Yuugen

It comes on gradually, and of course season 6 is widely known for Buffy's depression arc, but the seeds are well and truly planted in the season before it because I think season 5 is when it truly starts to hit her that... she was never supposed to live this long.

Because throughout history, Slayers have been incredibly short-lived. They make it to adulthood if they're very lucky, and at the age of 23 Buffy is officially the longest-lived Slayer in history. At 20, she had already well surpassed the average, and she's really starting to feel it. It's no coincidence that this is the season when she starts giving up on the life of the normal girl she'd been so doggedly clinging to, refusing to give up just because she's the Slayer, since season 1. She drops out of college, her mom dies, Riley leaves (and she didn't even love him but he was something normal and good and she couldn't help but cling to him even when she knew she shouldn't and no thanks to Xander's terrible fucking advice but ANYWAY), she has nothing but being the Slayer and taking care of her sister--who isn't truly her sister but finding that out doesn't matter because she is in all the ways that count.

And she's tired. Because she's just one girl, one woman, with the weight of the world on her shoulders--and every other Slayer in history was eventually crushed by it, killed by the very darkness they were destined to fight (and die fighting), most of them never even making it this far. So she's standing there, hearing Dawn tell her that she has to let her go, to let her sacrifice herself to save the world because it's what she was created for, it's the only way- and she remembers.

Death is your gift.

And on the face of it, yeah, her death is the gift she gives to her sister to ensure she lives, and to her friends and the world to ensure they are not consumed. But also? Death is her gift. And it's not just realization dawning on her face in the rising sun--it's relief.

Because finally, finally, she can just let go.

She doesn't have to fight anymore. She doesn't have to suffer, or lose anyone else, or lose more pieces of herself. She can just stop. She can just rest.

Because the universe calls for one single champion, one teenage girl in all the world to fight all the powers of darkness and evil. And at the end of it all, the world offers her nothing in return except this--true and final peace. Death is her gift, and she rushes to meet it and she thinks finally, finally, she can just stop fighting. Stop everything. The world will be ok without her, there's always someone else to take up the mantle. She doesn't have to be the one everyone else is counting on. And she's so exhausted and so ready.

And then she wakes up in her own coffin. And all that suffering she thought she'd finally been allowed to escape crashes down on her a hundred fold, and of course she would stagger under its weight. But I think deep down some part of her blamed herself even for that. Because she'd been so ready to give up, stop fighting, end her own torment and then... her friends needed her back so badly that they ripped her from the only sliver of true peace she'd known since her Calling, and how could she say they were wrong for it when she feels so very wrong to her core for being so ready to let go in the first place?

Is it a coincidence that Faith talks about how she always wanted something, and then Buffy is compared to that something by a third party who would have no idea what is going on in that conversation immediately after? Some would call that "thematic consonance."

because, you know, Marty Byrde: