BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER "Chosen"

By John Ringer     June 11, 2003

Some long-running television series simply cruise to an end so bland that it's hard to distinguish the finale from a regular episode. Others trail off, leaving major themes unresolved. Then there are those that feel the need to punctuate the audience's emotional investment with a killer blow in the name of leaving a lasting impression, making viewers so wretched that all but masochists wind up regretting that they cared in the first place.

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER blessedly ends its seven-season, 144-episode run with none of the above. Series creator Joss Whedon writes and directs a final hour that feels emotionally and thematically connected straight back to the opening episodes, with all of the uncertainty, sense of loss, hope, humor and primacy of friendship that have been there from the start.

Those who have been watching the series from the outset will remember (and those who came in later have been repeatedly reminded) that erstwhile high school cheerleader Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) never asked for her vampire-slaying destiny. It was thrust upon her to be "the one girl in all the world ..." responsible for fighting monsters until she dies and another Slayer is called. Since Buffy's family moved to Sunnydale, situated atop the Hellmouth, there are plenty of monsters in easy reach on any given night. Buffy died momentarily at the end of Season One, so another Slayer, Kendra (Bianca Lawson) was called, and when Kendra died, Faith (Eliza Dushku) was called, so there have been a Chosen Two for the past few years. Alas, Faith went bad, repented and wound up in jail, where she wasn't of much use to Buffy and Co. (Buffy subsequently died again and stayed that way until resurrected by her magic-using friends, but this death didn't trigger the calling of yet another Slayer.)

By "Chosen," however, Faith has broken out of prison (all in a good cause, on the BUFFY spinoff series ANGEL) and has returned to Sunnydale to help Buffy fight an incorporeal but malevolent and very ambitious entity that bills itself as The First Evil.  By now, bad vibes have caused most of Sunnydale's human residents to evacuate, leaving Buffy and her band to try to save the world from what will happen when The First opens the Hellmouth and releases the host of demons within.  On Buffy's side are her best friends witch Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and regular guy Xander (Nicholas Brendon), younger sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), vampire-with-a-soul Spike (James Marsters), former vengeance demon/former Xander fiancée Anya (Emma Caulfield), father figure Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), Faith, capable son of a Slayer Wood (D.B. Woodside), geeky Andrew (Tom Lenk) and about 30 girls who are Potential Slayers each one might be the next Slayer when the current Slayer dies and passes on her power.

The episode opens with Buffy kissing her first love Angel (David Boreanaz, on loan from the WB, where he stars in the series bearing his character's name), who's come to Sunnydale to help fend off the apocalypse. Spike, watching from the shadows, is shattered, as he's in love with Buffy as well. Buffy is attacked by The First's human lieutenant Caleb (Nathan Fillion), but uses a mystical scythe to cut him in half. (To the likely regret of gore fans, this happens offscreen, if only just.) Spike sticks around long enough to see Angel offer Buffy the use of a mysterious, possibly dangerous cleansing amulet, meant to be worn by "a champion," someone more than human, but with a soul. Angel offers to wear it in the coming battle, but Buffy tells him she needs him to go back to Los Angeles he's got to set up a second line of defense in case she fails in Sunnydale. Buffy also seems rather keen to keep her two ensouled vampire ex-lovers apart from each other (Angel smells Spike on Buffy and gets jealous) and tells Angel she's not ready for a relationship with anyone yet, though she acknowledges that sometimes she imagines a future in which he figures.

Buffy returns home to find Dawn and Xander are back (Dawn having foiled Buffy's previous-episode scheme to send her away to safety). Spike is in the basement, working out his feelings about seeing Buffy and Angel together (the drawing on Spike's punching bag is priceless). Buffy gives Spike the amulet and winds up chastely spending the night in his bed. In the middle of the night, Buffy is visited by The First, which initially takes on Caleb's form, then appears as Buffy herself, while telling Buffy she'll die alone. And Buffy gets an idea ...

Buffy's plan, which we learn in flashback as her team assemble over and around the Hellmouth is this: No more waiting for The First to make its move. Buffy, Faith, the Potentials and Spike will assemble over the Hellmouth, opening it at the same time that Willow (a witch who has been struggling to control the wild, conceivably apocalyptic magic within herself all season) uses her gifts and the scythe to spread Buffy's Slayer power among all the Potentials, both those in her care and those scattered around the globe. Now, every girl who can be a Slayer will be a Slayer.

Absolutely great plan except that even with all those extra Slayers, there is still a Hellmouth full of an army of primitive Turok-Han super-vamps, capable of ripping apart the planet's population.

