Buffy rewatch: 2.22. Becoming, part 2
When I was about to watch this episode, I wondered if I can still be affected by it, since I’ve seen it several times. Of course, this is one of the most important and iconic episodes of the show, but can it still move me when I almost know it by heart? And…it didn’t exactly make me cry this time, but it’s still an awesome episode you could watch over and over,.
As a season finale, it’s one of the best. It perfectly resolves so many storylines from season 2: Buffy’ s strained relationship with her mother, Snyder’s attempts to find a reason to expel Buffy, Willow’s relationships with Xander and Oz, the Spike/Dru/Angel triangle, the B/A romance and the “Angel loses his soul” story; and in the best tradition of bittersweet Whedon finales, it manages to have Buffy defeat the Big Bad and stop an apocalypse, but leaves her emotionally devastated.
Throughout the episode, things just keep going wrong for Buffy, with just an occasional break. First cops want to arrest her for Kendra’s murder and she has to run away, then she finds out that Willow is in hospital with a serious head injury, and that Giles is kidnapped; Snyder uses the opportunity to expel her from school, and later her mother tells her not to come back home, all while she has an apocalypse to stop. If episodes like Prophecy Girl and School Hard were about Buffy surviving because of her connections to family and friends, this one is about coming to the point when you only have yourself to rely on. As foreshadowed by Whistler’s voiceover in part 1, this is where she finds out who she is. And that’s someone who never gives up and keeps fighting, even in the most desperate situation:
Whistler: In the end, you’re all you’ve got.
Buffy: I have nothing left to lose.
Whisler: Wrong, kid. You’ve got one more thing.
Angel(us): No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away, and what is left?
Buffy (stopping his sword with her bare hand): Me.
To make things all the harder for her, she’s put in the position where she has to kill the man she loves to save the world (well, sort of, since Angel gets sucked into hell, but doesn’t actually die). But the emotional cost is too high, and the season 2 finale ends in both triumph and despair, as Buffy runs away from her life, trying to become someone else.
For an episode with so much pain and drama, it also has an amazing amount of humor, sometimes even at the same time. There are two scenes (Buffy and Spike coming up with the lie that they’re in a band, and Joyce and Spike trying to make small talk) that I would rank among the funniest in the show. There’s self-mocking humor even in show’s ending credits this time, as the Mutant Enemy monster doesn’t growl “URGH-ARGH” but whines “Ooh I need a hug!”
I won’t even try to choose the best scene, since there are way too many great ones. I’ll just list all the great scenes and major moments chronologically.
As Buffy visits her friends in the hospital where Willow is still lying unconscious, we see just how serious the situation is, when Xander isn’t able to laugh and joke with Buffy. Cordelia, who has a very small role in the episode, feels bad about running away from the library - the first sign that she wants to be strong and heroic like the rest of the Scoobies, but Buffy reassures her that running away was the best thing she could have done. Those two have come a long way in their relationship.
Xander/Willow/Oz: The first of two big somewhat ambiguous Xander moments in the episode: Xander pours his heart out to the unconscious Willow, telling her how much she means to him, that she is his best friend, and finally “Willow, I love you” only for her to finally wake up and still half-conscious, call out for Oz.
Did Xander mean it 100% as a friend, or with a romantic overtone? The scene certainly plays with the latter, or else the significance of this scene in the Xander/Willow/Oz storyline wouldn’t work. But on the other hand, for Xander to suddenly realize he’s in love with Willow would have been a big revelation that would have probably surprised even him, and it seem to be the case - and he doesn’t seem at all crushed with Willow and Oz’s sweet reunion. My guess is that Xander himself isn’t quite sure - he’s reacting to almost losing Willow and perhaps realizing just how strong his feelings for her are, and he’s confused teenage boy who can’t quite sort out his feelings for 3 important girls in his life. He probably started seeing Willow in romantic light only when she found a boyfriend, and he a) came to see her a sexual being, and 2) was jealous because he wasn’t the main man in her life anymore (as Buffy pointed out back in I, Robot, You Jane). I think the entire Xander/Willow early seasons relationship is largely about childhood friends growing up and not being sure if a girl and a boy can be friends or if they are supposed to be more than that because they’re a girl and a boy. I don’t see Xander’s feelings here as classic romantic jealousy, more like realizing that someone else is now the main object of Willow’s affection.
I always thought this was a perfect resolution to the Xander/Willow/Oz storyline, showing that Willow was really over Xander and in love with someone else - who was really in love with her and was a much better romantic match for her - with the irony that hearing Xander say “I love you” which once would have been all she wanted, now wouldn’t have meant much to her. (Or would have been the perfect resolution - if only the unnecessary Xander/Willow fling in season 3 hadn’t happened, which I’m really not a fan of.)
Snyder expels Buffy: a pay-off to yet another season-long tension - Snyder finally gets to do what he wanted to do for such a long time and promised a few times already. Afterwards whe calls the Mayor to tell him the good news, but while this confirms that he’s been working at Mayor’s orders, he also really hates Buffy and makes it clear he’s enjoying the opportinity (and even givea an ironic speech about the moments you want to savor and relieve,which is oddly similar toWhistler’s “big moments” speech). But it comes at the time when Buffy doesn’t care as much as she normally would have, since she’s got an apocalypse to stop - the good news it that for once she can openly treat him with the contempt he deserves, after more than a year of torment she had to endure. “You never got a single date in high school, did you?” is a good retort but doesn’t upset Snyder the way it would a normal human being, but an even better retort is Buffy simply pulling out her sword that she’ll use to stop Acathla, walking away from the clerly scared Snyder. Another memorable line is Snyder’s Lampshade Hanging comment “In case you haven’t noticed, the police in Sunnydale are deeply stupid.”
