The stakes are raised: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is being sucked into the Hellmouth, and fans are out for blood.

Buffy will slay her last vamp 8 p.m. May 20 on UPN, with the final four-episode run starting tonight.

What began as a blonde babe kicking monster-of-the-week butt has morphed into a seven-year exercise in innovation, said David Lavery, co-editor of Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Slayage, a refereed journal of Buffy studies.

"Buffy is the Star Trek of your generation," Lavery said. "Buffy, by industry standards, has not been successful. It's always been on netlets, never with a big audience. But people are going to be talking about Buffy for a very long time."

Fan reactions to Buffy's demise vary, with most bemoaning the loss of their Tuesday night guilty pleasure. Through their grief, though, many fans express satisfaction that the show is ending before it crashes and burns into a redundant, banal melodrama, ála Beverly Hills 90210.

Besides a guest appearance by Buffy's former lover, Angel, little information about the series finale has leaked.

Vague spoiler speculation includes the closing of the Hellmouth, a Scooby Gang death and a performance by Nerf Herder, the pop-punksters who provide the Buffy theme song. Fans doubt, though, that Buffy mastermind Joss Whedon will take the conventional finale route and kill his heroine. Afterall, she has already died twice. And come back to life.

"I'd like to see it not end simplistically, and leave itself open for the possibility of something like a movie one day, which Joss wants desperately," Lavery said. "I want to be surprised. I want to be moved. I'm willing to bet I will be."

Gretchen Felgar (senior-film and video), a Buffy addict for six years, said the program is a moving, relatable, non-simplistic and non-teen-fluff show. Hard as it may be to imagine anyone relating to a fictional reality rampant with vampires, witches and hellgods, Felgar said the fantastic plots stand as metaphors for the demons of teenagerhood.

"A lot of girls can relate to a guy turning into a monster after having sex with him for the first time, or being the school outcast, or secrets you can't tell your family because they wouldn't know how to handle it," Felgar said.

More than just the girl next door, Buffy has surfaced as an anti-damsel in distress icon. Vampires may follow her into a dark ally, but unlike so many horror heroines before her, Buffy dusts the vamps and emerges ready to take on the world with her slaying combination of brains and brawn.

"Buffy is a sexual being, but her power isn't in her sexuality," said Lissette Szwydky (graduate-English), who has used Buffy as a teaching tool to examine cultural constructions of gender, as well as good-versus-evil binaries.

Buffy, although never a major Emmy Award contender, has remained at the forefront of critical acclaim for its gender subversion, poignant performances and resonation of issues, said Louisa Stein, a doctoral student of cinema studies at New York University who is writing her dissertation on teen fantasy television.

"An important aspect of Buffy is to watch it and its characters change," Stein said. "It deserves an ending that does it credit."

A future Buffy spin-off is in the works, while several of the show's stars are rumored to be making the move to Angel, a Buffy spin-off that airs 9 p.m. Wednesdays on the WB network.