I am like a giggling 5-year-old with Halloween candy right now, and it's all because of the Angel season finale last night. For the convenience of my readers who have not yet seen it, I present spoiler tags.

[spoiler for Angel 4.22 "Home" with speculation for Buffy episodes 7.21 and 7.22, and spoilers up to 7.20 "Touched" and the preview for 7.21]
First of all, holy crap. That was a truly excellent episode. I won't say that it made up entirely for the mess of season 4 as a whole, but I will say that I am no longer on the fence: I LOVE this show (again). I ought to clean my apartment over the next few days, but I am far more likely to watch season 2 of Angel and grin a lot. (Note to self: compromise. Listen to season 2 while you clean.)

All of the characters finally feel like themselves again. And it really says something that I loved Lilah, who I am known for complaining about loudly.

Tim Minear, I would like to volunteer to have your children. You are the only person who has written a truly great episode all year. I really, really miss Firefly, but this kind of makes up for that heartbreak. Now if only you weren't moving on to a new series.

So, about Buffy. Angel has an amulet, which will give him a reason to go to Sunnydale. Fine, we saw him in the preview for 7.21, and I was spoiled for Boringanus's guest appearance anyway. I am going to speculate that the amulet/vial/whatever it is will somehow make the First corporeal, and that the scythe/axe/whatever will allow Buffy to kill it. OK, not kill, but banish. I think it will be banished from this dimension. This fits in with what I have been told about the Fray comic books, but as I've never read them I may be off a bit.

I also hope very much that Angel will appear as both himself and the First. Just because. (Plus, that would possibly cut down on Buffy-as-the First screentime, and I fucking hate that.)

Back to Angel for a second - I curled up into a tiny ball at the end and burrowed into Will's lap. Giving up Connor was the ultimate expression of love. However, it does make me wonder just how many "secrets" Angel has to carry. He is the only one who remembers his day with Buffy as a human, he is the only one who remembers his son, and I'm fairly sure he knows about Dawn too. Poor fucker.

John had only one complaint about the Angel finale - Lilah's comment about Cordelia getting a manicure. People in comas cannot wear nail polish. I made the excuse that a manicure does not automatically include polish.
[end spoiler]

I have many more thoughts, but my head is simply reeling and I will have to think more about all of this later.