10 Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes Everyone Remembers For ONE Awesome Scene
5. The Gift - Buffy's Sacrifice
The season five finale and hundredth episode overall, The Gift, features one of the defining images of the entire series: Buffy, our one and only vampire slayer (kind of), launching herself into the aether in order to save not only her little sister, but ostensibly the whole world.
As the god Glorificus uses Dawn Summers (aka the glowing ball of energy formerly known as The Key) to open interdimensional portals and unleash hell on earth in her quest to return home, Buffy fights to the top of her makeshift tower. But, even after defeating all of the bad guys, she is just that bit too late, and either Dawn or she herself must go.
The entire season, and arguably the show, has been building up to this one scene, where Buffy has to make that ultimate choice; one might call it destiny...
Though Joss Whedon has maintained that this was never meant to be Buffy's final episode, it can't help but feel like a definite closer, with a clear sense of an ending, all the way from how the Warner Bros Network marketed it, to the scene's flashbacks, to the foreshadowing of Buffy's death several seasons earlier.