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BUFFY/ANGEL Connection

arewhedonyet:

In the BUFFY Season 1 finale (“Prophecy Girl”), Giles, a watcher, translates an ancient prophecy stating the slayer (Buffy) will DIE.  Although she does briefly die in the episode, she ends up LIVING.

In the ANGEL Season 1 finale (“To Shanshu In L.A.”), Wesley, a former watcher, translates an ancient prophecy stating a vampire with a soul (assumed to be Angel) will one day DIE.  He later realizes the translation actually says a vampire with a soul will LIVE (become human).

Never noticed that connection before now.  In both instances, the prophecies end up being more complicated than they first appear.

I actually did notice this on my last rewatch. This is what got me to realize that Joss has three kinds of season finales.

The first is the “season 1” finale. Season 1 of his shows tend to be almost entirely episodic (with varying degrees of arc-ness). Usually, the second-to-last episode of the season is just an episode, but introduces a minor element that becomes central to the finale. In any case, the finale is pretty much a stand-alone. This is Prophecy Girl (Angel gets the prophecy in Out of Mind, Out of Sight), To Shanshu in L.A. (Angel also finds the prophecy in Blind Date), Omega (Alpha first shows up in Briar Rose), and Objects in Space. And yeah, I know Omega is technically the second to last episode, but bear with me a second. Dollhouse is pretty much the sort-of exception to all of these because the finales kind of combine most of them.

Epitaph One, the actual Dollhouse season 1 finale, is an example of the second kind: the “coda”. This happens after a season-long arc. The main conflict is over, the Big Bad has been defeated or whatever, but this episodes somehow wraps up the themes of the show. This is the rarest kind. Pretty much the only other examples are Epitaph Two, Restless, and Home.

The third kind is, of course, the end of an arc. This is pretty much every other finale I haven’t mentioned. Though, of course, the Dollhouse finales both sort of qualify for this category, too, because Dollhouse is crazy like that. And the ones that come before codas, like Primeval and Peace Out, are of course debatable.

This has been a needlessly precise categorization of the Whedonverse finales.

Joss Whedon’s ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ TV Series Will Feature All New Characters

jim0thy:

While S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn’t been the focus of any of the Marvel movies per se, we’ve gotten to know the group pretty well by this point. Indeed, the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division is the thread that ties the entire Marvel cinematic universe together, thanks to the strenuous post-credits recruiting efforts of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). And this summer’s Avengers has the biggest S.H.I.E.L.D. presence yet, with Clark Gregg‘s Agent Coulson grabbing some of the movie’s funniest lines and Cobie Smulders‘ Maria Hill making her eye-catching debut.

Now, as the intelligence agency heads to the small screen, we’re poised to learn more about the team than ever. But don’t expect to get the dish on Fury’s penchant for leather dusters or Coulson’s trading card hobby. Instead, writer/director Joss Whedon says, ABC’s S.H.I.E.L.D. will introduce audiences to a whole new cast of characters.

MTV’s Josh Horowitz got the details in an interview with Whedon at the Toronto Film Festival, where the filmmaker was promoting Much Ado About Nothing. Whedon said he’d gotten “very far” in the creating the show, having already pitched it to the network “with a full framework, a full cast.” Said cast likely won’t be anyone we’ve already met, however. Whedon framed the decision as a conscious attempt to help S.H.I.E.L.D. stand alone:

It’s new characters. It needs to be its own thing. It needs to be adjacent [to the movies]. You don’t want to do a show where you’re constantly going, ‘Iron Man just left, but he was totally here a minute ago.’ You want them to go off on their own thing, and say, well, what has S.H.I.E.L.D. got that the heroes don’t have? And part of that for me is, they’re not superheroes, but they live in that universe. That makes them a little bit — even though they’re a big organization — underdogs, and so that’s really interesting to me.

Whedon did not say whether the TV project would feature S.H.I.E.L.D. characters from the comics who’ve not yet appeared in the movies, or whether all of the characters would be created specifically for the show. (Not that the distinction will matter much to Marvel movie fans who don’t follow the comics.) In any case, it seems like a smart way to establish S.H.I.E.L.D. as a story worth telling in its own right, rather than as a minor sideshow to the studio’s higher-wattage superhero films.

★ best episodes ever! ★

JOURNEY’S END

Doctor Who, 4x13

When you consider the Doctor and Donna’s relationship — how they each brought out the best in each other throughout the season — this was actually the perfect thing to happen. Their yin and yang became literal when they each got the part of each other they were missing.

And of course, Donna couldn’t stay that way, because the Doctor is like the sun and his companions are all Icarus — get too close, and your wings melt and you drown. (Hence why Martha is arguably the “best” New Who companion for leaving.)

Meta-crisis Doctor got the humanity he’s always missing, always searching for vicariously through companions, but at the price of his alienness and his immortality. He could be human and stay with Rose, but he couldn’t last forever.

Because only the Doctor lasts forever.

(Source: queenmrgaery, via ahorsecalledhonour)