Prophecy Girl

Written by Joss Whedon

Directed by Joss Whedon

Original Air Date: June 2, 1997

In any other season, "Prophecy Girl" would have been appropriately a two-parter. The creators of Buffy, faced with the prospect of a 12-episode opening season, could not burn two episodes on one story, so they tied up several loose ends in one felled swoop.

As such, "Prophecy Girl" is broken into three part. The first 15 minutes or so concerns the mildly important but still superfluous struggle of Xander asking Buffy to the Spring Fling, and Buffy rejecting him. It was natural in Buffy's first year at Sunnydale High that Xander would develop a crush on her, and it is a story that couldn't be left without a finish, even though most crushes never get the resolution of Xander being told by Buffy that he's one of her best friends but she doesn't feel that way about him.

The melodrama exits and the hyperdrama begins. Buffy overhears Giles telling Angel that the Codex has prophesied Buffy dying at the hands of The Master, season one's Big Bad. Buffy rejects this prophesy and quits, not wanting to die. Meanwhile, Cordelia and, strangely enough, Willow go up to the school on a Saturday to get a sound system, and find Cordelia's boyfriend and several others slaughtered. This hits Willow particularly hard, and a lingering issue is finally addressed.

That issue is frail mortality of people who live in Sunnydale, and how that frailty doesn't appear to particularly effect anyone. People are killed in every episode, yet life goes on. Willow's encounter with this gruesome massacre changes that, and for once Willow is not the annoying, geeky sidekick, she is the Everyman who is numbed and saddened by the sight of so much senseless murder.

Willow's shock is all Buffy needs to get kick-started back into Slayage, and off she goes into the final 15 minutes, where she is killed by The Master, resuscitated by Xander and then goes on to kill The Master by tossing him through a skylight onto a jagged piece of wood. Sunnydale has avoided the apocalypse and all is right with the world.

This episode, written and directed by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, reaches for the stars and, though not exactly getting there, comes close. A Buffy episode is about 40-42 minutes long, and there is enough material jammed into this one to run for at least three full episodes. Had the show been given an initial 26-episode run, the Xander affair in and of itself would have been its own show, as would the massacre.

This episode established what would continue for six more seasons, and that is Buffy finishing each season with a bang. Whedon is not a cliffhanger junkie and each season's Big Bad is resolved by the end of that season, only to start fresh in the new year. Season five's finale was obviously the most problematic, as Buffy sacrifices herself for the greater good, and to Whedon's credit, her return is not the heroic one we would have imagined.

What is important to take away from "Prophecy Girl" is the creators' respect of its audience's intelligence. They establish here that they will toy with reality (killing Buffy, only to magically bring her back) but they will not resort of wholesale reality manipulation. In the Buffyverse, every cause has an effect and every action, a reaction. By resolving the driving conflict of the season in the last episode each season, they send the message that they respect the audience's wants without catering to its needs. There is nothing so annoying as the "Who Shot J.R." mentality most popular television shows now bring with their season finales, finales that inevitably ask more questions rather than supply a decent amount of answers, their plots becoming nothing more than a series of teasers and their arcs nothing more than the promise of what is just around the corner.

The Buffyverse does not operate this way. Its viewers are promised resolution and, no matter how unlikely, resolution is offered. It is more effective some times than others, but this is to be effective. Some people laud the redemption of Willow that concluded season six as the show's defining moment, while people like me believe that it completely sold the show out. The point is not whether the creators manipulated its audience, but had the guts to take a very serious chance that few shows would or could consider taking.

So, with this closing moment, the defeat of the first Big Bad and a resolution to party, season one of Buffy closes on a high note. Curiously, this little show at this point had developed a mildly cult following, though most people who bothered to watch it immediately fell in love with it.

Their fears of cancellation went away as season two came, and with it the best season Buffy would offer. It is not to say that the other seasons lacked in merit (though seasons four, six and the last half of seven were major let-downs), it is simply to say that the creators took the momentum they built with the usually hit but occasionally miss season one and steamrolled into season two, and with it made Buffy a show that lingered somewhere between cult favorite and breakout hit.