She's Gonna Die

The final episode of the first season ofBuffy the Vampire Slayer is unique in its presentation. The overarching show is built on life-and-death stakes, and prophecy figures. Using that structure to foretell that Buffy will die is, then, "playing by the rules" of the show and sets the stakes as high as they can go to close the first chapter of the overarching series.

“Prophecy Girl” distinguishes itself as one of the best early episodes of the series, not because Buffy fights through the prophecy (it’s sort of a given she will), nor because the prophecy proves more or less true (“dying” only to be brought back by CPR straddles the line between clever and contrived). No, I’d suggest that what makes this one as good as it is is that Buffy’s reaction is to cry, be afraid, and mourn the life she’s known. She’s a hero for ultimately fighting on, but first she’s a human for experiencing a very relatable sense of doubt and sorrow.

Indeed, Buffy isn’t the only one to face her limitations. A hitherto emboldened Willow, on her way to the iconic strong woman she’ll ultimately be, gets smacked down into her place when she’s the one to come upon the bodies of students whom vampires brutally murdered in school grounds. Giles has his own kind of crisis of faith in aiming to fight in Buffy’s place, with every implication he expects to die in her place, too. Angel, for all of his heroics, faces his limitations because he does not physically have breath to breathe into Buffy’s body after she drowns, thus leaving not only the slayer but her super hero-esque boyfriend at the mercy of Xander of all people.

So “Prophecy Girl” is about crises of faith and those moments when we seemingly don’t have it in us to carry forward against overwhelming odds. What does it say that Buffy and friends do ultimately prevail, surviving and slaying The Master, with Buffy even getting to wear a well-received gown to the spring dance afterward?

These victories could be dismissed as cliches of the TV hero, but the nature of each character’s, and most particularly Buffy’s redemption leans less on individual strength and resourcefulness than the support the good guys find in one another. Xander, probably the weakest Scoobie, breathes Buffy back to life. Buffy protects Giles from himself in fighting her own fight, and empowers Willow by avenging the scene she witnessed and demonstrating once and for all that good can win out.

It’s a central concern for this show that there’s strength in community. Season two sees Spike, a slayer of slayers, explicitly attribute Buffy’s un-kill-ability to the network of support. Season three sees not just the Scoobies, but a quorum of high school classmates rally together to fight the mayor, not to mention that Faith is established as an example of what Buffy might have been without a loving family and friends to lean on. These themes carry straight through to the seventh and final season, in which the only way to beat back evil itself, and the only way to truly free Buffy from carrying the weight of the world turns out to be in spreading the load: going from the chosen one to the chosen ones, in an army of slayers.

“Prophecy Girl” sees Buffy die. That much is inevitable. With her character’s passing, the show as we know it, too, dies and is resurrected as season two brings with it far fresher villains than The Master, and an increasingly rich sense of mythology as we know these characters, their relationships, and their (no pun intended) stakes better going into a second season.