The Gift (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)


"The Gift" is the fifth season finale, and the 100th episode, of the fantasy-horror television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The episode serves as the "WB Finale" of the series, as it moved to the UPN channel for the remainder of the series.
The premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that an adolescent girl, Buffy Summers, is chosen by mystical forces and given superhuman powers to kill vampires, demons, and other evil creatures in the fictional town of Sunnydale. She is supported by a close circle of family and friends, nicknamed the Scooby Gang. In "The Gift", Buffy refuses to accept that her sister Dawn's death is the only way to defeat the hell-god Glory and prepares to do battle. In the end, she discovers the meaning of her "gift".

Plot

The Scooby Gang considers plans to foil Glory, but can only suggest killing Buffy's sister Dawn before Glory uses her in the ritual, which Buffy refuses to consider. Anya suggests using the Dagon Sphere, which repels and confuses Glory, and the hammer of Olaf the troll. They hope to delay Glory until her deadline for completing the ritual has passed, preventing an apocalypse and making Dawn useless to her.
As Buffy trains with Giles, she reveals to him that the First Slayer told her, on her vision quest, that death was her gift, an idea she rejects. Buffy also notes that while she survived killing Angel despite loving him, losing Dawn will destroy her. Xander proposes to Anya.
Buffy and Spike gather weapons. She asks him to protect Dawn. Spike tells Buffy he knows she'll never love him, but is grateful that she treats him like a man rather than a monster. Glory's minions build a tower for the ritual to open the gates between dimensions.
Buffy and her allies confront Glory just as the ritual is to begin. Willow launches a magic attack, confusing and dazing Glory, while restoring Tara's sanity. Buffy attacks Glory with the Dagon sphere, but Glory manages to destroy it. As they fight Glory punches off her head, revealing she is actually fighting Buffy's robot double. Buffy surprises Glory by attacking her with Olaf's Hammer, and then races to save Dawn, but Glory slows her down as they battle on the tower. The two of them fall to the ground below and Xander uses a crane to hit Glory with a wrecking ball. Buffy beats Glory with the hammer until she reverts to Ben, but spares his life, telling him that Glory must never return or they will both die. With the others' attention diverted, Giles kills Ben by suffocating him, to prevent Glory's re-emergence.
With the window of time to stop the ritual about to close, the Scoobies spot someone up on the scaffolding with Dawn. Willow telepathically tells Spike to go up to Dawn, and she and Tara magically clear a path for him by throwing aside Glory's minions and guards. Spike finds Doc the demon threatening to start the ritual. A fight ensues, but Doc tosses Spike off the scaffolding and then cuts into Dawn with shallow cuts, starting the apocalyptic ritual. Buffy reaches the top, kills Doc and frees the captive Dawn just as the portal between dimensions opens. Dawn is willing to sacrifice herself to seal the portal, but Buffy, realizing the true meaning of the First Slayer's revelation, stops her. Buffy throws herself into the portal, which closes when she dies. She is buried with the epitaph, "She saved the world. A lot."

Themes

In an essay on the ownership of evil, Erma Petrova argues that Giles murdering Ben is comparable to Willow murdering Warren - both victims are human, and their deaths are necessary to prevent further suffering. Although the moral ambiguity of killing Ben is discussed earlier in the episode, as well as Ben's innocence, Giles is never shown to have feelings of guilt afterwards; he did what needed to be done. Contrast this with Willow's guilt over murdering Warren in a spirit of revenge, a theme that persists until the end of the series. Petrova feels the difference for Giles is that killing Ben is his only option - the police wouldn't understand the danger, Buffy is morally unable to take a human life, and leaving him alive presents too great a risk. Willow, however, had other options available and yet chose to murder Warren anyway.
Giles recognizes that Buffy, as a hero, lives by a more demanding moral code than most people. Her unique role and abilities confer special responsibilities, including moral rules by which Giles is not bound. When Ben marvels, "She could have killed me", Giles disagrees: "No she couldn’t. Never... She’s a hero, you see. She’s not like us." However, in an essay on the ethics in this episode, C. W. Marshall claims that Giles actually exhibits heroism, as his murder of Ben serves a greater good and protects those he loves.

Continuity