Was it ever explained?

[Edmund Blackadder]

Of course the only evidence that Buffy COULD have opened the portal would based on the theory (the wide theory) that since Buffy and Dawn had the "same blood" that when Dawn's started flowing, Buffy could throw herself in, her blood would stop flowing (because she died) and the portal was either happy or confused and closed.
In which case, if Buffy's blood is enough to either satisfy or confuse the portal into thinking that the "key's" blood stopped it, then one would have to assume she also could have opened it.
Remember, the "key" was not always a person. If they had made it into the Energizer Bunny, it would have opened when the bunny started and closed when the bunny stopped. (Which may have been never and we'd all have been doomed...thank God they went with Dawn and not the bunny. Dawn was more fun to watch than Anya freaking out all season too!)

Buffy couldn't have satisfied OR fooled the portal if the key had been the bunny. It only worked because Dawn was a human, her sister, and supposedly from her blood. The evidence would be that she DID close the portal...the rest is less evidence than logic, that if she could close it, she should have been able to open it.

But, since there is more than one weird hole in S5's ending...it could be nearly impossible to ever get an answer. Even asking Joss could be iffy. I bet it's hard, even with writers like Mutant Enemy had where everyone is really good, to "get" what's in everyone's head at one time. There may be 5 versions of what THEY think happened.

See, this all works except the question of how did Buffy get any of the Key energy in her, and the moment when Dawn is bleeding and Buffy touches her just really doesn't feel right, its not long enough.

People seem to be confusing 'Summers Blood' with the Key energy. This isn't the case, Dawn was the Key, the energy was all through her body BUT was drained when her blood drained.

Even though it is the same blood type Buffy has, it still isn't the same blood.

 

[Lou]

See, this all works except the question of how did Buffy get any of the Key energy in her, and the moment when Dawn is bleeding and Buffy touches her just really doesn't feel right, its not long enough.

People seem to be confusing 'Summers Blood' with the Key energy. This isn't the case, Dawn was the Key, the energy was all through her body BUT was drained when her blood drained.

Even though it is the same blood type Buffy has, it still isn't the same blood.

No, I get that and there just isn't going to be any way to get around that. They SEEM to try to say that they DO have the same blood. Hence, why she could close the portal. How the "key energy" gets into her I don't know. The show might make more sense with the Bunny involved, actually.

Now, the "old slayer" seemed to know beforehand. She said her gift was death. She may be who we have to go to in order to understand this.

I don't think people are necessarily confusing "Summer's Blood" and "Key energy" as much as that is what the connection the SHOW basically DEMANDED that we make. They basically said, "This is how we're wrapping this up so you people have to wrap your heads around it somehow." And that is how they explained it Summer's blood = they're the same in every way.
Of course, it IS possible to wrap your head around if you think of it as more of a "ritual" than science. Something more like in "Harm's Way" on Angel when Harmony kills the vampire secretary and it saves the day because the demon people wanted a sacrifice, ANY sacrifice. Only, this one would go more through the "Summer's Blood" than anyone. Dawn had the power to open it, but Buffy (being her only living sibling and having the same blood) was able to make the mean portal happy by HER energy stopping and not Dawn's.

Which would make the Monk's decision be a darn good one too. Send the key to the Slayer, she defends it WITH her life, then the key is safe AND if the Slayer dies, another gets called and everything is right with the world. (Good thing they didn't know about Faith, huh?)

 

[xgirlanachronism245x]

Honestly, I don't think it was so much as "Summer's Blood" or even "Key Energy" persay, as it was from the same blood line. I assumed that the portal recognized the fact that Buffy and Dawn shared a common blood line, so it satisfied the portal.

It was said that the monks made Dawn from a part of Buffy, so the conclusion can be drawn that both Dawn and Buffy have a connection. I think we are assuming (since Buffy assumed the connection was indeed Summer's blood) that the connection was in fact blood.
How do we know it wasn't the essence of the key? Or something else entirely?
But that wouldn't make sense because DAWN was the key. Not Buffy.

Perhaps I'm not making sense.
Posing another question:
If Joyce were still alive when this was taking place, would her sacrificing herself have closed the portal? Since the link between Buffy's blood and Dawn's would be Joyce. (Assuming the connection is blood.)
Or hell, out on a limb here, would Angel's death have closed it? Since he ingested a lot of Buffy's blood. (Which would be Dawn's blood, again if we are assuming correctly.)

