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Shortcuts within the article: Author’s Note: Restless is clearly an episode with many different possible interpretations. Whilst the following article represents my interpretation of the events of the episode, it cannot hope to encompass all of the ways in which the text might be viewed. Character Development Each of the Scooby Gang had a dream which to some extent reflects their subconscious fears and concerns. Let’s take them one at a time: Willow’s Dream Willow displays two concerns that we have seen before, her fear of performing and her fear of being a "geek". Both of these fears relate to how the world sees her; Willow worries that her true self will not be appreciated or understood. We saw her fear of acting before in Nightmares, where she was performing Madame Butterfly, unprepared. What scares Willow so much about stage performance is that it exposes her to the scrutiny of others. In Willow’s dream, her whole family are in the front row and everyone she’s ever met is in the audience. The display of herself involved in performance is a threat to her. This can be demonstrated by dreamGiles’ comments about acting: GILES: Acting is not about behaving, it's about hiding. The audience wants to find you, strip you naked, and eat you alive, so hide. Acting involves a focus on portraying a particular image, and on that image being received by the audience in the way in which it was intended. This is something which she had to deal with in school, when the image she portrayed was not one which won her friends or popularity, but instead a reputation as a geek. This is something which profoundly disturbs Willow. In Doomed, she seemed more concerned at Percy calling her an "egghead" than she was at finding a dead body. She is still frightened that, even now, she may not be "cool": BUFFY: (to Willow) Your costume is perfect. (Whispers) Nobody's gonna know the truth. You know, about you. Buffy’s comment to her indicates that she sees her recently acquired dress sense and confidence as a costume, something which does not represent the "real her" and which the audience (other people) might see through. This fear is represented by the moment when Buffy rips away her clothes to reveal her old mousy look from first season: BUFFY: Willow, everybody already knows. Take it off. Willow has to read a book report to the class, again a position where she is uncomfortably on display to others. Her friends are portrayed as unresponsive to her problems. The Scooby Gang laugh at her while she reads her book report and when the First Slayer attacks her, they do nothing to help her. This to some extent mirrors the situation in [i]Something Blue[/i], where Willow felt neglected by her friends in the aftermath of Oz’s departure. During the past season, Willow has moved apart from the Scooby Gang, hardly seeing Buffy because of her attention to Riley, and being separated from Giles and Xander as a result of her move to college. The one place where Willow does appear to have found some security is with Tara. At the beginning of the dream, she tells Tara that she never worries in Tara’s room and that she’s safe there. Her painting of the poem on Tara’s back is a trusting, loving gesture that requires the co-operation of the other person. The poem that she is copying is by the poet Sappho. Sappho wrote love poetry to women and lived on the isle of Lesbos, from which we derive the word "Lesbian". This demonstrates Willow’s confidence in her new sexual direction. Tara is the only person in the entire dream who attempts to help her, when she comes to tell Willow that the play itself is not important. Nevertheless, there remains some insecurity about her relationship with Tara. There are hints that Tara may not be telling her the complete truth about herself. Willow is concerned that Tara has not told her her "real name", although Tara assures her that she knows it. In the classroom, Willow’s fears about her are represented by Tara’s seeming connection with Oz. There is a shot of Oz nuzzling Tara's cheek while she giggles and the two exchange a knowing glance. Linking Tara to Oz is Willow’s way of suggesting that her relationship with Tara may fail, just as her relationship with Oz failed. In the dream, Oz is pleased to point out Willow’s inadequacies to Tara: OZ: (to Tara) I tried to warn you. Whilst Willow fears that at heart she is still the same mousy book-worm that she was before, she is also concerned that people may not approve of the new directions she has chosen, such as learning more about Wicca and becoming involved with Tara TARA: (offscreen) Everyone's starting to wonder about you. The real you. If they find out, they'll punish you, I ... I can't help you with that. Thus Willow’s insecurities can be seen to revolve around other people’s perception of her and her fear of their subsequent disapproval. She has altered her external self to appear more cool, but she has still to find acceptance of herself, within herself.
