Ronnie you CANNOT leave me at that. I need to hear more about the season 1 finale idc about spoilers
ough alright so season 1 episode 12 "Prophecy Girl." Can I talk about this coherently? We shall see.
I just. I love how for the first half of the episode Giles is having the absolute worst days of his life, freaking out, not sleeping, snapping at Jenny when she tries to help, watching all the signs of the coming apocalypse, all while Buffy, Willow, and Xander are wrapped up in the high school drama of who's taking who to the Spring Fling. And the audience Knows that something's wrong and Giles knows more than he's saying but they don't know what, and it's so easy to get swept up in the who's-asking-out-who drama.
And I love how violently that tone of low-stakes high school drama gets shattered. Willow and Cordelia finding a whole room of their classmates dead. Willow being genuinely traumatized. The way it hits close to home in a way it never had before. ("I know those guys. I went to that room every day.") And of course The Scene. The scene that made me cry.
We see Angel and Giles arguing about the prophecy that Giles just translated, and we still don't know what it actually said. We see Buffy show up to the library, but Angel and Giles don't notice her. We see Buffy notice Angel and smile in this excited, very uncomplicated "my cute sorta-boyfriend is here :)" way, and then we hear Giles finally say what's in the prophecy he's been freaking out about for the past two days. And Buffy hears that she is going to die TOMORROW.
And like. this fucking scene. I can't handle this scene. She's 16 years old and the person she trusts most is telling her that if she doesn't face The Master, the world will end, and if she does face The Master, she'll die. And she's 16 fucking years old, and she didn't ask for any of this, and she's already sacrificed so much for the greater good with barely any complaint, but she just can't do this. This is too much.
And Giles has to look at this 16 year old who, in his mind, he's sworn to protect, and confront the fact that no, actually. He's sworn to train the Slayer, he's trained to protect the world. Usually the best thing for the world is to keep Buffy safe, but not this time.
Also Angel's there. Idrc about what he's got going on, but he's not happy either.
It's just such a good scene, and Sarah Michelle Gellar acts the absolute fuck out of it.
Anyway for the sake of not making this 15,000 words I won't get into the rest of the episode but real quick LOOK at the giant puppet demon that emerges from the Hellmouth:
I love how huge and weird and slimy it is, I love the way it moves, I love how the demon that comes directly from the hellmouth is so much more inhuman than the demons we usually see hanging around Sunnydale. I am enamored with the big demon puppet.
