I do have to say one [of my] favorite memories of doing the entire series was doing "Lies My Parents Told Me", which was an episode I cowrote with Drew Goddard and directed in the latter part of the season. It was a Spike-centric episode. Principal Wood's mother was killed by Spike, and it was a whole revenge story, but it was just a really fun, glorious experience for me. I had so many different great experiences working on
Buffy and
Angel, but my last meaningful involvement in
Buffy was that episode. - James Marsters
I feel that I wrote the perfect ending and wrapped everything up exactly the way it should be and really sort of the final chord of this beautiful symphony. That, unfortunately, was in season five. So with season seven, I sort of had to shut the door on this as the last episode a little bit, because the weight of that was crushing me. I was terrified. But I so very specifically knew what I needed to say and what I needed to have happen. That was all in there. - Joss Whedon
The finale was fun, but it wasn't cool. Spike has no idea that he was going to be the big hero. He just wanted a freaking necklace. He just didn't want Angel to have that necklace and he was just proud that he got it and not Angel. It was just very petty on his part and the thing starts glowing and he lights on fire and he's like "What the f... oh no!" I played it as it wasn't a big heroic act. It was a wonderful scene, though, between Buffy and Spike. He could proclaim his love before he was gone. But I don't think of him as the heroic savior in that; I think of him as he guinea pig hero. - James Marsters
When you get into actually writing the finale, you're just like "Oh God, it's not good enough". Then you're like "Dude, you've got to chill", because it's unbearable pressure. You want it to go out with a bang; you don't want it to dribble out. You want the last episode to mean something that no other episode has. It was ****ing large. It was so hard to shoot. - Joss Whedon
Faith is my girl. She's always been good to me, and she's been a good friend to me. I love that character, this show, the places we've gone, and all the different emotions we've experimented with. I feel like she's a part of me. It was good to be back on
Buffy. Sarah is such a doll. We were like reunited high school friends. - Eliza Dushku
I do have visions of spinning the show off into a Star Trek-kian film franchise, but I also have visions of invading Poland, so we'll see which one I'll do. I want the show to be remembered as a consistently intelligent, funny, emotionally involving entertainment that subtly changed the entire world... or a small portion of pop culture. Enlightenment is the slowest process this side of evolution. Three steps forward, nice steps back. It's very hard to have come up in the 70s, to be raised by a feminist and then live through the Reagan era, and now God help us. Feminism, which hopefully will become an obsolete term by the time I'm dead, is a really important thing. Not just feminism, but antimisogyny. Changing the way that people think about women and the way they think about themselves is what I want to do with my life. There are other things I have to say, there are other things I want to do and stories I want to tell, but that's the most important thing to me. If
Buffy made the slightest notch in any of pop culture in that direction, well that's pretty damn good. - Joss Whedon
I'm done with BtVS and I'll the AtS part soon!
I was surprised about James's quote regarding Lies My Parents Told Me... I'm wondering if the book didn't make a mistake and they should have attributed the quote to David Fury as he cowrote the episode with Drew, directed it and it was his last episode on BtVS.