After Life

Writer: Jane Espenson
Director : David Solomon

Cast : Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Summers, Nicholas Brendon as Xander Harris, Emma Caulfield as Anya, Michelle Trachtenberg as Dawn Summers, James Marsters as Spike, Alyson Hannigan as Willow Rosenberg.

Main guest stars : Amber Benson as Tara, Lisa Hoyle as Hitchhiker Demon
Original broadcast date : October 9, 2001

Leaving the alley where they fought and killed Razor, Willow, Anya Tara and Xander are still astounded by the fact that Buffy is alive. They figure she’s at her house, so they set out to find her.

Meanwhile, Dawn and Buffy – still in her black funeral dress – walk up to the Summers house. Inside, Dawn gives her sister the grand tour, informing her that Tara and Willow live here now, and that Giles has left. That last info is the only thing that seems to spark some fleeting interest from Buffy, who just wanders around the house, an absent look in her eyes, completely turned inward.

Dawn helps Buffy clean up and change into casual clothes, but that doesn’t change her demeanor one bit. As Buffy starts to wander again after surveying Willow and Tara’s room, Dawn finally breaks the awkwardness by asking her sister if they can talk. Buffy almost focuses for a moment, but her eyes go vague again – and then, downstairs, the door opens – scaring the Slayer out of her wits – and a familiar British-accented voice calls angrily for Dawn.

After reassuring Buffy, Dawn goes down the stairs to meet Spike, who’s angry at her for deserting him and making him worried sick. “Spike… look…”, she quietly tells him. He stops short in his rant when he sees Buffy coming slowly down the stairs. He stares at her in wonder, then notices Buffy’s wounded hands. He figures out that she had to claw her way out of her coffin, and instructs Dawn to get some bandages and some mercurochrome. While she’s gone, Spike sits Buffy down in the living room. She asks him how long she was… “gone”; he answers that it’s been 148 days, not counting today. He then asks her how long it was for her. “Longer”, she quietly answers.

Once again, the front door flies open – much traffic at the Summers house tonight – and in come some very concerned-looking Scoobies. Relieved to see Buffy, they bombard her with questions – genuinely concerned about her well-being, but genuinely annoying – while Spike slips out. Dawn sees them and tells them to back off. Unable to stand all the attention, Buffy says that she just wants to sleep, and goes back upstairs.

Outside, Xander and Anya find a hurt Spike, who punches Xander (eliciting a response from the chip) before accusing him and the other Scoobies of having kept him in the dark about their plans, despite the fact that he’s fought beside them all summer. He hints that they probably did it because he would’ve been in the way if ever Buffy had come back wrong or evil. Climbing on his motorcycle, he serves Xander a dire warning – in magic, there are always consequences.

Upstairs, Willow tells Tara about her phone conversation with Giles in England; as the two go to bed, she confides to Tara that she would’ve liked some gratitude from Buffy. Tara says that maybe Buffy just needs time…

In the other room, Buffy, still dressed, is sitting on her bed, looking like a lost little girl. Getting up, she goes to her mirror, and looks at all the pictures of her and her friends. As she stares at them, they turn to skulls; startled, she snaps her eyes shut, and when she opens them again, the pictures are back to normal.

In the middle of the night, Willow and Tara are woken up by Buffy, standing at the foot of their bed hurling insults (and a vase) at them. Calling them bitches, she hints at the fact that Willow slit the fawn’s throat. The two girls panic, but when they turn on the lights, Buffy is gone… They go to Buffy’s room, but she’s hard asleep in her pyjamas. Going back to their room, they see a lump moving fast under the wallpaper. Way spooked, Willow dials Xander’s phone number…

… at Xander’s place, an insomnia-suffering Anya is trying to wake her boyfriend to play a game, but having little success. However, when the phone rings, he literally jerks awake. Anya steps away while he talks to Willow. Then she comes back in… her eyes white, laughing and slitting her cheeks with a knife. As he yelps in terror, she crumples to the floor, unconscious, and a lump moves away…

The next day, in the backyard, the Scoobies are sitting in garden chairs, theorizing about the previous night’s events; no one is sure what the thing is and how to kill it. Just then, Buffy arrives, asking “Are we killing something?”. Dressed in used black jeans and a black shirt, she looks better, but the eyes are still far away. When Willow tells her that there’s something going on but that they’re taking care of it, Buffy reports – having trouble readapting herself to speaking, it seems – what happened with the pictures in her room. They decide research is warranted, and leave for the Magic Box.

