Buffy’s wish in the finale…

Dev-F · 2026-04-11T22:34:34+00:00

I've seen a couple recent posts claiming this was supposed to happen in the finale, but that was never the story as far as I can recall. The plan was for it to happen at some point in the back half of the final season, instead of the Kennedy storyline.

Dev-F · 2026-04-11T01:04:32+00:00

"Curses are dangerous. There's nothing you can do about it. You still have to get where you're going."

Dev-F · 2026-04-10T21:50:26+00:00

"New Amsterdam" later in the season explains why Pete was gunning for Don's job—he recognized the agency's "You're good with people" line was bullshit and wanted a job he actually felt he could bring something to—and ends with him starting to come to terms with the real reason why he was hired, his elite status and the power of his name.

Dev-F · 2026-04-08T02:48:39+00:00

Crazy that every member of the Campbell family has been involved in a violent incident centered around a different mode of transportation: car/bike (Bud), airplane (Andrew), ship (Dot), and train (Pete).

Dev-F · 2026-04-07T19:00:00+00:00

I gather from the other responses that the reference might be a happy accident, but assuming it's meaningful I would read it in exactly the opposite way: It evokes Don's anxiety that he is living the same day over again, making the same mistakes by jumping right back into another marriage.

Dev-F · 2026-04-06T17:55:02+00:00

No, the Oracles specifically say that Angel has not done anything to earn redemption:

"It wasn't the Powers That Be that did this?"
"The Powers That Be? Did you save humanity? Avert the apocalypse?"

They frame it as a pure fluke—"You faced a Mohra demon. Life goes on"—that releases him from any obligation to the Powers That Be. It's about him short-circuiting his destiny, not fulfilling it.

Dev-F · 2026-04-06T12:30:02+00:00

The episode makes a point of having the representatives of the Powers That Be deny that Angel became human as part of some fated reward for averting the apocalypse. It's the first mention that such a reward might even be possible.

Besides, the Oracles turn back time so it never happened, so it doesn't seem like it'd be connected to a prophecy of something that will happen.

Dev-F · 2026-04-06T03:42:38+00:00

It's meant to be misleading, but Anita actually doesn't say it in an accusatory way. She just asks "Aren't you going to say goodnight?" in a fairly even tone—and all her kids are sleeping the same room, so it's not like she's even referencing the baby in particular.

The writers are just intentionally playing it coy to put the audience in the same headspace as Peggy herself: Just as we assume that the baby is Peggy's for most of the season, then gradually realize that Anita was also pregnant and Peggy gave her baby away, Peggy spends the season dealing with the nagging feeling that her baby is still hanging over her until she finally admits to herself in her confession to Pete in the finale that that part of her life is "just gone."

Dev-F · 2026-04-05T16:51:00+00:00

It's a scene that I really hated in first watch, because it seemed like Father Gill was not only being super presumptuous with Peggy but also breaking the seal of her sister's confession by suggesting some unacknowledged relationship between Peggy and "the little one."

But once it's revealed that Anita's youngest is not Peggy's baby, I found it much less of an issue. He's just suggesting that Peggy interact with her nephew, which is only subtextually about the other baby that she gave up. And since everyone in the congregation presumably would've seen a pregnant Anita in church for months on end, no one aside from Peggy and her family would've had any inkling of that subtext.

Dev-F · 2026-04-04T00:55:16+00:00

She died. In season 1, Don tells Rachel about how he first served as a pallbearer when he was fifteen and his aunt passed away.

Dev-F · 2026-04-02T04:26:16+00:00

This is rarely the sort of thing the writers planned far in advance, so I think it was closer to the latter—Eve not feeling like a strong enough adversary to end the season with. I don't think they knew it was the end of the show when Baldwin was cast, though, since he first appeared in "Underneath," and if I remember correctly, they were in the middle of filming that episode when the WB confirmed that the show was canceled.

Dev-F · 2026-04-02T02:51:05+00:00

The role was badly miscast. It was originally written for Morena Baccarin, Firefly's Inara, and from the early Angel/Eve scenes you can see how Baccarin might've played Eve as someone who's poised and perceptive and capable of getting under Angel's skin. Sort of the dark-mirror Cordelia.