Xander worries that he has no future and that he is being left behind by his friends, as they move on to bigger and better things. Throughout his dream, he keeps ending up back in his basement, a place that for him represents his failure to earn enough to move out, away from his family. Anya’s first words to him when he meets her in the ice-cream van echo his own concerns: ANYA: Do you know where you're going? Snyder says much the same thing later: SNYDER: Where are you heading? This is Xander’s chief worry, that he isn’t doing anything useful with his life. In The Yoko Factor, Xander was horrified when Spike told him that the Scooby Gang thought he was inadequate because he had no direction. In the dream, Joyce and Giles both tell Xander that the rest of the Scooby Gang have "gone on ahead" and he expresses a desire to catch up. Willow and Buffy have gone ahead in the sense that they have both left their parents and gone on to college, yet Xander is still trapped at home. His dream is full of images of motion without movement; whilst he runs away from his basement, he always returns there; in the van with Anya, the moving scenery behind them is obviously fake; Giles and Spike swing, moving upwards, yet not going anywhere. Xander wants to get going and achieve something with his life. XANDER: (in playground) You gotta have something. Gotta be with movin' forward. Xander’s worries about how others view him are demonstrated by the moment where he discovers that the Initiative members are watching him as he goes to pee. There are scientists in white coats in the foreground, writing on clipboards. It is as if they are waiting to see him "perform". Xander is concerned about what others will think of his achievements or lack thereof. When Anya is talking about her vengeance hobby, in the van, he tells her, People can't do anything they want. Society has rules, and borders, and an end zone. One of society’s rules is that people are judged by what they achieve in their careers, by how much money they have, by where they live. We’ve already seen that Xander is susceptible to the belief that ownership of a particular thing can change a person’s status, see the car he bought in The Zeppo. However, Xander’s attempts to improve his life are failures. We see Xander in the ice-cream van, another of his dead-end jobs. Anya tells him that she is thinking of going back into vengeance. This indicates that Xander fears he is so inadequate that he might lose her, because she will simply lose interest. Of course, Anya isn’t the only potential partner in Xander’s dream; there is a great deal of sexual imagery. At first one might write this off as just being the product of Xander’s "I think about sex looking at linoleum" mind; however it is noticeable that though Joyce, Willow and Tara all give him the come-on, he doesn’t actually get anywhere with them. He tells Joyce he’ll be right back, then gets distracted, and when Willow and Tara call him into the back of the ice-cream van, he ends up in the basement again. Xander feels he unlikely to succeed with women, because he hasn’t got the social or economic status required to attract them. When Tara tells him that she and Willow think he’s "really interesting", Xander replies with a line that is supposed to reassure them as to his status and ambition. XANDER: Oh, I-I'm going places. Yet he does not believe that himself. Fundamentally he believes that he is less intelligent than the people around him. When he meets Giles and Anya at UC Sunnydale, they speak French. This represents both Xander’s intellectual insecurity and his feeling of being excluded; the others are now speaking a language he cannot understand, he is separated from them by his own inferiority. Xander is then bundled down the hall by students and taken, handcuffed, to Snyder. He has lost control of his movements within the dream, just as he fears he is losing control of his own life. He then has two confrontations with authority figures, Snyder and his father. In both of his conversations the authority figure tries to make him feel insignificant. Snyder not only didn’t believe that Xander could achieve anything in life, he didn’t believe that any of his students could: SNYDER: The hope of our nation's future is a bunch of mulch. Xander’s confrontation with his father is of course on one level an obvious representation of his family problems and how uncomfortable he feels at home. However at the same time, it is also a reminder of his failure to get away from them by earning enough money to move out. His father appears to blame him for his lack of drive: DAD: (Starts down the stairs, stomping angrily) The line ends here with us, and you're not gonna change that. Xander’s problems with his father, whatever they may be, have led him to seek out Giles as a replacement father figure. In the playground, Xander sees Spike assuming a father/son relationship with Giles and remarks that he's tried that. Though in the past he has used Giles to replace his father, they have moved apart in the last season and Xander may be concerned that he’s lost that relationship now. At the same time, it might be said that Xander feels that he no longer needs to use Giles in that way, since he is trying to make a life for himself. Glancing over at the ice-cream van, he remarks: I got other stuff goin' on. If Giles can be seen as the "father" of