Buffy Summers

Buffy Summers is the main hero of the Buffy the Vampire-Slayer movie (although the movie is considered non-canon by the creators of the television series) and TV series as well as the related comic books and videogames - she is a normal high-school teenager by day and Slayer of vampires, demons and the forces of darkness by night.

Buffy's life was never easy and she was forced to move to the town of Sunnydale where she would meet up with her future "Scooby Gang" - Xander Harris and Willow Rosenburg, she was also introduced to her new Watcher - the school librarian known as Rupert Giles.

Throughout her stay in Sunnydale Buffy battled the forces of darkness by night and the daily stresses of growing up by day - some of Buffy's most notable enemies were The Master, Adam, Mayor Richard Wilkins and Glory: these powerful threats would become known as the "Big Bads" and would become a recurring theme in the series.

Buffy also meet up with the antihero known as Angel and the two would grow to form a powerful bond, sadly this romance was not meant to last and Angel ultimately left Sunnydale to start his own life in LA as the head of Angels Investigations.

Los Angeles
Buffy was born to Hank and Joyce Summers in January 1981, in Los Angeles, California. At the age of eight, Buffy was close friends with her cousin Celia, and enjoyed playing superhero with her. Buffy looked on helplessly as Celia was murdered in her hosptial bed by Der Kindestod, a demon that killed sick children and was only visible to those who were ill, an experience which instilled in Buffy a fear of hospitals. Growing up, Buffy came to idolize Olympic ice skater Dorothy Hamill as she learned the sport herself. In fifth grade, she developed a crush on sixth grader Billy Fordham; although the two were friends, he never returned her feelings. Buffy started attending Hemery High School in 1995; during her time there she became a popular cheerleader and was elected both Prom Princess and Fiesta Queen.

At the age of fifteen, Buffy started having violent dreams about women from different periods of history slaying monsters. One day, she was approached by Merrick, a mysterious man who revealed her destiny as the Chosen One and became her first Watcher. Buffy initially did not get along with Merrick, who was sarcastic and intolerant of her valley girl nature, but the pair eventually gained a mutual fondness as he prepared her for battle against the vampire king Lothos. As Buffy's increasingly strange behaviour alienated from her peers, including her boyfriend Jeffrey, she befriended fellow social outcast Pike, relying on him for support after Merrick shot himself to protect her from Lothos. Despite little training, Buffy managed to defeat Lothos and his minions at her school dance, burning down the high school gym in the process, for which she was subsequently expelled. Shortly after her expulsion, Buffy and Pike ran away to Las Vegas looking for vampires. Upon her return, Buffy's parents found out about what had really happened at Hemery and about her destiny as the Slayer. Worried that she was losing her mind, they sent her to a mental institution. While there, Buffy realized that attempts to persuade others of the existence of demonic forces would be futile. She kept quiet and was released after a couple of weeks. Buffy and her parents never spoke of it again.

Sunnydale High
Buffy's parents, who had been experiencing marital troubles for years, finally divorced, and Buffy moved with her mother to 1630 Revello Drive in Sunnydale, a small town in California. Little did they know that the town was located on a Hellmouth, and that Buffy's presence there was predestined. Buffy enrolled at Sunnydale High, where she became friends with Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg, as well as her new Watcher, Rupert Giles. She also met Cordelia Chase, a superficial cheerleader reminiscient of Buffy before she became the Slayer, and Angel, a mysterious and handsome stranger who aided Buffy with cryptic advice. After successfully stopping the vampire ritual known as the Harvest together, Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles formed the "core four" of the "Scooby Gang" and continued to investigate the various supernatural mysteries that occurred on the Hellmouth.

Buffy developed an attraction to Angel, and was horrified when he turned out to be a vampire. Though initially reluctant to slay him, she ultimately decided to do so when it appeared that Angel had attacked her mother, only to relent upon discovering that he had a human soul as a result of being cursed by a Gypsy clan as punishment for his various crimes, in addition to the fact that they had in fact been set up by Darla of the Order of Aurelius, Angel's sire and Joyce's true attacker. When people's nightmares began coming true in Sunnydale, Buffy's guilt over her parents' divorce manifested and she was briefly transformed into a vampire. Giles warned Buffy that she would eventually be forced to battle the thousand-year-old (some sources say older) vampire leader known as the Master. Upon learning that the infallible Pergamum Codex prophecised her death at the hands of the Master, Buffy quit being the Slayer and contemplated leaving town, but accepted her fate after Willow discovered bodies of their classmates slaughtered inside the school. Buffy was overpowered and left to drown in a pool of water in the Master's dwellings, but Xander resuscitated her and she managed to defeat the Master and stop him from opening the Hellmouth.

