Final words for the televisual part of Angel’s story. And while I know people who weren’t fond of it when it first aired, I’ve loved it from the first time I saw the cut to credits. It’s not quite a Sopranos-sized ending but it still leaves you hanging, and even better it 100% fits with the major philosophy of the show. Just like the ongoing atonement and redemption, the fight against evil never ends, and you don’t do it for the prize at the end. Evil’s not there to be beat, it’s there to be fought.

There is a problem here though: the amulet. Why would Wolfram and Hart give it to Angel? There are some rationalizations made along the way but some contradict each other and none are particularly satisfying for me. It really comes down to one thing: it was a double-edged deus ex machina. The first being the thing that will save the thirty slayers from the army of twenty million ubervamps to cap off the most climactic battle in Buffy history. The second to bring Spike to Los Angeles. And dei ex machinis annoy me. But and they are not unprecedented in the Buffyverse, so I can manage.

If you ignore that little qualm, which doesn’t much interfere with your enjoyment anyways unless you’re someone who tends to quibble the minutiae, this season not only caps off one of the best shows that ever graced Television but also introduces some larger ideas that the show could have explored in future seasons. Previously, the show explored the ideas surrounding Faustian bargains and Pyrrhic victories, and those themes are expanded on this season which puts the phrase “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” to the test.

Angel and his team have been offered a powerful weapon to wield against the dark forces of the world, the only problem is it exists because of those dark forces, so to keep the weapon you have to pick your battles. Therein lies the rub, and man do the senior partners rub that shit. This season, above anything else in the series, shows that Wolfram and Hart are not really evil. They operate because of the evil in the world, and the evil inherent in the way businesses are run. Firefly had a company, Blue Sun Corporation, that arguably was the greatest force of evil in that universe, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Joss Whedon was in an anti-corporate mood when breaking these stories.

The interesting thing about this season is how various ignorant factions of evil battle each other and the casualties are all Angel’s friends. Gunn was given knowledge of the law, which led to the rebirth of Illyria inside of Fred. Meanwhile, Lindsay was employing the amulet, used in the finale of Buffy, to garner favour with the senior partners and join the Circle of the Black Thorn. And the senior partners were slowly wearing away the team’s once heroic worldview. As Lindsay said near the end of the season, heroes don’t compromise with the world; they see the world the way it is and they fight it.

All of these evils twist and distort our heroes intentions, making them less and less heroic, whether they know it or not. And when Angel is finally returned to the right path, it made sense that Cordelia would be the one to do that for him. Not because Cordelia was Angel’s most recent Love — we’ll exclude Nina since they weren’t dating yet — but because she’s the one who’s been with him since the beginning. She’s seen his ups and downs and knows what he wants to hear and what he needs to hear. It was a fitting end to the character, though if they hadn’t made her so damned mature over the past couple years it would’ve been entertaining to see her get completely swallowed up by the glitz and glam of the Wolfram and Hart lifestyle.

There are some who feel like the ending for this season was bad: they are wrong. It was the most tragic yet uplifting ending the show could have done and it’s the melange of those two characteristics that has always made Angel such a fantastic show.