If you could change ONE thing about the Season Finale...

[Nathan]

What would it be? Just one thing only...

Mine would be Anya's death; I did want some characters to die, but it was how they did it; I felt it was far too quick, it was a "blink and you'll miss it" scene, which as an Anya fan, disappointed me.

 

[Hale Caesar]

I thought season 7 in general was bad, so it's hard to pick one thing out of the finale, but if I had to choose I would definitely say Anya's death, it was just random and unnecessary

 

[PrincessBuffy16]

Anya's death too. I would never kill her. Or at least I would give her a proper ending.

 

[dexeded]

The gaping plothole on how easily the Turok-Han were defeated.

 

[The Scourge]

I would have liked for some characters to actually care that Anya died, and not be making jokes soon after.

 

[nightshade]

I agree with Anya's death, I know Emma wanted Anya to be killed off, but they could have made it more important than what it was

 

[Kean]

The slayer spell never would have happened.

 

[Washburne]

Making it a double episode so they didn't need to rush things.

Yes, I know. That was kind of cheating.

---------- Post added at 08:05 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:01 PM ----------

The slayer spell never would have happened.

Leading to everyone dying? Many people died as it was and with only Buffy and Faith with slayerpowers the fight would have gone even worse, no? Which can be debated forever I guess. Just sharing my instant and not fully thought through thoughts.

Or just so season 8 didn't become what it became?

 

[Kean]

Leading to everyone dying? Many people died as it was and with only Buffy and Faith with slayerpowers the fight would have gone even worse, no? Which can be debated forever I guess. Just sharing my instant and not fully thought through thoughts.

Or just so season 8 didn't become what it became?

What came after is definitely a major reason for me choosing this, but mostly I hate that thousands of girls had slayerhood forced on them.

As for the people dying, well, it wasn't the potentials/slayers that stopped the First and the Turok-Han, it was the amulet. Whether the potential/slayers were there or not, that still would have happened.

I would have much preferred if Buffy had actually told Angel to stay (not for that reason) and used his resources at W&H. They could have had an army of anything there in a heartbeat. In that case Buffy could have offered the potentials a real choice and asked if they wanted to stay and fight, or go home.

Even if the Angel angle wasn't worked, Willow could have done a spell to hold the vamps off, or cloak Buffy and the other super heroes until the Turok-Han hit the streets of the school and bit sunlight.

My point is, the slayer spell was actually entirely unnecessary, the key to defeating The First was the amulet.

The fact that spell-less alternative would have prevented S8 from happening is really just the icing on the cake.

 

[Kemy]

One simple thing, a "Sunlight Shield".

The only opening the entire Vampire army had was that Goat head portal, thats all, a bottleneck. Thats the worst possible military tactic, compressing your forces into a line that can be mown down.

If Buffy had had them open the manhole thing as before, but have Willow and the Wicca Slayers create a barrier or shield in the mouth of it, that if anything touched would glow with a similar but smaller directed way than the amulet. Vampires have literally a layer of sunlight they can't get through, nowhere to go.

And, could continue to work without damaging the building, and could keep going at night when the natural sunlight was gone. They could have bought time to work out a way of getting the amulet down there separately and finished them off.

 

[Nathan]

What came after is definitely a major reason for me choosing this, but mostly I hate that thousands of girls had slayerhood forced on them.

As for the people dying, well, it wasn't the potentials/slayers that stopped the First and the Turok-Han, it was the amulet. Whether the potential/slayers were there or not, that still would have happened.

I would have much preferred if Buffy had actually told Angel to stay (not for that reason) and used his resources at W&H. They could have had an army of anything there in a heartbeat. In that case Buffy could have offered the potentials a real choice and asked if they wanted to stay and fight, or go home.

Even if the Angel angle wasn't worked, Willow could have done a spell to hold the vamps off, or cloak Buffy and the other super heroes until the Turok-Han hit the streets of the school and bit sunlight.

My point is, the slayer spell was actually entirely unnecessary, the key to defeating The First was the amulet.

The fact that spell-less alternative would have prevented S8 from happening is really just the icing on the cake.

I agree with you; I disliked how they made so many Slayers because it kinda eliminated the story of "each generation there is a chosen one"; by S8 it's "each generation there's thousands" LOL

 

[InsaneMystic]

My choice isn't gonna surprise anyone, I guess - no cameo apperance of the Bad Hair Dude. 😛

Kean agrees: I for one am shocked!

No you're not, but thanks for saying it.

(I couldn't pass that one up... 😀)

 

[sosa lola]

I would have loved to see a final Xander/Anya scene before the big battle. We've got lots of Buffy/Spike scenes, a Willow/Kennedy scene, but no Xander/Anya at all. That was a major ship.

