The wisdom of the ages is: there's no free lunch

6.1: Bargaining, Pt. 1

6.2: Bargaining, Pt. 2

6.10: Wrecked




Clearly, one can't have a season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer without Buffy, but the full, real resurrection of the deceased Slayer (the initial "big number" to get the season off the ground) is entirely disturbing. As we saw in the finale of season 5, Willow began to take charge of the group while Buffy was in her catatonic state, and it was thanks to her that Buffy ever emerged from that condition. At the end of the fifth season, Willow was a hero, who protected and guided. Here at the beginning of the sixth season, she still continues to lead them, but now it is on a rather roundabout trail that is dark for most of the trusting crowd following her. Anya and Xander are busy being secretive about their engagement, neither Giles, Spike, nor Dawn are in the know, and Tara and Willow's relationship has lately been slightly strained by Willow's obsession with magic.


As the group performs the resurrection spell (and even before), it is very clear that Willow is definitely the main shaker and mover in the process. She is the only one of the bunch who fully understands all the rather dark ins and outs of the procedure, from killing the innocent fawn (which she keeps a secret from Tara) to the nature of her "trials" during the spell. Everyone is unnerved, amazed, and perturbed by the crazed powers attacking Willow, and it might be just as well that the bikers interrupted before more could happen to her. One really has to agree with Giles in one of the later episodes, once he's heard about the spell: "You're a stupid girl." Of course, Giles was always wary of Willow's study of magic. With his past, he has much more experience with evil and the spirit world than anyone else in the group (except Buffy and, of course, Spike). He had always been afraid that she will get in over her head—which has happened here, even though the resurrection spell was ultimately a "success."



Unfortunately it's a fact of life that, as the colloquial saying goes, "There's no free lunch." Spike says, "There are ALWAYS consequences to magic," and again, I think that at the end of "Bargaining, Pt. 2" the writers have used some "big bad" as a metaphor for recurring themes of the season. Here, when the Scoobies raised her from the dead, they simultaneously conjured a dangerous (and exceedingly creepy) demon and thought of it as the "price" of this particular brand of magic (or, as Anya says, it's their "free gift"). However, little do they know that there is so much more that must be paid for even after Buffy chops off the demon's head. Of course, we find out later that Buffy had been somewhere calm, peaceful, without time, where she felt free and contented—apparently some version of Heaven. That is something that will stick with her for the rest of her life and their lives as well, and something that is an inner—and ultimately more urgent—reflection of the tangible evil that she has already had to face and vanquish.