YMMV / Buffy The Vampire Slayer S 7 E 5 Selfless

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The major one being Anya and her punishment - whether it was just or not? On the one hand, while she had (briefly) been human her actions had become noble and, somewhat, heroic. However, on the flip side she had inflicted misery, torture and pain on humanity for centuries and this latest massacre was particularly horrific to demand her life as suitable payment. It comes down to whether you see her as a sympathetic Fallen Hero or a cold Big Bad Friend?
  • Also, Xander. Was he genuinely trying to save Anya for her sake? Or was it more selfishly motivated? He could be seen as protecting her because he wouldn't want to be lonely. His Always Save the Girl attitude was to the detriment of the rest of humanity, who Anya probably would have continued (albeit reluctantly) to torment.
  • Buffy. A snowball that keeps rolling and rolling until a few episodes before the series finale when everyone turns on her. Her 'I am the law' attitude rattles her friends' collective cages but who are they to supercede her authority? Willow is a recently reformed Big Bad Friend only just going sober from her Addictive Magic and Xander is The Team Normal with a tendency to get in the way more often than helping (and as Buffy points out, his lingering love for Anya doesn't exactly make him an impartial judge, not to mention - as Buffy points out - she was willing to kill Angel for the greater good, so she knows what she's talking about).
• Broken Base: Who was in the right: Buffy or Xander? The show doesn't take either person's side but that doesn't stop fans from trying.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Anya tells Buffy that it will take more than a sword through the chest to kill her. She is killed in "Chosen" by a sword through the chest. Though, to be fair, swords didn't do as much permanent damage when she was a vengeance demon.
• Moral Event Horizon: D'Hoffryn was once an Affably Evil amusing albeit demonic office boss. Then he kills Halfrek when Anya was expecting to be able to sacrifice herself to bring the people she killed back to life, and making a casual pimp-like comment that he "has plenty of girls".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: At long last, Xander is caught for lying about the possibility of saving Angel back in "Becoming Part 2". The result? Absolutely nothing, to the point where you could remove those couple lines and not affect anything.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While the episode attempts to present Both Sides Have a Point, Xander crosses into this. It's understandable he wants to save Anya, but he outright ignores the twelve people she had killed and seems to act like this is no big deal. He also tries to stop Anya from offering herself to reverse the wish - again, understandably not wanting her to die but also not appearing to care about the twelve people. He presents a false equivalency between her and Dark Willow - who only killed one person (who was already a wanted murderer and had been attempting to kill Buffy, making him far from innocent), was stopped before she could do more damage and was rehabilitated to ensure she never went off the deep end again. Willow had also been acting out over the traumatic sudden death of a lover, while also still recovering from an addiction, making the incident a more unfortunate relapse brought on by exceptional circumstances. Anya meanwhile had been a practicing vengeance demon for months and easily caused the deaths of twelve people with one spell.

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