Who will Xander spend eternity with in the afterlife: Dawn or Anya?

[S Rou]

I'm team Anya.

Will dawn even have an afterlife? I thought that since she is a magical construct , she doesn't have a real soul. Can someone explain this too? As well as who Xander will be with?

 

[NeonSlayer]

Would Anya go to Heaven? She willingly became a vengeance demon and mutilated, tortured, & murdered humans for over 1100 years. Her time on Team Good lasted less than 4 years (October 1999 to May 2003) and even that had a detour back to willingly becoming a vengeance demon and not showing remorse for any of her victims to the point of choosing to stop until Selfless, only 7 months before her death.

I do think that despite Xander & Dawn having more in common (she would've been good for high school him), what he had with Anya felt realer, adult, & weirdly natural. In Turbulence, which took place after Xander officially became her boyfriend, Dawn threw a tantrum like it was s6. They were trying to figure out who was missing and she was interrupting to say I told you so and when they focused on the missing people she pouted and was like "Nobody is paying attention to me." And in Living Doll Dawn confessed part of the reason she cheated on a thricewise was to get Buffy's attention yet when Buffy tried to figure out why he cursed her she refused to talk to her about it. Dawn is brave & academically intelligent but she still had a lot of growing up to do emotionally. Yet Xander & Dawn began sharing a bed by the end of s8.

 

[FaithLehane16]

Neither. I don't like the idea of both of those relationships.

 

[Spanky]

The idea of spending eternity with one person sounds more like hell than heaven to me.

 

[Octavia]

Would Anya go to Heaven?

Would she be punished for doing her job? She might even go to one of the higher dimensions for being so good at it. Or get promoted to the torture of the lower souls for eternity

I don't know much about Dawn and Xander in a relationship sense, I don't really know how they work together.

Maybe Xander will get a choice, I hope his choice is with Anya They could rule their dimension as king and queen forever and ever.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Matthew 22:30

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

So the answer is neither.

 

[white avenger]

Matthew 22:30

At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.

So the answer is neither.

True enough in a Judaeo-Christian Heaven, But I seriously doubt that one of Joss' characters would end up there, especially given Tara's mention in Season 6 of not knowing which Heaven dimension they had pulled Buffy from. Buffyverse characters would most likely wind up in something the equivalent of Valhalla, Avalon, Elysium, Nirvana, or the Happy Hunting Grounds, to mention just a few . With that in mind, why should it be an either or question? I'm sure that Xander would love to spend eternity with his own little harem. From what we saw of Anya, she probably wouldn't object too strenuously, and Dawn would probably not take a whole lot of convincing.

He might even like an occasional visit from Faith or Cordy, just to keep things interesting. We're talking about Xander's version of Heaven here, right?

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

I think it's quasi ascended fanon that Buffyverse Heaven is "Much Ado About Nothing," a monochrome Valhalla where you fight by day, party by night, and endlessly play "Will they, won't they" with your soul mate. Perhaps after a short stay in Joss's mansion, you get reincarnated. Not how I foresee the Afterlife, but acceptable, and provides us with a working model that fits the genre.
Re: Anya; To borrow from Tolkien, this is a world where the highest act of loyalty to the Creator is physical resistance to evil. Anya died fighting the First Evil, so I could accept she was pardoned of her other sins.

But frankly, I have no opinion. Xander's relationship's seem primarily based on despair.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

I'm going to say neither.

The one person who Xander would be happy spending eternity with in the afterlife is Willow. She's his best friend.

 

[FaithLehane16]

I would prefer it if he ends up with Cordelia in the afterlife.

 

[spikenbuffy]

Anya

 

[TriBel]

I actually read the last scene in S12 as alluding to Paradise/Afterlife and he's with Dawn - so, I'm gonna say Dawn.

 

[thrasherpix]

I think Dawn has a soul.

The idea that Dawn doesn't have a soul seems a western idea to me (though even here, I believe Pinocchio gets a soul after turned human). In the far east, even man made objects have souls and it wouldn't be a question if Dawn had a soul or not. Especially when she can invite a vampire into a home and displays the ability to grow and show moral behavior which is as close as we get to an objective definition of a soul.

(I figured the reason Dawn was made human was so she'd get a soul, though maybe she was given one the way Spike and Angel were given souls, is because it made it all the harder for Glory to find her without going to extraordinary efforts, though I'll have to add there must've been distance limitations on that spell to have her so close to where Glory was currently at.)

And I'm inclined to say both Dawn and Anya. I don't know if a single soul mate is a strictly western idea or not, but marriage often had multiple spouses (usually, but not always, multiple women to a man) throughout history, and in some cases the wives (and even concubines and slaves) were killed to serve the one who died in the afterlife. Marriage for love is a relatively new concept that would've been considered trite to radical in previous centuries. So based on that, I'd say that if Xander were to spend eternity with someone loved then it would be both Dawn and Anya (hopefully they're not the jealous type), but I'd like to think it would be with all he loved, not just them.

