Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Weight of the World

"I'm willing to wager, when all's said and done, Buffy likes it rough..."

Just one more episode after this, and Buffy's all catatonic and flashbacky. There's a certain amount of treading water until the finale here, but it's well enough executed to make a passable episode, if not a great one.

The theme here is guilt; Buffy's guilt for subconsciously giving in and, worse, momentarily wishing her own sister dead so that all this will just go away. Meanwhile, even Glory gets a bit of guilt leaking through from Ben. Buffy's the important one, though; she's the one with the brains and, indeed, character traits.

So we get Willow going inside Buffy's head, and a bit of trippy symbolism passes the time. There are clues and, indeed, misdirection over the meaning of "Death is your gift", as the first slayer told Buffy. We will, of course, find out in the finale.

We end with Giles telling Buffy that there's only one way to beat Glory: kill Dawn. This is slightly undermined by our knowledge that you could also just kill Ben. But let's see what happens...