First Love
Buffy took months to recover emotionally from her clinical death, finally moving on after destroying the Master's remains herself. In her junior year of high school, she came into conflict with Spike and Drusilla, a vampire couple intent on wreaking havoc in Sunnydale, and former comrades of Angel. Buffy's relationship with Angel heated up and the pair began officially dating. Buffy also met and formed an awkward friendship with Kendra Young, a second Slayer who had been activated when Buffy drowned. Kendra helped Buffy appreciate that being a Slayer was part of who she was, and not just a burden. On the night of her seventeenth birthday, Buffy lost her virginity to Angel, and unknowingly lifted the curse placed on him a century earlier, causing him to lose his soul and revert to the evil Angelus, one of the most notoriously evil vampires in history.

Angelus became obsessed with destroying Buffy's life and joined Spike and Drusilla, who had reconstructed an invincible demon called the Judge. Buffy managed to defeat the Judge with a stolen rocket launcher, but Angelus' pathological abuse continued to take a heavy toll on Buffy and her friends over the months. When faced with Angelus's subsequent plan to destroy the world, Buffy reluctantly accepted an alliance with Spike, who had become tired of Angelus' presence and had no wish to see the world end. While strategizing with Spike, Buffy was forced to reveal her identity as the Slayer to her mother, who reacted badly to the news. Buffy confronted Angelus and tried to prevent him from opening a vortex to a hell dimension while Willow worked a spell to return Angel's soul. Though the spell was successful, Angelus had already begun to open the vortex, and Buffy was forced to drive a sword through the re-ensouled Angel's chest, sending him through the vortex to hell before he could even remember Angelus' siege against Sunnydale. Traumatized and alone, Buffy then left Sunnydale and escaped to Los Angeles.

The Chosen Two
In L.A., Buffy spent the summer waiting tables in a diner under a false identity (her middle name, Anne), trying to turn her back on her destiny. However, after rescuing a runaway from a hell dimension, Buffy returned to Sunnydale to face her own demons. She reunited with her loved ones and tried to find closure to her relationship with Angel. However, when he returned mysteriously from hell, Buffy found herself still drawn to him, much to the disgust and confusion of her friends. Meanwhile, a rebellious new Slayer, Faith Lehane, arrived in town, providing Buffy with a new ally. Shortly before her eighteenth birthday, Buffy was depowered in preparation for her Cruciamentum, a Slayer rite of passage organized by the Watchers' Council meant to test the Slayer's practical capabilities. Giles' reluctance to see Buffy hurt and subsequent interference in the test led to him being fired as her official Watcher and replaced with Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, though Buffy largely ignored him and refused to take him seriously due to his extreme cowardice and incompetence.

When Faith accidentally killed a human, her relationship with Buffy deteriorated rapidly. Increasingly alienated from the Scoobies, Faith found a friend in the affable yet sinister Mayor of Sunnydale, who was preparing to become a pure-blood demon on Sunnydale High Graduation Day. As the Mayor relied on Faith to help him prepare for his ascension, Buffy worked first to thwart his plans, then to organize a resistance. Faith impeded these efforts by poisoning Angel, leaving him on the verge of death; when the Watchers' Council refused to help, Buffy decided to stop following their orders altogether. When the Scoobies learned that only the blood of a Slayer could save Angel's life, Buffy attempted to sacrifice Faith to save him. Their battle left Faith in a coma, and Buffy ultimately saved Angel with her own blood. Buffy then led her classmates in a climactic battle against the transformed Mayor and his minions, which culminated in an explosion that destroyed the Mayor as well as Sunnydale High. After the smoke cleared, Angel left for Los Angeles so that Buffy could try to have a more normal life without him.