Spike and Buffy. And finally we see what Spike’s plan is, which cements the Spike/Angel switch - first the good guy went bad and Buffy’s sweetheart became the Big Bad, and now the former Big Bad goes… a little less bad, and becomes Buffy’s unexpected ally. Unlike part 1, part 2 is about people making choices, and whule Angel is the poster boy for destiny, Spike is one for free will - that’s one of the things that are consistent with his character despite all the changes. He’s the one who does the unexpected, breaks rules, a wild card or “loose canon”. Of course, Spike is still nowhere near being “good” at this point, just the lesser evil at the moment, and his motives for offering an alliance against Angel are dubious and mostly selfish, but it’s still an unexpected lucky break for Buffy, who needs all the help she can get. He is pragmatic and irreverent and more grounded, and he does like the world as he explains in his unforgettable speech, and would rather not have it sucked into hell, but getting Drusilla all to himself is still his main motivation, as we see later when he walks away at the crucial moment of the fight, as soon as he got Dru to himself. (He won’t keep the other promise, either - never to come back to Sunnydale.)
The Spike/Buffy scenes are so enjoyable and the chemistry between them is amazing, whether they’re arguing and negotiating and punching each other, or when they’re fighting together for the first time against Angel’s henchman and immediately working perfectly in synch (something that we’ll see so many times in later seasons, it’s one thing that always works well for them) or when they’re lying to her mom about being in a band - they seem oddly familiar, like people who’ve gone to school together or something, rather than Slayer and a vampire whose conversations before this were always happening while they fought each other. (I remember I used to think when I first watched season 2 how odd it is that I thought Buffy had more chemisty with the guy who was trying to kill her than with her boyfriend - even though I never expected anything to come out of it, and didn’t even entertain an idea at the time.) I love their matter-of-fact, snarky interactions (so much different from the sugarcoated romanticism they showed with their respective lovers, Angel and Dru) and this one is great. When Spike tells her that he wants an alliance to get Dru back, he gets a bit carried away talking about his problems, like he’s using the chance that there’s someone finally there to listen to him talk about his relationship problems - since he can’t make himself try to talk these things through with Dru herself. I love how Buffy points out, not mincing words, how pathetic he is for caring more about jealousy over his fickle girlfriend, than the fate of the world. It recalls Xander’s accusation from part 1, that Buffy wants to forget about Jenny’s murder so she could have her boyfriend back. There are definitely parallels between Buffy and Spike in season 2, in the big fight in this episode they both end up fighting against people they’re in love with; and the contrast, as Buffy puts the fate of the world above wanting her lover back, and Spike doesn’t.
I always think back to these scenes as one of the obvious proofs that the idea that Buffy really thought of soulless Spike as a “thing” is utter BS. Even when he was the enemy, she treated him as this annoying guy she knows, not some anonymous vampire “thing” - all their interactions were very personal. You wouldn’t criticize the character flaws of a “thing”. It’s funny that she snarkily asks him if he forgot that he’s a vampire, but she’s kinda doing that when she calls him pathetic for being selfish and unconcerned about the fate of the world - as if one could expect better from a soulless vampire? She also tells him “I hate you”, which is only the second time she’s said that to a vampire (the first one was Angel in Angel, when Buffy believed he had attacked her mom and made a point that she kills vampires but never hated one before him). The Scoobies always treated the vampires they actually knew as individuals, as people, even if they people they disliked or hated (we’ll see a lot of that with Harmony as well).
It’s also funny and feels a bit foreshadowy when Spike says he just needs to kill the cop, and then checks himself after Buffy’s disapproving cough and he remembers she wouldn’t be pleased if he did that. Or when he later can’t help himself feeling proud that Dru killed a Slayer, but then, faced with Buffy’s glare, quickly adds “Though not from your perspective, I suppose”. So many memorable lines from the B/S scenes - another one is Buffy’s “We’re mortal enemies, we don’t get time-outs”. Don’t say that twice…
The pretending-to-be-in-a-band scene is just hilarious, as is the Joyce/Spike ‘small talk’. Love the reference to School Hard. “You hit me once with an axe, ‘Get the hell away from my daughter’” (a lot of it is in JM’s deadpan delivery). These two will have an interesting relationship. Continuity detail: Spike gets his first invitation to the Summers house, which he’ll use in season 3.
That leads to a very serious scene between Buffy and Joyce after Buffy ‘comes out’. Fitting term, since the metaphor of a teenager coming out to their parents couldn’t be more obvious in this scene: Joyce asking Buffy if she could try not being gay, err a Slayer; “This is all because you didn’t have a strong father figure”; Buffy sayingshe didn’t chose to be this way, and telling her mother that she should have figured it out ages ago, but she just didn’t want to know. Joyce was never portrayed as a perfect mother, just someone who tried hard but was flawed as a parent - and while learning her daughter was a Slayer must have been a big shock, she really comes off as an awful parent in this episode, refusing to accept that her daughter isn’t a ‘normal’ girl and throwing Buffy out of the house.
Meanwhile, Giles gets a great badass moment when, while he’s being tortured, tells Angel that he’s going to tell him how to awaken Acathla: “To be worthy, you have to perform the ritual…in a tutu. Pillock!” It’s fun to see Angel really pissed off, but poor Giles barely escaped losing limbs, when Spike had a better idea to use Drusilla’s skills (Spike’s real motive is to save Giles’s life because he has to fulfill his end of the bargain with Buffy). The inversion of the Spike/Angel roles this seasons gets summed up when Angel remarks on Spike surprisingly becoming level-headed, and Spike’s retort that it was right around the time when Angel became pig-headed. Funny that Angel felt happy for having Spike “watch his back, like old times” - it’s a bit late to be all chummy with Spike, buddy, did you really think he’d be eager to help you after the way you’ve treated him?
