In 2018, it was announced that Dark Horse was losing the license to publish "Buffy" comics; Joss Whedon's intent for the final season was to "give the Dark Horse era some closure". The four-issue "" (2018) picks up one year after "Season Eleven", with a thirty-year-old Buffy pondering her future; she is separated but on cordial terms with Spike, still working as a part-time police consultant, and a doting aunt to Dawn and Xander's baby daughter Joyce. Tying up story elements first alluded to in 2001's "Fray", Buffy is warned about an apocalypse called "the Reckoning" led by time travelling vampire Harth, in which the Slayers are depowered and Buffy is banished to a hell dimension battling an army of demons. With help from her friends, and those of Angel and Fray, Buffy proactively takes the fight to Harth in an attempt to change her fate; Illyria sacrifices herself to banish the demons in Buffy's place, altering history. After the battle, Buffy becomes a fulltime member of the SFPD supernatural division alongside Faith, reconnects with Spike, and comforts a grieving Angel over Illyria. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Buffy, Fray returns to the 23rd century to discover her world has been drastically improved by the continued presence of many Slayers.