Buffy a figment of her own imagination

MiloYossarian

Kind of annoyed at this. It seems a little weak. 'It was all a dream.'

Just watched Buffy ep 17 s6. It is the one in which Buffy, while investigating recently rented houses looking for the trio, Warren calls a demon that injects Buffy with something that causes her to hallucinate.

She begins to switch between "the real world" and Sunnydale. In the real world Sunnydale is a creation of a schizophrenic mind.

The thing is, at the end of the episode she decides in the real world not to let the demon kill her friends. She accepts that Sunnydale isn't real but decides to retreat back in there anyway.
No harm no foul, I still thought that they were saying that Sunnydale was real, just after I watched the final scene I thought of this scene and realized what she was really doing. Giving up.

It's the last scene. Buffy is catatonic in her hospital room, with her parents crying over her. The doctor says, 'I'm sorry she's gone.' End of episode. Up until now, Buffy has been lucid in the real world. Taking part. So it could have been because of the drug/part of the hallucination. However in the last scene she wasn't awake, just completely catatonic. She wasn't taking part. She was in "Sunnydale."

To put it another way, up until then, she was the person that was seeing the hallucinations because she was the one under the influence of the drugs. In the last scene, who was seeing it?

I know I'm probably not explaining this very well, but the scene says explicitly that the Buffyverse is not real. It does not leave it open to interpretation.
It plainly says it.

Also throughout the episode explanations are given for things within the Buffyverse. The reason it is coming apart is the introduction of Dawn. It stretched the boundaries of her own belief.
The thing that injected her was a devise invented by her mind to allow her to escape.
Why would she want to escape? All throughout the season she is deeply unhappy. She doesn't want to be there. She didn't want to be pulled out of "Heaven". This is compounded further when in episode 15 season 6 Riley returns to reveal he is married.
Her friends don't have as much time for her. All through seasons 1 to 5 Willow and Buffy always took the time to chat about what was going on in their lives. But in season 6 that does not happen.
She is just not happy in world she created.

It's the last scene, if it's an hallucination who is seeing it? It can't be Buffy because she is not present. It is shown exclusively to us, the audience. It says that the Buffyverse is all in Buffy's mind. No question.

I know I'm going to be attacked for this, and feel free because you're wrong. Plus I know I didn't explain myself well.
Just go back and watch it. You can see for yourself.

Hopefully in an episodes to come they will give a good reason to explain why I'm wrong rendering what I've said above obsolete (please let me be wrong). It ruined the illusion for me. And it is sooo weak writing wise.

nyarlothothep

I'd like to think the poison hadn't worn off, she had yet to drink the antidote, so this was the last dream sequence we saw from Buffy's perspective. In any case she references this psychotic episode in later episodes, if she could recall it in an imaginary world I would like to think that it would eventually surface again to undermine the validity of that constructed reality but we never see it happen again. Its a major stretch to say this so I kind of agree with you that she may have been dreaming it all.

I think in terms of reflecting what a lot of people sometimes think, namely the question of whether any of this world is real, the problem of trying to prove whether someone else is manifestly there or just a figment of one's mind, I think in playing out this scenario, the episode is interesting.

MiloYossarian

Ya, I think that's a very sensible solution.

I had discussed it since with somebody, and he put forward a theory that was similar, and I refined it down to what you have suggested.

The thread was a knee jerk response to just watching the episode. I really really want to be proved wrong. But, I think what you have said does explain it away.

My main issue was that Buffy, our window in to the "real world" did not take part in it. You know, so it's like it's just for the audience, and if it's just for the audience then the Sunnydale is a manifestation of a sick mind.

However, their is a scene earlier on in the episode in which Joyce is talking to the doctor. He is giving some exposition. Joyce listens attentively for some time while Buffy, catatonic, sits next to her. The scene goes on for a while, and only later does Buffy become lucid in it. This scene supports what you have said, because Buffy is not present for the whole lot of it. She's veged out.