Just Stake Me! Episodes

Two to Go (Ep. 6.21)

"Black Magic Woman"

Okay. It's the finale. Here we are now. Entertain us.

. . .

"Two to Go" picks up right from the moment we left off in "Villains," meaning we've been operating in a pretty much continuous string of events ever since "Entropy." Let's recap: Day One: Anya tries to get vengeance on Xander and fails, she ends up getting drunk and sleeping with Spike; everyone's secret affairs are outed; and Willow and Tara reconcile. Day Two: Spike tries to apologize to Buffy and ends up trying to rape her instead, then leaves town; Buffy nabs two of the Troika but Warren escapes. Day Three: an enraged Warren shoots Buffy and Tara; Willow goes all black magic, and by the day's end has turned Warren into a grease spot. We are now in progress on the evening of Day Three.

Out Of The Woods
Buffy, Xander, and Anya dash through the woods scant minutes after seeing DarkWillow flay and torch Warren. "I think I'm gonna be sick," Xander gasps, leaning against a tree to catch his breath. "Again?" Anya says, exasperated. Buffy urges him on, reminding him they don't have much time before Willow extends her rampage to the other two members of the Trio. "You don't think she'd kill them too? There's no good reason," Xander pants. Buffy explains it to him as: "Will's got an addictive personality, and she's just tasted blood." Uh-huh. Addictive. Right.

She theorizes further: "Willow just killed somebody. Killing changes you. Believe me. I know." Okaaaay. This is interesting. Come to think of it, Buffy has killed, hasn't she? She took out ten of the Knights of Byzantium, humans all. She stabbed Faith, with every intention to kill. Is this what she's thinking of? Or is she really thinking of Faith's accidental killing of the deputy mayor, and her "change" that came after that? Since Warren's death was hardly an accident, it's your guess which perspective is uppermost in Buffy's mind.

Xander does his best to get a handle on Willow's motivation. "Warren was a stone cold killer of women just getting warmed up... bastard had it coming," he says grimly. But, as Buffy points out, Jonathan and Andrew don't, and lays out her mandate re: Willow as the simple equation of we've-gotta-stop-her "whatever she's going through."

In this opening scene, we establish two things quickly. First, that Buffy's perspective on Willow is severely off-base. She either can't or won't let herself relate to her friend's grief and unreasoning rage over Tara's death. Why is a damn good question, but we'll get to that later. Second, it's made clear that normal-guy Xander not only has nothing in the way of power to contribute to the situation, but that he feels pretty useless about it as well. "I'll just catch up," he calls after Buffy as she sprints through the woods at high speed, leaving Xander stranded next to the smoking wreckage of his car, blown up by Willow to discourage pursuit. He bangs his hand on the hood of the car in frustration, muttering, "She's only my best friend, y'know... glad I can help."

Gimme A Prison Break
Meanwhile, Anya teleports ahead to the jail to deliver a warning, arriving just in time to interrupt an argument between the remnants of the Trio. Andrew believes that Warren must be sending them signals via some kind of implants, and is searching his body for where the microphone might be. "This is like a test. If we can just figure out how he's communicating with us, we'll be, y'know, worthy," he claims feverishly. Yes, Andrew. Krusty will come.

Ever the pragmatist, Jonathan snorts in disbelief, scoffing that Andrew should make himself a nice tinfoil antenna hat. (Side note: in this, I could almost hear the writers speaking directly to the show's more enthusiastic fans... er, present company excepted, surely.) He leans down and speaks into the other guy's elbow with: "Come in Warren, do you read me, your girlfriend's pathetic, over." Before they can resort to hair-pulling, Anya appears, raps out a summary of their dire situation in terse sentences, and begins yelling for the guard.

Unsurprisingly, the guard doesn't believe Anya's warning that something wicked this way comes, even after watching her teleport out of the cell. It doesn't matter anyway - Willow has arrived. She materializes outside the police station in a swirl of magical energy and begins mentally disassembling the wall of the jail, stone by stone. A crowd of cops tries to rush her, but are thrown aside with a look. (Willow's casual dismissal of the police is impressively reminiscent of Magneto in the X-Men movie. If the show had a bigger budget, I think we might have even seen the levitating squad cars.)

