The Character That Joss Whedon Thinks Got Short Shrift In Buffy Season 7
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" introduced a bevy of incredible characters, but not all of them got the same amount of love and attention. Some characters, like Spike (James Marsters), were supposed to be killed off instantly but stayed on the show because the audience would have rioted if he died. Others, like Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg), were absolutely instrumental to the narrative but totally hated by the show's fans.
Not only did "Buffy" buffs despise the Slayer's younger sister, but the writers also had trouble effectively working her into the show. Dawn was memorably introduced in season 5 under mystical circumstances but, in the final two seasons, she was left to her own devices as a regular teenage girl. The character re-introduced the coming-of-age themes at the show's high school roots, but her lack of powers and combat experience also made her far less exciting than most of the other characters. By season 7, her storyline stalled while others were wrapped up neatly with a bow.
Controversial series creator Joss Whedon "had wanted to go further with Dawn's character" in the seventh and final season, he told IGNFF back in 2003 shortly after the show ended. But it wasn't because Whedon shared the fans' dislike of Dawn that she took a backseat in the last season — other characters simply took priority.
"The problem was, again, we had so much work to do to get to the end of the season, that everything else kind of fell by the wayside," he continued.
Whedon wanted to do more with Dawn
The sixth season was a difficult one for Dawn. After her sister sacrificed herself to save her and was brought back to life as a shell of her former self, it's safe to say that Dawn had been put through the wringer. However, she was also no longer being hunted down by an ancient and all-powerful god as the key to a portal between universes. Whedon wanted to communicate how difficult things had been for Dawn, but he understood why it rubbed fans the wrong way.
"In season six, people were like, 'Oh, she whines so much,'" Whedon explained. "I sort of scratched my head. I was like, 'Excuse me, she's been abandoned by about six parental figures. The girl has huge issues.' At the same time, I was like, 'You get it ... we sort of run the same note for a while, they're not wrong.' We needed to make some changes."
Whedon planned to do a better job working Dawn into the larger plot in season 7, to give her more to work with. Unfortunately, between introducing a dozen new characters and wrapping up the storylines of the main cast, giving the Slayer's sister the long-awaited complexity and stakes she deserved became next to impossible. As Whedon put it, "the bigger picture just got so goddamn big, that it was hard."
The WB series creator explained that he was unable to focus on interesting parts of Dawn's teenage life, like romance, because they didn't tie Dawn into the larger plot. As he put it, "If it's not part of the bigger picture, people resent it. It's very hard to pull that off in season seven of the giant battle that's coming."
The terrible reason why Dawn might have been ignored
Dawn is played by Michelle Trachtenberg, a child star who rose to fame with films like "Harriet the Spy" and "Inspector Gadget." The actress continued working in film and television after "Buffy" with iconic roles like Georgina Sparks, the wicked witch of the Upper East Side in the smash hit CW series "Gossip Girl."
Whedon called Trachtenberg "extremely talented" in his 2003 interview with IGN, but a personal vendetta may have fuelled her character's faltering involvement in the final seasons of the show. The actress claimed that a rule forbade the series creator from being alone in the same room as her on set, per Vulture. Whedon says he had no knowledge of any such rule, but Tratchenberg's claim was confirmed by several sources, one of whom cited a closed-door meeting in the seventh season that left the then 17-year-old actress "shaken."
After several of her "Buffy" co-stars came forward accusing Whedon of severe misconduct, Trachtenberg supported them publicly on Instagram and wrote that his behavior with her as a teenage actress was "not appropriate."
Despite Whedon's claims that he did not know about the aforementioned rule, it still may have affected Dawn's involvement in season 7. His inappropriate behavior and the distance the actress put between them as a result easily could have motivated him to cut down Trachtenberg's scenes.
There are a few reasons why Dawn's arrested development might have been a true accident, the first of which was Whedon confessing that he had failed the character in his 2003 interview. If it truly had been a personal vendetta that made him pay less attention to Dawn, then why would he go out of his way to draw attention to her?
Was Trachtenberg Dawn's biggest fan?
Now, we all know Dawn was not a very widely beloved character, but how did Trachtenberg feel about her? It's safe to say the actress has mixed feelings about her involvement in the series, given her complicated relationship to the "Buffy" creator, but does she reject the show? And, more specifically, is she a member of the sparsely populated Dawn fan club?
Even before she joined the cast, Trachtenberg loved "Buffy." At her audition, she gushed about her love of one character in particular — and her chic whimsigoth wardrobe. "I was a fan first, I was a huge fan of the show," she recalled at a 2017 cast reunion with People. "I went and read for Joss and Marti [Noxon, writer-producer] again, and it was like three pages. And I was like, 'I really like Willow, she has really cool clothes and stuff.' [...] But I was a fan. It was really prevalent throughout my whole school, how big 'Buffy' was in influence."
She might have been a huge fan of "Buffy," but "Buffy" lovers were not huge fans of her character. In fact, the actress is still hearing about how unlikeable Dawn is to this day.
"I still get comments like, 'Oh my God! I think Dawn is so annoying!'" she revealed to Entertainment Weekly in 2017. "I get it. It's fine. It used to be a 60-40 'I hate Dawn.' Then, it became 50-50. Now, I think it's 60-40 being supportive of Dawn. Maybe even 70-30."
Despite the backlash, Trachtenberg has come to appreciate and understand the whininess of Dawn that viewers hate so much. "Hi, were you a teenager?" she added. "Oh, you were docile, sitting in the corner, doe-eyed and happy to be there? No. There's a reason why teenagers have a stigma and that is what Joss wrote."