3x08&09 Lover's Walk/The Wish

Published: March 1, 2017, 8 p.m.

b"This is what I'm here for!
We get Spike returning because Drusilla has broken his heart. Which doesn't surprise me, as she's not really the monogamous type. Spike is your regular ridiculous boy who can't understand that the relationship is over, and he wants a love potion to make her love him again. And yet he still seems to be the most emotionally mature person here. His cunning plan involves kidnapping Willow and getting her to cast a love spell, and Xander because he happens to be in the same room. But Willow is working on a way to kill her desire for Xander, and putting them in the same room for an extended amount of time isn't going to help that.
Once again we get more angst about Angel which I don't even really want to talk about. Break up or be a couple, I don't mind either way, just stop talking about wanting to a be a couple. Also, I was right to hate the Willow/Xander pairing, as both Cordy and Oz save their significant others only to find them about to do it. And poor Cordy ends up with some rebar through her chest for her trouble. She may be self-centered, but she's the only one I felt for in all of this.
But then we get to The Wish, which, honestly, was too short, The rest of the season should have been this alternate universe, with vampire Willow and Xander. Cordy wishes that Buff never showed her face in Sunnydale, and we get the darkest timeline which is far and away the most entertaining thing the show has ever done. I loved every second of it. I loved Larry being in the new scooby gang, I loved Cordelia having a lethal threesome with Willow and Xander, I loved Angel being the whipping boy for the vampire clique.
Cordy dies pretty early on, and it's Giles who figures out that the demon Anyanka is to balme for this terrible reality. And I wish he didn't, because I wanted this to be at least a 10 episode arc."