The seventh and final series of Buffy The Vampire Slayer at least ensured that things ended with a bang. Weaving together elements from previous series while expanding the mythos of the Buffyverse and introducing plenty of new characters, it certainly didn't lack ambition. But was it successful? Well...
Unusually, the first scene of the series eschewed any existing characters or settings in favour of heading to Istanbul to show a young woman fighting - and ultimately failing - to escape from mysterious hooded pursuers. It isn't initially clear what's going on, but does seed the idea of a global conspiracy (and one which is keen on murdering young, powerful women).
If this is new, the reintroduction of a rebuilt Sunnydale High, with Dawn a student and Buffy swiftly given a job as a counsellor (you'd think the local education system would be wary of hiring people who haven't been appropriately vetted, but just go with it), felt like a return to first principles. Or should that be, ahem, The First principles? Because it turns out that The First, essentially the embodiment of evil, which appeared (if that's the right word for an incorporeal entity) in Season 3 trying to get Angel to go all bitey again, is also back.
It appears to Spike, who's gone insane and is living in the high school basement, as a succession of previous (now dead) villains: first Warren, inspiring groans from all right-thinking viewers, then cycling through Glory, Adam, The Mayor, Drusilla and The Master before finishing as Buffy (as she's also died once or twice, it can take her form). Apart from wondering whether it was really worth the feller who plays Adam's time getting back in that costume for such a fleeting appearance, this scene also posits a question: is this season's Big Bad going to have a consistent look?
Well, it's not a quandary we have to ponder for a while, as the next few episodes are done-in-ones with little direct relation the season's primary arc. Again, these feel like a callback to the show's beginnings, particularly with high school back as a setting. Episodes about a giant underground demon and a magic American football jacket are fun but throwaway; another, about a student who's predicted her own death, is schlocky but ultimately sad. More significant is the return of Willow in Same Time, Safe Place; her invisibility to her friends (and vice versa) is a clever way of dealing with the feelings of guilt and mistrust caused by her dark turn in Season 6. Meanwhile, Selfless fills in Anya's backstory while pondering where she fits in.
It isn't, appropriately, until the seventh episode of the seventh series that the demonic plot is fully addressed again. Conversations With Dead People fits into the mini-genre of Buffy episodes that mess with the usual format, with each of its main participants experiencing entirely separate (but parallel) stories. Buffy encounters a vampire in the cemetery - a literally old school turn of events, as he turns out to be a former classmate. The other titular conversations, however, are with manifestations of The First: Joyce appears to Dawn to tell her not to trust Buffy, while Willow is visited by Cassie (the student who predicted her own death a few episodes earlier), but sees through the ruse when she tries to convince the witch to take her own life.
Unexpectedly, we also catch up with Jonathan and Andrew, who've come out of hiding and returned to Sunnydale. Andrew believes he's having visions of the ghost of Warren (that prick again), leading him to murder Jonathan on some sort of magic portal which, once again, happens to be in the school's basement. This doesn't bode well, does it?
From this point, the last fifteen episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer focus on the machinations of The First: Spike and Andrew are manipulated; Giles is shown about to be killed by an axe-swinging acolyte; the Watchers' Council building is blown up. Giles (OR IS IT?) turns up at the Summers House with three young ladies; it turns out that across the world there are a number of Potential Slayers ready to take the mantle should the Slayer die, and these are being hunted by The First's followers. Said dastardly henchmen kidnap Spike and use his blood to open that magic portal from the last paragraph, unleashing an absolute bastard of a primeval vampire called the Turok-Han. This creature nearly kills Buffy, who then uses a successful rematch to try and encourage the growing ranks of Potentials who keep showing up.
After this, there's a run of episodes which kinda drag. Aside from Kennedy (love interest for Willow), Amanda (local depressed girl) and Chao-Ahn (whose lack of English was used for arguably racist comedy, er, potential), the array of Potentials are too numerous to be given any distinguishing characteristics. Spike's struggle with his vampiric tendencies goes on so long it just gets boring. Fucking Warren Myers shows up again when a spell is cast on Willow making her transform into him - listen, maybe actor Adam Busch is a stand-up guy who was fun to have around, but the continuing presence of this mysoginistic murderer is an unwanted stench on the season.
Spoilers ahead! There are points of interest around whether Giles might have been killed in London and now be a manifestation of The First (he wasn't and isn't, but this uncertainty creates some welcome dramatic tension), and whether new Sunnydale High Principal Wood might be a baddie (he suspiciously buried Jonathan's body in secret, but it turns out he's a demon hunter and son of a previous Slayer). Andrew, an irritating character whose sub-Big Bang Theory schtick is nowhere near as funny as the writers seem to think, is a drag on proceedings and effectively gets his own episode when he tries to make a documentary about events; admittedly, its downbeat ending somewhat redeems him.
