Buffy The Vampire Slayer

The legend is that Kristine Sutherland went up to Joss Whedon during the filming of "Graduation Day Part One" to tell him that she wouldn’t be able to be in too many episodes of season four because she would be house sitting for a friend in Italy. Joss replied that it was okay that she stay out of season four because it kept in with the whole theme, but, he said, she’d better be back for season five because he had to kill her. This just goes to show how far ahead the Joss Whedon planning process goes.

There’s another old Mutant Enemy legend that’s similar and even more surprising. Reportedly, about halfway through season three, Joss confronted Sarah Michelle Gellar with the fact that come season five, she would have an onscreen sister. This is why murky references to Dawn pop up as early as the season finale of season three, over a year before the character would actually be introduced, even a full year before Joss would meet the actress that would come to play Dawn Summers, Michelle Trachtenberg.

And so it goes. Buffy The Vampire Slayer is one of a very few shows on television that dare to delve into the thematic element of foreshadowing. And so this article acts as a handy dandy guide to my personal favorite usages of foreshadowing throughout the seven seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

The biggie was the foreshadowing done during the big emotional Faith/Buffy dream sequence of "Graduation Day Part Two". One purposefully cloudy, unclear line changed the show together. Faith said, "Little Miss Muffet counting down from seven three oh." This line that resonated and wouldn’t be explained fully for another two years is such a layered line that it gets discussed in badly written essays about the television show it appeared in. First, the little Miss Muffet line is the first reference to Dawn. This was proved in the couple of season five episodes in which those that lost their minds due to Glory’s brain sucks referred to Dawn as such. One insane guy in "Real Me" says to her that he "knows who you are. Curds and whey", an obvious reference to Little Miss Muffet. Then there’s the second half of the sentence, the counting down from 7-3-0 portion. This refers to Buffy’s death in "The Gift". There are seven hundred and thirty days in two years, and two years later Buffy would die. This idea is even revisited in "Restless" when, in Buffy’s dream, she looks at a clock that reads 7:30. When she tells Tara that it’s getting late, Tara replies that "that clock’s completely wrong". She’s referring to the fact that there are now only 365 days until Buffy’s death. It’s a rather brilliant moment.

There’s another cute use of foreshadowing in another Joss-penned episode called "Dopplegangland". In it, Willow’s doppleganger acts "kinda gay", as she puts it herself. When Buffy tells her that the vampire version of someone is nothing like the person it was originally, Angel begins to correct her to say that that isn’t true. Then Buffy shuts him up. This is clearly a reference to the fact that one season later, Willow would fall in love with Tara and become a lesbian. What seemed like a cute little joke one season was turned into full-fledged foreshadowing one year later.

Another fantastic foreshadowing in "Restless" was payed off in "Tabula Rasa" in season six. There’s a scene during Xander’s dream sequence in "Restless" where he sees Spike dressed up in tweed training to become a watcher. In "Tabula Rasa", we once again get a glimpse of Spike in tweed, this time thinking that Giles is his father. And in that "Restless" scene, Giles tells Spike that he’s like a son to him. Joss has said on a few occasions that when filming "Restless" he never planned that, but I just think he’s being self-deprecating, because I noticed something that I’ve never heard mentioned before. In that same scene in "Restless", Xander and Spike talk about a shark with fins but on land. Then in that same other episode "Tabula Rasa", there is a big shark-man that calls himself The Land Shark. Hmm.

There are also less specific uses of foreshadowing in Buffy. These are interesting as well. For instance, there’s Willow immediately turning to dark magic to shield herself from pain in "Something Blue", an idea that comes back to haunt the hell out of her in season six, and especially in the last three episodes of that year. Then there’s Tara’s sabotage of the demon location spell in season four’s "Goodbye Iowa", which foreshadowed the fact that she actually thought she was a demon, which was revealed in Joss Whedon’s interesting season five Tara-centric "Family". And, finally, there were the few season five glimpses of Dawn stealing stuff from the Magic Box, something that was dealt with a full year later in "Older and Far Away".

More recently, I’ve become convinced that something in "The Body" was actually subtle foreshadowing. Anya has that whole brilliant speech about how she doesn’t understand the human perception of death. Two years later, she has a conversation with Andrew in, I believe, "End Of Days" that shows she’s beginning to understand. And then she dies in the last episode.

One thing’s for sure. Nothing that happens in the Buffyverse is accidental. Joss Whedon is a very deliberate writer. And an unpredictable one, which reflects in the world that he’s created.