As for the saying "death is your gift", there is yet another theory in my brain.
Perhaps the portal didn't need blood at all. Perhaps we are going off of what Giles said, which could have been wrong. Perhaps the portal needed a life, not blood (which the bleeding out of Dawn would have killed her, so there would have been a life taken there), so any life in relation to the key could have closed the portal.

Ah, I'm not making sense at all am I?

 

[Kana]

Again, Connor/Cordy/Jasmine is different.

Jasmine was born and her 'parents' are Connor and Cordy.

It was this blood connection that could reveal who Jasmine was. This isn't the same as Dawn at all.
Buffy was correct that Dawn was created from her blood, it was genetic material.

Without getting too pendantic my point is that there is a familial connection as well as a mystical one. That's the similarity.

 

[xgirlanachronism245x]

Aussie agrees: but what about if the key was something other then human?

Well, then Buffy couldn't have closed it. Haha.

I suppose then if the key was made into something other than human, such as the Energizer Bunny, then only the Energizer Bunny could close it. Since there are no factors realting the Energizer Bunny to any other object, there is no probability that anything else can close it because there are no connections between the Bunny and anything else. A little redundant, but I think it gets the point across.

The only way something other than the Bunny could close it is if the monks took a part of something else to make the Bunny with. In that case, that object(whatever it may be) could in fact close the portal.

Make sense?

 

[Lou]

What about the Duracell Ferret?

 

[NightBird]

Well the thing that always gets me is, how is this portal supposed to know when the blood stops flowing, its a hole, its not sentient or at least i dont think it is.
I didn't think that meant dawn had to die, just stop her bleeding into the damm thing, and then buffy goes all martyr on us and the portal closes, i dont think it will ever make sense, but then thats no reason to stop looking for answers.

I always saw the portal as sort of like a car, when it stops getting fuel it stops, so i just though that once dawn stopped bleeding into the portal it would stop, but this wasn't so.

I think my car/fuel theory would have made more sense, its much less dramatic but makes more sense, darn logic, I WANT DRAMATIC LOGIC!

 

[Blondie Bear]

It's true that the only part of Giles' speech that he got from the books was "The blood flows, the gates will open. The gates will close when it flows no more." He only ASSUMED that meant Dawn had to be dead. Good catch, Nightbird.

 

[NightBird]

Thanks BB, i feel bad for making giles look bad. lol

 

[caitaintdead]

Every time I've watched this episode I can't help but think "what if Buffy was wrong?" She would have given her speech to Dawn, jupmed, died, and then the world would have continued to fall apart and she wouldn't have been there to protect Dawn anyway! So it's a good thing that Buffy must have been given a copy of the script, because otherwise it could have been a very disastorous series finale. I guess with lots of movies and TV shows though, if you enjoy something enough, you just have to sit back and enjoy the ride sometimes when the plot holes start to appear. (But at the same time, it's a lot of fun debating it)

 

[Jaded Wolf]

Allow me to take a stab at this. I just watched the season 5 finale last night. I think Buffy's flashbacks pretty much explained it. Blood is life as Spike said. Dawn came from Buffy. Dawn and Buffy's blood was the same therefore Buffy was able to substitute herself in place of Dawn to close the portal. Dawn was needed to open it but not to close it. The scrolls which detailed the key and the gate had no way of knowing the monks would make the key human form. If the key had remained energy then the key would be required to close it. However, since the key was made human from another human, then all it needed was the same blood type to close it. That is pretty much my hypothesis on this one.

 

[Buffanator]

And I just thought of another one: Buffy didn't bleed.

Eh, by that time I usually just think Buffy should chunk Dawn into the portal and have done with it.

Ack. Wicked, hateful me. I, too, wish that Dawn had just jumped into the portal. Because (a) it would have spared us the Dawn-crap from S-6 & 7 (I hate whiney-baby Dawn) and (2) it would have been a great story arc that "Buffy just couldn't save her mother OR Dawn" - not to mention that the 1st slayer told Buffy "death is your gift" ... it didn't necessarily mean that Buffy was the one to GIVE the gift... it could have been that Dawn's death was a gift TO Buffy.

But that ain't the way it played out now, is it luv? :: vampire

 

[Lindsey McDonald]

See, the way I see it is that people are placing too much significance on the Key. I think that the all of the Key's mystical energy was used in actually opening the portal, hence why only a drop of blood was needed, and why it could never be used again. It makes more sense to think that the Key's energy is used up in that instant, because no-one ever tries to use Dawn again to casue hell on Earth. If the Key's energy could be used to close the portal, there would be some left over in Dawn, and we never get any indication that this is the case. So basically, as soon as the portal starts to open, Dawn is no longer the Key.

