Buffy rewatch: 3.10. Amends

[boot_the_grime]

Amends is an episode that was really necessary in season 3. Since Angel's mysterious return from hell, Buffy and Angel have both been avoiding the elephant in the room - Angel’s crimes in season 2, and the question what could have brought him back. This is a very dark, intense and emotional episode about guilt, forgiveness and redemption,

Comments

[red_satin_doll]

she argues that he has the potential to be someone better in the future, and he has to try: “You have the power to do real good, Angel, to make amends. But if you die now, then all you ever were was a monster.“ He was her first love, and a source of great trauma, and the pain and guilt for sending him to hell only made it harder to let go; on some level, maybe it’s not just about saving his life; it’s about saving his soul (not literally) - she needs the only love she’s had up to that point to be a source of goodness and hope, not just badness and destruction. I haven't watched that ep again since the first time I saw it a few months back; so it's interesting to read your review of it in light of S7, and the "I believe in you" scene in the basement with Spike: clear-sighted and rational. She gives Spike strength because she "believes" in him, rather than pleading that she "loves" him as with Angel; she comes from a place of strength rather than emotional neediness