U.C. Sunnydale
Buffy initally experienced some difficulty adjusting to life as a college freshman, something made even harder with her Slayer duties and Angel's departure. After sharing what she believed to be a night of emotional intimacy with fellow student Parker Abrams, she became depressed when he neglected to contact her afterwards. At Thanksgiving, Buffy, while determined to have a safe and normal dinner, was forced to deal with Hus, a Native American vengeance spirit accidentally released by Xander's construction crew, and was secretly helped by Angel, who had returned to town to after one of his new friends had a vision that she was in danger, though he only made his presence known to the other Scoobies under the belief that he would only distract and endanger her even more[40]. After Xander accidentally let it slip that Angel was in town, Buffy, hurt that he let everyone else know that he was back in Sunnydale, immediately traveled to Los Angeles and confronted Angel in his office, and the two agreed to just stay away from one another for the time being. Just as she was about to leave, however, the two were attacked by a Mohra Demon. Though the duo succeeded in wounding it, the Mohra escaped, and Buffy and Angel immediately tracked it down in the sewers. The two became separated, and Angel seemingly killed the demon itself, though its blood mixed with his own and turned him human again. The two reveled in finally being able to be happy together, but Angel soon discovered that the Powers That Be had not yet offered him forgiveness. When Angel was nearly killed by the regenerated Mohra, Buffy managed to slay it with his help. Upon discovering that Buffy would die much sooner if he was to remain human, Angel had the Oracles rewind time to reverse his transformation into a human, leaving no one but himself with any memory of the incident.

Eventually, Buffy attracted the sincere attention of teacher's assistant Riley Finn and began to wonder how she would balance her Slayer duties while dating a seemingly-normal guy. However, while fighting the Gentlemen, she discovered that Riley had a secret of his own; he was in fact a member of the Initiative, a U.S. government task force created to research mystical and demonic creatures led by Buffy's psychology professor Maggie Walsh. Buffy briefly joined forces with the Initiative, but her relentless questioning of the Initiative's plans and motivations, as well her relationship with Riley, began to unsettle Professor Walsh, who tried to dispose of her by having her killed in action. Afterwards, Walsh was murdered by her own creation, a monstrous bio-mechanical demonoid named Adam, who subsequently escaped and began his plan to create an army of similar super soldiers.

Meanwhile, Faith, having awakened from her coma, used a mystical device to switch bodies with Buffy. In Faith's body, Buffy was taken into custody by the Watchers Council Special Operations Team. She managed to escape and convince Giles of her true identity, and with the help of Willow and Tara Maclay, reversed the body swap. Upon discovering that Faith had traveled to Los Angeles and was attempting to kill Angel, Buffy traveled to L.A., determined to get revenge on Faith under the flimsy guise of protecting Angel from her, only to come into conflict with Angel, who insisted that Faith could be rehabilitated. Buffy had little choice but to protect Faith from the attacks of the Watchers' Council Special Ops team. Faith subsequently surrendered herself to the L.A.P.D., and Buffy got into a heated argument with Angel, climaxing when she used her relationship with Riley to verbally attack him and Angel lost his temper and harshly ordered her to go back to Sunnydale. However, Angel subsequently returned to Sunnydale to make amends and succeeded. Eventually Riley, who had been torn between the Scooby Gang and the Initiative for some time, turned his back on the corrupt organization to join Buffy. Despite having drifted apart over the last year, Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles finally reconciled and combined their essences by invoking the spirit of the First Slayer, allowing Buffy to physically destroy Adam. The four were later attacked in their dreams by the the First Slayer, who was offended by their use of the spell; Buffy promptly rejected her insistence that the Slayer work alone without friends.

Sisterhood
Following her confrontation with the First Slayer, and an encounter with the famous vampire Dracula, Buffy began to fully accept her duty as the Slayer for the first time in her life. A younger sister, Dawn, mysteriously appeared in Buffy's household, her existence seamlessly integrated with the memories of Buffy, her friends, and her mother. Buffy discovered that Dawn wasn't her sister, but rather a ball of mystical energy known as the Key that could open interdimensional portals. A group of monks transformed the Key into human form to hide it from a hell-god known as Glory, choosing the Slayer to protect it because they knew she would protect her sister with her life. Initially regarding Dawn as little more than a burden forced on her against her will, Buffy eventually accepted her role as Dawn's protector. Buffy's relationship with Riley began to deteriorate as she failed to give him the emotional intimacy he craved. Riley began visiting vampire brothels where he would allow himself to be bitten, and when Buffy discovered this, they finally broke up and Riley returned to the military.[54] As Buffy recovered from this, she was disgusted to learn that Spike, now unable to harm humans due to the Initiative's experiments on him, had fallen in love with her. Upon discovering the full extent of his obsession, she had Willow revoke Spike's invitation to her house and personally alienated him from the Scoobies.

