Buffy will return from the dead to slay vampires

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is dead. Long live Buffy.

So says creator Joss Whedon of Tuesday's season finale in which the Buffster (Sarah Michelle Gellar) sacrificed herself in order to save mankind.

That's right, she's dead and buried.

She'll return this fall when the program moves from WB to UPN, "but it's going to be strange," says Whedon, who is about to take a two-month break from writing.

In writing Tuesday's episode - which drew 5.2 million viewers, one of the season's best ratings performances - Whedon says that he hoped "to provide a good heroic closure to the journey that she has been on this year."

"But unfortunately, even when you have closure, you have to go on. So we're going to pull her back."

Whedon says he has received a lot of comments about the episode from fans via the Internet. Many of them said, " 'I hate you. Thank you, thank you.' " Others called the plot " 'predictable.' "

As for any viewers who might have been startled by the episode, Whedon says he'd hope as much.

He loves to put viewers in pain, narratively speaking, and instructs his staff writers to "give people what they need, not what they want."

"I love upsetting people. It's my favorite thing to do."