Dru doesn’t just have the skill of hypnotism, but also of reading people’s minds, apparently - at least to the extent of knowing what’s on their minds. When she appears to Giles as Jenny to manipulate him into revealing the info about Acathla, it becomes one of the most heartbreaking scenes of a season that’s full of them. It does make a lot of difference when a character who died stayed dead: we get those epic, heartbreaking death scenes in Becoming II, The Gift and Chosen, but they don’t feel as tragic anymore when you know that the character will come back. But when poor Giles is happy to see ‘Jenny’ again, telling her he though he lost her, and when he is seeing who he thinks is Jenny, telling him that they will be together at last, get to have and feel everything they never got to feel (it seems that they never even had sex?), it remains every bit as tragic - even more tragic, knowing that Giles will never find love again.
The moment when Dru she smiles an evil girlish green and says "I was in the moment" is both funny and creepy (just like Dru). Another sign of Dru being "mercurial" as Marti Noxon said in What's My Line 2 commentary (or Buffy would put it less nicely - "a big ho")!
It is pretty funny when Spike and Angel are looking at her and doing: "Um, Dru? Honey? It's enough..."... but on the other hand, poor Giles. It's non-consensual on his part since he was tricked, and how awful it must be for him to hope that Jenny is back and then realize the truth - not to mention that he realizes that he's probably just doomed the world by telling Drusilla how to awaken Acathla!
At the same time, Willow is trying to curse Angel with soul again, despite having just come out of a coma. This is the first time that magic plays a big role for Willow, and a sign of how determined and dedicated she can be. Even though I can’t see any difference between her “resolve face” and her regular face. It seems that, when the spell was starting to work, she became temporarily possessed by the Gypsy woman’s spirit.
Xander’s lie: one of big controversies of the season, maybe even the show. From what I’ve heard, debates about his motives went on that summer until Joss decided to put things straight and explain that it wasn’t out of jealousy/hate for Angel, but for tactical reasons. But his main reason was clearly because he thought Buffy might stall and not fight her best if she thought Angel might get his soul back, I’m sure that the fact that he didn’t care for the guy and wasn’t eager to get him back played its role.
It’s maybe more interesting to think, how did the lie affect the course of events? I’m not sure it made much difference to the fight itself, since the harshest part of it happened after Angel(us) pulled the sword out from Acathla, starting the process of awakening him (and boy, does Acathla need a long time to wake or what), at which point there was no coming back for Angel, soul or no soul. Maybe Buffy would have been less surprised by Angel getting his soul back. But in the end, I think the biggest difference it made might have been for Buffy’s decision to leave Sunnydale. Thinking that Willow, who’s always been the most supportive one of her relationship with Angel, thought that it wasn’t worth trying and just sent her a message to “Kick his ass”, probably contributed to Buffy’s feeling that none of her friends would understand how hard it was for her to kill Angel.
The fight: oh, now it’s clear why the special weapon in the finale had to be a sword: cool sword fight between Buffy and Angel!
Spike gets some overdue satisfaction in hitting Angel over the head with… whatever that object was, but he seems interested in giving him some pain, but not killing him (which makes sense given their complicated sibling-like relationships). Dru’s anger at Spike for betraying them is one of the rare moments when we see her really angry - she is obviously really invested in the whole apocalypse thing. It’s a bit funny to see Spike apologizing to Dru during the fight for having to hurt her. Incidentally, the line: “I don’t wanna hurt you baby… (after she attacks him) Doesn’t mean I won’t” were recycled in season 6 when Buffy told the same to Dark Willow (minus the “baby” part, obviously). Always the tender boyfriend to his princess, not blaming his princess openly for cheating - and not treating her as an adult responsible for her own actions, or worrying about what she wants. Instead, his solution is to get rid of his rival, grab his darling and drag her into his cave… err, car.
The climax of the fight is the iconic moment when Buffy, apparently in a hopeless situation (deprived of her weapon, with nobody to help as her ally just walked out, with the villain about to kill her), stops Angel’s sword with her hand and replies that she’s still got herself, and proceeds to kick his ass. He was already on his knees in front of Acathla and she was about to send him to hell to save the world, but Joss had to have Buffy beat him first, and then have Willow resoul him at that moment, so Buffy would have the maximum amount of heartbreak for having to send him to hell. And now is the time to say something about…
Angel/Angelus: I guess that the moment when Angel doesn’t remember what happened for the last few months is what some fans are basing the two entities theory on, and probably what the writers of AtS season 4 used to write Angel/Angelus dychotomy as something akin to a multiple personality disorder. But part 1 set it up by having the Gypsy Elder explain that Angel doesn’t remember (which the Gypsy wasn’t surprised by) but that he soon will. And in season 3, Angel does remember everything, just like he remembers everything he did before the Gypsies cursed him. In the Doylist interpretation, the not-remembering was simply a device to have a situation where Angel would have his soul back and Buffy would have to kill him (and feel even more guilty because he had no idea what was going on). If Angel had immediately remembered everything, the scene couldn’t have played that way - he’d have stabbed himself or agreed that she do it.
So right after getting him back, Buffy sends Angel to hell, after stealing a few more moments to hug and kiss him for the (as she believes) last time. She tells him “I love you” (in my count of Buffy’s ILYs: this is the 3rd time she told Angel ILY, and the 3rd time she’s told anyone ILY romantically; the first time was in Lie to Me when he asked her to tell him, the second when he dumped her in Innocence.)She tells him “Close your eyes” (echoing Darla, who said the same words before she killed Liam and made him a vampire) and kisses him for the last time, before stabbing him and letting him get sucked into hell.
