15 Best Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episodes
13. Restless (Season 4, Episode 22)
"Haven't you figured it all out yet with your enormous, squishy frontal lobes?"
The season finale of Buffy's love-it-or-hate-it fourth season, Restless is a daring episode which the First Slayer stalks the dreams of Buffy, Xander, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Giles and forces them to confront their deepest fears in bizarre and increasingly metaphorical ways.
It's quite a tough episode to take in thanks to its weird imagery and constantly obscure symbolism, but that's its charm.
Each segment of the episode is a rigorous and intelligent character study, as Willow deals with the anxiety she feels over her identity and her place in the world, Xander tackles his feelings of failure and inadequacy, and Giles tries too choose between staying in Buffy's life or going off to live a life of his own. Amongst it all, Buffy confronts the First Slayer and must find a way to save herself and her friends.
Foreshadowing the arrival of Dawn in season five and Giles' decision to leave Sunnydale, Restless is a heavily detailed affair that's likely to take a couple viewings to fully appreciate, but will remain completely unforgettable regardless of how you interpret it.