to her in the end. Buffy then promises to change her self-destructive behavior to be there for her sister. In the final season of the show (2002–2003), things start to come around for Buffy when Principal Robin Wood (D. B. Woodside) hires her as a school counselor for the newly rebuilt Sunnydale High School and she has repaired her relationships with Dawn and her friends. However, she is also confronted with the threat of the First Evil and becomes a reluctant leader to the Potential Slayers, who are initially respectful of her, but become increasingly more alienated by her tactics and decisions throughout the season. She unexpectedly becomes emotionally close with Spike, who has sought out his soul in an effort to prove himself to her. In the show's final episode "Chosen", Buffy shares her power with her fellow Slayers before leading them into an epic battle against an army of Turok-Han vampires. She also confesses her love to a disbelieving Spike before he sacrifices himself to save the world; as he dies, Buffy escapes Sunnydale's destruction with the surviving characters. Following the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the character maintains a presence in the fifth season of Angel (2003–2004), but does not appear onscreen. In the episode "The Girl in Question", Angel and a resurrected Spike travel to Rome to find her, where they learn she is apparently now dating the Immortal. Sarah Michelle Gellar was approached to appear as Buffy in Angel's one hundredth episode, but declined, so the character of Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) was used instead. She was asked to appear in the second to last episode of the series, "Power Play", but had to decline due to outside conflicts. Between 2001 and 2004, Joss Whedon and Jeph Loeb developed a 4-minute pilot episode for Buffy the Animated Series, which was set during the show's first season. Had the series been picked up by a network, the series would have focused upon Buffy (voiced by Giselle Loren) in more high-school adventures. Following a 2008 leak of the pilot to YouTube, Loeb expressed some hope the series may be resurrected in some form. Literature As the main character of the franchise, Buffy appears in almost all Buffy the Vampire Slayer literature. This includes a Dark Horse ongoing comic book and a series of novels. Buffy's debut into literature came in the comic Dark Horse Presents 1998