Does this iconic scene feel as tragic as it would’ve if Becoming II was the end of the series? Well, no - it can’t, when you know that Angel comes back in season 3. (And while Angel being in a hell dimension for 100 years must have been awful, we never really saw the psychological consequences, the way we did see them with Connor.) But it still affects me, watching Buffy’s heartbreak (SMG’s acting is amazing), and knowing that this is the moment that shapes so much of her personality in the future. She won’t be emotionally the same - not because Angel was her “one true love” as some would like to think, but because it was a formative trauma of her life, and she learned the hardest possible way how dangerous it is to give your heart, especially when one has the responsibility of the Slayer. She becomes more emotionally closed down and far less willing to “risk the pain”.
The closing scene has the first (but not the last!) perfect use of a Sarah McLachlan song for a BtVS season finale, this time it’s a sad, desperate “Full of Grace”, capturing Buffy’s feelings as she leaves her mom a note and decides to leave everyone and walk away from her old life, feeling unable to go on being who she is. She’s watching her mom and her friends from afar but can’t go and talk to anyone - and the lyrics seem to explain why better than anything. Not only does she feel that they wouldn’t understand what she’s been through, but, in her emotional state, she wouldn’t be able to be their friend and daughter (and from what we’ve seen in When She Was Bad and later in season 6, a depressed, PTSD Buffy really isn’t good for anyone around her).
I never thought I could feel so low
Oh darkness, I feel like letting go
If all of the strength and all of the courage
Come and lift me from this place,
I know I could love you much better than this
It’s better this way.
Best lines (so many to choose from!):
Spike: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got... dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here. But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real... passion for destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Piccadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square.
Buffy: The whole Earth may be sucked into hell, and you want my help 'cause your girlfriend's a big ho? Well, let me take this opportunity to not care!
Giles: It's a trick. They get inside my head, make me see things I want.
Xander: Then why would they make you see me?
Giles: Oh, right. Let's go.
Angel: Now that's everything, huh? No weapons... No friends...No hope. Take all that away... and what's left?
Buffy: Me.
One I love to quote (especially to comment on Buffyverse mythology): Oz saying „this all is making the kind of sense that’s not“.
Also worth a mention: Buffy telling Whistler “I'm gonna pull out your ribcage and wear it as a hat” - now that’s how you make a threat!
Mythology: This is the first but certainly not the last time that the other dimensions, and the idea of blood of specific people used for opening and closing portals to other dimensions., is a big plot point. When I watched the show the first time, I thought that the hell that Acathla was going to suck the world in was the Hell - that there’s just one as in Christianity - which made Angel being sent to hell seem much graver and less reversible. I think we all, just like Buffy, thought of it as “killing” Angel, but technically, he didn’t die in Becoming II, even though it seemed like the character was being “killed off”. But now we know that there are lots of hell dimensions, and that people can come back from them. This particular hell seemed to be one that evil demons enjoy (or else I suppose he and Dru wouldn’t have been so eager to end up there, and Spike would’ve been more concerned about ending up in there) but that’s presumably awful for humans or good souled vampires (based on how feral and tortured Angel seemed when he came back in season 3). Too bad we never found out more about what it was like in there.
Buffy meets Whistler in this episode, twice, and he doesn’t really offer much help beyond some vague advice. He tells her that nobody saw it coming that she and Angel would fall in love (really?! A teenage girl meets a handsome, mysterious older guy; a guy who’s spent 100 years alone with no purpose in life, is told that he can be important by protecting a beautiful innocent girl that kinda looks like his long-time ex-girlfriend? The possibility never even occurred to them?). Why did Whistler want to bring Angel and Buffy together? Apparently he thought Angel would help Buffy stop the Acathla. Due to Whistler’s role in seasons 8 and 9, there’s been some speculation if he had other reasons, but I’m not sure I like such huge retcons a la Jasmine. And I like the idea that messengers of higher powers can do things based on misinterpreted prophecies.and really screw up.
Inconsistencies: Spike makes Drusilla lose consciousness - by choking her?! The best fanwank I’ve heard is that Dru probably forgot that she doesn’t have to breathe.
Spike badass-o-meter: After a long period of doing nothing but making snarky remarks from a wheelchair,Spike is back to being a major player. He gets major points for being his own man and doing the unexpected, not caring for vampire rules (again) and having the audacity to suggest an alliance to a Slayer and a mortal enemy he tried to kill several times. In the only season that he spent mostly as a villain, Spike’s most important action was being the good guys’ ally. He’s also shown to be smart, resourceful, On the other hand, one might ask how much courage it takes to only take on Angel when he’s got the Slayer as an ally and when he can attack him from the back (kind of like one could ask how much courage it takes for Angel to only pick on Spike when he’s in a wheelchair).. but Spike is a pragmatist, and as Garak would say when asked if he’d shoot a man in the back: “well it’s the safest way, isn’t it?”
Buffy bad liar: “I’m in a band…with Spike here!” - “She plays triangle…” - “Drums.”
Nicknames: or rather sarcastic terms of endearment. Spike addresses Buffy with “Hello, cutie”. Buffy taunts Angel(us) with a snarky “Hello, lover”, the way he taunted her in the previous episode.
Pop culture references: Spike’s “"Goodbye, Piccadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square" is apparently a quote from a British World War I marching song called „It's a Long Way to Tipperary“,which I’d have no idea about if it weren’t for BuffyGuide.com.
Foreshadowing: Unintentional - when Spike says “I want to save the world”, who’d think that he’ll really do it one day.
Fully intentional: as Buffy is leaving town, we see the sign “You’re leaving Sunnydale - Come back soon” or in other words, come back for season 3, viewers, because Buffy won't stay away from Sunnydale for good.