the Scooby Gang, then Buffy is clearly the child. In the dream, she is playing in the sandbox and pouts like a little girl. There is also a pointer to Xander’s role in this family setting: BUFFY: I'm way ahead of you, big brother. XANDER: Brother? Xander has always assumed the protective, big brother role within the Scooby Gang. When Buffy is attacked, Xander often wades in to try and protect her, resulting in his being swatted against a wall or other stationary object (see him leaping on Spike in The Harsh Light of Day for a prime example). He also tries to support her emotionally, for instance, in his "Buffy, you’re my hero" speech in The Freshman. Buffy calling him her "big brother" can be seen as his recognition of his role within the Gang. (For an alternative interpretation of this, see Portents for the Future) Whilst Xander appears to have accepted his job as comforter, there is a logical conflict between his two goals, that of personal ambition and conquest and that of supporting others: XANDER: I move pretty fast. You know, a man's always after- JOYCE: Conquest? XANDER: (shrugs) I'm a conquistador. JOYCE: You sure it isn't comfort? XANDER: I'm a comfortador also. Whilst Xander may not be successful in his attempt to gain personal status, his strength does lie in helping others. Perhaps Xander worries that this is part of what contributes to his inability to move forward. When he says of Giles and Spike’s father/son relationship, That's good. I was into that for a while, but... I got other stuff goin' on, this may signify that he considers that he cannot focus so much on his relationship with others and on being there for them if he is to succeed in his own pursuits.
The message of the dream to Xander appears to be that he should not concern himself so much with material end products of his efforts, such as money and a place of his own, but instead focus on what he gives, day to day to others. The film Apocalypse Now features heavily in his dream, of which Giles comments: Oh, I'm beginning to understand this now. It's all about the journey, isn't it? For Xander, the journey should be more important than the destination, he shouldn’t worry about what he has factually achieved, as if he were being graded by outside observers, but instead should concentrate on his relationships with others, wherein lies his strength.
This presents one readily identifiable theme, that of Giles’ parental feelings for Buffy. At the fairground, we see Buffy wearing overalls and pigtails and behaving like a little kid. Giles plays the fatherly role, taking her to the fair and allowing her to play at the games. Right at the beginning of the dream, Giles is hypnotising Buffy, something he did in Helpless, where he was fired from the Watchers’ Council because he had a "father's love" for Buffy. At the same time, the dream focuses on Giles’ role as Watcher. Whilst Buffy plays a fairground version of killing vampires, Giles is training her and trying to improve her aim. In contrast to his fatherly role, Giles as Watcher must take a harsher approach. He cannot offer Buffy any treats if she succeeds and Olivia has to tell him to "go easy" on her. This represents Giles’ old attitude to being a Watcher, that which he rejected in Helpless, where he chose to instead be a father to her. Giles has made a lot of sacrifices to be there for Buffy when she needs him. As a watcher, there was no chance for him to have a normal life and family. The constant knowledge of the dark forces that surround him prevents Giles from ever truly being off duty. At the fairground, we see Olivia walking beside Giles, pushing a baby carriage. But there's no baby in it. Later we see her crying in the crypt, with the overturned buggy. This represents the family life that Giles has sacrificed in order to be a surrogate father to Buffy and to fight the darkness. In [i]Hush[/i] we saw Olivia’s shocked reaction to learning the true nature of the supernatural. We haven’t seen her since. She may simply have found the knowledge too scary and decided to discontinue their relationship. Giles worries that he is missing out the chance to have a life of his own, a wife and children. That is not the only sacrifice Giles has made. In order to play the father figure to the Scooby Gang, Giles has sometimes had to sacrifice his own individual enjoyments and pursuits. Singing is something we know that Giles enjoys. In Where the Wild Things Are, we saw him singing to entertain others in a café and the Scoobies seemed shocked to see Giles doing anything that might make him appear "cool". When we see Giles singing at the Bronze, this displays just one of the burdens he has assumed, that of being the "responsible adult", who cannot appear trendy in any way without it coming as a surprise. Giles’ worry that he is wasting time is displayed throughout the dream. At the beginning, we see him using a watch to hypnotise Buffy, symbolising both time and his position as a Watcher. Twice, we hear characters mention to Giles the possibility of missing out: BUFFY: We're gonna miss all the good stuff. SPIKE: Come on! You're gonna miss everything! As Giles leaves the crypt, Spike calls out to him: SPIKE: (offscreen) You gotta make up your mind, Rupes. What are you wasting your time for? This is indeed the question, what does Giles get out of putting so much effort into the Scooby Gang and