Stew’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer Retrospective: Season 5, Episodes 21-22

A New Challenger Emerges: A BTVS Retrospective, S5 E21-22

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Episode 21

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

After Glory’s rousing and emphatic victory to end episode 20, we kick off episode 21 with her minions packing up her stuff. She notes that she doesn’t want to kill them for messing up, but she isn’t sure why not. We off-handedly find out she has been on Earth for 25 years, so… has she been bound to Ben for his entire life? And this baby would occasionally turn into an evil god? That must have been very confusing for his parents.

As the scene fades into Nerf Herder, we see a bound and gagged Dawn.

After the show intro, it’s time to check in on the Scoobies, where Giles has made, frankly, a miraculous recovery. He took a full-on spear through the gut, but Ben shot him up with something, and he’s just dandy now. Gotta love those BTVS stakes, guys. I really thought his grievous injury would be a… thing. But nope!

Buffy, meanwhile, is in a trance of some sort, and the team has no idea what to do with her. Spike tries roughing her up, but everyone else is afraid to even move her. Xander and Spike start fighting until Willow takes charge and orders them to stop. Spike mentions about Glory having been Ben, but no one is able to remember that. Even with Spike’s urging, they can’t retain that information for more than a few seconds. You see, it’s because Spike is supernatural, so whatever spell is cast around Glory’s identity does not affect him.

Just… the mind reels at this. You know who else is supernatural? The living embodiment of a millennia-old Key, which this show has repeatedly shown to be not natural and not of this world. AND YET! Dawn could not recall the Ben/Glory transformation, either.

I ask for so little from these writers, and honestly, so little is what I get.

Glory, Dawn, and the underlings have packed up and moved on elsewhere to something like an old factory. There is a higher-ranking minion guy who wants to anoint The Key, but Glory shoves him out, too busy for his ceremony at the present time.

Dawn does what she does best and whines that she just wants to go home, and Glory tries to be reassuring and calm, though she then realizes she doesn’t know why she cares. Dawn tells her she is feeling guilt, and Glory doesn’t like that! She brings back in the anointing guy to finish his work. She reports on her way out that the process to open the barriers between realities will bleed Dawn dry.

We cut to Willow, Tara, and Anya somewhere, and Willow puts Anya in charge of watching out for Tara while she performs a spell to help Buffy. In another room, we see the catatonic Buffy set up in a chair. Willow lights some candles and channels herself into Buffy’s mind, where she sees the Vampire Slayer as a little girl.

In one of those scenes we definitely needed and in no way could have been cut for time, we see Spike check out Glory’s old pad. It’s empty, save for a few of Ben’s scrubs.

Anyway, back in Buffy’s brain (or mind, or both, depending on your philosophical view of how the mind and the brain differ or don’t), Mom and Dad show up to Lil Buffy and bring home a newborn Dawn. Buffy asks to watch over her sometimes. Suddenly Willow sees a normal age Buffy put a book on a shelf, then she goes to the fire where Buffy met The Guide, and I am reminded how well this show does dream sequences when it wants to. So ethereal!

Spike meets up with Giles and Xander elsewhere, and he reports he knows a demon who may be able to help them out.

Back at Glory’s new digs, she is ranting and complaining about remembering things from Ben’s life; she is starting to feel infected by Ben and his humanity. Dawn suddenly DOES remember the Ben/Glory dynamic, but that’s just because the veil between the two is lowering. The anointment guy says this is the price Glory pays as she gets closer to messing with the door between realms. Glory bickers with Ben inside of her.

Back at Willow’s Professor Xavier spell, she sees Buffy reliving the “Death Is Your Gift” moment with The Guide.

Glory, meanwhile, is still going on about feelings and emotions and how sick of them she is. Dawn remarks that most people enjoy having feelings, and Glory retorts that most people do drugs or drink or copulate to get away from their humanity. Also during this scene, the anointment ash on Dawn’s forehead goes away, and it bugs me that no one caught that. Curse you, minor continuity error; I’ll never forgive you!

BACK NOW to Willow and Buffy, and we see Buffy visit the gravestone of her mother. She then goes into Dawn’s bedroom and smothers her with a pillow while saying “Death is my gift”.

Look, there’s only two things going on this episode, so it’s time to shoot back over to Glory and Dawn, where Ben has taken his body back from Glory. He is lamenting that he can feel the deaths of the Knights Of Byzantium on his hands, so the wall is breaking for him, too. He attacks the anointment underling and escapes into the night with Dawn!

Meanwhile, back in Buffy’s brain, Willow is back to the beginning with little girl Buffy.