Having dealt with the police, Willow floats up to the sizable hole she's created in the brick wall to finish the job... and finds the cell bars bent out of shape, and Jonathan and Andrew gone. Only Anya is left, pleading with her to stop and listen to reason. Realizing what's happened - that Buffy has absconded with her prey - Willow tosses Anya away with a gesture and whirls around, her mouth opening wide in a hideous banshee scream.

Let me pause for a moment to say here that DarkWillow is freeeaky. This is awesome.

Something Wiccan This Way Comes
Outside, Xander has managed to steal a squad car and speeds away from the station with the two human targets and Buffy as passengers. Huddled inside the car, the group takes stock of their situation. One of their best friends is after them. Their "brilliant plan" can be summed up as "run and hide." "I can't believe that was Willow," mumbles Jonathan, in shock, remembering that "she packed her own lunches and wore floods." Things have indeed changed.

The group muses about Willow's battle plan. "Why doesn't she just wave her arms and make us dead?" Andrew asks. Buffy replies: "She doesn't want you dead. She wants to kill you." This is easily the most insightful thing Buffy has said so far.

Willow then appears to drive that point home, causing a big rig truck to bear down on them unmercifully, smashing repeatedly into the rear bumper of the squad car. They manage to escape only because she eventually collapses from exertion after a full day's worth of running on continuous hot rage. But Willow is far from done.

Looking to recharge her magical batteries, she makes a stop at Rack's place. "Look at you now," the warlock purrs, seductive, looking over the new DarkWillow with interest. "All growed up. Full of dark juice." He circles her, drawing close, touches her face with his hands, and asks her what she wants. Willow lifts her face to stare into his eyes. "I'm just gonna take a little tour," she whispers. Placing a hand on his chest, she violently drains his magical power in a shower of sparks.

Although a little unclear at the time, the rape metaphor for Rack's magical invasion of Willow in "Wrecked" is now crystal clear. "When you first came to me, you were just a little slip of a girl," he reminds her, and describes her new power level as a strawberry that's now "ripe." It's true - this Willow is indeed a far cry from the shy girl he first met, curling in on herself in repulsion at his touch. In contrast, DarkWillow is nobody's victim - her reaction to his sleazy attentions is stoic silence, followed by cold rage. She reclaims herself from Rack through violence, throwing his own words back at him, raping him with her magic. (It reminded me of nothing so much as the bit in Natural Born Killers where Juliette Lewis kicks the shit out of a dirty prison offical screaming "Am I sexy now?")

This episode finally gets back to Willow's power issues, the ones raised early in the season before the drug-addiction plotline got into full swing. Jonathan's reminiscence about the geeky girl of years gone by serves as a reminder that Willow's role in the series has always been that of reliable backup to Buffy, ever since she first became one of the "Slayerettes"... but we're also reminded that she's never been entirely comfortable with this. "I'm not your sidekick!" she'd yelled at Buffy in Season 4's "Fear, Itself."

Magic aside, Willow has always been a strong person... stronger in many ways than Buffy herself. She has great intelligence, courage, and a natural skill for leadership that was displayed prominently as early as Season 2, when she took over as a student teacher in Jenny Calendar's computer class - no mean feat for a high schooler. In Season 5's "Weight of the World," we saw Willow cope with crisis by stepping into Buffy's vacated position as field commander, ordering the other Scoobies around with every bit as much authority as Buffy herself had shown against the Watcher's Council in "Checkpoint."During the summer following Buffy's death, Willow held sway over the entire group, deferred to even over Giles. Through continuous hard work, Willow reshaped herself from a shy, bookish teenager into a strong, confident woman.

But... if there's a parable being presented here about power and how it corrupts, we can see from the events of Season 6 how it applies to Willow. In contrast to Buffy, who can be annoyingly rational (as we see in plentiful examples later in the episode), Willow's strongest actions have always been directed by her passions - her heart, not her mind ("Wild at Heart," "Tough Love"). She's come to believe that the ends justify the means (e.g. "Bargaining"). And now, with the love of her life extinguished, Willow's grief and rage at cruel fate have swallowed her whole, and her advanced power level not only means she can do more far damage trying to drown out her anguish than she did with her botched spellcasting in "Something Blue"... she now feels entitled to use her power to do so. "Not like I owe anybody anything.. I'm totally free," as she'd told Amy in "Smashed." And with Tara gone, payback is all that matters.