Buffy was devastated when her mother, who had been experiencing health problems for months and only recently received surgery for a brain tumor, died unexpected from an aneurysm. Taking up the role of Dawn's legal guardian, Buffy was forced to drop out of college to look after her sister. As she struggled to fully understand what being the Slayer meant, Giles took Buffy on a vision quest, where the Guide told her that death was her gift, a message she found confusing and hurtful so soon after her mother's death. Upon her return, Buffy discovered that Spike had forced her former Sunnydale High classmate, Warren Mears, to build a sex-bot in her likeness, and it had resulted in him getting captured by Glory's minions, who believed him to be the Key. Despite her understandable rage and disgust over the robot, Buffy saved Spike and subsequently discovered that he had endured intense torture at the hands of Glory rather than reveal the identity of the Key, nearly choosing death to protect Dawn. Moved by this, Buffy rewarded Spike with a kiss and reconciled with him, welcoming him back to the fold.

When Glory finally discovered the Key and captured Dawn, Buffy retreated into her subconscious, where she battled with the guilt of failing to protect her sister. Willow successfully drew Buffy back out into consciousness, and the Scoobies attacked Glory's stronghold in full force. Despite everyone's efforts, Dawn's blood was used to open the interdimensional portal and chaos reigned on Earth. Buffy defeated Glory and, finally understanding the meaning of the message from the First Slayer, sacrificed her own life, using her own blood to close the portal so Dawn wouldn't have to. Afterwards, Buffy was buried on the outskirts of Sunnydale with the epitaph, "She saved the world. A lot." Finally able to rest, she ascended to heaven and found peace.

Back From The Grave
Months later, Buffy was resurrected by her friends, who feared that her spirit may have been trapped in a hellish dimension due to the mystical circumstances of her death.

Buffy's transition back to her life was difficult; she experienced an overwhelming sense of loss after being ripped from heaven, as well as the added everyday responsibilities of raising Dawn and paying bills. She attempted to keep her problems secret from her friends, not wanting them to share in her grief, and confided only to Spike that she had in fact been at peace while dead, though the truth ultimately came out. Buffy's depression worsened when Giles left Sunnydale and returned to England when she became overly dependent on him. Struggling to feel alive and seeking someone who understood her, she began a violent sexual relationship with Spike which left neither of them satisfied. At the same time, she was forced to both fight Sunnydale's demon population and become somewhat of a vigilante crime-fighter when faced with the ongoing efforts of the Trio, a group of nerds she went to high school with who had decided to take over Sunnydale, though taking down Buffy, the Slayer, was their top priority. In order to deal with her increasing financial problems, Buffy started working at local burger bar the Doublemeat Palace, a job she found degrading and disturbingly mundane. With all of these problems, Buffy sank into severe depression and self-loathing.

Meanwhile, Willow, proceeding Buffy's resurrection, developed an addiction to magic and began to use it excessively, which Buffy failed to notice and largely ignored at first, even when confronted with evidence by Anya and Xander. This climaxed when a spell cast by Willow went awry and erased all of the memories of the Scooby Gang, which resulted in Tara dumping Willow when the spell was broken, which immediately caused Willow's addiction to spiral out of control. Buffy finally became fully aware of the full extent of Willow's addiction when she and Amy Madison, having been transformed into a rat for three years only to be finally changed back, began making regular visits to the home of Rack, a shady sorcery dealer, who only worsened Willow's condition. When Willow made another trip to Rack's place with Dawn in tow, the two were attacked by a demon that Willow unwittingly summoned during her high, and Willow's carelessness caused a car accident that left Dawn severely injured. Buffy and Spike arrived in time to save them and, despite being understandably furious with Willow, relented slightly when Willow desperately begged her for help. With Buffy's help, Willow renounced the usage of her magic altogether and was put on the road to recovery.

A brief reunion with Riley shocked Buffy into finally breaking up with Spike, admitting to him that she was just using him and it was killing her. Confused and angry, Spike later cornered her in the bathroom and tried to rape her; Buffy fought him off, and Spike fled Sunnydale, horrified by his own actions. When Warren Mears, the leader of the Trio, accidentally killed Willow's girlfriend Tara in an attempt to kill Buffy, Willow, enraged and grief-stricken, suffered a relapse and exacted bloody revenge against him, flaying him alive before the eyes of her horrified friends. Unable to condone Willow's actions, Buffy battled her best friend to stop her from committing more murders, but was promptly defeated before Giles came to her rescue. Willow then tried to destroy the whole world to end everybody's pain, leaving Buffy and Dawn trapped underground. Xander eventually came through for Willow in the end and Buffy promised to change her self-destructive behavior in order to be there for her sister. With this battle over, Buffy was finally ready to truly live again.

