Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Weight of the World.

episode 99.
airdate: 15 May 2001.

Glory is feeling more human lately, not happy, though she has everything she wants and the time has come. Dawn is tied and gagged. Buffy is still catatonic. Spike slaps her and shakes her. Willow tries to talk to her. Xander and Spike start fighting.

Willow separates them with magic and starts laying out the plan. Anya will look after Tara, Spike goes to find where Glory is, Xander gets Giles to the hospital, and Willow will try to get into Buffy's mind to bring her back out. Spike asks Willow what he should do if he runs into Ben. Remember they all saw him change into Glory. Willow says Buffy doesn't need a doctor right now. So we then realize that Spike is the only one that remembers that Ben is Glory. Even when he tells them they all seem confused and keep forgetting again and again. Spike realizes Glory has a "mojo" so that humans forget if they see the transformation...apparently even if they talk about the transformation. Spike tries to beat it into everyone for like five minutes.

Glory is comforting to Dawn. Offers her pizza. Dawn tells her not to call her "Dawny" and Glory's feelings are hurt. She's feeling guilt. She's feeling things. Turns out Dawn's blood is the "key to the Key". She has to be bled dry to open the portal. Willow, Tara, Anya, and Buffy are at Xander's. Anya will look after Tara while Willow takes B to Xander and Anya's bedroom to try spells to enter her mind and coax her back out of her catatonic state. When Willow gets in she's in Buffy's childhood home the day Dawn is brought home from the hospital after being born.

Spike gets to Glory's apartment, but she's no longer there. Ben has a little simple room hidden away behind all Glory's pretty things.

Buffy's mom and dad are still together. They bring Dawn home and she holds her baby sister. "I could be the one to look after her sometimes." Then suddenly we're watching Buffy shelve books at the magic shop, then at the campfire of Buffy's spirit quest. She's in a loop. Giles is already being released from the hospital. Spike has no leads on where Glory is but he's going to consult someone he knows "demon, bookish, ties to the magical world". Glory is starting to remember things from Ben's life, is changing frequently from Glory to Ben. This is apparently her price for dealing with the serious magics involved in opening the portal.

Willow hears the First Slayer telling Buffy "death is your gift" from the ritual. Glory starts asking Dawn how you deal as a human. As a slave to hormones and feelings. She genuinely wants to know. "Who's not crazy? Everyone's drinking, smoking, shooting up...at least I admit the world makes me nuts. Name one person who can take it here." Dawn answers "Buffy". Buffy is leading Willow to her mom's room. Her grave is in there. Then she goes to Dawn's room and she's crying on her bed. Buffy suffocates her. This is her current interpretation of "death is my gift". Glory changes to Ben: "Has Glory hurt you?" He's also remembering all the things Glory has done...they're merging. The magic that keeps the two of them separated is breaking down. Ben fights one of the minions and says "I'll take you as far as I can, then ditch you when she comes back." They're back at the beginning of Buffy's mind loop.

Xander and Spike go visit the demon-creepy dude from "Forever". He refuses to help them, but Spike realizes he's standing in front of "the very thing we need". He throws a fancy box into his fireplace, Xander stabs him, and Spike gets the box back. Dawn hits Ben over the head to try to get away, but then he's Glory again. Ben and Glory start arguing, turning back and forth rapidly. Dawn tries to sneak away as they're arguing, but Glory doesn't let her. Glory says she can make Ben immortal if he cooperates. He apparently decides to side with Glory.

Willow asks Buffy what happened in the part of the loop where Buffy is shelving a book in the magic shop. She says she "quit just for a second". It was this moment that she realized she can't beat Glory and she wanted it to happen. She wanted it to be over. She decides this is the moment she "killed Dawn" because some part of her wanted it. Willow decides to stop humoring Buffy: "Snap out of it! All of this has a name...it's called guilt and it's important, but it's not more than that...you've carried the weight of the world on your shoulders since high school...and you wanted out for one second. So what?" Buffy keeps asserting that she killed Dawn and Willow reminds her this hasn't happened and she can still prevent it if she comes back. Willow says she's going where Buffy is needed. "You coming?" She does. She cries. I cry. Willow comforts her.

They're all at the magic shop. Giles says once the ritual starts it cannot be stopped. Only the end of the bloodletting will close the portal once it has opened. "Buffy, the only way is to kill Dawn." says Giles.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Blood Ties.

episode 91.
airdate: 6 Feb 2001.

