12 Small Details You Only Notice Rewatching Buffy The Vampire Slayer

...and the foreshadowing doesn’t stop there. Season four closer Restless is a divisive episode, with the vast majority of screen time being taken up by dreams. It feels like a throwaway on first watch, but in retrospect, the seeds are set for a lot of what comes next.

In Buffy’s dream, she enters a bedroom to find Tara. They have a conversation that refers back to a previous dream, and after some typical mysterious dream chat, Tara tells Buffy to “be back before Dawn”. On second viewing, this one’s pretty obvious, but it goes deeper than that.

The dream Buffy and Tara discuss again features Faith, who in an earlier episode are making a bed (in the room where we first see Dawn). This time, Faith explicitly states that “Little sis [is] coming”. At this point, it’s safe to assume that the next season’s storyline was more or less fully mapped out.

The revelation that Buffy suddenly has a sister is one of the show’s most audacious moments, and means that these hints a season earlier couldn’t possibly be picked up by even the keenest viewers. But on a further watch, Joss Whedon’s master plan becomes clear.