And the concept of having someone you're "married" to in say Heaven intrigues me...like do they have to conceive little baby souls that are then incarnated in our world? And they always need more (especially as the global population grows) because of all the miscarriages and stillbirths (or worse, like that boy in one Angel episode where the human boy had no soul--though maybe that's where the monks got their soul for Dawn...) are a result of not enough "fertility" in Heaven, maybe because so few go and fewer get to remain after being abducted by gypsies and demons and who knows what else. So the Higher Powers That Be are saying, "Hurry and boink! Multiple spouses and orgies encouraged! We need baby souls, people!" I know it's not romantic (sounds like the measuring stick of a cattle rancher), but it would be the closest version to conform to marriage practices for most of human history.

 

[wolfpuppy]

It is a strange thing to contemplate. I'm not at all sure there would be marriage in the afterlife, ,but playing along, it's still a tangled web to sort out the relationships of who would be with who.
I think Dawn has a soul, she is human now.
Anya died fighting evil, so I think she earned her redemption. .
I have to admit to being biased as I love Anya and Xander's relationship and am squicked out by Dawn and Xander's relationship, so for this question Anya is a definitive and easy answer.
It does get more complicated when you widen the scope. Would Cordelia be with Xander, Doyle or Angel? Would Buffy be with Angel or Spike?
A wide, loving poly circle is probably best for all involved.

 

[wolfpuppy]

Imagine how depressing it would be to die and learn your spouse was going to be with their second spouse, or their high school sweetheart or whatever.
The limits of monogamy don't work well on Earth, we don't need it in Heaven!

 

[Athene]

I think this is the problem with seeing the afterlife as basically life but forever. I liked how Buffy described it as just feelings, she just said she felt happy and warm and that everyone she loved was okay. She didn't mention anyone else being there not even her mother.

 

[wolfpuppy]

I think this is the problem with seeing the afterlife as basically life but forever. I liked how Buffy described it as just feelings, she just said she felt happy and warm and that everyone she loved was okay. She didn't mention anyone else being there not even her mother.

I did think it was noteworthy that Buffy didn't mention Joyce being there. It does reinforce the idea of different Heavens, and maybe Buffy wasn't in the right one if her mother wasn't with her.
Also, she felt that everyone she loved was ok, but they weren't, so it was based on a lie. Whether contentment and peace are ok based on a lie is debatable. I'd rather come back and deal with the problems of life if it meant when it was over I could be with my loved ones in the Afterlife in a place built on honesty.

 

[Athene]

I did think it was noteworthy that Buffy didn't mention Joyce being there. It does reinforce the idea of different Heavens, and maybe Buffy wasn't in the right one if her mother wasn't with her.
Also, she felt that everyone she loved was ok, but they weren't, so it was based on a lie. Whether contentment and peace are ok based on a lie is debatable. I'd rather come back and deal with the problems of life if it meant when it was over I could be with my loved ones in the Afterlife in a place built on honesty.

I didn't see it as a lie when Buffy said she knew everyone she loved was okay because I think they would have been okay eventually in the way that life sorts itself out somehow. But she definitely could have just been in a nice dimension rather than actual heaven.
And I do get the appeal of heaven being this place where everyone is together but I think there's probably some loophole to it like in Supernatural heaven is somewhere you relive a memory over and over again but you don't get bored. Because otherwise heaven would just be like life.

 

[DeadlyDuo]

I didn't see it as a lie when Buffy said she knew everyone she loved was okay

It's possible that Buffy was talking about the end of Season 5 when she sacrificed herself to save everyone. At that point in time, everyone she loved was okay, the world was saved and she could be at peace.

In regards to the thread question, it's a bit like the end of Titanic. Old lady Rose dies and her spirit returns to Titanic to be with Jack. However she married and had kids and grandkids, Is her husband's spirit waiting for her in their special place looking at his watch and wondering where the hell she is whilst all the while she's galivanting around on Titanic with the guy who would've stood a significantly better chance of survival if she'd just stayed on the lifeboat and not jumped back on board the sinking ship. She could've even moved over on the floating door so he could've climbed on too (they only had to get the balance right).

 

[AlphaFoxtrot]

Something Tolkien once said stuck with me. Religion in LOTR is extremely thin, there are no temples and the only real religious ritual is Elendil's table grace. He gave two basic reasons for this, 1. This is a mythic age, what good is faith when the gods walk visible among us? 2. This is world where loyalty and obedience to God is not demonstrated by obedience to law, but by physical resistance to evil. So, I would say, if you die fighting to ensure the Old Ones never again set foot on God's Green Earth, or butchering espy-Satanists, a grace would be made to allow you into heaven. Or, as I like to say, Valhalla rules. Or at least for Chosen Ones, Champions and the other ministers of grace. Or, if you want to stay with Canon, if Darla gets into heaven, so does everyone else not named Knox.

Of course, the Catholics would argue Purgatory exists for someone like Anya, where she has the opportunity to go to heaven, but only after her penance is done.

My religion teaches that in heaven the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will in exist in a higher state of communion, kind of like Neo-Genesis Evangelion, but without the tang. But again, YMMV