Guest Starring: 
     
 Amber Benson: 
 (Tara) 
   
 Clare Kramer: 
 (Glory) 
   
 Charlie Weber: 
 (Ben) 
   
 Joel Grey: 
 (Doc) 
   
 Todd Duffy: 
 (Murk) 
   
 
 
  22. The Gift.  
   
  Glory is going to open the doorway to hell; someone is going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice.  
   
  Great quotes:  
   
 
    Buffy prepares to sacrifice herself for Dawn.
  • Buffy: "Are you guys having a fight? Cos, you know, fighting's not cool."
  • Willow: "We'll solve this... don't have another coma ok!"
  • Xander: "Smart chicks are so hot." Willow: "You couldn't have figured that out in tenth grade?"
  • Buffy: "I don't know how to live in this world if these are the choices."
  • Willow: "I'm not a 'big gun', I could be a cudgel or a pointy stick."
  • Giles: "We few, we happy few." Spike: "We band of buggered."
  • Xander: "Shpadoinkle!"
  • Minions to Glory: "Oh most sweaty naughty feelings causing one."
  • Glory pleads: "Stop it!" Buffy: "You're a god, make it stop."
  • Buffy: "Dawn listen to me; I love you, I will always love you. This is the work that I have to do. Tell Giles I figured it out, and ... I'm ok. And give my love to my friends, you have to take care of them now, you have to take care of each other, you have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me."
  
  Fantastic moments:  
   
 
    Xander proposes to Anya.
  • The fight between Buffy and Glory, in which they both struggle to climb the metal girders to Dawn as they battle, is really well-choreographed and has lots of cool acrobatics.
  • Giles steps in at the end to kill Ben, he does the thing that no one else could do, "She's [Buffy] a hero you see, she's not like us."
  • The whole pre-credits sequence is just genius, you immediately know something special is going on. First we have the montage of clips recapping Buffy's story, then a camera tracks speedily though an alleyway before Buffy saves a boy with her trademarked southern Californian high-kicks and pithy quips. The boy then asks her "How'd you do that?" Buffy replies, "That's what I do." The boy tells her "But you're just a girl." Buffy: "That's what I keep saying."
  • Anya being scared by the fluffy bunny is a great horror moment. She then complains about how nervous she is and that she's having "inappropriately timed sex" instead of being frightened of the apocalypse and running away. Xander then chooses that moment to propose marriage, Anya slaps him, Xander says "Can I take that as a maybe?" She then accepts, altogether now, aah!
  
  Duff Bits:  
   
 
  • So why does Buffy's death close the gateway? Not that it matters.
  • Anya says that Olaf the troll's hammer is "The weapon of a god". Since when was Olaf the troll a god? That and the Dagon sphere seem to have the nasty after-taste of MacGuffins about them.
  • Giles is reading an ancient scroll that tells him the 'gateway' that he key opens will be closed when 'the blood stops flowing'. Would Glory not have had access to these scrolls too? Would they not have given her a hint that the key was Human?
  
  Dean's comments:  
   
 
Buffy lies dead after defeating Glory.
"Death is you gift." This is the perfect end to the season and probably the best way to end the whole series; Buffy, out of feelings of love towards her sister, sacrifices her life to save the world. The episode also has the perfect beginning, going back to the show's roots with Buffy killing an ordinary vampire who has never heard of her. This follows a sequence of short clips from each of the 99 episodes up to this point in the series. "It's been a long time since I met one that didn't know me." Buffy says to the vampire, the series has come full circle. What a shame they couldn't have kept this fitting ending under their hats until they were ready to finish BtVS for good. In a sense, Buffy's sacrifice is a sign of her growing maturity into Dawn's de-facto mother, she has come to the realisation that the life of her offspring (metaphorically speaking her sister) was more important than her own. As the sun rises on a new day (a symbol of hope and perhaps rebirth), Dawn apologises to Buffy and tells her that she is prepared to jump off the platform in order to kill herself and save the world. Buffy wont let her do it, but realises futility of stopping her. Finally, the message that Spike brought Buffy in 'Fool for love' has come true; a slayer only dies when she wants to. Buffy, with nothing left to live for without Dawn, realises that her death can save the world and sacrifices herself so that everyone else can live. The final scenes, and the music that accompanies them, are the ending that Buffy's story needed. The Scoobies break down and weep before Buffy's broken body as her last words to Dawn play as a voice-over, the slightest of smiles is visible on Buffy's face.

Buffy's tombstone, a fitting end to the series.
It was a shame that the season's final exposition scene couldn't have been a little less densely packed with 'flobottanum', it swings between a dramatic argument between Buffy and Giles, clever gags (Spike: "When you [Buffy] say you love us all..."), unfortunately disappointing signposts (lines about Dawn being 'made from Buffy') and depressing MacGuffins (Dagon sphere, troll hammer). Buffy's headstone reads, "Buffy Anne Summers, 1981 - 2001, beloved sister, devoted friend, she saved the world a lot."

 
   
 10/10 
 
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