“Yeah, Buffy, what are we gonna do now?” Dawn asks. The camera zzoms in on Buffy’s face as a grin erupts, and the sun lights it up . The screen goes black, Joss Whedon and Marti Noxon’s names shows up, and I close the window. I lower the volume, I start up my Winamp playlist, and Green Day’s “She” starts flloding out of the speakers. And I feel as if I can accomplish anything.

From the beginning, I noticed that this was an episode written by Joss himself. The sarcastic jokes were looser in every mouth, the drama seemed more intense, as did the character interaction and moments. When Buffy told Spike that, “I realized something. It never occured to me before. But I think we can win this,” my heart fluttered with joy, giving me a moment’s respite from the nervousness and the anger that’s kept it shaking for the last six or seven hours.

Funnily enough, this continued until Buffy got a sword through her stomach, until the girls started buckling under the onslaught of the Übervamps, until SPIKE hit the fan for the bad guys. Every bad thought I’ve thought of this character (I actually wrote “guy” here originally, as if he was an actual person) over the last ten months or so, are taken back. The same goes for all of the characters, really, but especially for Spike.

Now, I think I’ll just sit for a while, listening to songs that remind me of this episode — Green Day’s “She”, Madrugada’s “Majesty”, just to mention a few — and think.

(Oh, and the “Queen” tag of this post doesn’t refer to the band Queen, but to all the Slayers in general (even, or perhaps especially, the non-superpower ones), and Buffy in particular.

The world will never seem the same again, after Buffy and her friends saved it.

Finally: Yet another thank you! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!! to Loki, for recommending this series, and Whedon, more generally. It sure has been a special year.