It's Buffy's birthday again. 20. Glory is a crazy hellgod. Being not from this dimension she has to eat brains to sustain her form in the human world. Willow and Xander start asking about finding the Key before Glory does. Remember, they still don't know about Dawn. Only Giles, Buffy, and Joyce do. Buffy reveals she and Giles know, but didn't want to put them in danger by telling them. She decides it's time to tell them after Xander points out they always put themselves in danger.

"There's something that you need to know about Dawn."

The knights of Byzantium are chanting when the Glory-minions show up to fight them. The knights mostly kick their asses. Glory shows up and kicks their asses. Willow and Tara are doing a spell to protect the Magic Box, alert them to the presence of any hellgods in the vicinity. Everyone is acting weird around Dawn.

Glory is torturing one of the knights to ascertain the whereabouts of the Key. He doesn't know and refuses to tell her anyway, so she eats his brain.

Buffy is opening presents. Dawn gives her a homemade frame with shells they found on a trip to the beach. The picture inside is from the trip to the beach too. Everyone gets all mysteriously quiet. Dawn notices everyone is weird around her and confronts them all about it; no one says anything helpful.

She goes to her room and slams the door, then sneaks out, runs into Spike. He's there with a present for Buffy. She tells him she's headed to the magic shop to break in and steal things. Spike decides to go with her. She wants to find a book Giles hid in her presence. The book is Giles' journal/notes on the Key. Dawn reads it aloud. She finds out she's the Key, obviously. "Guess that's you, niblet", says Spike.

Party has mostly wound down when Dawn shows up having cut her own arms. "Is this blood? Am I real? Am I anything?" Buffy and Joyce tell Dawn the truth about everything. They're very forthright. Buffy finds out Spike is the one that got Dawn into the magic shop and goes to beat him up, as per usual. He tells her he went along to protect her. "If kid sis wants to grab a midnight stroll, she'll find a way sooner or later. I just thought she'd be safer with Big Bad looking over her shoulder." He defends Dawn and suggests that Buffy shouldn't have kept her in the dark so long.

One of the minions confronts Ben. Tells him he needs to stop defying her. Ben tells him Glory can't "lay a finger" on him and they know it.

Dawn is burning her old journals alone in her room. She was suspended in school. She destroys her room. When Buffy and Joyce find the fire, Dawn is gone. Buffy calls a meeting and assigns everyone a side of town (in twos) to look for Dawn. For some reason, Spike is at the meeting. Does this mean he's finally been let in? Anyway, her and Spike are the twosome for their part of the search. Why wouldn't she put Spike with one of the less physically-able peeps? She divided them up as to who would want to hang with who the most, it seems. Well, except Xander/Giles, but they're just hilarious together. Narrative pairings, really, then.

Can you imagine having all these memories of your life, but they're not real? Everyone else is wondering the same things. Buffy tells Spike he was right about telling Dawn earlier, but Spike makes her feel better by telling her she's not only a ball of energy, but also a fourteen-year-old "hormone ball", so she may have reacted this way no matter how she found out or when.

Dawn's wanderings lead her to the hospital. She goes to the mental ward and all the patients know it's her, ironically. The ones that Glory debrains are the ones that know who the Key is. Dawn starts asking them questions about what she is. She runs into Ben and he comforts her over a cup of hot chocolate. Dawn reveals everything to him. Ben tells Dawn to get away from him because "she always knows". Then you see Ben turn into Glory for the first time. Glory wants to know what Ben was doing with Dawn and takes her somewhere more deserted in the hospital. Glory asks her if she knows where the Key is. Dawn asks her what it looks like and she says it's a "bright green swirly shimmer". She presses Glory for more information on the Key. It's been around for a really long time. Glory gets angry after all the questions. Gets a little crazy. Thinks about eating Dawn's brain when Buffy and everyone show up (after they reconvened, Buffy decided to check the hospital).

She's thisclose to killing everyone when Willow does a teleportation spell on Glory. Buffy tells Dawn she loves her because she's her sister and her blood is Buffy's blood. Makes her feel a little better. Willow has a wicked nosebleed from the spell. Dawn tells Buffy Ben was there...but he must have "left before Glory came". She doesn't remember Ben is Glory.