Buffy the Vampire Slayer S6 — Season 6

What is Joss Whedon going to do after the brilliant Season 5 I was wondering. Well, he tried to go on and mostly succeeded in doing so. Season 6 is not as good season 5 but especially the last few episodes were brilliant!

In this season Buffy is resurrected after having died at the end of season 5 to safe Dawn and close the magical portal that Glory opened. However, this resurrection is not as Willow and the gang anticipated "the release from Hell" but a rather a "forceful departure from Heaven" for Buffy. This leads to a lot of confusion and conflicts and is one aspect which pushes Willow into dangerous magical territories and her addiction to magic. This in turn leads to the break-up of Willow and Tara and is also partly responsible for Gilles' permanent return to England and Dawn's becoming a kleptomaniac.

Additionally Spike and Buffy are sleeping together and the season is special in as far as there is no supernatural villain but "The Trio" (Jonathan, Warren and Andrew) who tries to best the Slayer. This leads to far less slaying of monsters and more mundane dangers! The season ends with Spike getting back his soul so that he can be with Buffy, Willow (who is grieve-stricken by Tara's murder at Warren's hand) killing Warren as well as trying to end the world and Buffy coming to turns with being on Earth instead of Heaven.

UPN resurrects Buffy the Vampire Slayer for a sixth season, but it proves to be a controversial one that's incredibly uneven; with high highs and low lows. The change in networks also comes with a change in tone, to darker themes and more moral ambiguity (which leads to a lot of inconsistencies). Plot-wise it’s the season of Dark Willow, after raising Buffy from the dead Willow begins to lose herself in the magicks; meanwhile Buffy struggles to reconnect with life and find a reason to live again. Dealing with such serious themes as depression, physical & psychological abuse, and addiction, the series' usual camp and comedy seems especially out of place and incongruent. Still, the season manages to deliver some inspired episodes; such as the musical “Once More, With Feeling” and the mind-bending “Normal Again.” Season 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is full of problems and departs from the series formula in a lot of ways, but the new directions adds intrigue and excitement to the show.

This season was such a huge disappointment to me after season 5, which had such a clear and consistent mission and an entertaining villain in Glory. It started out interesting (with Buffy being depressed about being brought back to life), but the resolution was basically "get over it we need to deal with the new villain" who ended up being just some dweeby old classmates? The plots of the episode became very serialized again, which is something I thought the series had evolved past. Because of this, we had to watch Dawn do stupid teenage things and Anya be sad for the bulk of the second half and made it feel so anticlimactic. By the end, I didn't even care that Willow had turned evil and I was just hoping for it to be over with. Even Spike couldn't save this season for me