Rating: 5
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As a season finale, it’s one of the best. It perfectly resolves so many storylines from season 2: Buffy’ s strained relationship with her mother, Snyder’s attempts to find a reason to expel Buffy, Willow’s relationships with Xander and Oz, the Spike/Dru/Angel triangle, the B/A romance and the “Angel loses his soul” story; and in the best tradition of bittersweet Whedon finales, it manages to have Buffy defeat the Big Bad and stop an apocalypse, but leaves her emotionally devastated.
Throughout the episode, things just keep going wrong for Buffy, with just an occasional break. First cops want to arrest her for Kendra’s murder and she has to run away, then she finds out that Willow is in hospital with a serious head injury, and that Giles is kidnapped; Snyder uses the opportunity to expel her from school, and later her mother tells her not to come back home, all while she has an apocalypse to stop. If episodes like Prophecy Girl and School Hard were about Buffy surviving because of her connections to family and friends, this one is about coming to the point when you only have yourself to rely on. As foreshadowed by Whistler’s voiceover in part 1, this is where she finds out who she is. And that’s someone who never gives up and keeps fighting, even in the most desperate situation:
Whistler: In the end, you’re all you’ve got.
Buffy: I have nothing left to lose.
Whisler: Wrong, kid. You’ve got one more thing.
Angel(us): No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away, and what is left?
Buffy (stopping his sword with her bare hand): Me.
To make things all the harder for her, she’s put in the position where she has to kill the man she loves to save the world (well, sort of, since Angel gets sucked into hell, but doesn’t actually die). But the emotional cost is too high, and the season 2 finale ends in both triumph and despair, as Buffy runs away from her life, trying to become someone else.
For an episode with so much pain and drama, it also has an amazing amount of humor, sometimes even at the same time. There are two scenes (Buffy and Spike coming up with the lie that they’re in a band, and Joyce and Spike trying to make small talk) that I would rank among the funniest in the show. There’s self-mocking humor even in show’s ending credits this time, as the Mutant Enemy monster doesn’t growl “URGH-ARGH” but whines “Ooh I need a hug!”
I won’t even try to choose the best scene, since there are way too many great ones. I’ll just list all the great scenes and major moments chronologically.
As Buffy visits her friends in the hospital where Willow is still lying unconscious, we see just how serious the situation is, when Xander isn’t able to laugh and joke with Buffy. Cordelia, who has a very small role in the episode, feels bad about running away from the library - the first sign that she wants to be strong and heroic like the rest of the Scoobies, but Buffy reassures her that running away was the best thing she could have done. Those two have come a long way in their relationship.
Xander/Willow/Oz: The first of two big somewhat ambiguous Xander moments in the episode: Xander pours his heart out to the unconscious Willow, telling her how much she means to him, that she is his best friend, and finally “Willow, I love you” only for her to finally wake up and still half-conscious, call out for Oz.
Did Xander mean it 100% as a friend, or with a romantic overtone? The scene certainly plays with the latter, or else the significance of this scene in the Xander/Willow/Oz storyline wouldn’t work. But on the other hand, for Xander to suddenly realize he’s in love with Willow would have been a big revelation that would have probably surprised even him, and it seem to be the case - and he doesn’t seem at all crushed with Willow and Oz’s sweet reunion. My guess is that Xander himself isn’t quite sure - he’s reacting to almost losing Willow and perhaps realizing just how strong his feelings for her are, and he’s confused teenage boy who can’t quite sort out his feelings for 3 important girls in his life. He probably started seeing Willow in romantic light only when she found a boyfriend, and he a) came to see her a sexual being, and 2) was jealous because he wasn’t the main man in her life anymore (as Buffy pointed out back in I, Robot, You Jane). I think the entire Xander/Willow early seasons relationship is largely about childhood friends growing up and not being sure if a girl and a boy can be friends or if they are supposed to be more than that because they’re a girl and a boy. I don’t see Xander’s feelings here as classic romantic jealousy, more like realizing that someone else is now the main object of Willow’s affection.
I always thought this was a perfect resolution to the Xander/Willow/Oz storyline, showing that Willow was really over Xander and in love with someone else - who was really in love with her and was a much better romantic match for her - with the irony that hearing Xander say “I love you” which once would have been all she wanted, now wouldn’t have meant much to her. (Or would have been the perfect resolution - if only the unnecessary Xander/Willow fling in season 3 hadn’t happened, which I’m really not a fan of.)
Snyder expels Buffy: a pay-off to yet another season-long tension - Snyder finally gets to do what he wanted to do for such a long time and promised a few times already. Afterwards whe calls the Mayor to tell him the good news, but while this confirms that he’s been working at Mayor’s orders, he also really hates Buffy and makes it clear he’s enjoying the opportinity (and even givea an ironic speech about the moments you want to savor and relieve,which is oddly similar toWhistler’s “big moments” speech). But it comes at the time when Buffy doesn’t care as much as she normally would have, since she’s got an apocalypse to stop - the good news it that for once she can openly treat him with the contempt he deserves, after more than a year of torment she had to endure. “You never got a single date in high school, did you?” is a good retort but doesn’t upset Snyder the way it would a normal human being, but an even better retort is Buffy simply pulling out her sword that she’ll use to stop Acathla, walking away from the clerly scared Snyder. Another memorable line is Snyder’s Lampshade Hanging comment “In case you haven’t noticed, the police in Sunnydale are deeply stupid.”