Back Among The No-Plan Clan
With no other ideas where to go, the gang ends up back at the Magic Box in search of ways to combat Willow. It doesn't look good - all the magic books have been drained... except for one, a tome of anti-magic protection spells Anya had kept locked under the counter. Unfortunately, it's in a language they can't read. Jonathan tries to offer translation advice, but is promptly shut down by Buffy, who coldly explains her position as "I'm not protecting you... we're doing this for Willow... she kills you, she crosses a line, I lose a friend. And I hate losing." She orders them to sit down and shut up.

Buffy's refusal to let Jonathan help, and her explanation of why, is one with her tedious moralizing in "Villains." Her claim that Willow has yet to "cross a line" even after turning Warren into an anatomy lesson shows the shallowness of Buffy's emotional involvement with the events at hand. She is cold, showing virtually no anguish, grief, fear... anything, really. Unlike Willow, she is reacting with her head, not her heart, approaching Willow's rampage as a mental problem ("Willow has an addictive personality") rather than an emotional one.

Jonathan has a better read: "I could practically feel it," he says, explaining that Willow's power must be running low, once again emphasizing feelings over thoughts. Xander follows this up by asking Buffy what she plans to do once they manage to stop their friend. "I talk to her," Buffy says simply. "And say what?" Xander asks. Buffy doesn't have a real answer, coming up again with the explanation that Jonathan and Andrew are the "line she cannot cross." Okay. That's gonna work. Right.

On the Outside Looking In
Meanwhile, stranded at Spike's crypt, Dawn has had plenty of time to get restless, pacing back and forth while her current babysitter, the loose-skinned demon Clem, provides running commentary on his selection of tortilla chips. Realizing his charge is bored, the good-natured demon does his best to cheer her up, suggesting a movie ("PG-13!" he says brightly), but Dawn has other ideas, recruiting Clem to take her to Rack's in search of Willow. Uncertain, Clem worries about getting into trouble, noting that "your sister's the Slayer. I'm a demon. That's real incentive to get along with her," but he's pressured into it, protesting all the way. "A bad element comes down here," a jittery Clem cautions, and warns her that even if Rack knows where Willow is that "he's gonna want something" and that he "likes little girls." So we've seen. Eww. Undeterred, Dawn heads into Rack's sanctuary alone, leaving Clem behind in the waiting room.

Dawn's proactivity here is a welcome reminder of her Season 5 spunkiness and bravery. "Do I look weak to you? Or incapable?" she protests to Clem. "Heck, no!" the demon tells her. With an actual crisis to cope with, Dawn has abandoned her season-long whining and once again become the tough little cookie who defied her sister and marched off to discover that she was the Key, who braved a demon's cave with Spike to fetch the egg she needed for the spell to resurrect her mother, who stared down Glory in a deadly Q&A session for information. About time.

And a quick aside here: Clem has got to be the most mild-mannered demon ever to appear on BtVS. "It's not very clean" he complains about Rack's place, looking around as if the walls are contagious. How weird is it that this is Spike's closest friend in Sunnydale? What does that say about this particular vampire's alignment with the forces of darkness?

King of the Ring
Speak of the devil, let's now check in with what's going on in the Cave of the Mysterious "Pyramids of Mars" Demon. (Which I'll now refer to by the acronym PoMD.) In Africa. Right. Or maybe it's Haiti, for all we know. Cuba. Cabo san Lucas. Joshua Tree.

Shirtless and barefoot, Spike prowls the cave in wait for the start of the "trials" he's about to undergo. He doesn't have long to wait - the first challenge is soon up, a deathmatch against a pro-wrestler-weight gladiator with flaming fists. (Note here, once again, that vampires are flammable.) It's a hard fight and we get to see only short snippets of it, but fist-flaming muscleman eventually goes down. "You have passed the first stage of the test," the PoMD rumbles. Tired and looking much the worse for wear, Spike bitches "first stage?" Pay attention much? Trials, plural. Round 2, coming up.

