(You guys. Tumblr failed and lost my original review. Charming.)

This was hard to write. I was disappointed and then I was angry at myself for being disappointed. It felt like going out with kind of a whimper. I think thematic things got tied up at the expense of a strong narrative arc. No character actually went anywhere excited and new at the end of the season except for the sort-of hero redemption for Spike which I still don’t think he deserved anyway.

And every time I think about the fact that I have no more Buffy, I get teary eyed. That sounds silly, but if you’re reading your random friends Buffy blog, you get what I’m saying.

I have mixed feelings about a season-ender where the Big Bad is stopped but not defeated. I know that’s what they were setting up, but it was still anti-climactic.

Anya. I knew it was going to happen. And I know the intention was for it to be blunt and unemotional - both like Anya and as a new way of exploring death. But still. Because she had been so underused for the second half of the season it didn’t have that impact and just felt cheap. I loved Andrew’s lie though. And Xander’s reaction.

I don’t love everyone awakening. It just seems “Heh. Interesting.” Rather than see Buffy decide to assert herself and break the Slayer rules set up by Watchers - and thereby resolving her issue of feeling Alone - I would have rather seen her come to terms with her identity as The Slayer. On the other hand, part of me wants to say she already did in The Gift.

Dawn broke me. Her “anything you say will sound like goodbye” ripped me into tiny pieces. What a bizarro way to introduce a character. What an under-appreciated character arc. They took her somewhere subtly cool this season and if the show wasn’t so over-saturated we could have explored that. AND she was promised Slaying lessons at the beginning of the Season. Lame.

Still. All I really wanted from the last episode - all I needed - was some kind of a moment with The Core Four. And the hallway scene that called back both the Pilot and the penultimate episode in Season Four was it.

This show was good.