Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy Bites the Big One, Season 5

’’You’re just a girl!’’ exclaims a kid who Buffy saves from a vamp at the top of the fifth season’s finale...but we know better. As evil god Glory and creepy Doc Joel Grey use the Key — a.k.a. Dawn, Buffy’s sister — to open a portal that will destroy the universe, the only way to stop yet another apocalypse is for our blond heroine to jump in herself, dying on behalf of all mankind. The show turned irreversibly dark after this episode, but the epitaph on Buffy’s tombstone sums up all seven years of its greatness: ’’She saved the world. A lot.’’ —WP