20 Most Hated Characters In TV History

For a little while at the beginning of season five of Buffy, the mystery of the Slayer’s kid sister Dawn Summers acts as dramatic irony on an unprecedented level. You see, Buffy’s been an only child for the preceding four seasons, and the only people who seem to realise that Dawn shouldn’t be there are us, the television audience.

Buffy eventually finds out that Dawn isn’t real: she’s a thing called the Key, which has the power to open gates between dimensions. Without going into too much detail, she’s absolutely essential to the plot of season five: she’s the McGuffin, the object around which the whole narrative spins, but she’s also a teenage girl, and she and everyone else believe she always has been.

So the tantrums, the acting out and the attitude that come along with that act as counterbalances to her importance… except that then they resolve all the conflict and kill the Big Bad, and in season six Dawn’s just a teenage sidekick to the Scooby Gang, with all the irritating drama and none of the relevance.

There’s nothing wrong with Michelle Trachtenberg’s performance. On the contrary, she pretty much nails everything she’s asked to do, and her professionalism and talent are all the more impressive considering that she’s the same age as the character she’s playing.

But that’s the point: Dawn isn’t anyone’s definition of a real teenager. She’s every petulant adolescent teen soap opera character rolled into one: a gestalt teenage nightmare, and after season five all the moods, the kleptomania, the lying, the childish strops and the pouting act against the narrative, not with it.

There was no need for Dawn in seasons six and seven of the show, but she was too central to Buffy’s life to get rid of. That left us with a godawful third wheel: a teen written by thirtysomethings that got in the way and sulked her way through every scene, many of which wouldn’t have been such scenes if she hadn’t created so much g*ddamn drama.