Angel is over.

I can't believe my favorite universe just went off the air. Who else is going to do zeitgeist-as-hyperbole now? Both Buffy and Angel went from astute and clever to political allegory, driven by the necessity of the last several years. They gave us the critique of the war on Iraq and Bush's unilateralst doctrine as subtext that burst into text at the very end of Buffy's last season. And this season of Angel was, really, really anti-corporate before it was anything else. Everything from the episode where Angel is literally turned into a puppet to Angel's last direct-action plan where he spells it out for his crew that they are inside a machine and "we can bring their gears to a grinding halt...even if it's just for a moment... Power endures. We can't bring down the Senior Partners except for one bright shining moment. We can show them that they don't own us." Angel even gives up his presumed chance at humanity in an amor fati kind of moment, the implication being that any worthwhile destiny cannot be negotiated in a contract, but only formed through praxis. The other theme developed throughout this season that I really appreciated was the (very timely) idea that everyone expects an apocalypse to be this Big Event, and in the meantime the apocalypse is in progress, it's going on all around us, and people are blindsided by it and do nothing to stop it. This is pretty much what pnts and I have talked about in regard to our own "moment of danger." And in line with that I was really pleased with the conclusion, because no one knows how it's going to end, not in their world, not in ours, and they go out fighting, and to all those whining about it, it's not a cliffhanger, it's an allegory.

P.S. Yes, I cried, just like I've cried at five out of seven Buffy season finales and at last year's Angel coda. I thought the final exchange between Wesley and Illyria weirdly and sweetly resonated with one of the early Buffy episodes "Lie To Me," which was the episode that first reveled in the kind of gray areas that eventually came to define the world of both shows. And I cried when she "lied" to him. It's always saddening when the characters that have undergone the most development die, like Anya and Cordelia, but I suppose those are the rules of a narrative genre.

P.P.S. Question to all those well-versed in with both Buffy and Angel: Does Angel's decision regarding Lindsey in the finale come from the same place as Giles taking care of Ben in "The Gift"? Discuss.

Bye-bye Whedonverse. Thanks for the amazing eight years.