Death's Lessons

A girl is stabbed in Germany. Another drops dead of a heart attack after being saved from sacrifice and flying arrows. Twelve more die of a hyperbole-ified wish. The last is the death of an ignorant friend in place of a fatal penance. There is no obvious common thread in season seven’s rise in the death of innocents except one thing. Death has a message. Be it lesson or warning, there is something to be gleaned from these casualties.

The girl in Germany is one of two young women so far stabbed by cloaked men with curved knives. They’ve both been part of the introduction scene of the episode, and they’ve both been alone, running and fighting alone. Whoever or what ever these cloaked, masculine figures are, the women have a strong resemblance to slayers, and they are being tracked down and killed one by one. Like all slayers though, their death is not without meaning; Buffy receives messages from their last moments through her dreams: something is coming “from beneath you.”

Cassie’s death is the most disappointing to the audience. After all that Buffy did to save her, all the evils she staves off, the girl dies of natural causes anyway. She too has a few meaningful last words, but they are not exactly epiphany worthy. We all could have figured out that Buffy will save the world yet again. Cassie’s real lesson is that there are some things Buffy can’t control. There are some things no one can control. Throughout all the previous seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the idea of a higher plan or power has always been... inconclusive at best, if not entirely unrepresented. With the death of Cassie, fate is proven. It was her time to die, and neither Buffy nor anyone else could do anything about it. It proves there is some kind of higher plan that can’t be changed, not even by the Scoobies.

The 12 students may not be entirely innocent, but their actions hardly warranted their gruesomely painful death. So remember friends, be careful what you wish for! Actually, that lesson has already been learned previously in the series on multiple occasions. What their deaths teach is the difficulty of the kill, for Anya and for Buffy. Anya learns that killing isn’t always the answer, and Buffy learns she has to be willing to kill her friends, and she has suddenly realized the need to accept it. I think it is ironic that this realization comes in the form of Willow, the friend who tried to win the world and was stopped only with words of love. (Or is it a message that she needs to rethink the idea of killing those who might help? Maybe the lesson is the same for all there of them.)

Then there is the end of a vengeance demon’s life in exchange for the undoing of the death of the 12 boys. Again, it is proven that there is a plan, of which we are unaware, that we cannot control or change. It was not Anya’s time yet; she couldn’t just use the role of self-sacrifice as an excuse to give up. We are not the ones who choose are own path; something else determines our purpose at critical moments.

It seems to me that this season is one of higher powers. There is a great power beneath us, and a higher plan we cannot control. For once, Buffy the Vampire Slayer may finally answer the God question. So far, that answer has come on the lips of death.