Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Every Season Ranked Worst To Best

Season Five was far more confident than Season Four in terms of what it wanted to be, and it had learned from the past mistakes of the previous season. Riley was quickly phased out and Spike's infatuation with Buffy became more central. Likewise, Glory proved a far superior antagonist than Adam, as she returned to the more witty and wise-cracking villains of Big Bads past.

The show also took its biggest gamble and most controversial choice with the introduction of Buffy's little sister, Dawn Summers. Dawn was a well constructed mystery, where this teenage girl had come from that had never been mentioned or seen before, but somehow all our characters acted like she had always been around was a compelling story. Unfortunately, Dawn herself was unbearable.

Buffy's sister uprooted a lot of the core dynamics, and her constant immaturity was consistently grating. Looking back, however, it is hard to imagine the show without Dawn in its later seasons, and the character does improve with time.

Regardless, even Dawn isn't enough to knock an otherwise stellar season of the show that showed the Scoobies in a new phase of their lives as they got accustomed to adulthood. Solidifying the show's new mature approach was the standout episode in which Buffy's mother Joyce suddenly died of a brain aneurysm. The episode is hard to watch at times, but it is Buffy the Vampire Slayer at its most tragic and its most human.