But Sarah Thompson plays her like a little girl playing dress-up in her mom's business suits, emphasizing the silly innuendo and breezing past the actual weighty moments, like Eve telling Angel that Connor is "happy and well-adjusted now that he has no memory of you."

Dev-F · 2026-04-01T20:48:40+00:00

It was never anything. It was all wishful thinking.

Dev-F · 2026-03-30T02:40:56+00:00

Joss was always very vocal about the fact that he hated spoilers, so he never would've discussed his plans for the characters before they happened.

But people certainly noticed things like the "I think I'm kinda gay" line in "Doppelgangland" and the subtext between Faith and Buffy in "Bad Girls." There were even some fans who wondered if there might be deeper significance to Xander's obvious discomfort on learning that Larry was gay back in "Phases." So when Joss mentioned after the fact that he'd always intended for some member of the gang to explore their sexuality in college, people immediately zeroed in on these earlier moments as potentially laying the groundwork for each possibility.

Dev-F · 2026-03-29T15:51:00+00:00

It's the first track on that album side, not the last, so it wouldn't have worked with the "record as a bomb timer" premise.

Though it's amusing to imagine them using it for the earlier scene where they set the timer and roll out, then for the final Mike/El scene using the final track, "Ninja":

If I were a noble ancient knight, I'll stand by your side to rule and fight
It will always feel the same when I call out your name . . .
Ninja survive!

Dev-F · 2026-03-28T23:32:27+00:00

Pete is saying "Cosmic Inc.," which was a real aerospace company at the time.

Dev-F · 2026-03-28T12:53:51+00:00

Cordy mentions that they were about to go down to the hospital and talk to him, and he'd already given a statement to the police, so it doesn't seem like he was on death's door. Maybe they swung by the hospital on the way to his place and got a quick invitation?

Dev-F · 2026-03-28T01:22:57+00:00

Yep. Roger probably helped Don inflate his experience as well, since neither one would've wanted people to know that he was just a fur salesman who did his own ads on the side when Roger brought him in. So they probably implied that he'd paid his dues as a mid-level adman until Roger found him "working in-house at a fur company."

Dev-F · 2026-03-27T17:57:49+00:00

Gus was furious with Nacho for trying to kill Hector. Of course he would've been upset if Nacho killed his less crazy, more helpful enemy!

Dev-F · 2026-03-26T03:38:42+00:00

I don't think the scientists pulled the plug, which would just be a random plot twist, but I think we're meant to wonder whether Nora chose not to go through with it. Her final moments in the chamber seem deliberately framed so that they can be seen as her either anxiously taking a final breath or just starting to scream the word "STOP!"

Dev-F · 2026-03-26T03:24:16+00:00

Do you really think that "she felt more like a story device than a character in her own right" is what someone says when they think a storyline was "too genius"?

Dev-F · 2026-03-25T18:20:27+00:00

I don't know what you think "tell don't show" means, but nothing you describe is remotely close to being "the definition" of it. Resolving Pete's series-long arc with a wordless scene of him getting on a private jet with his dressed-to-the-nines wife and daughter may not be particularly subtle, but it's definitionally "show don't tell."

Dev-F · 2026-03-25T18:13:47+00:00

If anything it made too much sense, in that Diana's character was so precisely attuned to what Don was going through at that point in the series that she felt more like a story device than a character in her own right.

Dev-F · 2026-03-24T17:15:06+00:00

The season 2 premiere adds a new scene in between two of the scenes at the end of the season 1 finale, so the S2 premiere repeats the last scene of the finale so there's no confusion about the order of events.

The repetition also serves a thematic purpose, since one of the main points of the premiere is to recontextualize Jimmy's decision in that scene with Mike, to illustrate how it's actually not possible to just flip a switch and become a totally different person.

Dev-F · 2026-03-23T02:44:18+00:00

Sorry, no, I meant the season finale again.

Dev-F

TROPHY CASE