought Riverdale invented pandering to the female gaze!
• Ooh, after this whole season is Willow gonna be the big bad instead of the Three Nerds? [ETA: Yup.]
• “I guess you two finally have something in common,” Xander says bitterly when Anya says Willow doesn’t care if he lives or dies. WHERE DO YOU GET OFF, XANDER?! (That should be the catchphrase of this entire season.)
• I like that this episode focuses so much on the friendships and Dark!Willow and gives so little time to Spike’s Hercules-style trial of strength. If we must have the trials, at least let’s keep them off-screen as much as possible.
• Willow says she gets to be the Slayer now, and Buffy argues that “a killer isn’t a Slayer.”  It’s a really important concept on this show, even though in some ways I find it dubious—now that Spike, and in a different way Clem, have clearly proven that monsters do have morals in this universe, how can you automatically feel OK about slaying them?
• Anya stays behind in the store to keep putting the spell on Willow. Uh-oh, I think we’re seeing the end of Anya. (ETA: Apparently not! Woohoo! Anya lives to be sarcastic another day.)
• I love that the end of this is just the three women in a battle of strength. (Until Giles shows up anyway.)
• I love how Dawn’s way of fighting against Andrew is to just say really emotionally, “Let him go.” Like… sure, that’ll convince someone who just pulled an ancient sword on Xander!
• Giles does look actually badass in this sort of Dr. Who-esque black coat.
• Janes and I just agreed that when they inevitably remake Buffy, Christine Baranski should be the Watcher.

Notes from a True Stan:

• Ew, I hate that we’re supposed to feel bad for Xander because he’s useless, like okay? People are dying?
• My partner says, “Why doesn’t he use those military skills from season 2?” and I LOLed.
• Rack is human, as far as I know, but no one ever mentions again that Willow killed him. Not that I care–he essentially raped her.
• Dark Willow is right, we would be a lot happier without Dawn’s whining. 

Episode 22 “Grave”

Giles is back! (Or as Willow puts it, “Daddy’s home.”) He shows up to fight Dark Willow with magic he borrowed from a British coven, and they have a tense face-off. Willow taunts him that he once called her a “rank, arrogant amateur,” and after a brief fight, he traps her in a donut-like force field.

While Willow is contained, Giles has an unbearably sweet reunion with Buffy in the back room. Buffy succinctly explains that everything’s gone to hell since he’s been gone: “Xander left Anya at the altar, Dawn’s a total klepto, and I’ve been sleeping with Spike.” She’s expecting him to scold her, but Giles cracks up, which is exactly the right reaction. They’re adults, they’re going to make mistakes. Buffy starts laughing too, and before long they’re cracking up about how everything has gone so comically wrong. It is so lovely.

Unfortunately, their reunion is interrupted when Willow mind controls Anya into freeing her and then knocks Anya out. (They left Anya alone with her? Really?) Willow fights Giles, and this time the magic donut doesn’t work. She gets the upper hand, and nearly brings part of the Magic Box crashing down on his head, when Buffy saves him in the nick of time. Willow gets annoyed that she’s always saving everyone (“It’s kind of pesky!”) and sends a magic fireball to kill Jonathan and Andrew–and everyone helping them. She knows that Buffy will have no choice but to save Dawn and Xander, so Buffy leaves Giles to fight Willow alone.

When we next see them, the Magic Box is all but destroyed, Giles is bloody and weak, and Willow is playing with him like a cat toy. “I used to think you had all the answers,” she taunts him, “that I had so much to learn from you. You were jealous. You still are.” Giles warns her that she’s expending so much energy that she’s going to burn out, so she grabs him by the chest and leeches his power, leaving him close to death. Willow gets ultra-buzzed from the power at first, saying she feels connected to everything, but then she has a quick comedown, and says she can feel all of the pain in the world. She says she can make it go away, and that the “suffering has to end.” 

Elsewhere, Xander is sulking. While Dawn is insisting they go back and help, Xander bitterly says, “Yeah, I’ve been such a big help already, standing like a monkey” while Buffy gets shot, Tara gets shot, Willow loses her shit, etc. Dawn says feeling sorry for himself isn’t helping either, which might be the truest thing she’s ever said. Then she says Spike would go back and fight–oh, Dawn. Then Xander goes and reveals that Spike tried to rape Buffy! WTF!!! Dawn is like “Spike wouldn’t do that,” and God, does anyone care about Buffy and her trauma??

As the fireball approaches, Xander continues to be useless. He kicks the door to a stone crypt in the graveyard and says “ow” over and over (lol) and then calls Jonathan and Andrew “social retards” (WHAT). Buffy makes it in time and saves them from the fireball, but Dawn and Buffy fall into the giant hole in the ground that it creates. Xander hits his head and is knocked out, so Andrew and Jonathan run off to Mexico. 