Rack And Ruin
Back at Rack's place, Dawn realizes that her idea of pumping Rack for information has come too late, as she comes smack up against the sorcerer's corpse, floating dessicated in the middle of the room. She turns to run with a scream and is brought up short by the sight of Willow, also looking much the worse for wear, her now seriously pale skin streaked with dark veins, her eyes blacker than ever. "Hey, cutie," Willow smiles.

Immune to the girl's terror, Willow shrugs off Dawn's question about whether she killed Rack with "It's an improvement, believe me." Freaked out, Dawn tries to appeal to Willow's grief. "I miss Tara too," she pleads. For a moment, this reminder of Tara's death seems to reach her. "Did you cry?" Willow says softly. "Of course you did. I get that." But then she segues into a scarier train of thought. "You cry because you're human. But you weren't always... you used to be some mystical ball of energy. Maybe that's why you're crying all the time 'Dawnie.' You don't belong here." In a moment that's equally creepy and hilarious, Willow mocks Dawn's recent crybaby tendencies and offers to change her back into her true form. "No more tears, Dawnie," she says, in a voice somewhere between comfort and menace. Dawn winces, and braces herself for the end... but then suddenly her sister appears in the doorway. "I think you need to get away from her," Buffy grinds out tersely. Let us all now fill in the words missing from this neat little Aliens homage: you bitch!

And now, for suspense, a quick switch of scene: back to the Magic Box!

The Lady And The Jerk
Anya is hard at work trying to translate the impenetrable anti-magic spell. "You're too close," she frosts to Xander, who is hovering over her shoulder with a dictionary of some type. They argue for a moment about well-then-how-can-I-read-it? "I'm looking right at this stuff and I can't read it!" she retorts. Less than inspired by the competency of their protectors (shades of Spike's "this is the crack team that foils my every move?" from Season 4's "Pangs"), Andrew begins egging on Jonathan to join him in trying to escape. "You know magic. We're in a magic shop. We can take them," he whispers, adding that Jonathan can even be the leader if he wants to. "Just tell me what to do," he pleads. Irritated, Jonathan tells him to grow up.

Terrified and frustrated, Andrew has a small explosion, pouring out his view of events (couched in a long string of Star Wars references) that Willow isn't likely to stop with just killing the two of them. "The annoying virgin has a point," Anya agrees. Xander objects. "We're her friends... her family. She would never hurt us." Uh-huh. Except for the fact that she already tried to.

Anya points out the flaw in his logic by citing the truck-driving incident, stating that Willow "doesn't care if you live or die." Xander promptly ties this to his own emotional issues. "Guess you two finally have something in common." An uncomfortable pause later, Anya confides, "I care if you live or die, Xander. I'm just not sure which one I want."

The conversation becomes increasingly bitter. Anya reminds the audience that Xander's last reaction to a major threat was to proclaim his love and propose to her; Xander reminds us that he's not so much with the big love these days by asking if she plans to turn on him and use the situation to take her revenge. Furious, Anya tells him that she although she would love to, she can't. "Not officially. Not magically... You got away with it. I can't hurt you." He responds by bringing up the "hurt" he felt over her one-night-stand with Spike. "That wasn't vengeance," she says softly. "It was solace." Xander's reaction makes it clear that he'd never even considered this viewpoint - that her intention wasn't to hurt him, but to console herself, to ease her own pain. As in "Normal Again," we're getting the picture that Xander hasn't really given Anya's wounded feelings that much thought.

...a picture that Xander then brings into sharp focus by turning her comment, "You don't get to play the martyr... none of this would have happened if it weren't for you," into a self-hating digression about his own sense of uselessness, about how he'd actually seen the gun before Warren shot Buffy and Tara. "I saw it, and... I couldn't move," he confesses, miserable over his failure. Anya absorbs this, then gently reminds him, "I was talking about us." Realizing he's just underlined his own self-involvement, he lapses into silence, ashamed.

