I felt this strange need to see Angel through to the end. NSM with Buffy.

But didn't the show end before anything happened to Angel and Spike and Illyria and Gunn?

Sorry, I don't mean the end of the show like, "up until the last frame before the credits." It's not a timing issue. Maybe I should say "the end of the story" instead. To me it's only slightly more ambiguous than the ending of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I don't need to see them actually die on-screen to get the idea.

I guess I could say they're doomed instead of dead. If you want them to survive the show, maybe that distinction matters. As I said earlier, if there's a movie that starts and ends in the midst of that fight, and then it's all a flashback to some story set six months earlier that's fine with me. (Well, it's not fine, but I won't scream about it.) Because that doesn't change the end of the story: they die in a rainy alley.

For me, the fat lady hasn't sung. And she won't without authorial intervention. But I don't know her lines.

Of course, it's theoretically possible that the blond vampire is neither Spike nor Buffy. Um, nor Harmony. It could be some other blond vampire that we've never seen before. Although, I will stand out here by myself to say that while I never liked Harmony alive, she started to grow on me once she died. I actually liked Disharmony (I still think it should be spelled disHarmony, though).

runs away and hides...

I liked disHarmony, too, libkitty. (But I don't wanna see a whole movie about her.)

I liked Spike, in spite of it all, but I'm not so sure I wanna see a whole movie about him, either.

The stories are done, and while I miss having new stories in the Buffyverse, I don't need new ones. I had my quibbles over the way both stories were wrapped up in their final seasons, but the way they ended was perfect, to me. Buffy got to save something more than the world; she got to save herself and have a (sort of) normal life. And Angel got the redemption (through self-sacrificial death) he wanted, or at least I can believe that he did. So unless some really amazing writer can give us a really amazing reason to believe that anyone in that final battle in NFA survived, and that there's a compelling story still to be told about them that did, I really don't need a movie at all.

Well, both Wesley and Lindsay, while dying onscreen, were under contract to Wolfram and Hart. Those contracts are unlikely to be voided by mere betrayal and we know death doesn't cancel them. So, yeah, dead, but so were Lilah and Holland and they're still wandering around doing stuff for the Senior Partners. I think a revenant Wesley would be an interesting approach to take. Especially since he specializes in moral ambiguity anyways. Be an interesting story, wouldn't it?

Also, I understand that the post-NFA Angel comic is canon(ish), so we know Angel's supposed to have survived. Thus far, the comic hasn't said anything about the rest of them.

I can see some interesting stories that could be told about post-NFA Spike, and I'd trust Tim not to devalue the rockishness that was the final scene.

Lilah was quite aware of the nature of her contract with the firm, though. I doubt Wesley would have signed one that included the Wolfram & Hart retirement plan with her example fresh in his mind, and Lindsey seemed to think he was free and clear of them after his resignation. Maybe only VP level and above got the perpetuity clause?

i'm actually pretty amused that a throwaway comment Tim made here has caused this huge ruckus throughout the fandom.

I don't really care one way or the other about a Spike movie. i'm pretty meh about the Buffy/Angel-verse being toyed with at all at this point. that's probably my own issues with having my favorite characters fucked over.

Of course, nothing may happen at all, and he'll finish Moon, and the next show will go to pilot, and there could be no Spike flick at all, and the 'verse is truly dead.

Which is what I'd like, truth be told.

Same here. I'd love to think the Jossverse could become the next "Star Trek" (dozens of spinoff shows, even more spinoff movies), but I think I'm satisfied w/ the way things ended on both shows. Especially w/ "Buffy," there was a sense of completion that you don't always get w/ long-running shows, and that was nice.

So, bad news, and good news. The bad news is, just when my DVD collection was beginning, w/ S1 of "Buffy" and "Angel", it's about to go back to square-one. (That's right. I'm selling them.) The good news, though, is that it's for a worthy cause: I think I'm about to get a good friend of mine hooked into the 'verse.

Gunn could have survived through some miracle. . . but Wesley is still dead, right?

I've got this incredibly indulgent fanfic in my head waiting to get out. In it, Illyria sacrifices herself to not only gather up enough strength to bend some time and un-do Wesley's death, but the effort also releases her from Fred's body, which has been protected by the nasty creature's crystal vomit...

I may be a bit pollyanna.