Now, the whole opening of the portal is very ritualistic. This suggests a certain ritual element to the closing. As we know, in the Buffyverse, conditions of rituals and prophesy and the like are often misleading. What I am suggesting is this:

• Dawn in human form is no longer the Key.
• Dawn was created by the monks from Buffy's blood. This is important, as she was not born. It has been stated she was created from Buffy, not Hank and Joyce (perhaps a reason why Joce knew she was not her mother whereas Buffy never truthfully doubted their connection.
• The ritual states that "The gates will close when it flows no more." Literally, this is problematic, but when taken as flowery language, it could simply mean death.

Now, take all these elements and you have two girls with the same blood (mystically, at least, which I feel would be more influential than genetically), with a ritual that states that a sacrificial death of the person with said blood will close the portal. Joyce could never have closed it, nor Hank, and Buffy could never have opened it - she lacked the initial Key energy. Here is where people are thinking too much of a literal unlock/lock key, rather than a figurative unlock only Key. I think the second part of the ritual relies purely on the vessel, not the Key itself. After all, if the Key was in its pure, unadulterated green smooshey state, once opened I don't see how the portal could be closed. Therefore, the monks chose a human vessel to give precisely that last ditch option.

I personally think it all slots into place nicely, although Buffy did jump to certain conclusions. She does seem to do that a lot though! The Summers' Blood line does confuse things a little, but that was a part of Buffy's pep talk to Dawn to make her feel loved, so it cant be heavily relied upon. However, I do realise that this is all based upon the one assumption that the Key energy is expended at the opening of the portal, but I feel there is evidence enough to support it.

 

[Buffanator]

The ritual states that "The gates will close when it flows no more." Literally, this is problematic, but when taken as flowery language, it could simply mean death.

Agreed. It seems that some people are not grasping that you don't have to "bleed out" for the blood to "stop flowing". When you die, the blood *stops flowing.*

But isn't it interesting that Buffy didn't appear to have a scratch on her physically when she was dead on the ground. : erm : Yeah, guess that's a whole'nuther thread. :lol:

 

[Skytteflickan88]

Interesting thread. I have nothing to add to the summers blood thing.

And I agree with Buffanator.

The blood stopped flowing when Buffy's heart stopped. The end.

It could be mystical of course, a sacrifice might have ben needed.

And about the energizer Bunny.

It's a ölectric thing, isn't it? We have electricity in us too. lots of electricity,energy in out brains, sending messages. Maybe The monks could have taken some of Buffy's eöectricity and made the key into a Energizer Bunny instead.

The same way, if Buffy's heart stopped, the electricity would have stopped flowing, closing the portal.

So you know, the key could have been anything. lol

 

[fly on the wall]

^The 'summers blood' saying was only to make Dawn feel part of the family it wasn't really that big of a deal.

I always took it as Dawn did have the same blood as Buffy. The key was was transformed into Dawn but she did have Buffy's blood running through her, Dawns blood also acted like the physical form of the key.

Dawn was cut and the blood opened the portal. Giles said that the portal would close when the blood stopped running, when Dawn was dead.

What Buffy did was trick the portal. When she jumped in, the portal recognized the same blood so when Buffy died the portal did too. Like as far as the portal knew Dawn was the one who had jumped.

Thats just my theory, cuz I don't think it really makes sense, if Buffy was able to close it, she probably should have been able to open it as well.

I agree.

Although, as far as Buffy being able to open the portal, I don't think that could have happened.

Her blood is the same as Dawn's...but Buffy is not the key. Her body does not contain the mystical energy that Dawn's does. The rule about closing the portal was, once the blood "flows no more" (the body giving the blood is dead), the portal will close. It says nothing about the mystical energy being run out, dead, etc.

So no, Buffy could not have opened the portal. But yes, she could have closed it.

It is a foggy theory, and I think the writers know that. I forget which commentary it was, and even which writer (I wanna say Marti Noxon..) but she was pretty much revealing that the whole Key thing didn't make a whole lot of sense to anyone. They wrote what they had to to make the series work, even if it wasn't as smooth as it could have been.

 

[AgentX7k]

The way I look at it is the portal was waiting for 'The Key', when they bled Dawn it recognized that type of blood as the key so from that point on it wasn't looking for 'The Key' it was waiting for that blood to stop flowing (for that person to die). When Buffy jumped in a died it closed because that type of blood stopped flowing. They needed to die inside the portal for it to stop.