Season 2, Episode 22 | Aired: 19 May 1998 | Written by: Joss Whedon | Directed by: Joss Whedon
The one that earns everything. Becoming Part 2 is the episode that made Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a different kind of television — the one that proved the show was genuinely willing to follow its own logic to its worst possible conclusion. Buffy kills Angel. She had to. She’d just gotten him back. She does it anyway, and then she leaves town. Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz are extraordinary in it, and the final ten minutes still land forty years on.
What Happens
Buffy is alone — Giles taken, Willow in hospital, Xander and Cordelia barely functional. She makes an unlikely alliance with Spike, who has his own reasons for not wanting the world to end: he likes it here. Spike agrees to neutralise Drusilla and get Giles out. Buffy will handle Angelus.
Willow, recovering in hospital, attempts the re-ensoulment curse again — her first major act of real magic, and she does it partly in a language she can barely read. It takes. Angel’s soul returns in the moment Buffy has already run him through with her sword, as the vortex begins to open. He doesn’t remember anything. He’s confused. He’s Angel again.
And she has to push him in anyway. Because the vortex is open. Because only his blood can close it. Because there’s no other way. She tells him to close his eyes. She kisses him. She runs him through.
Then: Joyce kicks her out of the house when Buffy finally tells her the truth about who she is. Giles, freed, is hospitalised. Xander doesn’t tell Buffy that Willow attempted the curse — he tells her to “kick his ass.” The Scoobies wait. Buffy doesn’t come home. The season ends with her on a bus out of Sunnydale, Sarah McLachlan’s Full of Grace playing over the closing montage.
Key Moments
The killing of Angel is the episode’s axis. The scene is staged simply — a corridor, two swords, and then that terrible moment of recognition as the soul returns and Angel doesn’t understand what’s happening. Gellar holds the moment for just long enough. Then she acts. The economy of the scene is what makes it devastating.
Spike’s negotiation with Buffy is the episode’s best dialogue sequence — Spike explaining, with complete sincerity, that he actually likes the world, that he wants to see his century-old favourite things again, that he’s capable of pragmatism when survival requires it. It’s the episode that turns Spike from villain to something else.
Monster / Villain
Acathla, and Angelus — who ceases to be the threat the moment Angel’s soul returns, which is exactly why the episode is so painful.
Notable Quote
“Close your eyes.” — Buffy. Two words doing a great deal of work.
Where It Fits
Becoming Part 2 is the summit of the first two seasons and the template for everything that follows. The rule it establishes: Buffy will save the world when she has to, and it will cost her something real every time. Season 3 picks up months later with her in a diner in a strange city, calling herself Anne.