The beat of the ocean,
the rhythm of the fire
(spoilers for Chosen) the final Buffy episode
So, weird to think my only reaction thus far was in a complaint thread
and, uh, errr, I loved Chosen. It had a beat and you could dance to it.
Watching it and hearing the rhythm of my heart as those last unspoiled
moments slipped away. Into the desert and the winding road.
I love road trips. Okay, I love travel. But there’s just something about
a road across a desert. Black tarmac curving slicing through the dust.
What can I say? I’m an American. Road trips. They’re like a Constitutional
right or something.
And the Sunnydale that was in that strange liminal luminal place that
was on the sea, in the mountains, with forests and the trees and the clean
vast desert. What was once night now day.
The desert
Where the son of God is tempted. Where only mad Englishmen like to roam.
Where Buffy talked to the First Slayer. Where she has to love, give, forgive.
Burn brightly. Where Buffy’ll be a fireman when the floods role back.
The sound of my beating heart. The sound of the waves pulling back from
the shore.
I consider where all the characters were at the beginning of the season.
Willow in green England connected to the earth. Spike deep in the earth.
The spark burns. Anya so powerful that nations burned. Dawn and Xander
and Buffy in their little quazi family.
Ow, forget the beginning of the season. Farther. The beginning of the
series. Buffy dreaming of girls and monsters and look school. Seven years
(well, technically six and half, but whatever)
Buffy clawing her way out of the earth in book ended set. Preceded by
her seraphim flight Joinings that saw bullets into doves. Graduation to
Summer. Farewell to love with a kiss.
God, first season. Everyone so plump and un-plucked partridge young.
We’ve come a long way. From rejecting being the Slayer to having so
much power that she’s giving it away. “The” into “a”.
Willow turning from the softer side of Sears to black taking to the
everything give of white. Nifty.
I’m entranced by that image of the clasped hands. Fingers threaded and
then burst into flames. Buffy, who has always been the hands, letting go.
I’m reminded of an interview with JM from, I think, second season. He
said something like he hoped that whenever it was that they killed Spike,
that he’d get a good death. Not a staking, but you know, be hit by a train
or something.
I’d say he got his wish five years later.
Cleansing, purifying fire. Pretty.
It’s all about power. Or was that control? Or was that choice? Maybe
it’s just letting all of the irrelevancies melt away.
Am I worried about the logistics of a thousand or so girls now made
super roaming the world? No more than I am of demon clans and electo women
and monks who can make girls of sugar and spice and everything useless
unless you’re baking.
I feel like I should have some sort of profound wa, but really I’m still
mulling. That strange scene with Spike and Buffy standing on opposite sides
of that basement just looking at each other.
Dawn kicking Buffy’s shin, “If you die, I’m telling.” Letting go of
parental control. Dawn is what, 16. The age that Buffy was when she went
into the earth to face the Master. When so many possibilities were opened
up.
Prophecy Girl. Chosen. Choosing. All the potentialities of power opening
like that flower from Paraguay.
Connected. Remembering that the earth is dark with teeth, but the green
reaches up yearning to the light.
And I consider Anya. She wasn’t necessarily well served by the latter
end of the season. But for her to raise a weapon to protect something that
she had loathed for so long. What she had planned to barter for love and
respect so long ago. Having given up vast dark connected power, she fights
for the confused milling mass that is us. Floppy eared and soft. Velveteen
rabbits and wooden boys into real.
Shopping for shoes. Drowning in souls.
It seems that when the Hellmouth ate them, it did indeed choke. And
then itself consumed into itself.
A fitting, well, prye isn’t really right, monument for all the fallen.
A dimple in the earth. Like the vision of hell in Dante, the cone pit made
when power to himself grasping bright Lucifer fell.
Now that they’ve climbed out to see once more the blazing sun, time
enough to travel round to find Purgatory. To bake. To sleep, perchance
to dream not of Slayers who have died, but who live and struggle and grow
in the light.
No longer lights hidden under a bushel. Free to burn or shine as they
choose.
Neat.
Keen.
Nifty.
Not doomed, just work to be done. The work of living.
Where do they go from here?
Where not?
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