Leader to the Potentials
As Dawn enrolled in the recently rebuilt Sunnydale High, Buffy was offered a job as guidance counselor by Principal Robin Wood, which she gratefully accepted. Spike returned to Sunnydale after regaining his soul in an attempt to prove himself to Buffy. Buffy recognized the difference in him, and even when it seemed he may revert to a dangerous killer, she assured him that she believed in him. When agents of the First Evil, the Bringers, began tracking down and killing Potential Slayers in an attempt to wipe out the entire Slayer line, Buffy's home quickly filled up with teenage Potentials who came to Sunnydale for protection. Buffy stepped into a leadership role to the girls and worked to train them into an army that could stand against the First and it's army of ancient Turok-Han vampires. She later contacted the Shadow Men for assistance, who offered to increase her strength via the essence of a demon. Buffy refused, unwilling to sacrifice her humanity in exchange for power.

Meanwhile, a reformed Faith, having escaped from prison to help Angel, travelled to Sunnydale to aid the Scoobies in the battle. Upon learning that the First's minion Caleb had something of hers, Buffy led the Potentials into battle to retrieve it, which resulted in the loss of several girls as well as Xander's eye. With this, the Scoobies and Potentials, having been losing trust in Buffy's leadership skills and methods for quite some time, held a mutiny, appointing a reluctant Faith their leader and forcing Buffy out of the house. Only Spike remained loyal to her, and through him, Buffy, depressed and about to give up, found the strength that she needed to keep fighting. Buffy found the object Caleb was keeping from her—an ancient Slayer Scythe—and saved the Potentials and Faith after the latter led them into a trap, earning back the gang's trust, respect, and loyalty, and finally making peace with Faith before revealing her plan to share her power with the other Potentials. Also, with the help of Angel, Buffy finally defeated Caleb and killed him by cutting him in half, killing the First's leading enforcer and one of her greatest foes. Willow used the Scythe to perform a spell which activated Slayers all around the world, and a huge battle was waged in Sunnydale between the Slayers and the Turok-Han. During the fight, Spike sacrificed himself to close the Hellmouth once and for all. Before he crumbled to dust, Buffy admitted to his disbelief that she loved him, before escaping the ruins of Sunnydale with the other survivors.

A New World
Following the destruction of Sunnydale, the Scooby Gang scattered around the world to locate and train newly-activated Slayers. When Angel and his crew took over the L.A. branch of Wolfram & Hart, Buffy and the Scoobies began to lose trust in them; when Angel contacted them for help to contain the insane Slayer Dana, Buffy sent Andrew to help apprehend her, but refused to leave Dana in Angel's care, sending a large squadron of Slayers with him and personally ordering Andrew to bring Dana back with him by any means necessary. When Xander once again fell under the thrall of Dracula and went to live with him as his manservant, Buffy was forced to break into the vampire's castle and convince Dracula to let Xander go. Encompassing mystics and a wide technological armory, the Scoobies expanded to keep on top of demonic threats on a more global level. Buffy funded this organization by going on a bank heist with other Slayers, which she reasoned was a "victimless crime" due to the bank's insurance. As the Scoobies and the Slayers have been declared terrorists in the wake of Sunnydale's destruction, decoy Slayers were set up to divert enemy attention for Buffy's protection, one in Rome, who was supposedly dating the Immortal, and the other underground; not even former allies like Angel were aware of her true location. Buffy, Dawn, and Xander eventually set their base in a Scottish castle, with Buffy training a squad of new Slayers, including Satsu, Rowena, and Leah. However, she failed to experience the feelings of connection that the other Slayers did, and began to employ ruthlessly aggressive tactics against the Slayers' enemies, demon and human alike.