 

[white avenger]

If I could have changed one thing about the Season 7 finale, it would have been that it wasn't the SERIES finale. No Sunnydale destruction, no closing of the hellmouth, and no deaths of Anya and Spike. Instead of the amulet and the Slayer activation spell, Willow could have activated Dawn as the Key and sucked the First Evil and its entire army into the universe without shrimp. Faith would have moved over to "Angel" for the 5th season (and stayed there for the 6th, 7th, 8th, and so on) Giles and Wood would have realized that Spike with a soul was, indeed, a different man from the monster they knew and hated. Buffy, Spike, and the Scoobies would have continued to patrol and guard the hellmouth until they were all ready to draw Social Security, and one of the side affects of the spell that Willow cast to activate the Key resurrected Jenny Calendar and caused Angel to turn into a 4 armed monkey every full moon night. (That last one would be the tie in to the new "Fray" series that would premier the next season with Kristin Kreuk in the title role, and David Boreanaz as the voice of the monkey)

 

[Tome]

Personally I agree with what Wash and Drizzly previously said in this thread. First, I'd have made it a two-parter, and then I would have came up with something to explain why those Turok-Hans were weaker than the first one the Scoobies encountered. Because that was a really annoying plothole.

 

[Washburne]

As for the people dying, well, it wasn't the potentials/slayers that stopped the First and the Turok-Han, it was the amulet. Whether the potential/slayers were there or not, that still would have happened.

My point is, the slayer spell was actually entirely unnecessary, the key to defeating The First was the amulet.

Yes it was and forgive me if I don't remember correctly, it was a long time since I watched the show, but they didn't knew exactly what the amulet would do right? That's one hell of a plan. "The amulet will make sure we win. Lets send in one champion with it and victory will be ours." Simple as that.

I'm not saying there aren't other solutions, or that they used the best one available.

 

[white avenger]

What came after is definitely a major reason for me choosing this, but mostly I hate that thousands of girls had slayerhood forced on them.

As for the people dying, well, it wasn't the potentials/slayers that stopped the First and the Turok-Han, it was the amulet. Whether the potential/slayers were there or not, that still would have happened.

I would have much preferred if Buffy had actually told Angel to stay (not for that reason) and used his resources at W&H. They could have had an army of anything there in a heartbeat. In that case Buffy could have offered the potentials a real choice and asked if they wanted to stay and fight, or go home.

Even if the Angel angle wasn't worked, Willow could have done a spell to hold the vamps off, or cloak Buffy and the other super heroes until the Turok-Han hit the streets of the school and bit sunlight.

My point is, the slayer spell was actually entirely unnecessary, the key to defeating The First was the amulet.

The fact that spell-less alternative would have prevented S8 from happening is really just the icing on the cake.

And once again, we are in agreement (I'm tellin' you, Miss K, I'm really starting to worry here) Buffy makes this big speech about how every girl now having a choice right before condemning all of the potentials in the world to a life of pain and danger, almost certainly culminating in a very short life. It would have at least been excusable if Buffy had asked the girls there with her if, knowing what kind of life she and Faith had, they would be willing to volunteer, then activating them, possibly only for the duration of the final battle. But leave the other several thousand Potentials around the world alone. (Didn't Joss say somewhere that he did that in order to explain why no one was called again until Frey?)

Willow should have been perfectly capable of working some sort of spell that would have permanently sealed the hellmouth using the power of the scythe, and destroyed all of the Bringers in the process, requiring only a much smaller scale battle in keeping the First Evil's minions from getting to her before the spell could be completed. The amulet was just a way to pass Spike over to "Angel" the next season,

But having Angel stay to help, with or without the assistance of any army that might have been at his disposal, wouldn't have worked for the simple reason that it would have been an almost certainty that Buffy would have actually made her choice between Spike and Angel, if only in which one she would have spent that last night with. (If that had happened, we wouldn't have had our dance for all this time. Either you would have had to settle for Cangel, or I would have had to settle for Spaith, and I find either possibility...unsettling)

 

[VisionGirl]

I agree about Anya's death being more acknowledged. Actually, I would have liked it better if she had died a bit later, in Xander's arms. He never even found her, that was so sad to me.

I feel so torn about the Scythe Spell. When I'm watching it I get goosebumps as I listen to Buffy speechifying and see the images of the girls. It's an empowering thing. And I do still love to watch it. But when I think about it now I'm bugged, for the same reasons everyone else is:

1. It's only really a choice if there's a choice to decline. Which there isn't. Sure I guess they could try to what? Go back and live normal lives? But they're still activated no matter how they feel about it. Danger will be sure to find them even if they try to hide from their calling.

2. Fray had already been created & published, so Joss faces the situation wherein he has to eliminate a heckuva lot of girls and do something radical so that Slayers don't continue to be called. Thus, season 8.

 

[BuffyBloke]

Kill Kennedy. 🙂 Her death would not only be celebrated by me, but I would have enjoyed it more if was her rather then Anya.

 

[MissEH]

Buffy should have told Faith she loved her instead of Spike.