Buffy series finale (spoilers)

[TwistedBishop]

Exactly, it's inane and pointless.

Her plan was for 30 slayers to kill an entire dimension of ubervamps? In just the brief bit of fighting they got to do, most of the potentials were wiped out (judging by how many escaped at the end). And that was just after fighting a tiny fraction of the hell dimension's vamp population. Did you see the wave of ubervamps when Spike's amulet went off? It was suicide.

I find it ironic that just a couple episodes before they made such a big deal about her total lack of planning with the wine cellar disaster. Then, they just blindly accept her "melee one million ubervamps to death" plan.

 

[John Crichton]

Exactly, it's inane and pointless.

Her plan was for 30 slayers to kill an entire dimension of ubervamps? In just the brief bit of fighting they got to do, most of the potentials were wiped out (judging by how many escaped at the end). And that was just after fighting a tiny fraction of the hell dimension's vamp population. Did you see the wave of ubervamps when Spike's amulet went off? It was suicide.

I find it ironic that just a couple episodes before they made such a big deal about her total lack of planning with the wine cellar disaster. Then, they just blindly accept her "melee one million ubervamps to death" plan.

I'm thinking that you're putting too much weight into the "We're going to win" statement she made before revealing the final plan. Every leader has to at least think they are going to win to be effective at all. Did she really believe it? That is up to you. I think she did on some level but it was a minor breakthru and one of the only positives to come her way in some time. She was fully aware that they may loose no matter what. She said it to Angel at the beginning of the ep.

Basically, she gave them a fighting chance. It was revealed earler in the season that the First acted now because of something to do with the Slayer line. The First harped on that fear again which tipped Buffy off to an idea. Not all that unlike previous season finale plans which all involved fighting and violence. It was a desperation move and pretty much their only option. She decided to strike first given the opening she had.

And this was a much better plan than the wine cellar issue, which she happened to be right about.

 

[TwistedBishop]

I'm not even thinking about the "We're going to win" line. They were going to lose. There was no chance. If Buffy hadn't seen the huge army of ubervamps in a vision, it would have been slightly different. At least she wouldn't have known it was a hopeless battle. But she did.

That Buffy is willing to throw their lives away pointlessly is the problem. Compare that to the wine cellar, where at least Buffy thought Caleb had something of hers the first time. There was some POINT to going in. What was the point of going into hell to fight the ubers? If you want to believe that 30 people can melee to death a million ubervamps rushing them, there's not much hope in arguing the logic of it.

That their victory was in no way, shape, or form dependant on the slayers is another problem. Spike's amulet won. All the slayers did was alert the ubervamp population they were there and kill time. This is a huge fault on the part of the writers. Never before have they been so lazy with a finale. Always in the past the main characters have took the initiative, decided what to do, followed through with it and saved the day. That's the whole point of enjoying their victories. Why choose for your big finale to have them fall backwards into it by happenstance?

 

[Jemal]

About the "rush in and fight" plan:
Buffy had 3 choices...
ONE: Wait for the uber-vamps to be released, and then try fighting them after they've been unleashed on the world.
TWO: Run, hide, and wait for the end of the world.
THREE: Rush in suicidally hoping that they'd be able to slow them down, maybe kill a lot of them, and basically hope that SOMETHING happens because they didn't have any other hope.

And about the spike's amulet thing.. Buffy knew it would do SOMETHING, she just didn't know what. Angel wouldn't have brought it and said she needed a vampire with a soul to wear it if it wasn't important for something. She KNEW it wasn't just a trinket, and so combined with the fact that she didn't really have any other choice, she took spike and the potentials into Hell, hoping for the best.

Could anyone here come up with a better plan, knowing only what she knew and having only those resources she had?

 

[TwistedBishop]

You're considering the finale from where the writers dumped us off: having no plan and loaded down with gimmicks. That they wrote in no options for her is their fault, not ours for being unable to conjure one from their mess of a storyline. I wouldn't have thought of blowing up Sunnydale high for the Mayor, of creating SuperBuffy for Adam, or of talking down Willow. They pulled those off well. It's a shame that for the big showdown it was left with "eh, something will come up".

 

[John Crichton]

I'm not even thinking about the "We're going to win" line. They were going to lose. There was no chance. If Buffy hadn't seen the huge army of ubervamps in a vision, it would have been slightly different. At least she wouldn't have known it was a hopeless battle. But she did.

It obviously wasn't a hopeless battle because they won. If you want to blame the writers for a crummy season and setup to the finale so for it but I see this as no different from the previous 3 times she saved the world. Every single time a wildcard saved the day.