Quick break: There's a sharp lesson being given about relationships here. It's becoming clearer with each passing moment that Xander's relationship with Anya both began and ended with him thinking, more often than not, only of himself. What's more, he's still doing it, obsessing over his own feelings, with only the barest idea of or interest in hers, while Anya has repeatedly shown a streak of selfless devotion to him that's far and away beyond anything he's yet given her... and the feelings of betrayal to match. In Anya's mind, Xander was her "best friend." It's become painfully obvious that Xander never felt the same way. And in this, he's just like his icon, Buffy, who has spent the year exploiting someone else's love while giving next to nothing back - ironically, exactly the kind of behaviour Xander had called her on in her relationship with Riley, when he'd lectured her in "Into the Woods" about taking Riley for granted, and treating him as "convenient." Buffy had thrown it right back at him: "Look who's talking! You've got Anya following you around like a lovesick puppy. Is she more than a convenience?" It's beginning to look like they'd both gotten each other's number even more than they'd realized at the time.

Bluff-y The Vampire Slayer
Back at Rack's, Buffy tries to stall Willow with a therapist approach while edging Dawn toward the door. "You need help," she tells her friend. "The forces inside you are incredibly strong, but you're stronger... you're still Willow." Willow scoffs, describing herself in a third-person sum-up as a loser, with "stupid, mousy ways," and "a junkie," shifting back into first-person only when discussing Tara. "The only thing going for me were those moments when Tara would look at me, and I was wonderful." She glares at Buffy, as if willing her to get it. "And that will never happen again," she grates.

Buffy tries again, saying she knows how much it hurts, but that if she lets the magic take over "the world goes away" and lamely offers that "there's so much" to live for. Willow recognizes this for the incredible line of crap that it is. "You're trying to sell me on the world?" Willow derides. "The one where you lie to your friends when you're not trying to kill them and you screw a vampire just to feel and insane asylums are the comfy alternative?" During this speech, Willow effortlessly shifts time and space, bringing the group of them to the Magic Box, all without moving. Stunned, Buffy and Dawn look around, then collapse, disoriented.

Willow smiles broadly at the sight of her targets and makes the mild quip, "You boys like magic, don't you?" before extending her hands and blasting them full force with crackling magic.

The blast doesn't work. Unbeknownst to Willow, Anya has finished a phonetic translation of the shielding spell, and is hiding behind a curtain, reciting it continuously. Willow tries blasting a few more times before realizing that that her magic is being blocked somehow. Changing tactics, she does a spell on herself instead, increasing her strength, and steps forward, intending to get physical. Buffy gets in her way.

Willow smiles... and sends her friend flying with a backhanded slap. While Buffy gets back on her feet, Xander grabs the others and heads for the door. Anya stays behind to continue the spell, Horatio at the bridge. "Do something right," she hisses to Xander. Ouch. Not that he didn't deserve that.

Womano a Womano
The two friends face off. It's a big moment, and both know it. "Are we really gonna do this?" Buffy asks. Willow grins and reminds her that "this is a huge deal for me... six years of being a side man, now I get to be the Slayer." Buffy's response is a self-important snide that "A killer isn't a Slayer. Being a Slayer means something you can't even conceive of." Willow reacts appropriately: "Oh, Buffy," she drawls. "You really need to have every square inch of your ass kicked." And the fight is on.

Although this slamfest contains more than a few echoes of Buffy's climactic battle against Faith, it's Willow's manner that's really interesting. She's cocky, jokesy - her wordplay has a careless, taunting quality, superior. The level of masculinity in her speech borders on channeling Warren, with her comment about "getting a wood for the violence" and calling Buffy "superbitch." (Oddly, Buffy seems to be channeling her share of masculine energy as well. "I don't want to hurt you," she tells Willow. "Didn't say I wouldn't." This is an almost word-for-word repeat of Spike's words to Drusilla in "Becoming Part 2." Strange.)

The fight spills over into the back area of the shop, revealing Anya, defiantly clutching her spellbook. Quick to realize the implication, Willow grabs Anya by the throat. With her demonic teleportation powers, Anya should hardly feel threatened, but she inexplicably panics and screams for help. Buffy, on the verge of unconsciousness, can't help her. Anya is easily tossed aside and knocked out, and Willow turns her attention back to Buffy, conversationally sharing that she now understands that "the Slayer thing really isn't about the violence. It's about the power. And there's no one in the world with the power to stop me now," only to be hit by a powerful blast of energy from an unknown source.

In the doorway of the Magic Box, stands... Giles! Leather jacket. No glasses. Looking extremely tough.

Round 2, coming up.

Go Back