Spike and Buffy. And finally we see what Spike’s plan is, which cements the Spike/Angel switch - first the good guy went bad and Buffy’s sweetheart became the Big Bad, and now the former Big Bad goes… a little less bad, and becomes Buffy’s unexpected ally. Unlike part 1, part 2 is about people making choices, and whule Angel is the poster boy for destiny, Spike is one for free will - that’s one of the things that are consistent with his character despite all the changes. He’s the one who does the unexpected, breaks rules, a wild card or “loose canon”. Of course, Spike is still nowhere near being “good” at this point, just the lesser evil at the moment, and his motives for offering an alliance against Angel are dubious and mostly selfish, but it’s still an unexpected lucky break for Buffy, who needs all the help she can get. He is pragmatic and irreverent and more grounded, and he does like the world as he explains in his unforgettable speech, and would rather not have it sucked into hell, but getting Drusilla all to himself is still his main motivation, as we see later when he walks away at the crucial moment of the fight, as soon as he got Dru to himself. (He won’t keep the other promise, either - never to come back to Sunnydale.)
The Spike/Buffy scenes are so enjoyable and the chemistry between them is amazing, whether they’re arguing and negotiating and punching each other, or when they’re fighting together for the first time against Angel’s henchman and immediately working perfectly in synch (something that we’ll see so many times in later seasons, it’s one thing that always works well for them) or when they’re lying to her mom about being in a band - they seem oddly familiar, like people who’ve gone to school together or something, rather than Slayer and a vampire whose conversations before this were always happening while they fought each other. (I remember I used to think when I first watched season 2 how odd it is that I thought Buffy had more chemisty with the guy who was trying to kill her than with her boyfriend - even though I never expected anything to come out of it, and didn’t even entertain an idea at the time.) I love their matter-of-fact, snarky interactions (so much different from the sugarcoated romanticism they showed with their respective lovers, Angel and Dru) and this one is great. When Spike tells her that he wants an alliance to get Dru back, he gets a bit carried away talking about his problems, like he’s using the chance that there’s someone finally there to listen to him talk about his relationship problems - since he can’t make himself try to talk these things through with Dru herself. I love how Buffy points out, not mincing words, how pathetic he is for caring more about jealousy over his fickle girlfriend, than the fate of the world. It recalls Xander’s accusation from part 1, that Buffy wants to forget about Jenny’s murder so she could have her boyfriend back. There are definitely parallels between Buffy and Spike in season 2, in the big fight in this episode they both end up fighting against people they’re in love with; and the contrast, as Buffy puts the fate of the world above wanting her lover back, and Spike doesn’t.
I always think back to these scenes as one of the obvious proofs that the idea that Buffy really thought of soulless Spike as a “thing” is utter BS. Even when he was the enemy, she treated him as this annoying guy she knows, not some anonymous vampire “thing” - all their interactions were very personal. You wouldn’t criticize the character flaws of a “thing”. It’s funny that she snarkily asks him if he forgot that he’s a vampire, but she’s kinda doing that when she calls him pathetic for being selfish and unconcerned about the fate of the world - as if one could expect better from a soulless vampire? She also tells him “I hate you”, which is only the second time she’s said that to a vampire (the first one was Angel in Angel, when Buffy believed he had attacked her mom and made a point that she kills vampires but never hated one before him). The Scoobies always treated the vampires they actually knew as individuals, as people, even if they people they disliked or hated (we’ll see a lot of that with Harmony as well).
It’s also funny and feels a bit foreshadowy when Spike says he just needs to kill the cop, and then checks himself after Buffy’s disapproving cough and he remembers she wouldn’t be pleased if he did that. Or when he later can’t help himself feeling proud that Dru killed a Slayer, but then, faced with Buffy’s glare, quickly adds “Though not from your perspective, I suppose”. So many memorable lines from the B/S scenes - another one is Buffy’s “We’re mortal enemies, we don’t get time-outs”. Don’t say that twice…
The pretending-to-be-in-a-band scene is just hilarious, as is the Joyce/Spike ‘small talk’. Love the reference to School Hard. “You hit me once with an axe, ‘Get the hell away from my daughter’” (a lot of it is in JM’s deadpan delivery). These two will have an interesting relationship. Continuity detail: Spike gets his first invitation to the Summers house, which he’ll use in season 3.
That leads to a very serious scene between Buffy and Joyce after Buffy ‘comes out’. Fitting term, since the metaphor of a teenager coming out to their parents couldn’t be more obvious in this scene: Joyce asking Buffy if she could try not being gay, err a Slayer; “This is all because you didn’t have a strong father figure”; Buffy sayingshe didn’t chose to be this way, and telling her mother that she should have figured it out ages ago, but she just didn’t want to know. Joyce was never portrayed as a perfect mother, just someone who tried hard but was flawed as a parent - and while learning her daughter was a Slayer must have been a big shock, she really comes off as an awful parent in this episode, refusing to accept that her daughter isn’t a ‘normal’ girl and throwing Buffy out of the house.
Meanwhile, Giles gets a great badass moment when, while he’s being tortured, tells Angel that he’s going to tell him how to awaken Acathla: “To be worthy, you have to perform the ritual…in a tutu. Pillock!” It’s fun to see Angel really pissed off, but poor Giles barely escaped losing limbs, when Spike had a better idea to use Drusilla’s skills (Spike’s real motive is to save Giles’s life because he has to fulfill his end of the bargain with Buffy). The inversion of the Spike/Angel roles this seasons gets summed up when Angel remarks on Spike surprisingly becoming level-headed, and Spike’s retort that it was right around the time when Angel became pig-headed. Funny that Angel felt happy for having Spike “watch his back, like old times” - it’s a bit late to be all chummy with Spike, buddy, did you really think he’d be eager to help you after the way you’ve treated him?
