5 Best Dawn Summers Episodes On Buffy The Vampire Slayer

When Dawn Summers (Michelle Trachtenberg) first popped up at the end of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” Season 5, Episode 1, it was a shock to everyone watching. There had never been any mention of Buffy having a younger sister, and yet, as soon as she shows up, the whole cast acts like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It was clear at the time that something strange was afoot, but it took a while for fans to figure it out. The secret of Dawn, her status as the “Key,” and her relationship to season villain and Hell goddess Glory (Clare Kramer) unfold over the course of Season 5, contributing to what many (myself included) see as the show’s greatest chapter.

With the recent, tragic news of Trachtenberg’s death, it seems appropriate to look back at some of her best episodes of “Buffy.” Always a unique piece of the show’s ensemble, Dawn plays into some of the most emotional story arcs across the entire series, and her relationship with Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is one of the series’ true pinnacles.

These are the best Dawn Summers episodes of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

It’s only right that we start off with Dawn’s first full “Buffy” episode. “Real Me” takes on the daunting task of assimilating an as-yet-unknown character into a cast riding high off of four years of chemistry. It does this deftly by immediately casting Dawn as the perspective character and narrator of the episode, which is anchored by voiceover clips from her diary entries. It’s a fun and fresh way to see the story as it stands at the start of Season 5, with Dawn providing something of an outsider perspective on the Scooby Gang.

We also get the start of Buffy and Dawn’s sisterly relationship here — a balance of sibling squabbles and hard love that sets a firm foundation for the season ahead. Gellar brings immediate depth in this new dynamic to Buffy’s character, and Trachtenberg matches her beat for beat. While not the most high-stakes or emotional of the Dawn episodes, “Real Me” is a great start to her story, and the underlying mystery on your first viewing adds a lot.

Jumping ahead to the final season of “Buffy,” we have “Potential,” which puts Dawn in the role of potential-potential, if you will — someone who might have the capacity to become a slayer in her own right. In the midst of a chaotic and honestly overpacked season, this chapter gives Dawn one of her more interesting episodic arcs, as she puts herself in danger trying to prove she could be just as capable and strong as her sister.

In the end, of course, it turns out that the potential slayer the crew has been searching for is someone else. Dawn has to contend with the reality that despite being adjacent to so much supernatural importance, she will likely never be at the center of it. It’s the kind of story that “Buffy” always excels at — blending coming-of-age struggles with fantastical stakes. In the midst of an impending apocalypse, “Potential” does a nice job adding a personal touch to Dawn’s status in the season, and Trachtenberg shines with a few years of familiarity with the character under her belt.

Another Season 7 episode, “Conversations with Dead People” has a unique vignette structure. It’s a character-centric episodes that follows various members of the cast in independent stories, with Dawn starring in one of the most memorable ones. While home alone, poltergeist-esque disturbances begin to plague the house. Believing that her dead mother is somehow involved, Dawn gets to work trying to put a stop to the chaos.

It’s a fun opportunity to see Dawn work through a mounting danger on her own. Trachtenberg does some of her best work in this isolated arc, balancing both the character’s lingering grief and her desire to prove herself capable. The final confrontation between Dawn and what appears to be (but really isn’t) the specter of her mother is powerful, and it helps to ground Dawn emotionally before the real momentum of the season starts to pick up. While unrelated to her larger story, Dawn’s vignette in “Conversations with Dead People” is a definite highlight.

“Forever” is a fantastic episode of “Buffy” that often gets overshadowed by “The Body,” the critically acclaimed episode that directly precedes it. “The Body” details the aftermath of Buffy finding her mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) dead in their house, tracing the grief and emptiness of the ensuing hours in heartbreaking detail through a close-up focus on Buffy herself. “Forever” continues with these themes, and while it may be less famous (“The Body” is widely seen as the best episode of “Buffy,” as well as one of the greatest TV episodes of all time), it adds new layers to the story, specifically through Dawn.

While we see Dawn’s grief alongside her sister’s in “The Body,” their shared sibling trauma is the main focus of “Forever.” Buffy struggles with suddenly becoming both Dawn’s sister and guardian, all while trying as hard as she can to run from her own overwhelming sadness.

The climax of the episode sees Dawn desperately trying to resurrect Joyce through arcane means, despite warnings that she can’t possibly get the result she’s hoping for. Positions swap when the spell seems to actually be working, as Dawn realizes the horror of what she’s done and Buffy, the weight of her grief crashing back in on her at once, starts to hope that the resurrection might actually have worked. In a powerful moment of the younger sibling having to be the mature one, Dawn deactivates the spell just before Buffy unleashes a potentially dangerous force. The two come together in the end, still devastated but stronger for accepting support from one another.

While the other episodes on this are all great, “Blood Ties” is the Dawn episode. It’s the moment when she finally discovers who and what she is. When Trachtenberg was cast, this was the moment she had to build up to, and she absolutely nails it.

Driven to her wits’ end by all the hushed conversations about her, Dawn breaks into the Magic Box shop with Spike’s help to look through a tome that holds the answers. Watching her face as she finally discovers that she is the Key is heartbreaking, but it’s nothing compared to when she confronts the other characters later, begging to know what she is, if she’s real, and if all her memories are lies.

Dawn burns her diaries, which serve as a kind of structural throughline up to that point in the season, and she nearly meets a grave fate at the hands of Glory while running away from her sister and the others. Trachtenberg nails her heartbreaking “Buffy” spotlight moment, and the emotional heft of this episode, combined with the devastation of “The Body,” combine to create the foundation for Season 5’s unforgettable finale.