"Restless" is the 22nd episode and season finale of season four of the supernatural drama television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003), and the 78th episode of the series overall. The episode was written and directed by the show's creator Joss Whedon and originally aired on The WB in the United States on May 23, 2000.
The premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is that an adolescent girl, Buffy Summers, is chosen by mystical forces and given superhuman powers to kill vampires, demons, and other evil creatures in the fictional town of Sunnydale. She is supported by a close circle of family and friends, nicknamed the Scooby Gang. "Restless" centers on the dreams of the four main characters after enduring an exhausting fight in the previous episode. The dreams are used to comment on the characters—their fears, their past and their possible future. Consistent with each dream is the presence of the First Slayer who hunts and kills them one by one until, in the final sequence, she is confronted and disempowered by Buffy.
The episode serves as a coda to the fourth season instead of a climax, as Whedon wanted to achieve something different for a season finale. Whedon experimented with several filming techniques to make the episode as dreamlike as possible. The episode also foreshadows upcoming events, most notably the first appearance of Buffy's sister Dawn. Buffy scholar Nikki Stafford calls the surrealistic episode "unprecedented in television", saying it is "so jam-packed with information that we'll probably be seeing allusions to it for the rest of the series", and referring to it as a "mysterious lead-in to the emotionally turbulent season five". "Restless" received high praise from critics upon airing, particularly for its character development, visual direction, and wit. It is frequently noted as one of the best episodes of the series.
Background
In the series, Buffy Summers is a teenager who, at the age of fifteen, was chosen by mystical forces to be the latest Slayer, a girl endowed with superhuman powers to fight and defeat vampires, demons, and other evil forces. After moving with her mother, Joyce (Kristine Sutherland), to the fictional town of Sunnydale, she befriends Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) and Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), who join her in the struggle against evil. They are guided by Buffy's "Watcher", Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), who is well-versed in demonology and is responsible for Buffy's training as a Slayer. The group collectively refer to themselves as the Scooby Gang. During season two, Willow begins to experiment with magic, eventually becoming a formidable witch.
Each season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (often simplified as Buffy) presents an overall story arc which episodes tie into, as well as a specific manifestation of evil known as the Big Bad. As noted by Buffy scholar Roz Kaveney, episodes in the fourth season address authority, order, and the estrangement from the self and others as Buffy and her friends take on new roles after high school.
Season four begins with Buffy and Willow starting college, attending U.C. Sunnydale, while Xander works at a series of odd jobs and begins dating Anya Jenkins (Emma Caulfield), who lived for 1,100 years as a vengeance demon before losing her powers and getting stuck in the body of a teenager. In the fourth season, Willow becomes romantically involved with fellow-student Tara Maclay (Amber Benson), an experienced witch. The Big Bad in season four is the result of the work of a covert military force called "The Initiative" who are capturing and performing experiments on vampires and demons in Sunnydale. Buffy and her friends discover that chief amongst these experiments is the creation of a human-cyber-demonoid hybrid known as Adam (George Hertzberg), whose programming has gone terribly wrong, leading him to wreak havoc on the town. Buffy's challenge is to find a way to disempower him, something she and the Scoobies achieve in the penultimate episode of season four, "Primeval". In order to do this, the four magically join their essences together to create a single "super Slayer"; while the others perform a ritual, Buffy confronts and defeats Adam while mystically empowered with Giles' mind, Xander's heart, and Willow's spirit aiding her. The ritual employs four tarot-like cards: Manus (meaning hands or strength) represents Buffy, Sophus (meaning teacher or wise) represents Giles, Animus (meaning courage, or heart) represents Xander, and Spiritus (meaning spirit and magical power) represents Willow. These symbols will become relevant to the central motif in each of the episode's four dream sequences.
Plot
Following their victory over Adam; Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles meet at Buffy's to relax with movies, including Apocalypse Now. They quickly fall asleep and are each confronted by a primitive girl in their dreams.