into fighting evil? If Giles must sacrifice so much, he would like at least his role to be appreciated. Over the last season, Buffy has relied on him less and less, turning instead to Riley and Initiative. It was apparent in A New Man how deeply Giles was wounded by Buffy failing to inform him of her knowledge of that organisation and we saw in his conversation with Ethan his concern at how little his years of demon hunting had achieved in comparison with their efficiency. In the dream, we see Spike being photographed over and over again and Giles seems disgusted by Spike receiving all this attention. Attention is something that has been denied to Giles and therefore he is repulsed to see Spike getting it. Likewise at the Bronze, the stage provides an opportunity for gaining the praise of others. When Giles first arrives, Anya is on stage. She is telling terrible jokes, yet the audience is laughing. Giles then takes the stage and begins to sing. Whilst this gives him an opportunity to tell Willow and Xander what’s happening, it also enables him to gain recognition. The audience cheer and even hold lighters in the air. Thus, in his dream world, Giles gets the appreciation that has been so lacking from Buffy of late. But is this a sacrifice he wishes to continue to make? In the dream, whilst Willow is trying to gain his assistance, he tells her: GILES: I'm very busy. I have a gig myself, you know. In The Freshman, we saw Giles’ uncertainty about how much to help Buffy with her new life at college. Giles is reconsidering his role. Should he be pursuing his own life, perhaps with Olivia, or should he continue to devote his time to fighting evil with the Scoobies? His singing on stage at the Bronze, whilst he is also helping them fight the First Slayer, is a strong representation of the clash he feels between being an authority figure and pursuing his own goals. Singing shows off Giles’ "cooler" side, the side that is more than just responsible adult, yet even whilst singing, Giles still find time to take a parental role by telling Xander not to drip blood on the couch and by assisting Willow. Giles needs to be reassured that he is appreciated. When at the end of his dream he tells the First Slayer that she could not know how powerful he is, since she never had a watcher, this emphasises how great his value is to Buffy and to the rest of the Scooby Gang. Giles gives a lot, but expects to receive acknowledgement in return. As it stands, he may need more from life than simply being there for the Scoobies.
One obvious concern in this dream is Buffy’s worry that she’s abandoning her mother to a lonely life playing mah-jongg since she went away to college. DreamJoyce is living in the walls of UCLA Sunnydale, being nibbled by mice. Buffy is concerned, and whilst Joyce assures her that she’s fine and perfectly happy on her own, she does not seem convincing. Certainly, Buffy has not spent a lot of time visiting her mother since she went away. In This Year’s Girl, Faith told Joyce Buffy's too into her own deal to remember dear old mom. and we saw at the beginning of the episode Joyce’s mild chagrin at having only just met Riley, even though he and Buffy have been dating for quite a while. Despite this distance between them, Buffy does not seem particularly keen to re-establish regular contact. DreamJoyce tells her, Well ... you could ... probably break through the wall. Buffy could break down the wall between them, by visiting Joyce more and preventing her from being alone. However, Buffy’s other concerns, her friends and her role as slayer, come first. When Buffy sees Xander across the hallway, she leaves her mother mid-sentence and chases after him. Buffy is growing up now and thus is naturally leaving her mother behind whilst she pursues her own life. The rest of Buffy’s dream displays her own discomfort about the source of her slayer powers and about her own violence. Riley’s first words to Buffy in the dream highlight her fears: RILEY: Hey there, killer. Buffy’s attitude to slaying has always been somewhat unique. She kept a social life and friends, something of which the Watchers’ Council disapproved and which was in sharp contrast to Kendra’s stark way of life. Whilst not tying herself into that rigid approach, she also disapproved of Faith, who embraced and enjoyed the violence of slaying. Buffy’s slaying does involve her having to kill, yet she does not want to think of herself as a "killer". There is a difference between slaying and killing. In Who Are You, when Forrest called Faith (as Buffy) a killer, she responded: I am not a killer! I am the slayer! In the context of the Buffyverse, "Slaying" implies that that which is being killed is being killed righteously, is a evil of some kind that must be destroyed, as demons and vampires must. "Killer" is reminiscent of "murderer". This is the line which Faith crossed when she abandoned her calling as a slayer to do the Mayor’s bidding. Buffy fears her own violence and fears being seen as a killer rather than a slayer. The First Slayer represents this primitive violence, the source of Buffy’s power. She carries this strength within her and uses it to slay, yet in its raw state, this strength can be used not just to slay but to kill. The First Slayer’s essence seems violently intent on destroying the Scooby Gang for the affront they have given to it by calling on its