Welcome to Rewatching Buffy, the part of the blog where I rewatch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each Tuesday evening, you’re invited to join me as I attempt to rediscover what made me love this show 20 years ago.

Amends

• Pretty sure this is Buffy’s only Christmas-themed episode.
• We open in Dublin, 1838.
• We see a young lad hurriedly walking through the streets. He passes some carolers and keeps looking behind him. He’s really nervous about something.
• Then he’s pulled into an alley by Angelus, who briefly speaks to him about gambling, then kills him.
• Angel wakes up from this past lives’ nightmare.
• He goes for a walk and runs into Buffy downtown. While they talk about Christmas presents, Angel looks behind her and sees the young Irish lad that he just dreamed about killing.
• Angel is clearly haunted by his past as the demon Angelus.
• Duh.
• At school, Buffy, Xander, and Willow talk holiday plans mixed with worry about Angel.
• Cordelia brags that she’ll be in Aspen. Skiing. With actual snow.
• She seems to make a big deal about how they’re expecting record highs in Sunnydale for Christmas. She’s probably foreshadowing some kind of ironic snowfall.
• Oz and Willow have a talk. He misses her and wants to give their relationship another chance.
• Buffy and Joyce are looking at Christmas trees. Joyce thinks they should invite Faith over for Christmas Eve.
• Buffy suggests inviting Giles over. Joyce is quick to squash that. Hmm…
• While wandering around the tree lot on her own, Buffy notices a grove of trees that mysteriously died.
• Angel has another nightmare. This time it’s a bunch of weird monks chanting in a creepy cave.
• Buffy invites Faith over, but she claims to have a big party that she’s going to.
• Angel goes to Giles for help with his nightmares. Giles is extremely reluctant to help him.
• He invites Angel into his apartment, holding him at arrowpoint with a crossbow.
• Angel has no idea why he’s back from Hell.
• While talking with Giles, Jenny Calendar appears. Angel is the only one who can see her.
• Angel has another dream. This time, Angelus is victimizing a maid at a Christmas party. He kills her, then looks up and sees Buffy.
• She’s making a cameo appearance in his dreams now. And she wakes up, remembering the dream.
• Now Jenny is showing up at Angel’s mansion. “I’m always here.”
• She changes into the lad from Dublin. This is no ordinary self torture with personal demons kind of thing.
• Buffy, Giles, and the gang research the Angel issue.
• Back at the mansion, Angel is visited by a ghost of someone we haven’t seen before. He transforms into the maid from Angel’s last dream.
• Buffy and Angel dream again. This time, it’s a naughty dream. While they have dream sex, Angel vamps out and goes in for the kill.
• But not before Buffy notices one of the weird eyeless monks standing in her bedroom.
• Jenny tells Angel to remove the curse… to lose his soul. That’s the reason he was brought back.
• Giles discovers a reference to an ancient power known as the First Evil.
• Buffy recognizes a drawing of the monks and goes to Willie the Snitch for information on the monks, also known as Harbingers.
• Willie has been hearing things from the underground. Demons are getting scared off by something big and bad. Something that may be hiding out underground.
• Meanwhile, Oz shows up at Willow’s house to hang out. She clearly wants to seduce him. But, for him, that kind of move is not necessary.
• “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
• Faith decides to go to Buffy’s after all. I think the party was a falsehood.
• Buffy heads upstairs to get presents and Angel confronts her in her room. He’s still seeing Jenny, who’s encouraging him to take what he wants.
• Jenny is trying to convince him that if he loses his soul, he’ll no longer be tortured.
• He takes off. Buffy tries to follow.
• She and Giles figure out that, wherever the Harbingers are, nothing can grow above or below.
• This leads her to that grove of Christmas trees that mysteriously died.
• Angel refuses to do what Jenny is telling him to do. So he says the solution is to die.
• She tells him he doesn’t have the strength to kill himself. “I don’t need the strength. I just need sunrise.”
• “This isn’t the plan,” Jenny says as Angel leaves, “but it’ll do.”
• Buffy heads underground and confronts a trio of Harbingers.
• She interrupts their chanting and knocks them all out.
• Jenny appears. She reveals herself to be the First Evil. “I am the thing the darkness fears.”
• The First tells Buffy that Angel will be dead by sunrise.
• Buffy is able to find Angel. He’s waiting for dawn on Kingman’s Bluff.
• They have a big conversation. Buffy tells him that he has the power to make amends for the things he’s done.
• This is a great Buffy/Angel scene.
• It begins to snow.
• It’s snowy and overcast, so Angel can’t be killed by direct sunlight.
• It’s a Christmas miracle!
• Uh… why is snow sticking to everything? It was hot outside just a few minutes ago.
• It’s a Christmas miracle!
• Body count: Humans – 2 (But do they count? They were dream kills…)

All right, we’re roughly midway through Season 3 and Amends kind of helps to set up Angel’s spin-off that will begin during Buffy‘s fourth season. But I wanted to ask, for the three of you who read these Buffy posts, would you like me to intersperse Angel episodes with them? There aren’t a ton of crossovers, but they do happen. Let me know if you’d like to see Rewatching Angel become a thing alongside Rewatching Buffy.