Back at the Magic Box, Anya wakes up and finds Giles, who tells her he’s dying. He explains that he planned for Willow to take his power all along, and that it was “the only way” to save Willow, because it made her feel again. But now she’s feeling pain that she wasn’t ready for, and she’s going to “finish it.” “Finish what?” Anya says. “The world,” he says. This seems like an oversight in the plan!

While Buffy and Dawn are trying to get out of the giant hole, Anya comes to tell them that Willow plans to destroy the world. She introduces a random super-powerful “she-demon” named Proserpexa, who can drain the planet’s life force and funnel it through her effigy to burn the world to a cinder. (She’s literally Acathla, except she looks a lot cooler.) Anya says that according to Giles, no magic force can stop her, including the Slayer. She also says she should get back to the Magic Box because Giles “doesn’t have a lot of time.”

Despite this prophecy (or whatever it is, it’s pretty vague how Giles knows this), Buffy doesn’t give up. Willow, sensing that Buffy’s coming after her, talks to her telepathically from Proserpexa’s Satanic temple. She says she knows Buffy won’t go out without a fight, and demons start coming out of the dirt. Buffy says she can’t take them all, and asks Dawn for help. (Um, WTH is Dawn going to do? Buffy’s been through much worse alone.) At some point, Dawn beheads a demon and says, “What? You think I never watched you?” Okay, that’s actually pretty cute.

At the Satanic Temple, Willow is in the process of summoning Proserpexa and ending the world, when Xander stops her. She tells him to go away, but he refuses. “You’ve been my best friend my whole life. If the world’s going to end, where else am I gonna be?” Then he gives a very cute speech about how on the first day of kindergarten, she broke the yellow crayon and was too afraid to tell anyone, and that he loves every version of her, from “crayon-breaking Willow to scary veiny Willow.” She tells him to shut up and hurts him with her magic, but he keeps saying I love you. Her attempts to hurt him become feebler and eventually, she starts sobbing in his arms, and her hair turns back to red! She’s regular Willow again!

Then we get a bunch of uncharacteristically happy endings, probably because this season was so depressing. Once Willow transforms, Giles is okay–somehow?–and tells Anya that the magic did what he hoped it would do. Instead of being powered by rage, the magic he gave her “tapped into the spark of humanity she had left.” That’s convenient, considering the magic is what made her want to end the world in the first place!

When Buffy and Dawn realize that the world isn’t ending, Buffy breaks down into tears. Dawn bitterly says, “Sorry to disappoint you,” then realizes they’re happy tears. Buffy, horrified that Dawn thinks she wants the world to end, tearfully apologizes to her. She says she wants to be there to see her friends happy again, and she wants to see Dawn grow up. She doesn’t want to protect Dawn from the world, she wants to show it to her. (They’re really pushing this narrative that Buffy’s overprotective, but I really don’t see it. If anything, Dawn could use more supervision.) In the end, they pull themselves out of the hole, mimicking the imagery of Buffy climbing out of her grave–she’s ready to start living again.

Continuing Spike’s subplot from last episode, Spike goes through lots of unpleasant trials, including having very fake-looking bugs crawl all over him. In the end, he passes the tests, and he says ominously, “Make me what I was so Buffy can get what she deserves.” We’re meant to assume that he’s getting the chip out of his head, but instead the demon says, “We will return… your soul.” 

—Janes

Notes from a New Fan:

• “Uh-oh, Daddy’s home,” Willow chants sarcastically when she sees Giles. Hee. And she calls him “Rupert.” Sassy!
• Buffy explains to Giles why everything is chaos: “Xander left Anya at the altar… Dawn’s a total klepto… and I’ve been sleeping with Spike.” I love how Dawn’s problems are such a letdown compared to everyone else’s. And how Giles laughs at Buffy sleeping with Spike. I appreciate that he isn’t shocked—it seems to help Buffy put the whole thing in perspective, too.
• I’m glad Giles apologizes for leaving since we really objected to that. Buffy says that he was right to, but I still disagree, on a human level. (Though on a story level it makes sense to see Buffy truly on her own.)
• They go back to the same trope about Willow that they used to say about Faith, the notion that she’ll never be the same because she’s killed a human being. At least this time it was on purpose so it makes a bit more sense!
• Anya is unconscious. Oh no! Is Anya dead?! I’ve gotten attached. I know Janes likes Cordelia better, of the two beautiful and tact-challenged love interests Xander has had, but Anya is sort of like Cordelia meets Jack Donaghy and I dig it. [I do enjoy the ruthless capitalism! –Janes]
• “If Spike were here, he’d go back and fight,” Dawn says. Then Xander makes a weirdly flippant remark about the attempted rape, which is a) a RIDICULOUSLY insensitive way to tell a teenager that her big-brother figure tried to rape her actual big sister, and b) a gross way to talk about attempted rape in general. All in all, totally on-brand for Xander.
• I’m really glad these bugs crawling over Spike’s face are such low-quality special effects. They’re still gross, but at least they’re not realistic.
• I love that Willow calls Jonathan and Andrew “Jonathan and the other one.” He’s so forgettable.
• How come Buffy doesn’t just do a superjump out of this cave she’s stuck in? Also, it’s confusing that she can run as fast as a flying fireball.
• Hooray, Anya is alive! But Giles tells her he’s dying. Hmm… they do seem to be setting him up to be the big hero, but it seems like killing him would be too obvious and this show has tricked me before. Honestly I won’t believe it till I see the beginning of season 7. (Edited to add: never mind, didn’t even have to wait that long! False alarm!)
• I love that Anya points out actually things would have gone better without Giles coming. You can always trust her to puncture an inflated male ego.
• Xander finally gets to be the hero by loving Willow even when she beats him up. I’d love to protest, because shut up Xander (I even predicted that that was the annoying thing that would happen in this episode!), but actually I think it’s great. His superpower is to remain loyal even though he gets beaten up for it again and again. It’s totally the opposite of the masculine ideal of power, and it’s more powerful than any magic, more powerful than rage and anger and vengeance. That’s beautiful!
• Wait, so NO ONE died? Umm, anti-climactic much?
• And then it turns out Giles was hoping Willow would take his powers because they came with some kind of Trojan horse that would connect her to her humanity. So he secretly saved the day after all. Or rather, he and Xander did. Hmm. I don’t… love that? I mean, I guess if there was a season to have the dudes save the day, it’s the one sandwiched between the unbeatable end of season 5 and what I’m sure is an epic Big Bad in the final season, but… I mean, couldn’t we have just had 7 seasons in a row where women save the day? It’s not called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer and her Horny Friend Xander.”
• Then Buffy decides that she wants to show Dawn the world, which — just doesn’t feel like the actual conclusion to this arc. It’s satisfying that she realizes she doesn’t want the world to end, that she’s figured out how to live in it. But to have Dawn give meaning to her life? Meh, I want Buffy to find meaning in her own life, not in Dawn’s. [Note: After rewatching the sixth season a second time, I actually got more out of it. It’s not that “show Dawn the world” makes any sense as an arc. It’s more that Buffy’s been using Dawn, and her mission of protecting her, as a kind of spiritual crutch to give herself purpose when she was too depressed to be emotionally connected to her mission. And by giving that up here, she’s saying she’s ready to be back in the world. Dawn is just the symbol.]
• Ending the season with Buffy once again climbing out of a grave is great though. Even if no one explains why now she can climb out after she spent the whole episode waiting in vain for Xander of all people to bring her a rope.
• Ending with Sarah McLachlan is clutch.
• Oh wow I’d totally forgotten about Spike! I didn’t think that was possible.
• [spoiler alert] OK I’m just going to admit it: I’m glad I know that Buffy and Spike don’t end up together because this ending where Spike gets a soul would have given me way too much hope, despite… well, you know, despite all the reasons I should not like them anymore.

Notes from a True Stan:

• Dark Willow’s campiness levels are off the charts (in a great way). The goth look, the “fly my pretty, fly!”, the “Willow doesn’t live here anymore.” It’s giving “the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now” and I love it.
• Okay, I’ve been pretty tolerant of the magic-as-drugs metaphor, but then Willow steals Giles’ power and says things like, “Who’s your supplier?” and “I’m so juiced!” Ew, what?
• When Buffy makes an offhand comment about not wanting to go to Spike’s place, Dawn jabs, “But it was good enough to take me there after what he did to you?” LITERALLY MAKING HER ATTEMPTED RAPE ABOUT YOU.
• The little cutaway where Buffy says “There is no temple on Kingman’s Bluff,” and we see Willow raising it out of the ground is hilarious to me. There are so many things conveniently buried under Sunnydale!
• It is cute when Dawn and Buffy fight together but it goes nowhere? When I first saw this, I thought Buffy was going to mentor Dawn and really teach her how to fight, but iirc that only lasts for one episode.
• There are lots of parallels to the second season finale, when Buffy also had to fight someone she loved–including the Sarah Maclachlan soundtrack!
• I hate the misdirection with Spike’s soul. A man who wants to repent for trying to rape the woman he loves by damning himself to eternal torture doesn’t say things like, “Bitch is going to see a change.” It’s so clumsy.
• I also have many issues with the decision to give Spike his soul back, but we can talk about that next season (and trust me, we will).
• As much as I don’t want any of the core characters to die, it feels like either Giles or Willow should have died here? Especially Giles–I was very surprised the first time when he didn’t die. He’s not a regular anymore, Buffy doesn’t need a Watcher, and he doesn’t even get anything good to do in season 7! 
• Overall, this is my least favorite season finale–it rings a little false and saccharine. But they do perfectly conclude Buffy’s arc; I love that at the beginning, she tells Giles that for a long time, she felt like she “wasn’t really here.” “It was like when I clawed my way out of that grave, I left something behind. A part of me.” And by the end she’s clawing herself out of the ground again, but this time choosing life. It’s lovely.
• Xander finally got to save the world! Does this mean he can stop complaining forever?