power. When Buffy tells Adam and Riley that she has weapons and reaches into her weapons bag, she finds mud inside, which she smears on her face, just as she did in Giles’ dream, thus symbolising the primitive nature of her power as a slayer. Buffy secretly fears that her strength and calling as a slayer makes her inhuman. In the dream, when she meets the human Adam, he tells Buffy, Aggression is a natural human tendency… Aggression is natural for humans, both in fighting, as is shown by the gun on the table between Riley and Adam, and even in business, where one might take over the world with "coffee makers that think", as Riley suggests. Yet Adam states that his and Buffy’s aggression is beyond human: Adam: …Though you and me come by it another way. Thus Buffy’s subconscious mind equates herself with Adam, her recent enemy, a mixture of demon and human. DreamAdam appears human, displaying how easily humanity can be counterfeited, even by something as alien as him. Buffy fears that she, too, may be hiding behind her human skin. She tries to deny this: BUFFY: We're not demons. But Adam responds, Is that a fact? To a certain degree Buffy does have to call upon her own primitive nature, in order to fight and to slay. Yet she also maintains her humanity by having friends and living as much of a normal life as possible. At the beginning of the dream, we see Anya trying to wake Buffy up, but Buffy, like any other college student in the morning wants a lie-in. Buffy sometimes casts aside her responsibilities and tries to pretend that she isn’t "The Chosen One". Buffy: I'm not really in charge of these things. It is this attitude that so offends the essence of the First Slayer. Buffy is not supposed to be wasting her time with anything so trivial as a normal life or friendship. The First Slayer believes that friends get in the way of being an effective warrior: FIRST SLAYER (through TARA): I am destruction. Absolute ... alone. FIRST SLAYER: No ... friends! Just the kill. We ... are ... alone! However, to Buffy, friends are important. She spends the whole of her dream searching for them. RILEY: Thought you were looking for your friends...if that's the way you want it. I guess you're on your own. When Buffy confronts the First Slayer, she is not prepared to follow the rules that the First Slayer has laid down, just as she was not prepared to follow the rigid strictures of the Watchers’ Council. BUFFY: I am not alone. TARA: The Slayer does not walk in this world. BUFFY: I walk. I talk. I shop, I sneeze. Buffy tells the First Slayer by these words that she is part of the modern world. She then says: Buffy: I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back. This seems to refer to change and Buffy’s ability to adapt to it in a way that the First Slayer never could. Whatever new threats arise in the future, Buffy will be able to deal with them, in her own way. The mention of floods calls to mind the Biblical floods of ancient times, whereas a fireman is a modern profession. So, by stating that she will be a fireman, Buffy may be laying claim to her status as a creature of the modern world, rather than being tied to the First Slayer’s primitive rules. BUFFY: There's trees in the desert since you moved out. And I don't sleep on a bed of bones. Things have changed since the First Slayer’s time. The desert in which the First Slayer resides represents her solitary nature. For Buffy, there is no desert, there are trees, symbols of growth and change. She is not deserted, she has friends. The First Slayer slept on a bed of bones, in the sense that her whole life, even her off-duty hours spent in sleep, revolved around the death of her enemies, so that her bed was constructed of the bones of those she’d killed. Buffy has a nice modern bed and a life that contains more than just slaying. Buffy then fights with the First Slayer, something that is symbolic of her own internal conflict, between her role as "The Chosen One" and her desire for a normal life. Buffy rejects the primal power of the her inheritance, choosing instead to carve her own path, one in which she can have her friends and in which she is a slayer, not a killer: BUFFY: You're *not* the source of me. In this way, Buffy may have underestimated her own reliance on her primitive side. As the human Adam pointed out in Buffy’s dream, the Slayer’s power is not human. Buffy’s power does have a primitive, aggressive root and she uses that aggression to help others. Whilst Tara was talking to Buffy by the bed, she showed her a Tarot card, "Manus" – the hands. Manus was Buffy’s role in the joining spell which she ands the Scoobies made use of in Primeval and therefore represents her. On the card there were two hands, one open, the other balled into a fist. I think these represent the two sides of Buffy’s nature, her normal, everyday persona, which is capable of friendship and her aggressive side, which is required to kill. It is only by fully integrating both of these sides of herself that she can truly hope to become the best Slayer she can be. Yet Buffy replies, on sight of the card: I'm never gonna use those. This shows her unwillingness to accept her primitive side and her refusal to face how different she is from other humans. Clearly this issue may arise again in the future: TARA: You think you know ... what's to come ... what you are. You haven't even begun.
