Xander dies instead of Anya
The First appears as Angelus, Kendra, The Master, Glory, The Mayor and Joyce
Dawn becomes a slayer
Furthur explanation into The First's rise from the Hellmouth and more of the slayer mythos

Gonna try and get these somewhat sorted, but I promise nothing.

So what the hell happened with the vision of Dawn's mother? It couldn't have been the First, so what was it, if it wasn't Joyce? Did that whole "she'll be against you" thing just refer to Buffy sending Dawn away with Xander? Joyce's message seemed to indicate some sort of betrayal or something, almost as if Buffy would sacrifice Dawn to save the world (which would have been a nice flipside to the end of the fifth season, too).

What was the First planning on doing with Spike, anyway? It was using him to kill and turn people into vampires, but to what end? Perhaps it ties into that "demons outnumbering people" thing that the First mentioned in the last episode. One would think that there'd be an easier way to create a bunch of vampires, especially since the First was able to convince at least one other demon to do its work for it (the one played by Ashanti in First Date), why not just get a bunch of Vampires in an area where there ISN'T a slayer living to just create a bunch of other vamps? If that wasn't the case, and the First was trying to bring up a bunch of Turok-Han all along, why didn't it have Spike use the blood of the people he was murdering to open the seal? We've seen that human blood can open it (Xander's).

And speaking of the Turok-Han, how come one of them can force Buffy to retreat, beat her into unconsciousness, then give her yet another royal thrashing before finally being defeated, yet Xander/Dawn, Anya/Andrew, and Wood/Giles can hold off at LEAST two at a time all by themselves. Given what the first one did to Buffy multiple times, humans fighting them should have gotten slaughtered. Not only that, but where the hell did the group of Turok-Han in the sewers come from? We never heard anything about the seal being opened again, and one would think that if the First could get its agents to bring 3-4 of them up through the seal, it wouldn't stop there.

And then there's the whole mess with the Slayer line. As Doughboy mentioned, there really was no payoff to what the Eye said. However, it actually could have been referring to when Buffy was brought back to life in the first season. It's safe to assume that when a slayer dies, the next one is called instantly, since Buffy wasn't dead for that long. When Xander brought her back to life, maybe that caused the power of the slayer to be shared by two people, weakening it or something. All guesswork aside, they never went back to it, at all.

Not only that, but what was the First planning on doing with the potentials. The only thing close to an explanation we got was Buffy and Giles hypothesizing that the First was trying to eliminate all the potentials, then Faith, then Buffy. However, we know that's NOT the case, because the First tried to get Faith killed while she was in prison, through one of the other inmates. Not only that, but as we've seen, the bringers and the Turok-Han didn't need an invitation to enter a residence, and even Willow (with all her plot-convenient strength and limitations) couldn't hold them back (although that may have been intentional, to lead the Turok-Han to the construction site). If the First was so interested in wiping out the potentials, it had PLENTY of opportunities. Hell, we never saw anybody keeping watch at night, so the First could have staged an attack any given night. Barring that, we also saw that the First had access to explosives, so why not just send a bunch of Bringers in from all angles carrying a whole bunch of explosives. All you need is one or two to detonate to do a ton of damage. Not only that, but there was at least one time where the First could have killed Buffy outright, but didn't. The Turok-Han had knocked her completely out, but didn't finish the job. I could see if it took the opportunity to double back and kill the then-unprotected potentials, but it didn't. It just beat Buffy up and left, with no reason. Hell, Caleb did the same thing later on in the school. For something that was supposed to be pure evil, the First sure was giving the heros a fair chance, and then some.

And in what was just a huge red herring that wasn't necessary, we come to Giles. After what seemed like forever teasing the audience with the whole "is he dead?" thing, it just all came down to squeaky shoes. Blah. Not only that, but why would he have killed the Bringer that they captured while it was still talking? They could have gotten more information out of it. Heck, he killed it in mid-sentence. Then there's the fact that in First Date, he completely got on Buffy's case for going on the date with Robin (which was at least partly intelligence-gathering), yet seems perfectly fine with Faith taking the whole gaggle of potentials with her to a nightclub later on in the season. Again, more inconsistent and sloppy writing.

Spike's storyline sorta fizzled, too. We had him with a trigger in his head for most of the season, and then we get hinted to that even though he has a soul, he enjoyed killing fighting and killing the demon in Get It Done. Yet, it never goes anywhere.

And why, exactly, was everybody leaving Sunnydale? Buffy and Andrew supposedly shut the seal down in Storyteller, causing people to not be affected by the hellmouth any longer. I think that this is one of the main problems with Season 7. Instead of actually having the First Evil actually be evil, we just had the characters tell us over and over again that it was the end of the world, but we never saw exactly HOW it was going to be the end of the world. Sure, we got a half-assed explanation in the last episode about how when the Turok-Han outnumbered the people on the globe that the First would take corporeal form, blah blah blah, but it just didn't fit with what had happened in the season so far. Not only that, but that's a LOT of Turok-Han to have to unleash, and it never appeard that there were that many in the hole.

Xander dying would probably have been a better choice, as far as story goes. Anya was pretty much ignored for most of the season, so her death really didn't resonate that much with me. It's as if they gave her the big "I like humans" speech in the previous episode just to remind us that she's around before they killed her.

The First appearing as them would really have only been effective if it was actually being evil during the whole season. It started off great, with the parade of Big Bads in the first ep of the season, but fizzled fast. If the first suddenly changed into those for the last episode, it would probably have felt pretty tacked-on.

Dawn becoming a slayer would completely contradict what we saw in Potential, where we were finally told that she WASN'T a potential. Then again, what's one more piece of inconsistent writing?

The stuff with the First and the Slayer mythos is all stuff that SHOULD have been covered throughout the rest of the season. The big fight in Chosen would have been an awesome climax to a season that properly built up to it. What we got, though, was a season that puttered along for 21 episodes, started plotlines that went nowhere, then threw a big fight into the last episode to try and get us to forget that what preceded it wasn't that great. While it would have been great to have the information, cramming it into the last episode would make no sense.

According to the alternate version, Dawn had really been a slayer since Buffy died the second time. The power had transferred itself to her upon Buffy's death since technically, they are the same person. It really doesn't make sense though, since Dawn never felt the Slayer power for 2 years.

I just finished reading the alternate script, and you're right, that does make no sense. Not only that, but why would Buffy, Faith, and Dawn have to have died for a new Slayer to be called. It's pretty much a given that when Buffy died the first time, the actual line transfered to Kendra, then to Faith. When Kendra died, Faith was called, and Buffy wasn't involved at all.

The alternate script does have some good stuff, and parts of it would have been good to have in the final episode, but as I said, it really would have required the rest of the season to be good.

The whole controversy over Buffy's "choosing" is not convincingly written, plus it really doesn't fit with Jane Espenson insisting it had already been dealt with earlier in the season.

Dawn as Slayer is unbelievable, and is just too contrary to what has come before. This would have been planned for longer, and, at the least, they wouldn't have outright contradicted it in an earlier episode.

Xander dying instead of Anya doesn't make any sense--Anya was killed because Emma Caulfield refused to ever come back and play the character in the future.

The bloody hand doesn't fit, at all. Spike was never supposed to survive, and he was never supposed to come back corporeal. The original plan was to have him as a ghost on the Faith-spinoff, and he's ultimately coming back as a ghost on Angel.

Well, I was under the impression that the bloody hand was supposed to be that of the now-corporeal First.