Against Adam they used a spell that they had no idea would do anything at all. There were no assurances that she would win the day.

Against Glory she figured at the last second that she could sacrifice herself to win. That wasn't any time of plan.

Against Willow she wasn't even there at the end. Xander was the wildcard this time.

And this time it was Spike/The Amulet who was the wildcard.

Obviously, you didn't dig the final but your facts don't add up. If you would as Jamdin said give us a better plan or a better plot go for it.

That Buffy is willing to throw their lives away pointlessly is the problem. Compare that to the wine cellar, where at least Buffy thought Caleb had something of hers the first time. There was some POINT to going in. What was the point of going into hell to fight the ubers? If you want to believe that 30 people can melee to death a million ubervamps rushing them, there's not much hope in arguing the logic of it.

We are talking about a show with vampires, werewolves, witches and a 95 pound girl who has superpowers. 30 vs. one million is hardly a stretch. There's a reason she's a hero.

That their victory was in no way, shape, or form dependant on the slayers is another problem. Spike's amulet won. All the slayers did was alert the ubervamp population they were there and kill time. This is a huge fault on the part of the writers. Never before have they been so lazy with a finale. Always in the past the main characters have took the initiative, decided what to do, followed through with it and saved the day. That's the whole point of enjoying their victories. Why choose for your big finale to have them fall backwards into it by happenstance?

If you can prove that the slayers had no effect, please so do. We don't know how the amulet was activated. It just used Spike as a vessel, there is nothing that says how it came to life.

And as for previous seasons I believe that I have already illustrated that there were wildcard factors all over the place in many of the finales, not just this one. And there hasn't been a plan everytime. Most of the time its just the Scoobies being there and doing there thing. Was this season's ending as good as say 2 & 3, nope. But it was entertaining. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it as much as some of us did.

 

[LostSoul]

The finale was pretty much like every other episode:

1) Introduce monster.
2) Try to find out what it's all about.
3) Worry about monster, maybe complain that you can't kill it.
4) Buffy beats up monster.

There really wasn't any option other than Buffy fighting all those vampires toe-to-toe. That would be a total departure for the entire series.

I lost faith in the show a long time ago (but loved the first three seasons, so I kept hoping it would turn 'round). I really hated the whole "Glory" season, because in the end Buffy didn't have to die. She should have just walked up to the god and smacked her around with the hammer. Done and done.

So I wasn't really surprised at the poor resolution of the series. And, if I was Buffy, I would have told the Army about the other dimension and had them fire some nukes in there. Not like those "uber" vamps could do much against a tank. So for me, the First = no threat.

First few seasons good, but at the end there wasn't really much imagination.

 

[S'mon]

So I wasn't really surprised at the poor resolution of the series. And, if I was Buffy, I would have told the Army about the other dimension and had them fire some nukes in there. Not like those "uber" vamps could do much against a tank. So for me, the First = no threat.

Detonating a nuke within the Hell dimension would presumably have pretty much the exact same result as the amulet did, so calling the Initiative and getting military help would indeed seem like a logical approach. Leading the new Slayers into the hell dimension would've made sense if there were some kind of known achievable objective there, withb which they could help - an enemy commander who could be killed, say, or a way to close the Hellmouth. Since there was apparently no known achievable objective it didn't seem to make sense. Even if they'd known what the amulet would do, Spike + a small bodyguard group would've made more sense, the rest of them should've just been watching the exit. Talking of which, I couldn't understand why the Scoobies were scattered in small, easily killable groups about the school rather than at the actual hell-gate, the obvious point of defense. BTW anyone know how Andrew wasn't killed, with Ubers in front, Bringers behind & Anya dead?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Do you know if nukes and tanks do work in hell dimensions?
And what would they cause? Mutated Ubervamps?
(From a D20 Modern Perspective: Undead like Vampires don`t have a constitution score, and radiation sickness causes con-drain... )

Using conventional weaponry is usually not a valid option in Buffyverse. (The Sunnydale Initiative finally failed, even if it still exists after that season, and even they used special weapons. Only when buffy used that bazooka to kill that world destroying demon in Season 2 or 3 they used a normal weapon...)

Mustrum Ridcully

 

[John Crichton]

Yes, it has been more or less proven that modern technology has little effect against most of the bad guys in the Jossverse. With the one exception of The Judge everything else has to be taken down by more archaic means. I venture to say that a nuke wouldn't have done a whole lot except kill a bunch of humans living outside Sunnydale.