The Cheese Man The Cheese Man appears in each of the Scoobies’ dreams with a message that seems specific to them.
I've made a little space for the cheese slices. Since Willow’s dream was all about her uncertainty as to her true self and how that will be received by others, this seems to indicate that Willow needs "a little space" to clarify her own identity and learn to be comfortable with it, perhaps by exploring her sexuality with Tara. These ... will not protect you. The Cheese Man in this case vocalises Xander’s fear of being left behind by his friends, of having no-one to protect him whilst he faces his personal demons of failure at work and his abusive father.
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me. With this line, his own subconscious is refuting his suspicions that his role as Watcher and father figure to the group has left him no opportunity to be himself or to have a normal life with a wife and family. Giles wishes to believe that though he "wears" his role as watcher, it does not "wear him", in the sense of defining him as a person.
Then again, perhaps interpretation can be taken too far. After all, according to The Almighty Joss, there may be no meaning at all: The cheese man ...is the only thing in the show that means nothing. I needed something like that, something that couldn't be explained, because dreams always have that one element that is just RIDICULOUS. (joss, May 23 20:01 2000).
Are the Scoobies sharing the same dream? It does seem that there is at least some connection between the dreams of the four Scoobies and even an appearance of communication with each other within the dreams:
XANDER: Got the sucking chest wound swingin'. GILES: It's because of what we did, I know that. WILLOW: Something's after us. It's, uh, like some primal ... some animal force. Giles and Willow then discuss how to fight their enemy and Giles sings to her and Xander to tell them that he thinks the spell they cast together has released "some primal evil". He even instructs Willow, just as he would if they weren’t dreaming: GILES: (sings) Willow, look through the chronicles for some reference to a warrior beast BUFFY: I think I need to go find the others. Thus an appearance is given that the Scoobies are in fact communicating with each other and collectively searching for an answer to their predicament. Whilst this may be true, there are problems with this theory. Anya appears in all the dreams, even though she is not dreaming with the Scoobies and so cannot be sharing the dream. Therefore any time Anya appears, she is clearly just a representation, not Anya herself. If that is the case with her, why not with all the Scoobies that are seen in the dreams? Perhaps they are merely telling the dreamer what he subconsciously knows himself, so there is no actual communication between them. At some moments when representations of the Scoobies appear, they are not acting as the real people would, such as when Willow and Tara invite Xander into the back of the van with them. In Giles’ dream at the Bronze, Willow actually calls Giles, "Rupert", something she would never do in real life. So clearly, not all that the Scoobies say and do in each other’s dreams is really their action, but part of the fabric of the dream. However, some communication must be taking place for such specific details to be exchanged, such as the way in which Willow and Xander have been injured. It cannot be a conscious communication, because despite the fact that Giles tells Xander in Xander’s dream: It's because of what we did, I know that, Yet Giles is still puzzled at the beginning of his own dream as to what’s happening to him. Instead, it seems to be a meeting of their subconscious minds, where some information is exchanged between them, but they are not consciously working together as such. The link between them may have been created by the fact that their minds were so recently linked together in the spell and of course that the First Slayer is infiltrating all their minds.
Portents for the Future.
