Five seperate stories in this episode has the gang encountering a paranormal force which spells future doom. While out on patrol, Buffy squares off with a former classmate and current vampire, who goads her into revealing her insecurities. Back at home, Dawn is thrown into a panic when an invisible force trashes the Summers’ house and deposits the corpse of her mother on the sofa. The ghost of Cassie visits Willow under the guise of being sent by Tara; and Spike apparently has returned to his killing ways. Meanwhile, nerdy villains Jonathan and Andrew return from Mexico.

Dawn’s simple crush on Sunnydale High’s star quarterback RJ Brooks, goes far enough to make Buffy try and steer her attention elsewhere, especially when she falls for the boy herself. With the women all desperately trying to win RJ’s affections, Spike and Xander, now quasi-roommates, team up to discover why the teen seems to have the ability to make all women infatuated with him.

Anya grants a young woman’s wish, but the violent and deadly act of vengeance leaves Anya completely guilt-ridden. In order to fix her mistake, she asks that the spell be undone. Knowing the price of the reversal is the life of a Vengeance Demon, she’s willing to make the sacrifice.

Buffy is settling in to her counselor’s role at the high school helping troubled teens and sorting out problems, but is left speechless when Cassie, a student, comes to her and calmly tells her that she (Cassie) has only a week to live. Suspecting the girl is suicidal, Buffy investigates and discovers a cult of students playing with dark forces and comes to believe Cassie is psychic.

Buffy, Xander and Dawn are unable to find Willow who, shortly after returning to Sunnydale, is captured by a demon who enjoys eating the skin of his victims. Meanwhile, Anya pays the price for undoing the curse on Ronnie (the giant worm demon) and is restricted to only being able to teleport for vengeance jobs.

Soon after Buffy’s first day as Sunnydale High Guidance Counselor, the gang meets a young woman, Nancy, who’s dog was eaten by a large creature living in the sewer. Spike offers his assistance in tracking down the monster, but the gang and Buffy are still a little uneasy with him being around. The gang soon discover the cause behind the monster is an old, estranged friend; who is relishing in her return to form. Meanwhile, Willow has mixed emotions as she prepares to leave England and return to Sunnydale.

The re-opening of Sunnydale High School is not without trouble for Buffy as some undead students and faculty are raised, and blame the Slayer for failing to protect them. Dawn and Buffy, together with some of Dawn’s new friends join together to defeat the evil

Meanwhile, Spike and his new soul are seeking solace in the maze-like basement of the new school, and Willow begins her redemption with Giles in England.

Giles’s new-found power brings Willow down momentarily and Giles magically binds her and leaves to catch up with Buffy. Willow telepathically controls Anya and gets her to break the binding spell. Willow draws Giles’s energy into her and is hit by a sudden burst of emotion. Willow feels so much pain and hurt in the world and she decides to end it all.

After exacting revenge on Warren for Tara’s death, an extremely powerful and vengeful Willow now vows to go after the other two members of the trio, Jonathan and Andrew, forcing Buffy into the unlikely role of nerd-villain protector. After freeing the Duo from jail and escaping from Willow, the expanded group runs to the Magic Box to find a protection spell. While all this is going on in Sunnydale, Spike undergoes a fierce challenge given by an African demon in order to become what he once was. Willow, drained of her power, finds Rack and draws his energy into her, killing him in the process. At the Magic Box, Willow catches up to them all and takes on Buffy and Anya, who is doing her best to keep a magical barrier up around Willow. Buffy is no match for Willow’s power, but eventually she is drained again and they escape while she is down. Willow regains her strength and brings down Anya’s barrier, tossing both her and Buffy aside. Willow heads out of the shop intent on completi

While the paramedics work on Buffy in the yard, in her bedroom Willow deperately calls on Osiris to bring Tara back to life the same way as she did for Buffy. She is told that the spell will not work for a natural human death and becomes consumed with rage and wants revenge in the worst way. She runs to the magic shop and draws the dark power from the books into her causing her hair and eyes to turn black. After saving Buffy by magically removing the bullet from her shoulder she heads out to find Warren.

Willow and Tara are well on the road to recovery but love lives are not as good for Xander and Anya or Buffy and Spike. The Troika move full swing into their biggest plan ever: stealing a pair of mystical orbs which imbue the bearer with super strength and invulnerability. They attempt to rob an armoured van but Buffy crashes the party resulting in a battle between her and SuperWarren. Buffy is all but finished until Jonathan reveals the secret to Warren’s power. Buffy manages to defeat him but he escapes by use of a rocket pack and Jonathan and Andrew are arrested.

