-Buffy The Vampire Slayers season 5 finale ‘The Gift’ officially turns 25 having aired on 5/22/2001.
-The Gift synopsis reads: FIFTH SEASON FINALE & 100TH EPISODE WRITTEN & DIRECTED BY JOSS WHEDON — Another imminent apocalypse is at hand in Sunnydale. Buffy must square off against a true God when Glory prepares to use Dawn to break down the walls between the dimensions and unleash all Hell on Earth. Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Anya, Tara and Spike go to battle with the knowledge that they may not all survive.
-The episode remains one of the most iconic episodes of the series for a variety of reasons:
- The shows 100th episode
- The episode opens with a previously on featuring every single episode to date leading up to the finale
- Buffy is killed off
- This would be Giles final episode as a series regular
- The WB wanted to be shady and advertised it as the Series finale as the show would be jumping ship to UPN for Season 6 after a very public battle for the airing rights
- it was written as a potential series finale should WB refuse to up the shows budget and had no other takers
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What a rough year for WB. Losing Shannen Doherty AND SMG/BTVS?
