Reviewed by Sanguine

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered--

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition;

And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here;

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

William Shakespeare, Henry V, act 4, scene 3, lines 60-7

Adversity can forge a family. That's what we've learned the past five seasons on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In Season 1 we were introduced to a slightly vapid Valley Girl who had a sacred birthright to fight the forces of darkness. She creates her own extended family, reaching out to people who she probably would have shunned at her former school: Willow, the shy computer geek; Xander, the funny yet awkward "loser;" Cordelia, the obnoxious diva; and Giles, her Watcher, the stoic British school librarian. From early on Buffy questions her calling, particularly when she finds herself falling in love with the enemy. She discovers the mysterious yet attractive man who has been following her is a vampire. But Angel (for that is his ironic name) has a soul and a purpose. He fights on the side of good and has a destiny . . . he's been given a ticket out of the darkness by the Powers that Be and is now journeying towards the light. Angel, this unlikely bedfellow (bad pun intended), joins the Scoobies in many battles, but at the end of Season 1 is unable to bring Buffy back from the dead. A vampire, being a supernatural creature, cannot perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Family ties become strained during Season 2. New baddies are introduced (the delicious Spike and Dru) and created through post-coital soul loss (Angelus). Buffy must reassess who is her enemy and who is her friend. The end of the season finds Buffy face-to-face with the apocalypse. She joins forces with her adversary Spike (who wants to keep Angelus away from his woman, and would miss his happy meals on legs). Buffy must make a heartrending decision: stab her lover, send him to Hell, and close the portal, or allow the whole world to suffer. Sound familiar? At the last moment, Willow manages to restore Angelus's soul to his body, making Buffy's decision even more horrible. Buffy is no longer killing the demonic side of her lover. She is sentencing the man, a good man, to eternal torment. Buffy thrusts the sword into Angel's flesh and makes a decision worthy of the Slayer: she places personal concerns aside and acts for the greater good. It is a selfless act; it is a mature decision for a heartsick teenager to make.

During Seasons 3 and 4 the ranks of Buffy's family grow and the lines between friend and foe become increasingly blurred. Faith, a fellow Slayer, embraces the darkside. Anya, an ex-demon, is stripped of her powers and begins dating Xander. Riley, Buffy's seemingly innocuous love interest, turns out to be part of a covert military operation to capture, study, and destroy demonic life. Willow's boyfriend Oz turns out to be a werewolf who has a difficult time keeping his libido in check. Willow's new love interest, Tara, is a witch who might be harbouring a deeper secret. Buffy's old enemy Spike returns, and is chipped by the Initiative, preventing him from killing or harming humans. In the penultimate episode of Season 4, the core family group is strengthened as Xander, Willow, Giles, and Buffy join forces to defeat the super demon Adam. While their relationships had been strained, the end of Season 4 finds them close once again.

All of this has led inexorably to the developments of Season 5. Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer . . . a montage of memories from the last five years flit before our eyes, first slowly, then only two frames per image, then only one frame per image. This recapitulation of everything Buffy has experienced leads us directly into a tracking shot going down a narrow alley. It is a dead end. Already Joss Whedon (who wrote and directed this episode) is telling his audience what will transpire. All of Buffy's actions and experiences have led her to this place, a place from which there is ostensibly no escape.

This opening scene harkens back to simpler times. A scared boy is being chased by a bloodthirsty vamp. Buffy appears from the back door of the Magic Box. She banters with the vamp and easily dispatches him. For a change, the vamp has not sought her out; he does not even know of her existence. The boy turns to Buffy in wonder and says, "You . . . you're just a girl." Buffy looks at him sadly and replies, "That's what I keep saying." In a few moments, Whedon has summarized the show. For five years Buffy tried to a normal girl. She wanted to date normal guys. She wanted to do normal things with her friends. She wanted the good guys to be good and the bad guys to be very bad. She wanted her moral decisions to be clear-cut. But as Buffy grows older, she realizes that the world is not full of moral absolutes. The decision she must make regarding the fate of her sister is not an obvious one: should she save the world or let the world suffer? Should she be Buffy or the Slayer? The sister or the selfless superhero? Can she be both at the same time?

