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 so many years ago.

Grave

• Buff and Anya are excited to see Giles standing in the doorway of the Magic Box.
• Willow mocks him and his borrowed power.
• Giles insists that he’s here to help her.
• His borrowed power is enough to keep her on the floor.
• Buffy tells Willow to listen to Giles because she doesn’t want to fight her anymore.
• Willow agrees.
• She wants to fight him instead.
• Willow brings up the argument that she and Giles had about her abuse of magic to bring Buffy back to life.
• He called her “a rank, arrogant amateur.”
• Her response now: “Buckle up, Rupert. ‘Cause I’ve gone pro.”
• Sidebar: The thing I love about this whole thing is that this is so not Willow.
• She’s still a good person inside there.
• But in becoming the villain of the story, she is so blinded by rage and her lust for power, the person she really is just can’t come to the surface.
• Back to live action… Willow tries to cast a spell, but Giles binds her in some kind of thing that basically immobilizes her.
• This gives Buffy a chance to hug her surrogate father.
• Anya wants in on this action.
• Giles walks up to Willow and offers his condolences regarding Tara.
• Willow just tells him that this won’t hold her forever.
• In the training room, Giles tells Buffy that a coven in England made him aware of an extremely powerful, dark magical force fueled by grief and rage that had risen in Sunnydale.
• They imbued him with their power and he left right away.
• Buffy gives Giles the “Previously on Buffy…” spiel.
• When she gets to, “I’ve been sleeping with Spike,” Giles bursts into laughter.
• Which is kind of how lots of people felt about season six in general.
• You just have to laugh to keep from being so utterly depressed.
• Out in the store, Anya is trying to clean up a little, but Willow interrupts with some telepathy.
• She uses something akin to a Jedi mind trick to get Anya to free her from the binding spell.
• Giles and Buffy’s conversation comes back to the question of why Buffy is back from the dead.
• Then they question what will happen to Willow.
• Giles says that, no matter what, Willow may never be the same, citing the fact that she’s killed a human being.
• But then she comes in, holding an unconscious Anya in front of her.
• “I wouldn’t worry about that. Willow doesn’t live here anymore.”
• Giles magics Willow through a wall.
• Xander and Dawn are still leading the nerds away.
• He complains that he can’t even run away right.
• Dawn says they should go back, but Xander squashes that.
• Then Dawn says, “If Spike were here…”
• Which leads Xander to spill the beans about Spike’s attempted rape and that the only good thing he ever did was finally leave town.
• Meanwhile, Spike is still going through these trials, the latest of which involve a bunch of gnarly looking beetles crawling all over him.
• Willow is still talking a good game as Giles is barely standing up and the Magic Box is falling apart around them.
• He asks her what Tara would think about this, and Willow says he can ask her himself.
• Buffy saves Giles from the killing blow, and Willow complains that Buffy is always saving people.
• Then she creates a fireball that she sends after Jonathan and Andrew, saying it’ll bury them and anyone who’s helping them.
• So Buffy rushes off to save Dawn and Xander.
• Willow keeps toying with Giles, until he finally goads her into draining him of his borrowed magic.
• Now she’s connected to… well… everything.
• She’s feeling all of the pain and sorrow of humanity and she’s ready to make it all stop.
• Time for another apocalypse.
• Willow’s fireball finds the runaways and Buffy gets there just in time to knock them out of the way.
• But Dawn falls into a pit and Buffy falls in right behind her.
• Oh, and the nerds’ swords drop into the pit, too… that’ll be important later.
• The nerds run away when they notice that Xander was knocked unconscious when he was thrown into a tombstone.
• Anya comes to and emerges from the training room and checks on Giles.
• He can see what Willow’s doing.
• And he tells Anya he’s dying.
• “It was the only way… I thought we… There’d be a chance…”
• He tells Anya that Willow is going to end the world.
• Buffy and Dawn try to climb out, but can’t quite get it.
• And Dawn confronts Buffy about her not saying anything about what Spike did.
• Xander wakes up and Buffy tells him to go get a rope.
• But before he takes off, Anya teleports in to inform Buffy about Willow’s plan to kill the world.
• Willow is raising an old Satanic temple on Kingman’s Bluff.
• Anya says her plan is to drain the earth’s energy and channel it into some kind of demonic effigy that will destroy the everything.
• Anya also throws in Giles’ warning that no magic or supernatural force can stop her at this point.
• Buffy yells for Xander to get that rope, but he’s already gone.
• Willow is aware of what Buffy is doing and gives her something to fight in the end.
• “It was me who took you out of the earth. Well, now, the earth wants you back.”
• And she sends some kind of mud/root monsters after Buffy and Dawn.
• An endless supply for Buffy to fight until the world ends.
• That’s nice of Willow, to give Buffy something to do.
• This is where those swords come in handy.
• Willow starts her apocalyptic ritual, sending dark energy into this scary looking statue.
• Then Xander gets to Kingman’s Bluff and steps in the way of her energy transfer.
• She tells him to get out of her way and when he doesn’t, she blasts him.
• Giles wakes up and tells Anya it isn’t over.
• Buffy and Dawn continue fighting and Buffy’s impressed with Dawn’s moves.
• “What? You think I never watched you?”
• Willow starts back up, and Xander gets in the way again.
• “You can’t stop this!”
• But Xander insists that he’s going to be there with her.
• She’s his best friend and if it’s gonna be the end of the world, he wants to spend it with her.
• “Is this your plan, you’re gonna tell me you love me?”
• Yeah… that’s the plan.
• And it works.
• Xander repeating that he loves her pulls Willow out of her darkness until she returns to a place where she can properly grieve the loss of Tara.
• Her hair goes back to red, the mud monsters vanish, and Giles recovers.
• Giles explains to Anya that Xander managed to save the world.
• The magic she stole from Giles tapped into the spark of humanity she had left, which gave Xander the opportunity to reach her.
• In the pit, Buffy begins to cry.
• Dawn doesn’t realize, at first, that it’s happy crying.
• Because Dawn thought for sure that Buffy would have been fine with the world ending.
• Buffy hugs Dawn and apologizes to her for the way things have been.
• Buffy’s ready to embrace life once more.
• Hey, remember Spike?
• Remember those trials he’s been dealing with?
• Yeah… apparently he passed.
• His reward?
• A soul.
• See you next season, kids.
• Body count: Mud Monsters – A bunch?