Princess Cordelia. The Groosalugg. Joss Whedon doing the Dance of Joy. Angel discovering he has a reflection and immediately lamenting his hair. This episode has everything. 👑

This week on Re-Watcher's Council, we're covering Angel Season 2, Episode 21: "Through the Looking Glass" — the Pylea arc's richest, most thematically dense episode and honestly one of the best of the entire season. Written and directed by Tim Minear, this one is doing a lot more than it looks like on the surface.

We dig into the episode's central theme — perception and identity. Lorne puts it best: "They start to see you a certain way, you become that image." Every character in Pylea is being reflected back differently — Cordelia as royalty, Wesley as a leader, Angel as a hero, and then as a monster — and the episode uses the looking glass of this alien world to ask hard questions about who these people really are.

Dawn is gone. Glory has won. And Buffy Summers — the Slayer, the one who always gets back up — is just... gone too.

This week on Re-Watcher's Council we're covering "The Weight of the World," the penultimate episode of Season 5, and it is a quieter kind of devastating. With Buffy catatonic from the shock of losing Dawn, Willow takes it upon herself to dive into Buffy's mind and pull her back — and what she finds there is a fascinating, heartbreaking look at the guilt eating Buffy alive. Meanwhile Spike and Xander track down Doc for information, Glory and Ben's increasingly unstable coexistence reaches a breaking point, and Giles says the thing nobody wants to hear out loud: maybe the only way to stop Glory is to kill Dawn.

We're unpacking Willow's journey through Buffy's subconscious, what the looping memory sequence tells us about Buffy's psychology, the brilliant chaos of Glory and Ben fighting for dominance, and how this episode does the incredibly hard work of setting up a finale that has to pay off an entire season's worth of grief, loss, and impossible choices.

One episode left. We are not ready. Are you?

They went through a portal to a demon dimension to rescue Cordelia. Angel can walk in the sun. He is not handling this calmly. ☀️🧛

This week on Re-Watcher's Council, we're covering Angel Season 2, Episode 20 "Over the Rainbow" — the one where the gang actually jumps through a dimensional portal to Pylea and everything gets completely, gloriously unhinged. Cordelia finds herself in a new dimension where humans are considered inferior and sold into slavery, complete with a shock collar and a very rude demon owner. Meanwhile back in LA, Angel is doing whatever it takes to get her back — including dragging a very reluctant Lorne back to the one place he swore he'd never return to.

And then they drive a car through a portal. Into Pylea. Where there are two suns. And Angel immediately sprints off to collect branches in a sunlit field like an excited golden retriever who has waited 200 years for this moment. It is one of the purest, most joyful things this show has ever given us, and we are going to talk about it at length.

Glory knows Dawn is the Key. The Slayer is outmatched. And Buffy Summers — who has never run from anything — decides to run.

This week on Re-Watcher's Council we're covering "Spiral," and it is a full-throttle, no-brakes descent into the endgame of Season 5. The gang piles into Spike's sun-proofed Winnebago and gets out of Sunnydale, which sounds like it should be almost fun — until the Knights of Byzantium show up on horseback and everything goes sideways fast. Giles gets a spear through him. The gang holes up in an abandoned gas station. And then Glory arrives, and she takes Dawn, and the episode ends on one of the most gut-dropping cliffhangers of the entire series.

We're breaking down Buffy's impossible leadership position, the Ben/Glory reveal finally clicking for the Scoobies, what the Knights of Byzantium actually want and why it matters, and the moment Buffy simply shuts down. Also — Spike catching a sword with his bare hands deserves more appreciation than it gets and we are here to give it.

Two episodes left in Season 5. Buckle up.

Snark rewatched Angel S2E19 "Belonging" and he's here to discuss it on The Re-Watcher's Council, joined by special guest Brennen Marr!

Yup, "Belonging" — the one where a demon crashes through a portal at Caritas, Lorne's mysterious home dimension gets its first real spotlight, and Cordelia ends up somewhere she very much did not plan to be by the end of the episode.

The Pylea arc is one of the most beloved stretches of Angel Season 2, and this is where it all starts. If you're rewatching the Buffyverse from the beginning, doing a full Angel rewatch, or just here for the dimensional chaos — you're in the right place.

Snark rewatched Buffy the Vampire Slayer S5E19 "Tough Love" and he's here to discuss it on The Re-Watcher's Council, joined by special guest Brennen Marr!This week on Re-Watcher's Council, we're covering "Tough Love" — the episode where Glory finally makes her move on the Scoobies and the fallout is absolutely devastating. Buffy is juggling full-time guardianship of a grieving, acting-out Dawn while trying to keep Glory from zeroing in on the Key. And then Willow and Tara have a fight — a real, honest, relationship fight — and the timing couldn't be worse.Because Glory misidentifies Tara as the Key. And what she does to her changes everything.We're talking about Willow's grief-fueled rage and what it signals for her arc going forward, the Buffy/Dawn dynamic as Buffy steps fully into the parent role, and what this episode does to set up the absolutely brutal final stretch of Season 5. Also — Tara deserved so much better and we will be saying that loudly.If you've been watching along, you know the stakes just got very, very real. Strap in.

Wolfram & Hart gave Lindsey McDonald a new hand. The hand has opinions of its own. This is fine.

This week on Re-Watcher's Council, we're covering Angel Season 2, Episode 18: "Dead End" — the one where the world's most reluctant buddy cop duo finally hits the road together. Angel and Lindsey teaming up is everything you didn't know you needed, and the reason they have to work together is genuinely horrifying: Cordelia's visions lead the gang to a Wolfram & Hart body shop harvesting live humans for parts. Dark, even by this show's standards.

But it's not all doom and body snatching. There's Lindsey absolutely mesmerizing the entire Caritas crowd with his guitar (Angel's reaction alone is worth the price of admission), the slow rebuild of Angel and Cordelia's friendship hitting one of its sweetest moments, and one of the best exit scenes in the whole series as Lindsey finally hits his limit with Wolfram & Hart and heads for the door. Oh, and Angel's parting gift to him is perfect.

We also dig into what this episode sets up for the road ahead — the visions are starting to take a serious physical toll on Cordelia, Wesley is quietly wrestling with the weight of leadership, and the Pylea arc is right around the corner.

🔔 Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and drop your thoughts in the comments. Was Lindsey redeemable? Did he make the right call leaving LA? Let's talk about it.

After two of the heaviest episodes in the entire series, Buffy Season 5 does something only this show can pull off — it gives us a robot and makes us cry anyway.

This week on Re-Watcher's Council, we're covering "Intervention," and there is a lot happening. Buffy heads into the desert with Giles for a vision quest, wrestling with whether her Slayer instincts are slowly killing her capacity to love. Meanwhile, back in Sunnydale, Spike's custom-built Buffybot has arrived — and the Scoobies are having a very bad, very confusing day. Glory's minions mistake Spike for the Key, which leads to one of his finest moments in the entire series. Yes, really. That ending scene? We talk about it at length and we are not sorry.

We're breaking down the First Slayer's "death is your gift" message, the comedy of the Scoobies encountering the Buffybot, Spike's loyalty under Glory's torture, and why this episode is a secret masterpiece sandwiched between two gut-punches.

Whether you're a first-timer or a seasoned re-watcher, this one's got everything — laughs, heartbreak, and Spike being inexplicably heroic. Come for the robot, stay for the feels.