In "The Gift" the characters are each accorded a scene that reveals how much they have matured. Xander and Anya are supposed to be looking for the Dagon Sphere, but instead they are shagging in the basement. They have a few poignant moments, then Xander does something unexpected. He proposes. Anya accepts, but only after the apocalypse. Anya and Xander are stable enough to attempt marriage. They have moved into the world of adulthood. Who would have thought that the awkward and lost buttmonkey Xander of Season 4 would grow into the confident and responsible Xander of Season 5? Who would have thought that Anya, the ex-demon could be so incredibly human?

Buffy approaches Willow and tells her that she is the "big gun. You're the strongest person here." Little Willow, always good with the computers, but not big on the superstrength is now the most powerful Scooby of all. Willow guiltily reveals that she has been concentrating mostly on ways to help Tara, but Buffy is understanding. Both women know what it's like to care for someone absolutely then lose them.

Giles and Buffy have a nasty confrontation about whether she should kill Dawn to save the world. Buffy flatly refuses. She cannot do it; Dawn is a part of her, a part of her untainted by death and killing, a part of her that she wants to preserve. After their conflict, Buffy retreats to her training room and begins pummeling her punching bag. Giles enters and wonders if Buffy hates him for the things he said. He tells her that he is sworn to protect the world, which means that he will do anything, including things that Buffy cannot or will not do. Giles is a pragmatist. He understands the world. Later in the episode he will do something that Buffy cannot. He murders Ben. Buffy is a hero. But so, I would argue, is Giles. By killing Ben, he saved the lives of Glory's future victims.

Buffy and Giles sink down on a bench . . . two old warriors reminiscing about past battles. "How many apocalypses?" "Seems like a hundred." Then Buffy reveals that she can't discern the line between right and wrong anymore. She loved Angel and yet she sacrificed him to save the world. Angel was not an innocent. But Dawn? Dawn is an innocent. She has done nothing wrong. She does not deserve to die. With Angel, Buffy "knew [she] was right. I don't have that anymore. I don't know how to live in this world if these are the choices." Buffy doesn't want to live in a world where there are only shades of gray. It makes her task too difficult, too morally ambiguous. She rises to leave the room and turns to Giles. "Spirit guide told me that death is my gift." Perhaps the Slayer is just a killer after all? Perhaps she is not righteous?

Perhaps that is why Spike is so problematic for Buffy. If a soulless vampire can love, then why didn't Angelus love her? If a soulless vampire is capable of self-sacrifice, then why do they all deserve to die at the end of her pointy stake? Are there more Spikes out there, or is he the exception to the rule? Whatever conclusion Buffy may have reached about Spike, we know she has forgiven him for his past transgressions and that she now trusts him with her life and the life of her sister.

Buffy takes Spike to her house to pick up weaponry, but naturally he cannot enter. After his Valentine's Day debacle he was uninvited. But instead of protesting, Spike shows that he has progressed beyond being a petulant lovesick adolescent. He accepts his fate and asks Buffy to pass the weapons over the threshold. A faint smile crosses Buffy's lips as she invites him in. Spike looks astonished, and slowly enters Buffy's house, realising the profundity of the moment. "Presto. No barrier." Their eyes lock, but Spike does not want to make Buffy uncomfortable. He moves to the weapons chest and begins gathering his gear. Buffy watches him. "We're not all going to make it. You know that." Buffy is giving Spike the unvarnished truth. She might die. He might die. She knows he can handle it. Spike approaches her. "Yeah. Hey, always knew I'd go down fighting." Buffy looks at him. She knows he would do anything for her and Dawn. "I'm counting on you. To protect her." "Till the end of the world. Even if that happens tonight," Spike replies. Buffy begins to go upstairs, but Spike can't suppress his feelings any longer. "I know you'll never love me. I know that I'm a monster, but you treat me like a man. And that . . ." With those words Spike reveals that he is not a monster at all. He knows Buffy will never love him, and yet he is willing to sacrifice himself for her and her sister. He knows that he has done some horrible things, but Buffy brings out the humanity in him. And all this without a soul. Thus, one of the most intriguing plot lines this season (Spike's moral progress and his problematic relationship with Buffy) was brought to a satisfactory conclusion. This scene also establishes that Spike will be Dawn's protector next season, even in Buffy's absence. We know Spike