Buffy heads home to await the next encounter but it comes all too soon. A crazed Warren proves he is evil enough on his own and shoots at Buffy. She takes a bullet in the shoulder but a wild shot fatally hits a Scooby…

Having accepted the offer to become a vengeance demon again, Anya attempts to curse Xander for the pain he caused her… but she can’t do it herself. Instead, she enlists the help of some old friends but it doesn’t go how she expected. Buffy spends some quality time with Dawn to make up for her violent actions in “Normal Again,” but Dawn’s idea of time well spent is the dangerous world of patrolling; while Willow and Tara go on a coffee date and begin to mend their troubled relationship. The gang discover that the Troika have been watching their every move with hidden cameras. The cameras are traced to the trio’s lair and what is seen on video proves to be devastating for all of them.

After being poisoned by a demon, Buffy comes to believe that she is confined to a mental hospital, her mother is alive and her parents are still together and that her life as a Slayer was all an hallucination for the past six years. Deciding that she prefers this ‘normal’ life with her parents a whole lot more, Buffy attempts to kill the things that tether her to the ‘fantasy’ life of the Slayer: the Scoobies.

The day of the wedding has finally come and Xander and Anya are preparing for the hoards of “guests” to arrive. While Xander’s screwed up human family go head to head with Anya’s mostly non-human friends, a special guest approaches Xander to warn him that his life with Anya may not turn out to be the married bliss he has hoped for.

Riley pursues a demon to Sunnydale and seeks Buffy’s help in killing it. He also comes with a surprise… he is married. His wife, fellow demon hunter Sam, befriends the entire Scooby Gang and gets along quite well with all of them, but Buffy’s own “relationship” with Spike comes into question when her ex’s perfect romance shows her just what she doesn’t have.

Old and new friends gather at the Summers home for Buffy’s 21st birthday party and it goes off without a hitch – mostly. Feeling neglected by Buffy and the Scoobys, Dawn’s wish to keep people from leaving her is answered by Anya’s demon friend Halfrek, who binds the attendees of the party to the house. When Tara tries a spell to free them, she only makes the situation worse by accidentally releasing a demon trapped inside a sword.

The Troika’s latest escapade to make Warren’s ex-girlfriend Katrina their willing slave goes horribly wrong when she is accidentally killed. The trio use magical and demonic forces to make Buffy think that she has killed Katrina – and it works. With finding out the truth about her resurrection and believing she killed an innocent girl, Buffy’s world begins to fall apart.

Starved for cash, Buffy gets a job in a fast food restaurant where the weird manager and high turnover of employees has her more than a little suspicious. When co-workers start ending up in pieces, the mystery behind the “secret ingredient” comes into question. Willow works on staying clear of magic, but Amy gives her an unwanted gift and Willow is forced to make a big decision. A vengeance demon friend of Anya’s visits and questions her relationship with Xander, leaving Anya doubtful about their soon-to-be-married life together.

Buffy and Dawn clear the house of magic items to help Willow and Buffy has a surprise visit from a social worker checking on Dawn’s home life. The meeting doesn’t go well and in a fit of rage after wards, Buffy cuts off her hair. Meanwhile, the Geek Trio have built an invisibility ray and accidentally hit Buffy with it.

When they finally return home from their nights out, Buffy is ashamed of having slept with Spike and Willow is exhausted from casting spells all night. Amy takes Willow to a warlock whose particular brand of magic quickly has Willow hooked. While looking after Dawn, Willow decides to get another quick fix and leaves the warlock’s place looking very high and not at all in control of herself. To escape a demon Willow and Dawn steal a car but Willow seems it better to drive using magic, not her hands, resulting in them crashing. Willow breaks down and seems truly sorry for what she has done, but her actions further enrage Buffy who is now convinced that Willow is completely out of control and may need to get help.

After breaking up with Tara, Willow successfully de-rats Amy and the two witches begin hanging out and having fun with magic, drawing Willow further into her growing addiction. Meanwhile, Spike notices that his chip doesn’t kick in when he hits Buffy but it only works with her, leading him to believe that she is not entirely human anymore.

After the gang finds out about Buffy’s true afterlife, Willow does a spell to make her forget that she was actually in heaven. Unfortunately the spell goes awry and the gang all wake up with amnesia, forgetting everything about their lives including the existence of vampires and the Slayer. Because of their British accents, Giles and Spike (“Randy”) think they are father and son, Giles and Anya think they are engaged, Willow and “Alex” think they are dating, and due to the absence of ID, Buffy names herself Joan. When a demon loan shark comes to collect a long overdue loan from Spike, “Joan” and “Randy” discover their true nature when they are forced to fight, while Dawn, Willow, Tara and “Alex” head out to try and restore their memories. At episodes end when they get their memories back the gang goes through some changes, with Tara breaking up with Willow and Giles finally leaving Sunnydale behind forever.