Tara In Willow’s dream, there are hints about Tara having a secret of some kind. Willow was concerned that she did not know Tara’s "true name", indicating perhaps that Tara is hiding something from her. This is reminiscent of the still unexplained incident in Goodbye Iowa, where Tara deliberately wrecked the spell to locate the polgara demon. Clearly there is more to Tara than meets the eye. This is something that will doubtless be explained next season, but first, allow me to indulge in some wild speculation. It is noticeable that Tara appears in a significant role within Willow’s and Buffy’s dreams. In Willow’s dream she appears during the play and asks Willow if she understands what’s going on. She clearly knows what’s happening and tries to communicate that to Willow: TARA: The play's already started. That's not the point. Whilst it is fairly natural that Willow’s dream might involve Tara, given that they are dating, the role she plays here is an authoritative and knowledgeable one, hinting at some special status. In Buffy’s dream, that status continues. Tara is chosen as the First Slayer’s envoy to communicate with Buffy: TARA: I was borrowed. The fact that it is Tara who does the talking for the First Slayer may not be pure coincidence. Indeed it may not even have been necessary. Tara says: Someone has to speak for her. Yet later on, the First Slayer speaks to Buffy directly, telling her she cannot have friends. It seems that Tara’s representation wasn’t needed and this leads to the thought that Tara was not just present to speak for the First Slayer but may have been a participant in the dream in her own right. Support is given to this theory by the fact that Tara representing the First Slayer does not speak as if her image were merely being used by her. She refers to the First Slayer in the third person; she does not say, "I had to find someone to speak for me ", but instead "Someone has to speak for her."Earlier on in Buffy’s dream, we see Tara talking to Buffy over the unmade bed. It does not seem that at this point that Tara is speaking for the First Slayer, certainly there is none of the hostility that characterises her later speech. Once again Tara is portrayed as a messenger, who tells Buffy that the clock is wrong and warns her: TARA: You think you know ... what's to come ... what you are. You haven't even begun. It occurs to me (and this is only speculation) that Tara may be a messenger of some kind from TPTB. It would explain her role in the dream and what she might be hiding from Willow.
" Little sis"In Buffy’s dream, Buffy looks at the rumpled bed and says: Faith and I just made that bed. This refers back to the dream Buffy had in This Year’s Girl, where she and Faith were making a bed together in preparation for the arrival of "little sis". Faith: Little sis coming. I know. Buffy: So much to do before she gets here. In the dream in Restless, Buffy thinks Tara is there to tell her who the bed has been made for, i.e. who "little sis" is. As yet we have no definitive answer who this new arrival is, but the reference to her by Faith and Buffy as "little sis" might suggest that this is a new slayer. How this would come about without the death of either Faith or Buffy is unknown. Alternatively, the name "little sis" might simply signify her relationship with Buffy, in terms of the fact that Buffy will be protective towards her. This is reminiscent of Buffy calling Xander "Big Brother" in his dream. If Buffy is the sister, Xander is the Brother and Giles is the father, then presumably the new arrival will fulfil a child role within the Scooby Gang. In any event, the end shot of the bed showed it newly made in preparation for the newcomer and emphasis was laid on this in the final moment of the episode where Buffy was staring at the bed and we hear Tara’s words: You think you know ... what's to come ... what you are. You haven't even begun. It seems likely that this issue will be central to the development of next season.
7-3-0 Once again, the illusive 7-3-0 make an appearance as the numbers on the clock next to the bed. Tara says that that clock is completely wrong, perhaps indicating that it is too early to worry about this yet and Buffy must deal with the task at hand. 7-3-0 was first referred to in Buffy’s dream in Graduation 2: Buffy: "There's something I'm supposed to be doing." Faith: "Oh yeah. - Miles to go - Little Ms. Muffet counting down from 7-3-0." Again, as yet we have no real idea as to the significance of these numbers (although see The meaning of 7-3-0 for some ideas). However it’s coupling in the same scene as another reference to "little sis" may be significant.
Conclusion As has been demonstrated, Restless is an enlightening episode with a great deal to tell us about the characters and about the future of the show. My thanks go out to Joss and Co. for giving us all something substantial to chew over whilst we wait for the next series.
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