takes his promises seriously.

The Scoobies prepare for battle at the Magic Box. Buffy turns to them grimly. "Hey, everybody knows their jobs. Remember, the ritual starts, we all die. And I'll kill anyone who comes near Dawn." Spike, revealing the good education he received as a Victorian gentleman, mutters to Giles. "Well, not exactly the St. Crispin's Day speech, was it?" Giles, being a good Englishman, responds in kind, "We few, we happy few" and Spike bastardises the next line, "We band of buggered." If you know the play Spike and Giles are quoting, Shakespeare's Henry V, you know that Henry gave the St. Crispin's Day speech to his men before a major battle against the French. The English, who were severely outnumbered, prevailed against tremendous odds. An English nation was forged out of adversity, the peasant united with the king against a common foe (according to the Bard's propaganda). Spike's reference is not a throwaway line. Spike, Giles, and Joss all know the rest of the speech: "For he to-day that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, / This day shall gentle his condition." Next season Spike cannot go back to being what he once was. Through adversity, he has become a member of the family.

In the end, Glory herself was not important. She was a cardboard cutout villain. We did not know much about her hopes and desires (as we did with other Big Bads Spike, Dru, Angelus, the Mayor). We just knew she wanted the Key. She was simply a plot device to cause the ultimate moral conundrum. What will the Slayer do when she cannot win? What will she do when she is presented with a profound moral problem for which there is no clear solution? Buffy should probably kill Dawn to save the world. But if she did, Buffy would lose the best part of herself: her humanity. So Buffy makes a decision. As she and Dawn share the same blood (Summers' blood) she will jump into the abyss, closing the portal and losing her life. At the end of Season 2 she made a lover's decision. At the end of Season 5 she made a mother's decision, sacrificing herself so her child might live. She saves the world and saves her humanity. In that moment of sacrifice, she is both Buffy, the sister, and Buffy, the Slayer. In fact, the whole final scenario is an interesting inversion of the denouement of Season 2. Instead of fighting alone, Buffy is surrounded by friends. Instead of sacrificing the person she loves, she sacrifices herself. While the parallels with Season 2 were interesting, it was not ultimately as powerful an episode as "Becoming Pt. 2". We all know Buffy is coming back (in technicolour on UPN next season!!). We didn't know that Angel was returning, an uncertainty that heightened the poignancy of his "death". Despite this minor criticism, I still found moments of the episode incredibly touching: Anya and Xander's engagement, Giles and Buffy's interaction, Spike's reinvite to the Summers' home, Willow discovering that her mind meld with Glory and Tara had restored her lover, Spike and Dawn's tear-filled eyes right before Doc tossed him from the tower, Dawn's reaction to Buffy's suicide, and Spike's emotional disintegration when he sees the Slayer's body.

"So you see, that's the secret. Not the punch she didn't throw or the kick she didn't land. She simply wanted it. Every Slayer has a death wish." Spike was right when he gave Buffy her "lessons" in "Fool for Love." As she contemplates her own demise, Buffy seems calm. She wants it to be over. She tells Dawn, "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it." And with that Buffy slipped the bonds of her mortal coil and once again saved the world . . . a lot.

Now, how will they bring her back? Will Doc be the Big Bad next season? Why couldn't Spike fight Doc? These are the questions that we'll be debating all summer. Damn you Joss, you most groove-tastic one.