Even though Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s final season was a mixed bag in terms of quality, the very last line of the show is sheer perfection. After seven seasons of Buffy and the Scoobies experiencing heartbreak, growing up, and saving the world a lot, Buffy season 7 often sidelined its core cast in favor of introducing myriad Potential Slayers to help the gang in the ultimate fight against the First Evil.
But what a fight it was. Not everyone made it out alive, with Spike sacrificing himself to save the world and Anya controversially dying in battle, but the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series finale, “Chosen,” sees the Slayer emerge victorious after Willow casts a mega-powerful spell instilling every Potential with her Slayer powers.
Buffy and the survivors evacuate just in time before the Hellmouth collapses, swallowing the entire town of Sunnydale. As the Scoobies take a moment to appreciate the magnitude of what they accomplished, Dawn asks her older sister, “What are we gonna do now?” It may sound like an innocuous question, but it carries tremendous weight, and as a closing line, it is a masterpiece of fantasy television.
Why Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Closing Line Is The Best In Fantasy TV
Right from Buffy‘s opening scene, the show has always been about subverting tropes, whether it’s the beautiful young blonde hunting monsters instead of becoming their prey, or the entire concept of the Chosen One. Despite her eye rolls and protests, Buffy accepts her destiny as the “One Girl in All the World,” but she insists on bucking tradition by utilizing the help of friends rather than undergoing her mission alone.
Though the stuffy, mostly male Watchers Council balks at this shameless, potentially world-ending defiance of sacred tradition, the Scoobies prove time and again that the fight against evil is everyone’s responsibility, not the burden of a Chosen One, and that by using collective strength, they are unstoppable. If Buffy had ventured into the Sunnydale High basement alone, she would have died, and the First would have won; it’s Willow’s spell that saves the world, one that is infinitely safer with multiple Slayers.
Buffy and the Scoobies accomplished the impossible and completely upset the power structure, which is the ultimate feat in the fantasy genre. The quest that these heroes have devoted their lives to is over, at least as they know it, leading Dawn to ask her question and Buffy to respond with a quiet smile as she’s able to acknowledge her true freedom for the first time. Good triumphed over evil, and the collective proved stronger than the individual — it doesn’t get more fantasy-perfect than that.
Buffy’s Closing Line Perfectly Captures The Show’s Themes
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a show with many themes — high school as hell, the horrors of adulthood, etc. — but at its core it has always been about female empowerment. It’s the ultimate paradox that Buffy Summers, a petite teenage girl, is the strongest person in the entire world and an absolute heroine, yet she is still at the mercy of a patriarchal system that forced her into danger and told her it was her sole responsibility to save the world.
By devising a plan and working with the other most powerful person in the world, Willow, Buffy is able to empower every woman with Slayer powers, allowing them to embrace agency over an oppressive, prescribed destiny — and also better accomplishing the mission the men who created the First Slayer claimed they wanted to serve.
Reese Witherspoon gave a famous 2015 speech in which she called out the staggering number of films and TV shows that feature a female character asking a man, “What do we do now?” Yes, the closing line in one of the most feminist shows in television history is another iteration of that question, but the fact that it’s addressed to a woman who changed not only her own life but the entire world after a bunch of men told her she couldn’t speaks volumes. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is iconic because Buffy, like every woman, knows how to answer that question.
- Release Date
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1997 – 2003-00-00
- Network
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The WB