List: Buffy Season Finales

I think enough time has passed since my Buffy obsession phase to take an objective look back at the best and worst of Buffy -- particularly the all-important season finales, where story lines supposedly get wrapped up amidst epic action sequences, major romantic shake-ups, and surprising character deaths.



From Best to Worst:

1. Becoming, Parts 1 and 2 (Season Two): The end to an amazing and iconic sophomore season, this epic finale had it all -- sword fights, death scenes, tearful goodbyes. Willow becomes a full-blown witch, Spike becomes a reluctant ally, Buffy becomes the hero the world needs, and Angel becomes a giant skewer.

2. Graduation Day, Parts 1 and 2 (Season Three): Graduation Day is naturally a fitting end to Buffy's high school chapter, fulfilling all of our childhood dreams of literally blowing up her high school building. But before that happens, there are some awesome fight scenes between Buffy and Faith, Angel leaves to headline his own iconic spinoff show, Willow and Oz get it on, and Xander...stands around and quips?

3. The Gift (Season Five): What really should have been the series finale, the end of season five was the end of the Buffy we all knew and loved. While Glory was a pretty weak villain overall, the final confrontation had pretty high stakes (heh) and presented the Scoobies as a united team. Even Spike was -- wait, no, Spike was useless. In the end, Buffy died a death befitting a hero -- sacrificing herself for the ones she loved.

4. Prophecy Girl (Season One): Season one was in general pretty campy and a product of its time, and the finale was no exception. Although somewhat goofy, the show did touch on heavy themes for the first time, forcing Buffy to confront mortality and showing the audience that the show wasn't afraid to put it's heroine in danger.

5. Restless (Season Four): The artsy fartsy season finale. It steered away from the typical showdown between Buffy and the season's Big Bad, which happened in the previous episode, and instead focused on the dreams of our four main characters. They are all haunted by the presence of the first slayer, a pretty cool concept they introduced (and then totally destroyed in the seventh season). It was fun trying to discern all of the symbolism and foreshadowing in each dream, but ultimately felt pretentious and self-important.

6. Grave (Season Six): Season six is almost universally hated, but the finale wasn't that terrible. A lot of people didn't like the saccharine crayon speech Xander gives at the end, but I thought it was affecting and well-done. I also always liked the idea of regular human Xander saving the world for once, even though Xander was a pretty shitty friend for the majority of the season. But our titular hero spends almost the entire episode literally trapped in a grave in one of the most boring and useless subplots ever to show up in a season finale.

7. Chosen (Season Seven): I will never, NEVER, forgive the show for having Spike single-handedly save the entire world on a show that is supposed to be about girl power. I mean, Spike, for god's sake! Not only is he a man, he is a murdering, abusive, attempted rapist! The slayers don't do anything except needlessly die until Spike shows up and puts on an amulet (an amulet that the show JUST introduced the episode before), destroying the Hellmouth and all of the uber-vamps inside. And don't even get me started on the whole thing where Buffy activates all of the slayers around the world without their consent, when just a few episodes earlier they make a specific point that the men who infected the first slayer with powers were completely violating that woman. Great feminist messages, show!