A mysterious force causes everyone in Sunnydale to reveal all of their innermost thoughts and feelings in song. Buffy tells the gang the truth about where she was when she was dead and they are devastated, none more than Willow. Tara sings a love song to Willow professing all her love, but does Willow feel the same way? Finally, Giles reveals his belief that Buffy is never going to learn to survive on her own with him around and decides to return to England for good.

Dawn lies to Buffy and spends Halloween night joyriding and partying with her friend Janice and two older boys. She develops a crush on one of the boys, Justin, and receives her first real kiss. When the boys reveal themselves to be vampires Dawn stakes Justin and is devastated. Buffy decides Dawn needs a serious grown-up talk but she hands the task over to Giles, who is not at all happy about the way Buffy is depending on him so much. Meanwhile, after Willow and Tara have a fight about Willow’s abuse of magic, Willow casts a spell on Tara to make her forget the fight.

As Buffy tries to ‘normalize’ her new life as a parent and return to college and attempt numerous jobs, she again comes up against the Troika, a group of would-be sorcerers, who test the Slayer by casting spells on her which make her experience time distortions, magically appearing demons and a strange “Groundhog Day” time loop.

With Joyce gone, Buffy finds herself trying to contend with burst pipes and home-improvement loans. She seeks out the advice of a just-returned Giles who expresses his concern over Willow’s attitude toward bringing Buffy back. While trying to get a loan, Buffy’s meeting is crashed by a demon, dispatched by a trio of bored, twenty-something would-be sorcerers who want to cause mischief (and to hypnotize Buffy and make her their love slave). The demon makes its way to the Slayers home and Buffy begs him not to break anything, and winds up drowning him in a pool of water formed by her plumbing leak.

The first repercussions of the resurrection spell has the Scoobies battling with a demon ghost and Buffy realizes she was happier with the peace of the afterlife but cannot bring herself to tell her friends. She finds a sympathetic ear in someone else who knows a little about an afterlife: Spike.

The Scooby Gang run from Buffy’s grave site and her resurrection goes unnoticed. When she does get back above ground, she is confused and disoriented and wanders around looking at the carnage caused by the demon gang. The demons damage the Buffybot badly and notice the real Buffy wandering around. They chase her and she eventually runs into the Slayerettes, who realize that she has been traumatize by having to dig out of her own grave. When the demons arrive for a final fight, Buffy, still very confused, returns to her Slayer ways and defeats them all; but runs away from her friends after. The Buffybot stays “alive” long enough to tell Dawn of the real Buffy’s return. Dawn finds Buffy at Glory’s tower, and she wants to jump off again. As the tower begins to collapse Dawn manages to coax Buffy down and they land just as the tower crumbles around them. Buffy and Dawn hug, but the Slayer is still not herself.

Several months have passed since Buffy sacrificed herself to save Dawn, her friends and the world. The Slayerettes are doing their best to keep the demon population down and Willow has repaired the Buffybot so the world remains unaware of the Slayers death. Unfortunately a vamp discovers the truth and escapes to tell his friends. With no Slayer to watch, Giles makes preparations to return to England and leaves Anya in charge of the magic shop. Willow, Tara, Anya and Xander secretly perform a powerful spell at Buffy’s grave site to resurrect the Slayer, but the spell is interfered with by a group of demon bikers and the Slayerettes flee, not knowing if the spell worked or not.

Another imminent apocalypse is at hand in Sunnydale. Buffy must square off against a true God when Glory prepares to use Dawn to break down the walls between the dimensions and unleash all Hell on Earth but she needs Dawn’s blood before her home dimension portal can be opened. Buffy, Xander, Willow, Giles, Anya, Tara and Spike go to battle with the knowledge that they may not all survive.