HEY, SOMETHING ELSE HAPPENS as we move on to Spike and Xander visiting the demon from earlier this season, the one that gave Dawn the spell to bring mom back to life. During this scene, Xander remembers that Ben is Glory, so that wall keeps tumbling down, now negating the spell for everyone else. The demon guy reports that he has no way to help them stop Glory, but it’s all a bluff because he serves Glory! Oh no! He throws a box into his fireplace, then launches into battle. Xander quickly stabs him with a sword, and Spike fishes the box out of the flames. As they leave, we see the demon open his eyes.

Ben and Dawn are escaping through the SunnyDale streets, but when Ben turns his back on her, she clobbers him with some loose chains she, I guess, found lying about. You’d think this was a good ploy, but he just immediately turns into Glory, who catches right up with Dawn.

This leads to an extended silly scene of Ben and Glory shifting back and forth and arguing with each other over Dawn’s fate. Ben threatens to kill Dawn, but it’s a bluff. Glory offers to make Ben immortal if he shuts up and works with her. Ben resists this for a while before acquiescing for no real reason, as he gives Dawn back to the minion patrol.

Well… it turns out there IS a reason, but that’s next episode’s problem.

Willow talks to two different mental image Buffies at the moment where she is putting a book on the shelf. Buffy refers to this as the moment she realized Glory is unstoppable. In that moment, she mentally gave up. And that meant she was accepting Dawn’s fate and as good as killing Dawn herself.

Willow tells her how stupid this is, and it’s just a feeling, guilt. SEE? We’re tying shit together this episode! Glory feels guilt but abandons it! Buffy feels guilt but faces it! Narrative constructs, man!

Buffy snaps out of her catatonia and cries.

After she lets it all out, she heads to the magic shop where Giles has the scrolls that the demon guy tried to burn in his fire. They read that the only way to stop the portal is to kill Dawn.

But I bet there is another way!

Episode 22

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox TV

It’s season five finale time, so let’s find out how Buffy defeats Glory!

We open our finale with a simple vampire attacking a kid. Buffy intervenes, has a short fight with the vampiric menace, and puts him down. She tells the kid she is the Slayer.

With that weird interlude–it felt like an introduction to the character for new viewers in THE SEASON FIVE FINALE–out of the way, Buffy heads back into the magic shop. She insists on a more thorough report of what the scrolls say are Glory’s plans. “The Gates Will Close When [the blood of the key] Flows No More” is what it says.

That is worded so that they save the day by just fucking bandaging Dawn’s wound, right? It’s pretty easy to get blood to stop flowing, really. What’s the worst case scenario here? She has to get stitches?

Buffy refuses to even entertain the notion of killing Dawn because that’s the only way these fools interpret stopping blood from flowing. Giles yells at her that she isn’t being realistic! Anya of all people talks sense into everything to quit bickering and figuring out how to stop Glory before she opens Dawn up. Xander suggests killing Glory in her Ben form. Anya notes they have accumulated a Sphere of Dagon and a big troll hammer this season; maybe they can use those to stop her?

Back at Glory’s factory, Ben brings Dawn some ceremonial clothes to wear. Dawn, aghast that Ben has turned on her, demands that he change into Glory since Glory at least admits he is a monster. Ben acquiesces. Glory notes that Ben’s humanity within her is the only reason she never killed the Slayer this season. When Dawn says Buffy will come for her, Glory asks if she’s sure Buffy won’t come just to kill her to stop the portal!

Back at the shop, Buffy is training on the heavy bag when Giles shows up and they talk through their earlier conflict. They are waiting for the right moment to strike at Glory and save Dawn because, let’s face it, these 60 minutes aren’t going to fill themselves!

Giles says he loves Dawn, too, but he’s sworn to defend the Earth from all threats. Buffy recalls the season two finale when she sacrificed Angel to save the world; she refuses to go through that again. She vows to quit slaying if Dawn dies.

Back at Glory’s hole, Dawn is in her ceremonial gear, and the minions lead her up a large crane to a platform high above the ground.

We cut to Xander and Anya post-coitus and JESUS CHRIST, Joss. They are supposed to be looking for the misplaced Dagon Sphere, but got sidetracked. Anya ends up finding a stuffed bunny that freaks her out; she thinks it is an ill omen of bad to come! She’s terrified of everything going on! Xander busts out a ring and proposes to her. She says yes, but she won’t put the ring on until after they have defeated Glory.

Moving on over to Willow and Buffy now, where Willow has been spending her time looking into ways to help Tara that, coincidentally, might also help stop Glory. She thinks she can reverse the crazy-fying of Tara, and doing so might also weaken Glory!

I have to say: love this! Because I full-on expected this show to pull the old “When the bad guy is defeated, all their effects go away”, and that’s SO LAZY. But they are actually going to be pro-active about curing Tara, and I appreciate that. I feel seen, BTVS, and I dig that.