Willow's dream opens with Willow painting Sappho's love poem, Hymn to Aphrodite, in Greek onto Tara's back. She then finds herself on the Sunnydale High school stage, about to perform in a radically changed Death of a Salesman, with Riley playing a cowboy, Buffy as a flapper and Harmony (a popular girl in high school who snubbed Willow, and who became a vampire at the end of Season 3) goofily trying to bite Giles' neck. Willow realizes with increasing uneasiness that she knows neither her lines nor her role. Buffy then takes Willow to stand in front of a classroom in the same nerdy clothes she wore in "Welcome to the Hellmouth" and "The Harvest" at the beginning of the series. Xander mocks her as she nervously begins to read her book report. Oz and Tara—Willow's ex-boyfriend and current girlfriend—flirt with each other while watching Willow recite. Suddenly, Willow is attacked and has the life sucked out of her by the primitive girl.
Xander's dream begins when he wakes on Buffy's couch. After excusing himself to use the restroom, he finds himself the object of an attempted seduction by Joyce. In the restroom, he starts to unzip, then realizes that the bathroom is attached to a large white room with many men in white coats ready to observe and take notes on his performance. He then meets Buffy, Giles, and Spike in a playground; Spike – unaffected by daylight – tells him that Giles is going to teach him to be a Watcher, as Buffy plays in a sandbox. Xander then finds himself in an ice cream truck with Anya; Willow and Tara (wearing skimpy clothing and garish make-up) are in the back, and they invite him to join them. He tries to do so, only to end up in the basement where his parents allow him to live. He goes to the university and comes across Giles, who starts revealing the reason for the dream, but who suddenly switches to speaking in French. Xander next finds himself in a reenactment of the Apocalypse Now scene between a captive Captain Benjamin Willard and Colonel Walter Kurtz, with Principal Snyder as Kurtz. Throughout the sequence Xander finds himself in his basement again and again, chased by an unseen pursuer, who is revealed as the primitive girl when she tears his heart out.
Giles' dream begins with Giles swinging a watch in front of Buffy. They are in Giles' apartment, which has been stripped of furniture but for a chair and a bed. She laughs, and Giles' dream cuts to a family scene with Buffy and his girlfriend Olivia at a fairground. Quicker than the others to understand that something is wrong, he confronts Spike, who is posing for a photo-shoot in his crypt. In The Bronze, he meets Anya failing as a stand-up comic, and Willow and Xander (with a bloody chest wound), who warn him of their attacker. He breaks into song, giving suggestions on how to deal with what hunts them, but when the sound system breaks down, he crawls backstage to trace a wiring fault. He begins to realize who his pursuer is, just as she scalps him.
In the final dream sequence, Buffy is woken by Anya in her dorm room. She then finds herself in her room at home, where Tara speaks cryptically about the future. At the university, Buffy talks to her mother, who lives in the walls, then meets Riley at the Initiative. He has been promoted to Surgeon General and is drawing up plans with Adam (now in ordinary human form) for world domination. The three of them are interrupted by a demon attack, and Riley and Adam start to make a pillow fort. When Buffy finds her weapons bag, the only thing in it is mud, which she smears on her face. She is then transported to the desert and finally confronts the pre-verbal First Slayer; Tara is present to speak for her. Through Tara, the primitive girl reveals herself to be the First Slayer and tells Buffy that she cannot have friends and must work alone, which Buffy rejects. The Slayers fight in the desert and then in Buffy's living room next to her dying friends until Buffy realizes that she can stop the fight mentally by simply ignoring the First Slayer. She refuses to fight and walks away from the First Slayer; the First Slayer vanishes, and everybody wakes up.
After they wake up, the four of them then discuss what happened, with Giles realizing that using the enjoining spell to share Buffy's power between them caused the First Slayer to attack. Going upstairs, Buffy recalls the First Slayer's warning that she has no idea what lies ahead of her.