At the shop, the gang discusses the demon (Dawn expresses a preference for small bone-eaters over large bone-eaters), while Buffy absently doodles. She suddenly interrupts them, saying – more to herself than to them – that she misses Giles. Willow reassures her, saying that Giles is coming back, but it seems to barely register with Buffy, who brusquely gets up, takes her coat and informs them that she’s going to patrol. Dawn tells her sister that she’ll be OK with the gang, but as the door closes, the camera shows that the teenager’s eyes are white…

Outside, Buffy walks slowly past a cemetery, her eyes staring blankly, a frown on her face. In the Magic Box, Anya is distributing coffee for the gang and hot chocolate for Dawn. But Dawn-demon turns to her and calls her an idiot, before flinging more insults to the Scoobies, breathing fire at them, and collapsing.

In his Crypt, Spike is sobbing, punching his frustration out on the wall, scraping his knuckles in the process. Hearing some noise upstairs, he grabs a weapon and sneaks to the upper level. It’s Buffy… After trying some small talk, to which she doesn’t react, he invites her to sit down, then tells her how he’s kept his promise to protect Dawn, and how since the night she died, he saved her, every night, he saved her in his mind. She just mutely stares at him…

At the Magic Box, Xander, with Spike’s warning in his mind, asks Tara if they had any inkling this could happen. Tara denies it, and both are interrupted by an exclamation from Willow – she’s found out that the demon was created by the spell, as a kind of exchange for the gift they asked, but that it does not possess a body. Also, the demon is tied to Buffy and if it is killed, the spell that brought her back is cancelled.

This last concept makes Dawn panic; she tells them that they can’t do this to her, bring Buffy back then take her away again. As they protest that it’s out of the question, Willow finds out that the spell is temporary, and that the only way the demon can survive is by killing Buffy and possessing her body. The demon – housed in Xander’s body – thanks Willow for the tip and leaves, as the Scoobies realize what has just happened.

Buffy comes back from her patrol, still looking very lost. As she heavily clambers up the stairs, a lump follows her in the wall… Upstairs, a ghostly voice tells her, “You don’t belong here…” As Buffy tries to fight it, managing only to punch through air, the demon taunts her and starts knocking her around.

While Xander drives (too slowly for Dawn’s taste) to Buffy’s house, he explains to the teenager and to Anya what Tara and Willow are going to attempt – to make the demon solid, so Buffy can fight it. Buffy is attacked by the formless demon which she can’t hurt, but she can be hurt by it. Indeed, elsewhere, the two witches are chanting an incantation…

Xander, Anya and Dawn arrive just in time to see the demon trying to choke Buffy to death. She yells for them to take Dawn elsewhere, but just then, the spell works – Willow’s head snaps up, her eyes black, as she announces: “Solid!”. Now working with something she can trounce, Buffy swings an axe at the demon, decapitating it.
The next morning, Dawn heads out to school, but Buffy calls after her, giving her a lunch bag. After telling her sister how happy they all are to see Buffy back and happy, Dawn walks away. Buffy goes to the Magic Box, where she finally thanks her friends for saving her from… Hell. Xander, then Willow, take her in a big group hug.

Buffy steps outside the shop to find Spike… in full daylight. After explaining to her that there’s enough shade for him not to catch on fire, he asks her why she left in the middle of a soggy group hug. She answers that she needed some time alone, and he asks her if she’s OK. He begins telling her about his own experience with Hell dimensions, but she interrupts him: “I was happy…” Staring straight ahead, she tells him that she thinks she was in Heaven, and that she was torn out of there by her friends. She ends by saying that this world, where everything is loud, hard and violent, this is Hell. Getting up, she tells an astounded Spike that her friends can never know, and walks away.

Summary by OttsFiveByFive.

Episode Ratings

Mac -
“Ok episode, with a Buffy revelation at the end. That makes it better than ok.”

Quotes

(B=Buffy, X=Xander, W=Willow, S=Spike, A=Anya, T=Tara, D=Dawn)
—
D: You remember what Mom used to say? “Either wash that neck or plant potatoes.” Yeah, I never thought it was funny, either.

S: You scared me half to death. Or more to death.

S: You– I could kill you. I mean it. I could rip your head off one-handed and drink from your brainstem.

D: She’s been through a lot with the… death. But I think she’s okay.