Over a year after Sunnydale's destruction, Buffy investigated signs of an attack from a new enemy known as Twilight and her team came under fire from the United States military, who had employed her old enemies Amy Madison and Warren Mears. Questioning General Voll as to his motive for attacking them, Buffy learned that he was part of a cabal which considered all Slayers to be a threat, should they start to think of themselves as above the law. Soon afterwards, Buffy discovered that Giles and Faith had set up a "Slayer social worker" program in an attempt to prevent Slayers from going rogue, and had assassinated the rogue British socialite Slayer Genevieve Savidge and her warlock mentor Roden, all without her consent, causing Buffy and Giles to fall out of speaking terms with one another. While searching for information about upcoming dangers, Buffy discovered that Twilight planned to eradicate all magic from the Earth and that Buffy would suffer a betrayal; "The closest. The most unexpected." In her first encounter with Twilight, she was warned that her decision to activate the Slayers had been a mistake, and she began to question her own actions. Feeling lonely, Buffy shared a one-night-stand with Satsu, but her inability to return Satsu's feelings caused the other Slayer to leave the squad. On a mission to New York, Buffy was transported several centuries into the future, where she discovered that the thousands of Slayers had been reduced to one individual, Melaka Fray. Fray and a future version of Willow tried to prevent her from returning home, prompting Buffy to kill future Willow just as present Willow brought her back to her own time. When Buffy told her that she killed her future self, Willow was unaffected and informed her that the future is not set in stone.

When a Slayer tried and failed to kill Harmony Kendall—Buffy's old classmate-turned-vampire celebrity—on live television, this, combined with the criminal activities of the rogue Slayer Simone Doffler and her gang, the destruction of Sunnydale, and the machinations of the Twilight Group, ushered in a pro-vampire, anti-Slayer world order. With Twilight tracking them through their use of magic, Buffy led the Scoobies and Slayers to Tibet, where she hoped old friend and werewolf Oz could teach them to suppress their magical powers, by channelling them into the Earth. When Twilight found the Slayers, Buffy and Willow were desperate to retrieve their powers. They deduced what was understood as the "Earth" absorbing their powers was actually three wrathful goddesses, Vajrayogini, Ekajati and Remati; the concept of the Earth gods and the Earth had become conflated over time. Using their anger, Buffy and Willow were able to summon the goddesses to the battlefield, but the goddesses were unable to distinguish friend from foe and casualties were incurred on both sides. Buffy saved a dying Riley from the battlefield, and revealed he has been a double agent spying on Twilight. When a goddess flung Buffy, she appeared to die. When she awoke, some of her friends had been captured by Twilight's forces. To her surprise, Buffy shot straight up into the air and hovered there, evidently flying. Due to spells in play by Twilight, Buffy was initially unaware that Giles, Andrew and Faith had been captured. She confessed to Xander's surprise that she had developed feelings for him, acknowledging that she was "too late", having seen him and Dawn kiss. She reluctantly showed her friends her new ability to fly and her enormously improved strength, with which she and Willow were able to bury the goddesses underground once again.

In the aftermath of this, Xander forced Buffy to test all of her newfound powers, which she eventually tired off. Soon afterwards, Willow reveals to Buffy that her new powers are not a reward for defeating the goddesses: she had, in fact, been absorbing the collective powers of all of the Slayers who had died since the Slayer Organization began, a revelation that both horrified and saddened Buffy.

During a second confrontation with Twilight, he unmasked himself, and Buffy was shocked to discover that Twilight was none other than Angel. Buffy attacked him in a rage for all that he had done, but Angel explained his true motives. Due to increasing fear and hatred among both the human and demon communities with the expanded ranks of Slayers, Angel created the Twilight persona and amalgamated all of the factions of the anti-Slayer movement most likely to strike at them, using a "master plan" to keep them distracted and thus limit the destruction that would be caused if these factions struck independently, while also trying to keep the deaths of the Slayers to a minimum. He also explained that Buffy's new powers, much like his own, are in fact a reward for all that she has done and what she was about to face. Moved by all of this, Buffy grabbed Angel and gave him a passionate kiss. After a passionate airborne reunion, the two found themselves in a pocket dimension while Giles explained to the others that the current events tie into a prophecy of a supernatural upheaval where the world shall be recreated after a Slayer changes everything in the world, with Buffy and Angel having been selected to serve as the catalysts of that change. However, upon witnessing her friends and family fighting the resulting demonic hoards, Buffy rejected Angel's plan to go along with the proposed "evolution" to go back and help her friends, Angel agreeing to join her, only for the fight to be interrupted when Spike appeared, claiming to have the answer to the current crisis.