The Slayer in Buffy is catatonic due to Glory’s abduction of Dawn so Willow psychically enters her mind. Willow goes through a loophole in Buffy’s mind and sees several replays of Buffy’s childhood when she first sees her sister; and of Buffy as she is now smothering Dawn to death. Buffy’s guilt over Dawn being kidnapped finally proved to her that she is no match for Glory and she believes she killed Dawn herself. Meanwhile, Glory vents her frustrations about being stuck on Earth to Dawn and is beginning to feel real human emotions as the barrier separating her and Ben’s psyches becomes weaker. She and Ben fight in a confusing switching back and forth argument as he tries to help Dawn. Eventually, Ben is the one to give Dawn away to Glory, knowing that it is his life or hers. Spike, Xander and Giles are left to try to figure out how to undermine Glory’s plans, but the options don’t look good. Buffy may have to end up choosing between killing her own sister or letting the world be

Buffy, Willow, Tara, and Dawn nearly escape from Glory when Glory’s hit by a truck. Buffy and the Scoobies leave Sunnydale in Spike’s RV to run from Glory, as Buffy realizes they’ll never beat Glory.

While Buffy tries to control a motherless Dawn and bring their lives back to some sort of normalcy, Tara is captured by Glory who is desperately trying to find the Key.

Buffy and Giles leave for the desert on a self-discovery/guidance quest led by the First Slayer. While they are gone, Spike decides to have a little fun with his BuffyBot but the gang mistakes it for the real Buffy and think that she has gone crazy. Meanwhile, Glory’s minions also mistake the Buffybot for the Slayer and, noticing how it acts around Spike, begin to suspect that he is the Key.

After dealing with the pain of Joyce’s funeral, Buffy falls into the arms of Angel who has come from LA to pay his respects, and he consoles her on the future and about getting her and Dawn’s lives back together. Dawn becomes fixated on using witchcraft to resurrect her mother and despite her best intentions, Willow actually helps her toward her goal. Dawn gathers information for a powerful spell and enlists Spike to help her complete the task. He takes her to a witch doctor who gives Dawn some advice and warning. After collecting the final ingredient Dawn performs the spell. Willow warns Buffy about Dawn and she confronts her. Dawn cries that she has no one, Buffy has been pushing her away since Joyce died and hasn’t even cried yet. Buffy tells her that when everything is over her mother will be truly gone, and she can’t face that. Someone approaches the door and knocks and Buffy rushes to let Joyce in, but Dawn, realising that she was wrong, breaks the spell. Buffy opens the door t

After finding Joyce unconscious on the couch, a terrified slayer calls 911. Unfortunately, it’s too late to do anything. The paramedics tell Buffy that her mom had been dead for a while already. We see Dawn at school for the first time, and she’s just getting over the freakout she had after finding out she was the key. Rumors were spread and Dawn was hurt by them, but she feels better after talking about it with a nice boy in her art class. Buffy interrupts this conversation though to tell her sister the bad news. Everyone is devastated by this tragedy and they spend the episode grieving, and dealing with their pain in all sorts of ways. Xander punches through a wall while Willow changes her outfit continuously. They are obviously very shaken up, especially since they were all so close with Buffy and her family. Even Anya sheds her first human tears.

Buffy is very upset about Spike falling in love with her instead of a nice, good boy that she could date. Spike shows up at the same party as Buffy, and he gets thrown out a window by a strange girl who has been wandering around looking for a guy named Warren. The whole slaying team agree that the girl is a robot because of the way she acts. Buffy pays a visit to the girl’s supposed boyfriend, Warren and finds out that Warren made the girl, April, to be the perfect girlfriend. April thinks only of Warren and devotes her entire existence to making him happy. The only problem is that Warren doesn’t want her anymore, he has fallen for a real girl and has been running away from the robot.

Buffy notices that Dawn is spending a lot of time around Spike and surmises that she has a crush on him, which Dawn shoots down saying that Spike has a crush on Buffy. Meanwhile a vampire has attacked the passengers on a train and Buffy is finding it hard to concentrate on investigating with the thought that Spike is in love with her.

Buffy finally tells her friends about Dawn being the Key and they start acting weird around Dawn, which leads to her seeking answers. She knows that crazy people know what she is, so she goes to the mental ward at the hospital. While she’s there, she runs into Ben. Ben freaks when she tells him she is the key and tells her to run away fast, but before she gets a chance to get away from him, he turns into Glory.

A team from the Watchers Council show up in Sunnydale with some info on who or what Glory is. Before they allow Buffy the details however, they want her to pass a series of psychological and physical tests. They even interview her very nervous gang of friends. Glory shows up at Buffy’s house and has a chat with her about the Key and Buffy freaks and takes Dawn and Joyce to Spike so that he can protect them. After being attacked by a group of human Knights who claim they will send an army to defeat her if she continues to protect the Key, Buffy decides she’s had enough and the Watchers will have to play her way. Buffy lays down the law and the Watchers agree and reveal to her what Glory is. Not a demon but a god.