Buffy and Spike head to Buffy’s home to arm up and do whatever they need to do. Spike reminds her he is unable to enter her house, so she invites him back in. She is counting on him to defend Dawn in the fight. He appreciates that she is no longer treating him like a monster. You know, after she spent a whole-ass season treating him like a monster. And calling him a monster. And generally being a jerk to him.

WHICH!

As I have noted!

He did deserve. And worse.

SINCE HE TRIED TO KILL HER AS RECENTLY AS EPISODE FIVE OR SOMETHING.

Back at the high platform, Dawn is securely tied in place, and we are told Glory is coming soon…

Back to the Scoobies, who, half the episode having passed, have decided it is time to strike! They let Tara go so she can lead them to Glory, and she pretty quickly takes them straight to the crane where Dawn is held. She approaches Glory long enough to distract her for Willow to sneak up and brain blast the both of them, reversing Tara’s craziness!

Glory is, in fact, weakened and decides she needs a brain to feed off, so she sees Buffy and decides that is good enough. She orders her minions to guard Dawn on the platform. Buffy chucks the Sphere of Dagon at Glory, further weakening her, though Glory is able to crush it.

This all leads to a multi-layered fight scene! Buffy vs Glory, and the underlings vs the Scooby team.

Willow finds and reunites with a recovered Tara as Glory straight punches the head off of the Buffybot. The real Buffy then shows up with the troll hammer. She and Glory fight up the stairs towards Dawn, but they end up falling off the tower together. As Glory recuperates first, she is smashed by a wrecking ball controlled by Xander.

At this point, there are only a few minutes left until the ritual has to start, and this is a sudden and arbitrary wrinkle. Why does the ceremony have to take place at a certain time? Whatever. The demon guy shows up to Dawn at the top of the crane. She assumes he is there to help… until he pulls out a dagger!

Willow and Tara clear a path through the underlings for Spike to climb the tower. He faces off with the demon, who pretty easily dispatches him and hucks him off the top of the tower. Whoops! Buffy’s faith is misplaced in a friend who got pretty soundly Brooklyn Brawler’ed here.

Anyway, back on the ground, Buffy is bludgeoning the hell out of Glory with the troll hammer. She beats her so bad that Glory turns back into Ben! Buffy has the chance to brain him with her mallet, but she decides against it. That’s when Giles shows up and smothers Ben to death.

Two things.

First, more neat-and-cleanness from the show by having Ben essentially turn heel last episode just so that we don’t feel even a little conflicted when Giles straight-up murders a dude.

But secondly, and more importantly, I was told ALL SEASON LONG that Glory was a great Buffy villain because she was the one villain Buffy couldn’t just beat up into submission. Glory was too powerful and too far over Buffy’s head! I was told this not just by the show itself, but by Buffy fans defending Glory as one of the best Big Bads!

So how does Buffy win?

By… oh, okay. BEATING HER INTO SUBMISSION WITH A HAMMER.

COME ON!

I get there are extenuating circumstances–Glory was weakened by the Sphere and Willow–but they could have done both of those things to weaken her all season long!

You all lied to me, is what I am saying.

So Glory is dead… now what? Well, the demon guy up with Dawn doesn’t either know or care that his master is defeated, so he starts draining Dawn’s blood to start the ritual! So… is HE the big bad now?

Hey, remember that time in Final Fantasy VII where Barrett just shot Sephiroth in the face, killing him before the final conflict, and that annoying little turtle guy villain came through and finished the Meteor spell?

This guy. You know him. He has the knife and everything.

Of course you don’t, because that didn’t happen!

WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?! We went through all of this for Glory to not even matter?!

Humorously, Buffy makes it to the top of the tower, the demon guy says “Well this should be interesting–“, and then Buffy just easily tosses him off the platform.

The portal opens with Dawn’s blood being spilled on time. As things start to break down, Anya pushes Xander out of the way and gets buried under some rubble! OH NO! Why did you save Xander?! We could have been rid of him!

Monsters start coming to Earth through the portal, and Dawn moves to jump to her death, but Buffy stops her. Buffy recalls hearing that Dawn was created from the Key using Buffy’s own body and blood, so SHE throws herself off of the platform in Dawn’s stead. The sacrifice and her death–which was her gift, do you recall?–closes the portal.

Even though Dawn is still bleeding, right?

Don’t think about it that hard!

The Scoobies see Buffy’s body, which is totally in better shape than it should be. Oh, and Anya is fine? She’s just standing there, NOT murdered by a pile of falling rubble. Spike is despondent over seeing his beloved dead. We then cut to a shot of Buffy’s headstone, ending season five.