#btvs 6

So my favorite buffy season is 6 and I know that can be controversial and everyone is entitled to their opinions and tastes..... HOWEVER, I really disagree with people saying characters, particularly the scoobies, behaved out of character. All the character's actions seem pretty grounded and understandable to me. That obviously does not mean I agree with what a lot of the characters do or that I think it's healthy but I understand them. Buffy having rough and sometimes violent sex with Spike is the only way she can feel anything in her deep depression and serves as a form of self-harm. She sleeps with Spike bc that's the only way she can feel and subsequently hates herself for sleeping with him. Willow has been shown in the past to rely on magic to try and fix problems in her relationships and her own emotional turmoil (3x08 Lovers Walk, 4x06 Wild at Heart, 4x09 Something Blue). So while it is extremely disheartening and upsetting that she does this with Tara it is not out of character. She also is definitely shown using more and more magic from season 3 onward pretty much exponentially. (I may give my opinion on the supposed retcon of how magic works later). Xander's unstable home life is hinted at throughout the series and his dream sequence in Restless can be interpreted as him being afraid of turning losing his heart and becoming his father. Anya even asks him in The Gift if he is only doing this bc he thinks they will die and that turns out to be true. Xander is uncomfortable with Anya's excitement about the wedding throughout the season leading up to Hell's Bells. Xander obviously should have voiced these feelings before the wedding and thinking he could just show up after leaving her at the altar and ask if they could still date was incredibly stupid but not out of character (Im not a big Xander fan I think he has his moments but this especially made me really dislike him. Even Giles leaving is not that unreasonable to me. I don't think it was necessarily the right call to leave Buffy as she was readjusting to living and clearly in a deep depression but I can see why Giles would think his presence as a parental figure was holding Buffy back.

Spikes’s Character in BTVS  & ATS S5