The world almost ended this May. Again. No, I'm not talking about some threatened terrorist action against the United States. This barely-averted apocalypse occurred on the small screen on a television show devoted to a girl who spends her evenings shoving pointed sticks into the chests of walking corpses. That's right, I'm talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy has received a lot of criticism over the years from many different sources. Television critics have complained that it was too gimmicky. Cynics have complained that it was shallow and repetitive. Christians have complained that it was too pornographic. All of these criticisms, and more besides, may have valid points, but for now I'll stick with the positives. For one thing, Buffy is great drama, able to match any soap opera blow for blow with its numerous relationships amongst the characters. For another, it is great fantasy, utilizing more supernatural creatures in unique ways than you can shake a stick at. In yet another perspective, it is great commentary on life, particularly the life that today's teens often find themselves thrown into.

But I'm digressing from my original point, which is that the world almost ended just recently. Of course, the world has a tendency of "almost ending" at least once during each season of Buffy. As one character in the show commented once, "Turns out I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of 'apocalypse.'" The main difference between this season and all the previous is that the harbinger of armageddon wasn't some maniacal demon with a god complex. Instead, it was Willow, a rather geeky and introverted character that I had grown to love since I began watching the show.

I started watching the series with the premiere of its second season, in which Buffy returns from a summer away from home carrying an overwhelming load of emotional pain, due to events in the previous season. Before this, I had always written off the show as a silly fantasy, something along the lines of Xena: Warrior Princess. After watching this episode, however, I realized that the creators of Buffy were interested in much more than casual silliness and creepy critters. Both of those elements were and are present to some extent, but they were no more the focus of the show than was Sarah Michelle Gellar's haircut. In a day where the sitcom, with all of its cynicism and fluff, reigned supreme in the airwaves, I had finally found a television program that was deeper than Seinfeld, but not as pretentious as the prime-time dramas. It was great to find a show that handled serious issues, but didn't take itself too seriously.

What other show was there on television that allowed the average high school/college-age viewer to grow along with the characters? Certainly not the old fogeys on E.R., nor the eternally adolescent characters on Seinfeld. Rather, Buffy was never afraid to let its characters grow: from high school into college, from innocence to guilt, from gain to loss, from childishness to maturity. The people in Buffy's universe certainly lived in a kind of moral confusion that conflicted with my Christian beliefs at times, but it was still the only show on the air that dealt with hard issues and was at the same time understandable.

Each season of Buffy has a theme, and according to show creator Joss Whedon, this last season's theme was "Oh, grow up!" I began this season with the same expectations and excitement that I had begun every season with. At the time, my love of the show had mutated into what's popularly called a "fan-boy" quality. Fan-boyishness, as the name suggests, is an immature attitude towards something generally fiction-related, such as comic books or television shows. This usually consists of an obsession with a show (or book/movie series), a desire to know far too much about the actors (or characters), a need to explain every plot and occurrence within an all-encompassing framework, and an excessive amount of emotional investment into the series. Basically one's life becomes what he reads or watches. To madness this road leads. This most recent season of Buffy, the sixth, was a much-needed wakeup call for me. As the show rapidly descended into a deep morbidity and depression, sprinkled liberally with the hardest pornography you can find in prime-time, I felt a very strong need to leave the show behind. And I did. I stopped watching the show after Buffy and her long-time enemy Spike literally brought down the roof while (to put it mildly) getting jiggy with it. I'm not certain that this is what Mr. Whedon meant when he referred to "growing up," but grow up I did, in my own way. My own personal Hero's Journey, it would seem.

So I walked away, and guess what? The world didn't end. Somehow, on some strange level, I thought that it would. Such attitudes form when you become obsessed with something not worthy of obsession. But if Buffy had taught me anything, it should have been that just when you think that the world is about to end, you realize that the reports were greatly exaggerated. The end becomes a beginning, and you grow up just a little bit more. I spent a few months away from all traces of my favorite vampire-slayer, and gained some much-needed perspective on life. Isn't it strange how something can have a hold on you without you even realizing it? Since I have an occasionally obsessive personality, walking away from whatever has a hold on me tends to clarify a number of problems. Walking away from Buffy showed me just how obsessed I had become with it, and, after a while, also showed me just how great of a show Buffy really is.

If Buffy had not been sometimes tugging and sometimes shoving me along, I may never have grown as much as I have. Many people watch Buffy for the entertainment, but come away with a sense of something being uncomfortably awakened. Mr. Whedon has commented that he gives fans what they need, not what they want, and I believe this is true. You cannot walk away from Buffy the way you can walk away from Felicity, with peace of mind. Not only does it challenge its viewers to grow up, but it also raises many important (and relevant) philosophical and moral questions. They wanted me to grow up, and I have, significantly thanks to them.

Now back to the end of the world. I decided to watch the season finale last month, mainly out of curiosity, and was pleasantly surprised at the path the show had taken. Willow, my favorite cute techno-geek, had gone a little bonkers. First, she became addicted to using her newly-found magical powers, which led to a break-up between her and her girlfriend, Tara. (The decision to make Willow a lesbian was never one I agreed with, but the show's creators handled it more tastefully than most others would.) Then, after cleaning up her act and hooking back up with Tara, suddenly Tara was killed by a gunshot through the heart, causing Willow no small amount of grief and anger. In short, she went bonkers, tortured and killed the man who shot Tara, and decided that the world was no longer a fit place to keep in existence.

Willow travelled to the site of an ancient Satanic temple, planning to use its energies to burn the planet to a cinder. Life is tough, the world is cold and spiteful, and the pain and grief is overwhelming. Who hasn't felt this way? Who hasn't wanted to just burn the whole planet to the ground in a moment of grief or pain? We can become so blinded by our own pain that the whole world becomes hateful and unworthy of existence. We just want to end it all, and make sure that we and everyone else are never hurt again.

"For all your fighting... Thinking you're saving the world... And, in the end, I'm the only one that can save it. It's the only way to stop the pain."

But then, just when everything begins to crumble around you, there is Hope. Maybe it's nothing spectacular, just a twinge of remembrance of better days, or a forgotten promise of days to come, but it's there. Just when the night seems the darkest, there is a splinter of light that breaks through. Willow's best friend Xander wouldn't let her slaughter him and everyone else on the planet without first telling her how much he loves her. And it's a good thing, too, because she cannot bring herself to kill him when he's looking her in the face.

"It's just - where else am I going to go? You've been my best friend my whole life. World gonna end - where else would I want to be?... I know you're in pain. I can't imagine the pain you're in. I know you're about to do something apocalyptically evil and stupid and hey, still want to hang. You're Willow.... So if I'm going out, it's here. You wanna kill the world you start with me."

The episode ended with Willow weeping in Xander's arms, Buffy finding hope for her own life and her sister's, and a musical rendition of the Prayer of St. Francis playing in the background. It is pertinent to mention here that at the beginning of this season Buffy was torn from Heaven by her friends after sacrificing her life to save the world. Ever since then, she had been searching for a reason to live on an Earth that seemed more like Hell after her return. Buried under the earth with her sister, told that she could do nothing to stop Willow from destroying the planet, fighting vainly against magical monsters conjured by her friend, Buffy must have felt the utter helplessness that comes when one knows there is nothing more that one can do. She fought in spite of the knowledge that the world was going to end, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. When salvation does unexpectedly come, Buffy realizes that the world is something worth both fighting for and living in. Our heroine passes once again through death, this time metaphorically, and comes out finding life.

Sometimes the end of the world is only the beginning.

(The Prayer of Saint Francis)