The final series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was produced and aired in 2002/03 during the run up to and weeks following the US/UK invasion of Iraq. This article argues that in this new context Buffy's once polysemic representational cycle was shifted, creating explicit, and unpleasurable, ideological signification. Working with Lawrence Grossberg's argument that since the mid-twentieth century affect and ideology have become disarticulated and that affect is “a-signifying,” I suggest that in the programme's earlier series Buffy's affective cycle between “certainty” and “uncertainty” allows for pleasurable ideologically open viewing experiences. Pleasure is, however, undermined in the programme's final series where Buffy's fighting and rhetoric start to signify ideologically as a result of the newly felt “real contradiction” between leadership and democracy. In this context, feminism-as-mood—as the “quality” of affect—fails in its previous ability to secure Buffy's superhero physical strength as an empowerment metaphor. A temporary resolution is struck in the final episode using allusions to the collectivism of the “Women's Movement” to create the re-articulation between representation, ideology, and affect necessary for Buffy's power, once more, to feel both like feminist empowerment and utopian human possibility.