Among the dedicated Buffy fan contingent, it's usually a toss-up between this season and season 2 when it comes to naming an all-time favourite, and once you watch it, it's easy to see why.

Season 3 has a lot going for it: this is the season of the young vampire Slayer and her friends' last year of high school, featuring one of the better Buffys season villains in the equally camp and terrifying Sunnydale Mayor, the truly fantastic Eliza Dushku giving a memorable and charismatic performance as Slayer anti-heroine Faith, and a season finale that's both edge of your seat suspense and the ultimate wish fulfilment for every pupil out there. Aside from a strong arc, this season has some of the best individual episodes. The season opener Anne, coming on the heels of the crushing season 2 finale is a beautiful exploration of feeling lost and ultimately reclaiming one's identity; Lover's Walk features the much-anticipated and utterly satisfying return of Spike; The Wish is an absolutely fantastic take of a dystopian alternate universe (which rather than stay a one-off has a brilliant follow-up in the episode Doppelgangland) and Graduation Part 1 and 2 is my personnal favourite season finale. And while everyone has episodes they prefer, I would argue that this is a season that lacks an outright (Go Fish-like) dud. The actors are truly in top form throughout, and the special effects have significantly improved.

This is also the last season with Angel, her brooding vampire paramour, is in before he goes off to have his own adventures in the spinoff, and the writers do a brilliant job of thematically setting up his character journey that follows up on his own show, so this is required viewing for anyone planning to check out Angel: the series.

I cannot reccomend this emphatically enough!