The image of

the massed Ubervamps seething up out of the bowels of Hell is reminiscent of the Uruk-Hai in LORD OF THE RINGS. On film, it was arresting. For Whedon and Co. to achieve similar effects on an episodic TV budget and schedule rates a standing ovation, as does the raging battle between Buffy's forces and the First's hordes. Potentials we've come to like over the season, prominently Amanda (Sarah Hagan), are killed. Anya falls in battle, stabbed to death by one of The First's acolytes. And Spike turns the tide for Buffy by deliberately allowing the power of the amulet to blast through him, destroying the Turok-Han as it incinerates him. Buffy escapes, leaping atop the school bus that Giles is driving to bear the survivors away from danger just before the Hellmouth completely collapses in on itself.

As our somewhat dazed remaining heroes Buffy, Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, Faith and Andrew (Wood and some of the Potentials are still recuperating inside the bus) stare down at the crater that was once Sunnydale, the others ask Buffy what they're going to do now. And Buffy smiles ...

BUFFY's best and most memorable episodes combine horror, humor, poignant drama, emotional jolts, farce and human warmth in ways we can't foresee, and "Chosen" is no exception. The episode brings together elements that have been building for years Willow's struggles with her power, Spike's striving to do something right and Buffy finally seeing a light at the end of the "one girl in all the world" tunnel into a resolution that feels inevitable. Dawn's concise reaction to Buffy trying to send her away and the way in which Xander, Giles, Andrew and Amanda spend the night before battle are quick and unpredictable and funny, while the enormous scope of Buffy's plan seems innately right.

Some viewers have complained that Anya's death gets rather short shrift it's a pity that "Chosen" and its immediate predecessor, "End of Days," couldn't have run as a two-hour episode, as Anya gets some valedictory dialogue that makes us laugh even as we recognize the points about how her character has changed over the seasons.

As for Spike, he gets something we don't see very often anywhere a death that is both incredibly sad and deliriously happy. He's so glad and proud and surprised to finally be the champion Buffy thinks he can be (and rediscovering his snarling, wild side as he sticks it to his erstwhile tormentor, The First) that we share his euphoric triumph even while experiencing our own loss (which, to be fair, is somewhat ameliorated by the news that Spike will be resurrected on ANGEL). Even newer characters like Andrew and Wood get grace notes, while there's a hint that beloved hard-ass Faith may finally be on the path of human connection.

Then there's the quartet who have been with us and each other from the series opening episode onward. As Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles are momentarily together as a group before separating to enter the fray in their individual roles, they talk casually, as though the world around them is totally normal and tomorrow will be like any other day though they and we are equally aware that this could be a final parting. The scene is played so delicately, with performers and characters alike trusting one another totally to be light in the face of potential devastation, that it's quietly breathtaking the resolute refusal to play with any of the usual tear-jerking tricks results in something that strikes the heart.

"Chosen" doesn't answer all of the questions of the Buffyverse. We come away as unenlightened as we were seven years ago as to just how Potential Slayers are created and located (we've learned how the very first Slayer was created, but not what makes one girl a Potential while another is normal). We don't know whether the vision Dawn received of her and Buffy's mother earlier this season was a ghost, The First or something else entirely, let alone what the entity's warning meant, if anything. Fans are going to be arguing forever over the implications of Buffy's ambiguous conversation with Angel and her final exchange with Spike (there may or may not be some clarification of one or both on next season's ANGEL). We never do find out the significance of the Cheeseman from the dream sequence at the end of Season 4.

What we do get, though, is wonderful entertainment in moment-by-moment terms and, in the larger sense, fulfillment of the promise of the first episode that it's not futile to face life's monsters, that there is magic in friendship, that sometimes it pays to challenge conventional wisdom and that where there's life, there's, well, life. In "Welcome to the Hellmouth," we hope not only that Buffy can survive high school/Sunnydale, but also that she won't be beaten down into something joyless, and that the relationships she forges with Xander, Willow and Giles will flourish. We're gently reminded of how it all began as it wraps up. For many viewers, the characters and mythology of the Buffyverse have a hold on the imagination that transcends the 60-minute episode running time and the edges of the TV screen. Whedon isn't stingy in the end about his characters' fates he's done telling their stories for now, but we're free to continue in our own minds. It's a final gesture of affection and generosity to both Buffy and Co. and to the viewers that feels exactly right.

Since Buffy's tombstone turned out not to be the last word on our heroine, paraphrasing its epitaph is likewise more punctuation than conclusion. Even so, BUFFY made TV better. A lot.

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