Naturally I had to dig out my old Chosen tape, blow the dust off it, and give it another view.
So I slipped it in the box, and fast-forwarded to the death of Anya scene, and oh my God, you three appeared to be correct. Anya was nowhere near Andrew. How could I be so daft? How could I think Anya saved Andrew?
But wait a minute. The truth is I'm not that daft. I might miss something on the first go around, but not on the third of fourth. I'd watched that whole fight scene frame by frame before, many times. Obviously I'd seen something then, that I was missing now.
I rewound the tape, and... hang on a sec. There's another part of the Anya/Andrew fight scene that occurs earlier.
I went through it frame by frame. This is what happens:
*
Anya and the dungeon master (Andrew) are guarding the north hall.
They are positioned at a 3-way corner, where 2 corridors meet.
Let's call the corridor that goes right to left, South to North. We'll call the other corridor that comes to meet it at a dead end East to West. It dead ends on the western side. The South to North Corridor goes straight through.
A&A stand in front of lockers along the north side of the E-W corridor. They face South.
Uber-vamps and Bringers come at them from the south up the South-North corridor.
Andrew ducks behind Anya, and turns South up the South to North corridor. He is stopped almost immediately by a bringer and points his sword at him. He tells the Bringer he has swimmer's ear.
Anya battles 2 uber-vamps. One is on her south side, the other on her north.
She slices off the head of the one to the South. He dusts, and she turns to face the one to the North, on the side where Andrew and the 2 bringers are. Bringers start to sneak up the East to West Corridor from behind Anya.
OK at this point we have to fast forward up to the next part of the Anya/Andrew battle scene.
This scene shows us what is happening to Andrew as Anya is fighting the uber-vamps.
The first bringer maneuvres past Andrews sword. He is unarmed. He pins Andrew against the wall facing east. Andrew Falls down to his butt, and lowers his head into a kind of foetal position.
Another Bringer lifts a knife into a stabbing pose.
He is standing on the South side of Andrew, just before where the South-North, and East-West corridors meet.
Andrew is on his North. Anya is to his South.
OK now let's rewind back to the scene we left prematurely. I'll show you what happens next, and how Anya saves Andrew.
When last we saw Anya she had dusted the ube to her South, and was now facing the one to her North. Further North was Andrew.
Anya dusts the vampire on her Southern side. She then lifts the sword abover her head, and (drum-roll please) strikes down at something beyond the corner. It's right about at the exact spot where the Bringer would be that is about to stab Andrew. Anya saves Andrew.
OK, so why did Joss say he wanted to give Anya an un-heroic end?
First of all he didn't just say it on the DVD. He's said it in interviews. If you do a board search on Death of Anya, you'll find people talking about it.
But back to it. I'm a fond beleiver in the "Joss is God when it to the Buffyverse" school. What he says goes, but here's the thing. God is tricky.
Joss is just as fond of putting hidden stuff in his interviews, and it would seem his DVD commentaries, as he is in his scripts. He's as quick with it as Tara is at hiding the demon seeking powder under the bed.
I could give you examples, but we'd wind up arguing about stuff that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Here's one that hasn't happened yet though, just to give you a taste of what I'm talking about.
Joss has said in at least 2 spots I can think of off the top of my head that Gunn dies in the alley after Not Fade Away. Once he almost appeared to be joking when he said it. The other time he appeared to be serious.
Here's the thing though. Knowing that, are you prepared to bet either way that Gunn is either dead or alive should a follow-up ever appear on the horizon to Not Fade Away. Would you bet money there's not going to be a curve-ball such as Gunn's a vampire?
So yeah Joss is God, and I believe everything he says, but it's a matter of interpretation. Anya is given an un-heroic end. That's the one you three saw, but if you go back and view both scenes frame by frame, you'll see Anya also dies a hero. She saved Andrew.
I admit in order to see the two scenes this way you have to see the time sequence as being slightly out of whack. You have to see the second scene of Andrew cowering on the floor as a kind of flashback, but what's the alternative?
The Bringer is bringing his knife down to kill Andrew. If nothing stopped him, what happened? Did the whistle blow for lunch?
Anya definitely steps around that corner with her sword above her head to strike at something right about at the same spot where the Bringers are attacking Andrew. In fact even if she didn't kill the Bringer in the second scene, she was still attacking something that was after Andrew.
Also if you put both scenes together it had to have happened pretty much the way I described it, with Anya stepping backwards later into the centre of the hall. So what makes more sense? A tricky flashback, time sequence change, or we didn't see a Bringer about to kill Andrew, and Anya about to strike something at that spot. Because I definitely saw those two things.