The thrust of the storyline as it approaches the endgame is, basically, everything gets worse for our heroes. From the viewers' point of view, the return of Faith for the last five episodes is definitely welcome. And after almost a whole series where the Big Bad has appeared in the form of others, we finally get a more solid figure to despise: Caleb, a vicious one-time priest given super-strength by The First. This guy's hatred of women eclipses anything we've seen before; it's frankly horrible. In his first episode, he beats everybody up, kills two Potentials and blinds Xander in one eye with his thumb. Jeez.
Everyone bar Spike rejects Buffy's leadership in what feels like an uncharacteristic turn; sure, Wood and the Potentials have only known her for five minutes, but after everything they've been through, the idea that Willow, Dawn or Xander wouldn't stand by her just seems wrong. Spike's defence of Buffy, and his successful attempt to repair her shredded confidence, could be seen as a redemptive moment for him after he attempted to rape her in the previous season. This does, of course, raise the entirely valid question of whether such actions can be redeemed - though this is a line of enquiry with which the show doesn't seek to engage.
So anyway, Buffy gets her hands on a mystical scythe, pulling it from a stone in an Excaliburesque move, and re-establishes herself as top dog by stepping in to save the day when a Faith-led mission goes to hell (not literal hell). Angel turns up to give Buffy a magical amulet; Buffy scythes a powered-up Caleb in two. Plans are made for the final battle with the horde of Turok-Han just waiting to emerge from the Hellmouth and bring the apocalypse. Look, there they are.
Everyone heads for Sunnydale High (in a school bus, no less). There's a nice scene when newer or more minor characters go to take up their positions, leaving an original line-up of Buffy, Willow, Xander and Giles to share one last quiet, quippy moment before everything kicks off. Then Buffy, Faith, Spike and the Potentials head to the basement to kick arse, while Willow does some magicky stuff with the scythe which will grant full Slayer powers to Potentials worldwide. The unpowered cast members take up positions in the school, soon overrun by acolytes of The First and the odd Turok-Han. Various people are injured, including Principal Wood and Buffy herself; others are killed, including Amanda and Anya, the latter in a rather offhand way - such a significant character surely merited a grander farewell, but there isn't time in the melee.
Remember that amulet? Buffy gave it to Spike, and its deus ex machina role is revealed when it bursts into light and blasts a hole, refracting the ensuing sunlight into rays that dust the Turok-Han. Everybody gets out of there double quick except Buffy and Spike, who share a moment before the latter turns to dust himself.
There's time for one last moment of drama as Buffy manages to jump onto the top of the school bus, departing with the survivors as the whole of Sunnydale falls into the crater caused by the amulet's power. Previous episodes had shown the town's population fleeing on account of the apocalyptic vibes, and despite the characters' losses - their homes, the bodies and graves of deceased loved ones - I can't deny that there's something brilliant in this scorched earth approach to the finale. As the survivors get off the bus and survey the desolation, the past is clearly over. The future is unwritten, as implied in Dawn's unanswered question, and the final line of the whole show: "What are we going to do now?"
Of course, Angel's own series was still running, and Spike would be resurrected there in pretty short order. Incredibly, five more seasons of Buffy would be released in comic book form, running all the way up to 2018. I've only read synopses, and despite growing up with DC, Marvel, 2000AD etc, I'm not really interested in these. My understanding is that the events of Seasons 8-12 were written as canon; presumably, the now-cancelled return of Buffy The Vampire Slayer to TV might have had something to say about that.
I tried rewatching Angel, but just did not vibe with the first episode. Yer man was never my favourite Buffy character, and with no Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, Anthony Head, etc involved (but for fleeting cameos on the odd crossover episode), the idea of wading through another five seasons of supernatural shenanigans held little appeal.
It's now over five years since I rewatched the whole of BTVS, back in the days of lockdown. In that time, the allegations against Joss Whedon gave me pause as to the wisdom of continuing with these chapters; however, even if the showrunner might have been a bully with (ironically) misogynistic tendencies, the show he created remains a beacon of inspirational feminist action, and the heart of it lies in the fantastic cast and their performances.
It says much about how slow I can be in writing these things that we're now in 2026, but it would have been nice to finish in the year which we might have got Buffy back on the telly. Instead, and with much sadness, this is being published after a couple of years when Michelle Trachtenberg, Nicholas Brendon and Anthony Head have all passed away. RIP to them all.
As time passes, maybe leaving BTVS at that original seven-year run is not the worst thing, and hey - we can always just start from the beginning and watch Buffy and chums save the world. A lot. Again.
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