Looks like a primo Buffy night between the FX episode and the new one.
Pop your popcorn! 
Soooo…
Where did Dawn come from? (no, silly, not the biological stuff)
I’ve seen I think about the second half of season three, and most of season four (last nite on FX, Riley went to the cave to confront Adam, so I’m thinking season finale), and I haven’t seen or heard any mention of Buffy having a kid sister. Now, in season six, here’s Dawn… who Vengeance Willow wanted to turn back into a little ball of energy…
I’ve seen a couple of posts referring to Dawn as the Key. Key to what? My cedar box? , because I lost my key, so now I can’t lock it anymore… and what’s up with her being a kleptomaniac (Buffy told Giles, right before she told him she was sleeping with Spike, and the great laughter that followed).
Last season, some monks who were guarding a mystical ball of energy that served as a Key to unlock interdimensional portals turned the Key into a 14 year-old-girl and made her into Buffy’s little sister. Memeories were adjusted so that everybody remembers Buffy always having a younger sister.
The monks did this to keep the Key out of the hands of an insane Hell goddess. The Hell goddess being defeated, Dawn is now part of the Scooby gang.
The klepto thing is Dawn’s cry for attention. She found out that she had not always existed, contrary to what she and everyone else remembers. That, plus the death of Joyce, their mom, has her plenty weirded out.
So, I won’t be able to use Dawn to lock and unlock my cedar box, then?
Darn.
The neat thing they did with Dawn was that she just appeared and everyone acted like she’d always been there. The viewers were baffled and probably thought that Mutant Enemy just dropped her in (and would claim that she’d always been there, just never mentioned). Only several episodes into the season is it revealed that she actually was a new development. Some characters don’t find out until fairly late (like Dawn herself).
Her first appearance was at the end of Buffy vs. Dracula (season 5 episode 1). Buffy walks into her bedroom and finds Dawn looking through her stuff. She says, “What are you doing here?” Their mom calls, “Buffy? If you’re going out, why don’t you take your sister?” Both Buffy and Dawn yell, “Mom!!!”
Meanwhile, everyone watching said, “WTF?”
I recently saw a rerun from before Dawn’s appearance–brain can’t recall which one–in which somebody–brain again–made an oblique reference to Buffy’s sister. Came off as a jokey aside, if I remember right, but was of course later revealed to be a particularly subtle example of Joss’s clever little foreshadowings.
Well now, depending on how you want to contort things, you could fit season five into that pattern. The little bad is Dracula or Dawn, the betrayal is Ben and the big bad is Glory. Or the little bad is Glory, the betrayal is Ben (or Joyce) and the big bad is Death. For season six, the little bad is the trio, the betrayal is Willow and the big bad is Willow.
Not as a joke. It was in Season 4, episode: “This Year’s Girl” when Faith wakes up. In the “opening” scenes Buffy is “talking” to Faith in a dream. In hindsight, it must be one of those prophetic dreams the Slayer is prone to. Transcript (from this site follows:
Why did Anya switch from demon to human, and when did she become a demon again? And why did Xander leave her at the altar?
In Season 3, after Cordelia caught Xander and Willow kissing, and she was impaled, she wished Buffy never came to Sunnydale. Anyanka granted her wish, and Cordy was transported to alternate dimension where Buffy never came to Sunnydale. Almost everybody was a vampire…except Giles (who was sitll waiting for Buffy) Oz (werewolf) and two others. They were the “whitehats”. Cordy insisted that tihngs were wrong in this world, thta things were supposed to be different. Giles figured it out, summoned Anyanka, took her power source (a pendent), and destroyed it, thus undoing the wish and making Anyanka a human.
The next time we meet Anya, she is trying to summon her pendent back from the alternate dimension and asked Willow ot help her. Instead of getting the pendent back, VampWillow came. Fun was had by all.
Flash forward 3 years, Xander and Anya are getting married, and supposed to be greatly in love. Xander got cold feet because he was scared that he would become his father–an abusive drunk. He didn’t want to put Anya through that, so instead of trying to work through it, he ran. This devastated the ex-vengence demon, and so D’Hoffryn offered Anya her powers. Being completely hurt and devastated, she accepted them. (Which is interesting, because the first time she asked him for her powers, he denied her.)
Again, just clarifying a few things. Anya, like all vengeance demons (I assume), was originally human. Some 1100 years ago, after a really bad breakup, D’Hoffryn the head vengeance demon guy offered to make her one, she accepted, and became Anyanka, Patron Saint of Scorned Women.
After she granted the wish to Cordy however, the Giles in the alternate universe managed to defeat her by destroying her power source, rendering her a mortal human again and…key plot point here…undoing all of her wishes, including the one creating the AU. Of course this little detail [mini rant] renders the plotline of “Hell’s Bells” utterly nonsensical, but hey, what’s a little broken continuity among friends :rolleyes:[/mini rant]
About the Little Bad/Betrayal/Big Bad Theory:
That theory always seemed kind of weak to me. I think the only season that really stuck to it was number two. In season three, Mr. Trick really just didn’t make enough of an impression on me to qualify as a “Little Bad”, especially after the example set by Spike. He just reoccurred in a few early eps, then became the Mayor’s flunky, and got dusted by Faith. Whoop-de-do.
Season four is even more problematic. The Initiative, at least, was more or less on Buffy’s side, against the “sub-terrestrials”. In retrospect we know Dr. Walsh and her cabal were “bad”, but this doesn’t really manifest until she tries to have Buffy killed, which is the same ep in which she herself is killed and Big Bad Adam takes over.
Season five didn’t track at all, of course. You could of course argue that season six did, with The Trio/Willow/Willow. You could argue it, that is, if season six actually happened, which it didn’t, and if you try to convince me otherwise, I will put my hands over my ears and say “La la la”.
See, I always thought that refered to Faith herself. I recall her or Buffy calling herself Buffy’s little sister, in a “younger slayer” kind of way. I saw theforshadowing in the ep. I just saw where the first slayer tries to kill them all in their dreams. In Buffy’s dream, Tara says something along the lines of “Be back before Dawn.” And then bang, next episode–Dawn.
OK, I can’t stand it anymore. I guess FX is about midway through Season Five- just saw the episode where they do battle (hilariously) with Olaf the Troll.
When the hell is Spike going to tell Buffy he loves her?
I loved that scene where he was “rehearsing” with the Buffygy in the crypt, bashes if over the head with the box of chocolates, kills it, then puts it back together…
Very soon now. Not in the next ep, but either the one after that, or the next one.
He told her in Crush, which is one of my all time favorite episodes for various reasons…