Dru doesn’t just have the skill of hypnotism, but also of reading people’s minds, apparently - at least to the extent of knowing what’s on their minds. When she appears to Giles as Jenny to manipulate him into revealing the info about Acathla, it becomes one of the most heartbreaking scenes of a season that’s full of them. It does make a lot of difference when a character who died stayed dead: we get those epic, heartbreaking death scenes in Becoming II, The Gift and Chosen, but they don’t feel as tragic anymore when you know that the character will come back. But when poor Giles is happy to see ‘Jenny’ again, telling her he though he lost her, and when he is seeing who he thinks is Jenny, telling him that they will be together at last, get to have and feel everything they never got to feel (it seems that they never even had sex?), it remains every bit as tragic - even more tragic, knowing that Giles will never find love again.
The moment when Dru she smiles an evil girlish green and says "I was in the moment" is both funny and creepy (just like Dru). Another sign of Dru being "mercurial" as Marti Noxon said in What's My Line 2 commentary (or Buffy would put it less nicely - "a big ho")!
It is pretty funny when Spike and Angel are looking at her and doing: "Um, Dru? Honey? It's enough..."... but on the other hand, poor Giles. It's non-consensual on his part since he was tricked, and how awful it must be for him to hope that Jenny is back and then realize the truth - not to mention that he realizes that he's probably just doomed the world by telling Drusilla how to awaken Acathla!
At the same time, Willow is trying to curse Angel with soul again, despite having just come out of a coma. This is the first time that magic plays a big role for Willow, and a sign of how determined and dedicated she can be. Even though I can’t see any difference between her “resolve face” and her regular face. It seems that, when the spell was starting to work, she became temporarily possessed by the Gypsy woman’s spirit.
Xander’s lie: one of big controversies of the season, maybe even the show. From what I’ve heard, debates about his motives went on that summer until Joss decided to put things straight and explain that it wasn’t out of jealousy/hate for Angel, but for tactical reasons. But his main reason was clearly because he thought Buffy might stall and not fight her best if she thought Angel might get his soul back, I’m sure that the fact that he didn’t care for the guy and wasn’t eager to get him back played its role.
It’s maybe more interesting to think, how did the lie affect the course of events? I’m not sure it made much difference to the fight itself, since the harshest part of it happened after Angel(us) pulled the sword out from Acathla, starting the process of awakening him (and boy, does Acathla need a long time to wake or what), at which point there was no coming back for Angel, soul or no soul. Maybe Buffy would have been less surprised by Angel getting his soul back. But in the end, I think the biggest difference it made might have been for Buffy’s decision to leave Sunnydale. Thinking that Willow, who’s always been the most supportive one of her relationship with Angel, thought that it wasn’t worth trying and just sent her a message to “Kick his ass”, probably contributed to Buffy’s feeling that none of her friends would understand how hard it was for her to kill Angel.
The fight: oh, now it’s clear why the special weapon in the finale had to be a sword: cool sword fight between Buffy and Angel!
Spike gets some overdue satisfaction in hitting Angel over the head with… whatever that object was, but he seems interested in giving him some pain, but not killing him (which makes sense given their complicated sibling-like relationships). Dru’s anger at Spike for betraying them is one of the rare moments when we see her really angry - she is obviously really invested in the whole apocalypse thing. It’s a bit funny to see Spike apologizing to Dru during the fight for having to hurt her. Incidentally, the line: “I don’t wanna hurt you baby… (after she attacks him) Doesn’t mean I won’t” were recycled in season 6 when Buffy told the same to Dark Willow (minus the “baby” part, obviously). Always the tender boyfriend to his princess, not blaming his princess openly for cheating - and not treating her as an adult responsible for her own actions, or worrying about what she wants. Instead, his solution is to get rid of his rival, grab his darling and drag her into his cave… err, car.
The climax of the fight is the iconic moment when Buffy, apparently in a hopeless situation (deprived of her weapon, with nobody to help as her ally just walked out, with the villain about to kill her), stops Angel’s sword with her hand and replies that she’s still got herself, and proceeds to kick his ass. He was already on his knees in front of Acathla and she was about to send him to hell to save the world, but Joss had to have Buffy beat him first, and then have Willow resoul him at that moment, so Buffy would have the maximum amount of heartbreak for having to send him to hell. And now is the time to say something about…
Angel/Angelus: I guess that the moment when Angel doesn’t remember what happened for the last few months is what some fans are basing the two entities theory on, and probably what the writers of AtS season 4 used to write Angel/Angelus dychotomy as something akin to a multiple personality disorder. But part 1 set it up by having the Gypsy Elder explain that Angel doesn’t remember (which the Gypsy wasn’t surprised by) but that he soon will. And in season 3, Angel does remember everything, just like he remembers everything he did before the Gypsies cursed him. In the Doylist interpretation, the not-remembering was simply a device to have a situation where Angel would have his soul back and Buffy would have to kill him (and feel even more guilty because he had no idea what was going on). If Angel had immediately remembered everything, the scene couldn’t have played that way - he’d have stabbed himself or agreed that she do it.
So right after getting him back, Buffy sends Angel to hell, after stealing a few more moments to hug and kiss him for the (as she believes) last time. She tells him “I love you” (in my count of Buffy’s ILYs: this is the 3rd time she told Angel ILY, and the 3rd time she’s told anyone ILY romantically; the first time was in Lie to Me when he asked her to tell him, the second when he dumped her in Innocence.)She tells him “Close your eyes” (echoing Darla, who said the same words before she killed Liam and made him a vampire) and kisses him for the last time, before stabbing him and letting him get sucked into hell.
Does this iconic scene feel as tragic as it would’ve if Becoming II was the end of the series? Well, no - it can’t, when you know that Angel comes back in season 3. (And while Angel being in a hell dimension for 100 years must have been awful, we never really saw the psychological consequences, the way we did see them with Connor.) But it still affects me, watching Buffy’s heartbreak (SMG’s acting is amazing), and knowing that this is the moment that shapes so much of her personality in the future. She won’t be emotionally the same - not because Angel was her “one true love” as some would like to think, but because it was a formative trauma of her life, and she learned the hardest possible way how dangerous it is to give your heart, especially when one has the responsibility of the Slayer. She becomes more emotionally closed down and far less willing to “risk the pain”.