B: How long was I gone?
S: 147 days yesterday. Uh, 148 today. Except today doesn’t count, does it?

B: Tired.
A: Yeah, I mean, jet lag from hell has got to be, you know, jet lag from hell.

A: I don’t think she’s particularly normal at all.
X: Well, she just got back. Give it time. I bet in a week she’ll be our little Buff-erin again.
A: Oh, yes, six or seven days, that’s all you really need to get over eternal hell experiences.

X: Look me in the eyes and tell me when you saw Buffy alive, that wasn’t the happiest moment of your entire existence.

S: That’s the thing about magic. There’s always consequences. Always!

W: Glad, but kind of weirded out. Which I get, you know. Lot’s of “Dear lords,” and I think I actually heard him clean his glasses.

T: You thought she’d say thanks… be more grateful.
W: Would I be a terrible person if I said yes?

T: Maybe we dreamed it.
W: Right, right. Wrong – different brains.

X: Very bad. Very, very, very bad. Bad.
A: He’s all traumatized.

A: It’s a standard way to travel through dimensions. Some demon-a-thing sees someone moving between worlds, and grabs on for the ride.

X: But what are we gonna do? I mean, I’m feeling the need for some vigorous doing, you know?

W: It’s okay. We just kill the beastie, and all is good. We’re rolling in puppies.

D: What’s the list?
A: Possible hitchhikers.
X: Demons that might have come out of hell the same time Buffy did.
D: [reading] “Skaggmore demons, Trellbane demons, skitterers, large and small bone-eaters.” If we get to pick, I say we go with the small bone-eaters.
A: Well, that just means they prefer to eat things with small bones. Like you.

A: Well, that’s four – what’s the other one like?
T: Oh, like the others, only dripping with viscous fluid.
D: Eww.

A: I found one of those 24-hour places for coffee. Remember that bookstore? Well, they became one of those books and coffee places, and now they’re just coffee. It’s like evolution, only without the “getting better” part.

A: Did I look like that? I hope I didn’t look like that.
W: No, I’m sure you looked really glamorous cutting up your face.

A: Evil things have plans. They have things to do.

S: It’s hard to get a good night’s death around here.

S: I do remember what I said. The promise. To protect her. If I’d have done that, even if I didn’t make it, you wouldn’t have had to jump. But I want you to know I did save you. Not when it counted, of course, but after that. Every night after that. I’d see it all again, and do something different. Faster, or more clever, you know? Dozens of times, lots of different ways. Every night, I save you.

T: I like sunrise better when I’m getting up early than when I’m staying up late, you know? It’s like I’m seeing it from the wrong side.

X: We made a demon? Bad us.

A: Technically, that’s not a price – that’s a gift with purchase.

A: Why are you smiling? That’s inappropriate.

D: Xander, drive faster.
X: I can’t.
D: I could drive faster and I can’t drive.
A: She’s right. You’re like a snail. A snail who’s driving a car very slowly.

A: So now what? We have to talk in some sort of anti-demon secret code?
X: Ood-gay idea-yay, An-yay.

X: So they’ll make it more solid so Buffy can kick its fully-embodied ass.

W & T: Child of words, hear thy makers. Child of words, we entreat. With our actions did we make thee. To our voices wilt thou bend. With our potions, thou took motive. With our motions came to pass. We rescind no past devotions. Give thee substance, give thee mass.

D: That’s probably the sort of thing I’m not supposed to see, right?

B: You know what they say – those of us who fail history… doomed to repeat it in summer school.

D: Are you okay?
B: I’m going to start charging money for every person that asks me that.

S: I was going to go inside, but I overheard you and the super-friends exchanging a special moment, and I came over a bit queasy. Say, aren’t you leaving a hole in the middle of some soggy group hug?

B: That’s okay. I can be alone with you here.
S: Thanks ever so.

S: Well, I haven’t been to a hell-dimension just of late, but I know a thing or two about torment.
B: I was happy. Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn’t mean anything. Nothing had form, but I was still me, you know? And I was warm, and I was loved. And I was finished. Complete. I don’t understand theology and dimensions… or any of it, really. But I think I was in heaven. And now I’m not. I was torn out of there, pulled out by my friends. Everything here is hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch… this is hell. Just getting through the next moment and the one after that. Knowing what I’ve lost… They can never know. Never.

Credit: The Sunnydale Slayers