The Wish

Written by: Marti Noxon

The Metaphysics of "The Wish"

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Anyanka is a wrinkled and raw-looking demon. Dubbed "the Patron Saint of scorned women", she possesses great physical strength and the power to grant wishes. Appearing to a woman as the human Anya, her modus operandi is to bring out the hurt in the woman scorned, get her to make a wish (typically, no doubt, something disfavorable to the man in question), and then grant it. It seems that she must grant the first wish her target makes (otherwise, she would have waited for Cordelia to make a wish about Xander). Anyanka's power to grant wishes is directly tied to her amulet or "power center". Without it, she doesn't have that ability.

Anyanka's origins

1120 years ago, Anya was a human being with some magical abilities, similar to Willow. When she was dumped by a man she loved, she performed some vengeance spells with the aid of the demon D'Hoffryn. He gave her the amulet that turned her into a vengeance demon.

Summoning Anyanka: Giles has a large golden goblet with smoldering ingredients sitting on his desk. He pulls bits of an herb from a bushel and drops them into the goblet, saying:

Oh Anyanka,
I beseech thee.
In the name of all women scorned.
Come before me.

The bizarro world

Creation of the bizarro world: Anya takes her pendant off and puts it around Cordelia's neck. Cordelia vocally wishes that Buffy Summers had never come to Sunnydale. Anya turns into Anyanka and says "Done", and it is.

Altered history: The alternate history was NOT another "dimension". Cordelia's wish destroyed the history of our Buffyverse as we know it and created a new history for the Buffyverse.   This new history is essentially the same as the old history, except that Buffy never came to Sunnydale. We don't know much about the rest of the world, but bizarro-Sunnydale is rapidly going to the vampires. School is still in session, some businesses remain open, but a curfew keeps humans off the trash-filled streets and night-time entertainment is a thing of the past.

Cordelia's memory: In the bizarro-world, Cordelia's memory of the old Buffyverse history is intact because she was the one who was granted the wish, and a wish is only as good as the receiver's appreciation of it. This is part of Anyanka's modus operandi. No one (not even Cordelia) remembered what happened when the old history of our Buffyverse was restored--it was as if the bizarro-world had never happened. We are taken right back to the same moment Cordelia made the wish in the first place and time resumes its course from that point.

Reversal of the bizarro-world: Giles reads in his text, "In order to defeat Anyanka, one must destroy her power center. This should reverse all the wishes she's granted, rendering her mortal and powerless again." When Giles smashes the amulet, the old history is restored. Anyanka is turned into an ordinary woman and her powers are gone.

Good and Evil in "The Wish"

VampXander and VampWillow: "The Master's most vicious disciples" don't seem very much like their human counterparts. They become walking embodiments of sadism and predatory evil. VampWillow can't hunt, she assuages her boredom by torturing Angel with matches while VampXander watches.

The Master's factory: A wooden cage of humans await an evil assembloodline--the victim is laid down, alive, on a long stainless steel pan. The pan moves along the conveyor to the blood-draining station, where four arms with needles on them extend over the victim. They plunge into her body, draw the blood from it, and then extract themselves. The pan with her corpse then moves along the conveyor for disposal.

The Master defends his creation thus:  Some have argued that such an advancement goes against our nature. They claim that death is our art. We have always been too parochial, too bound by the mindless routine of the predator. Hunt and kill, hunt and kill. Titillating? Yes. Practical? Hardly. Meanwhile, the humans, with their plebeian minds, have brought us a truly demonic concept: mass production!

Poetic justice: Anyanka granted a wish so horrible that its victims found a way of reversing it that destroyed her power to grant wishes altogether. Bizarro-world Oz staked VampWillow with a broken piece of a wooden cage.

Quote: My claim to fame was to maim and to mangle. Vengeance was mine." --Anya

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