The Wish (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Plot

Cordelia goes back to Sunnydale High only to find herself shunned by Harmony and the Cordettes, who mock her as Xander's leftover girlfriend. That night at the Bronze, Buffy accidentally shoves her into a trash can in full view of everyone, and Cordelia decides the Slayer is the reason her life has fallen apart.

The next day, a new student named Anya hands Cordelia an amulet and tries to push her into cursing Xander. Instead, Cordelia blurts out a wish that Buffy had never set foot in Sunnydale. Anya instantly becomes Anyanka, a vengeance demon for women who have been betrayed or mistreated, and makes the wish real.

Now Cordelia is back on top: the Cordettes obey her every whim, and a popular jock named John Lee wants to date her. But her triumph crumbles when she sees the town is crawling with vampires. The Master has broken free and built a huge army of bloodsuckers, terrorizing the few humans left alive. Most of the students are either dead or turned, and a strict curfew keeps people indoors after dark.

Walking the streets one night, Cordelia runs into Xander and Willow, who are now vicious, unpredictable vampires. A band of resistance fighters led by Giles rescues her. Cordelia tries to tell Giles that she wished Buffy away and begs to have her back, but before she can finish explaining, Xander and Willow kill her.

Giles phones Buffy's contacts in Cleveland but only gets an answering machine for the overworked Slayer. He discovers that the amulet Cordelia wore belongs to Anyanka, and the only way to undo her wishes is to destroy the demon's power center. Meanwhile, the Master has set up a factory to mechanically drain blood from captured humans. On his way home, Giles nearly gets caught by vampires rounding up people for the plant, but a cold, cynical Buffy saves him.

She doubts Giles can reverse the spell but agrees to kill the Master. Inside the factory, Buffy finds Angel chained up. She initially refuses to trust him because he is a vampire, but the torture scars on his chest convince her he is not on the Master's side.

The Master starts the blood-harvesting machine with his first victim, while a cage holds prisoners including Oz and Larry. Buffy and Angel attack the vampires. In the chaos, Xander kills Angel, Buffy kills Xander, Oz kills Willow, and the Master snaps Buffy's neck.

Cultural references

Mike Loschiavo notes that most good genre series play with the idea of a parallel timeline, citing Star Trek's "Mirror, Mirror" as an early example, with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise, and Star Trek: Discovery also visiting that timeline. Doctor Who first explored this with "Inferno" and later with "Rise of the Cybermen" and "Turn Left", the latter showing a world without the Doctor.

Reception

Vox ranked the episode at #10 on their "Every Episode Ranked From Worst to Best" list, writing that plunging a show into a parallel universe where everyone dies by the end is next-level trolling, and that elements from Vampire Willow playing with Angel as her "puppy" to the showdown between Giles and Anya are too gripping to care about hyperbole. Paste Magazine ranked it at #9, stating it packs one of the strongest emotional wallops of the series, with the alternate reality nightmarish and the assembly line of bloodletting horrific, but the brutal killings of heroes by each other being the real genius, relating to real-world relationships.

Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery described it as one of the darkest Buffy episodes, noting the shift in tone when Vamp Xander and Vamp Willow kill Cordelia without remorse, climaxing in slow-motion deaths with haunting music. Matthew Pateman praised Mark Metcalf's performance as the Master and pointed out the satire in the Master's mechanized blood-draining plan, its implicit criticism of mass production, and the script's reference to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Lewis Call called the episode a "multi-signifying masterpiece", noting that in an earlier episode, Willow's response to Xander's threat of force with "Force is OK!" indicates a character trait brought to the fore in "The Wish", where she is portrayed as polymorphously perverse and sadomasochistic.