Kly's thoughts on "End of Days"

Note: totally unspoiled, I don't know what's going to happen in the finale and I don't want to.

***

Sorry, too speechless to manage much.

I fell totally in love with Spike, Anya, and Andrew in this episode and it's robbed me of my powers of analysis. And Buffy is finally back on top of her form.

I see that Giles is recovering from being Evil!Giles too. I even began to like Kennedy, who is a bitch, but a scrappy little fighter.

In fact in general the point of this episode seems to have been to redeem all of the characters in time to kill most of them off in the finale. (Still expecting a bloodbath.)

Could say a bit about the Mothers (the Guardians), who hid the axe for the Slayer against the Fathers (the Watchers); and we were all right, the Men did become the Council. But it all seems not to matter now since the Council is dead and the Mothers are dead too.

But let us concentrate on the signal, blinding fact of the ending - that ultimately, it all depends on our man Spike. In the end how Buffy feels doesn't matter; what matters is what Spike thinks. (And suddenly we know, incidentally, why Buffy hasn't been allowed to give a clear idea of her emotions all season long - because if she had, we would not now have this moment.)

We've just been shown Spike's worst fear. That all along, it has really been Angel for Buffy, and in the end he didn't even register on her radar. I'm fascinated that the cliff-hanger is based precisely on that question. How will Spike interpret that clinch, and how will he respond to his own fear that Buffy never really cared for him?

Is Spike NOW going to succumb to the First Evil?

Has his time finally come?