I don’t understand the push for a love triangle in general, but BtVS is a particularly tough one. There might have been an appeal to it once upon a time, but by season 12, it was just… unnecessary and did Buffy herself a disservice.

This has long since surpassed any “ship war”, because seriously, if you wanted Angel to be her soulmate endgame, then just do it. But they don’t. It’s just that every time Buffy is happy or seems to have made a choice, Whedon comes around the corner like “haha! but the Love Triangle!!” and it’s just not funny anymore.

Season 7 had already pretty much set Spike and Buffy up as falling for each other, but then the show brought Angel back in and with him, the neon-sign like broadcasting of Buffy still being hung up on him. At this point in time, the love triangle situation might have still been valid; Angel and Buffy had a lot of history, Buffy and Spike had only just started growing emotionally closer. Of course was she torn. I even understand her not yet being in a place of love with Spike. Still, to build all of that up between Spike and Buffy just to then go “gotcha!” and put Angel in it was less a love triangle as more of a slap in the face.

Season 8 then literally made Buffy and Angel soulmates destined by the universe. And just when you think “okay. soulmates. that’s a thing now, huh. sure, can work with that” and you start thinking they will fight this evil together and come out of it together… suddenly, Spike is back and from thereon out, Buffy continued fantasizing about Spike instead and didn’t really pay any mind to Angel anymore for the rest of the season, until Angel literally kills Giles and thus gets booted from the series for a while.

Things go a bit static during season 9, though the characters around Buffy and Spike keep already very unsubtly setting them up and pushing them closer, until they finally get together in season 10. And after two whole seasons that amounted to about three years in-universe time in which Spike and Buffy were in a working actually healthy relationship, where they dealt with their trauma, triggers, self-doubt and communicated instead of letting things fester into misunderstandings… they were just broken up in season 12 for flimsy reasons and also we bring Angel back in. But, once again, not to actually make Buffy decide between them, just to show that both options are still available to her.

What makes it so incredibly frustrating though is that this just… takes agency away from Buffy as a character? It keeps setting her back to this lost, little girl who can’t make a decision. It keeps reducing her to her romantic interests, bafflingly enough even more so than if she would actually choose one.

Because she did. In season 10, she chooses Spike. And we spent two whole seasons of personal growth. Her growth, not just the growth of them as a ship. This is her leap of faith, her moment of facing something she’s afraid of.

They have a whole arc about it. Spike wants to break up with her, because things are complicated and scary. And instead of doing that, instead of running, Buffy talks about her feelings and admits that she’s scared and admits that she is happy that he is scared too, because it means she is not the only one. She concludes that this is unusual for them both, that they are both so used to running away when things get serious. And then she declares that she things that they are something worth fighting for.

Season 10 even has the obligatory “Angel drops by” moment. Which, it figures, if Spike and Buffy are dating, at one point, Angel will learn about them and they will meet up. But there is no insecurity there, not from Buffy’s side at all. She’s already come to the conclusion that she’s happy in this relationship, that being with Spike makes her happy and she is not suddenly torn about it when faced with Angel.

And on top of all that, they are even addressing Seeing Red and how it did leave Buffy traumatized, it shows her having triggers from that. It has Spike and Buffy actually talk about it all and about what she needs from him when it comes to this.

I love them together, I love seeing their relationship, but even beyond that, I love what this does for Buffy as a character. She has so much emotional growth over this relationship. She’s never been stellar at communicating with any of her partners and jealousy was also always a huge issue in her relationships, one way or the other. Instead of letting jealousy fester, she reassures her partner and she also… doesn’t get jealous herself. When a former potential love interest of Spike’s visits, Buffy just reasons that they regularly work with her exes, so it’d be unfair to Spike if she forbade him from seeing his. Her and Dylan are even friendly with each other.

Season 10 is kind of slow, which allows more focus on the romance and also the general relationships among the Scoobies. They don’t have a big bad that constantly terrorizes them, they do have three bigger bads who pop up along the way but they go dormant for longer stretches. There’s a lot of calmer time and there is also a lot of calm time between seasons 10 and 11.

Season 11 just straight-up puts them into an internment camp where they manage to be domestic while being held captive and where their relationship survives months of kind of just… sitting on each other, with very little to do otherwise. That was a real test for a relationship and they came out strong.

All of this is meant to serve my point of this breakup being a ridiculous retcon that undoes so much of the development that happened. Because the reason given is just that they “didn’t work out” when there was peace. Which, for one, I doubt they just had a year of chill-time with zero monsters. For another, they have lived a domestic life for about three years at this point. This kind of break-up would have made sense at the beginning of season 11, when you say they broke up between those seasons, they barely had been together for a couple months in season 10. But not at this point in time. Not with that reasoning.

And this conclusion makes it so much more infuriating. Because they really manage to reduce Buffy to her romance with that. To feeling like a failure because she can’t make it work. To being insecure Buffy who can’t have a real relationship. Unhappy Buffy, who feels stuck.

That’s… That’s not the place Buffy deserves to be at in the final ending of her story. She deserved a place where she was happy, where she felt like she belonged.

The final page given in seasons 11 and 12 are incredibly similar. Both end with the Scoobies gathered together for a barbecue. So, sure, she still has her friends and all. But in season 11 she had some additional happiness; we see her say “I love you” for the first time on-page to Spike, they’re cuddled up, she is in a happy relationship. She’s in a good, emotional place.

Season 12, with the fact that just three issues and a few days ago, she was talking about being a failure and being unable to make normal things work leaves her in such a much more… unhappy and depressing personal place. Sure, she’s now a cop, like that is somehow the pay-off of her being “normal”…

If they had broken Spike and Buffy up to switch back to Buffy and Angel again, sure, it might have pissed me personally off some, but at least there would have been a reason for breaking them up then. But since that wasn’t even a thing, season 12 could have just… continued on the notes from 10 and 11 and had her and Spike still going strong and could have given her the additional happy ending of being in a happy relationship.

Because damn it all, after the past 15 years of her life as a Slayer, she really, truly deserved the full package of a happy ending.