Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series) (41 page)

Buffy’s mentor, Giles, who arrived in “Bring On the Night” (7-10), also advises against the foray, but Buffy ignores him. One might also argue that Giles’s position in this case is as another Campbell archetype, the Threshold Guardian—those who attempt to dissuade the Hero from her path.

Buffy leads the girls on the assault on the vineyard, thus crossing the First Threshold (Stage 5)—with disastrous results. Her gambit fails; she has grossly underestimated the strength of her enemies, and some of her warriors are killed. Xander is terribly maimed.

Now comes the Stage 6 of Buffy’s journey, that of undergoing Tests and gathering Allies and Enemies. With her failure at the vineyard fresh in the mind of her followers, alliances shift. Kennedy and the other Potentials question her fitness to lead. Faith inadvertently corners their allegiance by providing them with some much-needed R&R; it is when Faith is threatened by the cops that the girls finally become the army Buffy needs to destroy The First—and who then turn against her. Wood fires her from her job because it’s distracting her from her true mission. And Giles sends Spike out of town, highlighting Buffy’s mistrust of him since “Lies My Parents Told Me” (7-17), in which Giles conspired with Robin Wood to kill Spike.

Making matters worse, Caleb approaches her on her home turf—her office at school—and knocks her unconscious.

Failing all her tests of leadership, her order to return to the vineyard is refused and her followers mutiny. At her nadir, she is stripped of her leadership and sent into exile.

Even Dawn turns against Buffy. Her only ally is Spike, who seeks her out and stands by her. He provides her with crucial information for the battle to come, and rallies her.

This period of Tests, Allies, and Enemies culminates in Stage 7, which is the Approach to the Inmost Cave. Buffy returns to the scene of her most crushing defeat, the vineyard, specifically to retrieve what belongs to her, circling back to the original Call to Adventure issued by Caleb and finally answering it. Caleb attacks her again; this is the third time she has faced him in battle, and this time she wins. She retrieves the scythe, which is the symbol of her right to lead.

Meanwhile, her rival, Faith, has led her followers into disaster. Buffy saves both Faith and the surviving Potentials, and they return to base camp—the Summers home. Her followers accept her return, and she resumes her position as commander-in-chief, the scythe firmly in her possession.

Buffy’s not so sure of that; and she continues on the Hero’s Journey to the Inmost Cave, launching on a quest to discover the origins of the scythe. Guided by Giles’ and Willow’s research, she meets another Mentor—the ancient Guardian named “She,” who explains that the scythe was imbued with power to benefit the Slayer.

And this is where the mini-arc takes off to provide the closure for the entire series as a whole, and not just one single season:
through the revelations provided by She, Buffy changes the Ordinary World
. She comes to understand that the Shadow Men forced the First Slayer to swallow the demonic essence that created the line. Becoming the Watchers,
they laid down the rules that there would be only one Chosen One at a time—reinforcing that notion time and again with tests like the Cruciamentum “Helpless,” (3-12); and conferring anxiously among themselves when first Kendra and then Faith were called, seemingly out of order, because Buffy had died and been revived—a total of twice (“Prophesy Girl,” 1-12 and “The Gift,” 5-22). Buffy had already broken their rule without realizing the import.

It is her enemy, speaking through the slain Caleb, who provides her with the answer to breaking free of the legacy imposed by the Shadow Men/Watchers upon Slayers since the beginning of time:

These have been the opening words of every episode of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
since the show’s premiere. They are the ground rules of Buffy’s universe, her Ordinary World. Throughout the run of the show, the fact that Buffy died and then was revived (in “Prophecy Girl,” 1-12) has been factored into the existing notion that there can be only one Slayer at a time. The presence of additional Slayers was considered an anomaly—and not the establishment of a new set of rules.

As she concludes her speech, she asks each Potential present to make a choice: to accept the power of a Slayer now, rather than to passively wait for it to be given to her, due to a random death of another girl she might never know.

It is for the Hero herself to understand that, through Willow, she has the power to change the world forever—literally. And she chooses to do so. Thus is Buffy’s entire journey distilled into the five-episode arc that concludes the show.

The decision made, this final episode then masterfully resumes the path of the season seven’s original quest: to destroy The First; but also refocuses the Journey on the establishment of a brand new Ordinary World (Stage 1), in which a new Hero’s Journey can begin.

Back in the Egyptian temple monument, when Buffy spoke with She, she also received an amulet from Angel, another of her allies. He told her she would need a champion to wear the necklace in order to prevail. Though his Mentor (Lilah, of Wolfram and Hart) is unreliable, both he and Buffy at least accept the amulet as part of the requisite items needed for her to win the day. Thus she has amassed her weaponry and her army, and now stands firmly at the door of her Ordeal. This is underscored by scenes showing the warriors on the eve of the big battle, a traditional trope of the Hero’s Journey: a few of the troops playing a game (in this case, a dungeons & dragons game); talking quietly; making love; and connecting, possibly for the last time.

The day of reckoning dawns. It’s Ordeal time (Stage 8). Buffy deliberately opens the Seal of Danzalthar by combining her own blood with that of her followers. Willow is preparing the spell that will imbue all the Potentials with Slayer power. Other warriors are taking up their positions: Xander and Dawn, Anya and Andrew, Giles and Robin Wood. Old and new strategies shift into play: brute Slayer strength, magick, and, unknown to the legions of evil, a Hero leading an army of Heroes, all prepared to launch their own Journeys.

With these rousing words in their minds, all the Potentials are Slayers, and any one of then could carry the day. The great battle ensues, filled with the elements Vogler describes as vital to the crisis: tasting death (seeing some of the Slayers die); the elasticity of emotion (mixing humor and pathos, for example, Andrew’s speech where he wants to thank his friends and family before he dies); seeing the Hero appear to die (Buffy’s seemingly mortal wound); and the Hero witnessing and possibly causing death (wearing the amulet Buffy gave him, its power
sears Spike’s soul and causes the huge explosion of light into the cavern). Buffy suffers a crisis of the heart, in which she says, finally, to Spike, “I love you,” then must leave him to die.

The Slayers prevail (Stage 9), and now begins Stage 10 of the Hero’s Journey: the Road Back—getting out of the cavern and out of danger. All the survivors save Buffy make it out and scramble onto the bus, but Buffy is left behind because she said goodbye to Spike. It is left to her to have one last star turn as she leaps from crumbling building to crumbling building as the hellmouth collapses, chasing the bus, which symbolizes safety.

Once she reaches the bus, it is time for Stage 11: Buffy’s final Resurrection. For the Slayer who has been brought back twice from deaths she has willingly chosen in the line of duty, this third death is startlingly different: she becomes a normal human being with the opportunity to live a natural life. Buffy is no longer the Chosen, no longer unique.

This is Buffy’s Return with the Elixir, which she presents at journey’s end. She is changed, and she has changed the destinies of untold numbers of girls—and of viewers, who can now foresee many different paths for the Slayer “franchise,” as Noxon terms it in an interview. And it is for that reason that I suggest this ending is structurally the soundest and most emotionally satisfying piece of storytelling Whedon could have devised for Buffy.

In her essay for the
New York Times
, Joyce Millman projects her hopes for the finale:

I posit that the finale Joss Whedon provided does unleash a surge of positive energy that empowers the forces of good, at the same time concluding the final arc of the show, thus providing a sense of closure to that dynamic thread; and additionally circling backward—or perhaps, spiraling upward—to promises of the journey laid out in the
premiere, seven seasons previous, exploiting the mythic structure of the Hero’s Journey to create an extremely satisfying, balanced end.