as you surely know, in the fandom there is a lot of criticism about Buffy's decision to share her power and while I can understand the reason about the lack of consent I can't see how it's more important than the danger those girls were going to face, first by being targeted and killed by the First and then by the world being overpowered by it's demon army.

In letting Willow do that spell, Buffy gave all those defenseless girls the possibility to defende themeselves, the people they loved and, IF they wanted, the world. Yes, she didn't ask them first (just those who lived in her house at the time) but really, what human being with a full functioning brain would refuse?

Now you are mentioning the slayer dreams and imo this is even less important because those dreams are surely not worse than nightmares people can normally have nor do they happen so often to be such a problem. In Buffy's shoes would this thought have stopped you?




If we are talking of writing issues, I'm totally in agreement with you: neither episodes were far from perfect but if we are looking at it from an in-story pov, the reasons you stated do not compare to me. I mean, Buffy's decision empowered those girls and saved the world (ok, it wasn't just that, but still). Angel's got almost all his friends killed and sent a whole city and its inhabitants to hell. How can both endings be equally problematics from this point of view?