The closing scene has the first (but not the last!) perfect use of a Sarah McLachlan song for a BtVS season finale, this time it’s a sad, desperate “Full of Grace”, capturing Buffy’s feelings as she leaves her mom a note and decides to leave everyone and walk away from her old life, feeling unable to go on being who she is. She’s watching her mom and her friends from afar but can’t go and talk to anyone - and the lyrics seem to explain why better than anything. Not only does she feel that they wouldn’t understand what she’s been through, but, in her emotional state, she wouldn’t be able to be their friend and daughter (and from what we’ve seen in When She Was Bad and later in season 6, a depressed, PTSD Buffy really isn’t good for anyone around her).
I never thought I could feel so low
Oh darkness, I feel like letting go
If all of the strength and all of the courage
Come and lift me from this place,
I know I could love you much better than this
It’s better this way.
Best lines (so many to choose from!):
Spike: We like to talk big. Vampires do. 'I'm going to destroy the world.' That's just tough guy talk. Strutting around with your friends over a pint of blood. The truth is, I like this world. You've got... dog racing, Manchester United. And you've got people. Billions of people walking around like Happy Meals with legs. It's all right here. But then someone comes along with a vision. With a real... passion for destruction. Angel could pull it off. Goodbye, Piccadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square.
Buffy: The whole Earth may be sucked into hell, and you want my help 'cause your girlfriend's a big ho? Well, let me take this opportunity to not care!
Giles: It's a trick. They get inside my head, make me see things I want.
Xander: Then why would they make you see me?
Giles: Oh, right. Let's go.
Angel: Now that's everything, huh? No weapons... No friends...No hope. Take all that away... and what's left?
Buffy: Me.
One I love to quote (especially to comment on Buffyverse mythology): Oz saying „this all is making the kind of sense that’s not“.
Also worth a mention: Buffy telling Whistler “I'm gonna pull out your ribcage and wear it as a hat” - now that’s how you make a threat!
Mythology: This is the first but certainly not the last time that the other dimensions, and the idea of blood of specific people used for opening and closing portals to other dimensions., is a big plot point. When I watched the show the first time, I thought that the hell that Acathla was going to suck the world in was the Hell - that there’s just one as in Christianity - which made Angel being sent to hell seem much graver and less reversible. I think we all, just like Buffy, thought of it as “killing” Angel, but technically, he didn’t die in Becoming II, even though it seemed like the character was being “killed off”. But now we know that there are lots of hell dimensions, and that people can come back from them. This particular hell seemed to be one that evil demons enjoy (or else I suppose he and Dru wouldn’t have been so eager to end up there, and Spike would’ve been more concerned about ending up in there) but that’s presumably awful for humans or good souled vampires (based on how feral and tortured Angel seemed when he came back in season 3). Too bad we never found out more about what it was like in there.
Buffy meets Whistler in this episode, twice, and he doesn’t really offer much help beyond some vague advice. He tells her that nobody saw it coming that she and Angel would fall in love (really?! A teenage girl meets a handsome, mysterious older guy; a guy who’s spent 100 years alone with no purpose in life, is told that he can be important by protecting a beautiful innocent girl that kinda looks like his long-time ex-girlfriend? The possibility never even occurred to them?). Why did Whistler want to bring Angel and Buffy together? Apparently he thought Angel would help Buffy stop the Acathla. Due to Whistler’s role in seasons 8 and 9, there’s been some speculation if he had other reasons, but I’m not sure I like such huge retcons a la Jasmine. And I like the idea that messengers of higher powers can do things based on misinterpreted prophecies.and really screw up.
Inconsistencies: Spike makes Drusilla lose consciousness - by choking her?! The best fanwank I’ve heard is that Dru probably forgot that she doesn’t have to breathe.
Spike badass-o-meter: After a long period of doing nothing but making snarky remarks from a wheelchair,Spike is back to being a major player. He gets major points for being his own man and doing the unexpected, not caring for vampire rules (again) and having the audacity to suggest an alliance to a Slayer and a mortal enemy he tried to kill several times. In the only season that he spent mostly as a villain, Spike’s most important action was being the good guys’ ally. He’s also shown to be smart, resourceful, On the other hand, one might ask how much courage it takes to only take on Angel when he’s got the Slayer as an ally and when he can attack him from the back (kind of like one could ask how much courage it takes for Angel to only pick on Spike when he’s in a wheelchair).. but Spike is a pragmatist, and as Garak would say when asked if he’d shoot a man in the back: “well it’s the safest way, isn’t it?”
Buffy bad liar: “I’m in a band…with Spike here!” - “She plays triangle…” - “Drums.”
Nicknames: or rather sarcastic terms of endearment. Spike addresses Buffy with “Hello, cutie”. Buffy taunts Angel(us) with a snarky “Hello, lover”, the way he taunted her in the previous episode.
Pop culture references: Spike’s “"Goodbye, Piccadilly. Farewell, Leicester Bloody Square" is apparently a quote from a British World War I marching song called „It's a Long Way to Tipperary“,which I’d have no idea about if it weren’t for BuffyGuide.com.
Foreshadowing: Unintentional - when Spike says “I want to save the world”, who’d think that he’ll really do it one day.
Fully intentional: as Buffy is leaving town, we see the sign “You’re leaving Sunnydale - Come back soon” or in other words, come back for season 3, viewers, because Buffy won't stay away from Sunnydale for good.
Rating: 5
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