When Dracula himself arrives in Sunnydale, he leaves the entire gang star struck. Buffy must find a way to stop him before she falls completely into his thrall, but his powers may be greater than even she can overcome.

Buffy's little sister Dawn gives her views on Buffy, Slaying, and the rest of the Scooby Gang. Despite her sudden appearance, all indications are that she has been around for a long time.

Are two Xanders really better than one? We find out when a demon searching for the Slayer accidentally hits Xander with his weapon, splitting him in two; one with all the positive aspects of his personality, the other with all the negative. While each of them try to convince the Scooby Gang that the other is a demon, Buffy must find the real demon to put the Xanders back together.

The increased strength and speed given to Riley by the Initiative are starting to tear his body apart. He must be operated immediately to repair the damage, but that will mean giving up his enhanced fighting ability and any chance of keeping up with Buffy.

When doctors cannot determine why Joyce is sick, Buffy is convinced that the cause must be supernatural. When she tries a spell to let her see magical influences, Buffy sees far more than she had planned.

 

As the gang get ready to celebrate Tara's birthday, her family arrives in town to take her back home. She resists, but her father insists that she come back with them before the family curse turns her into a demon on her 20th birthday.

 

When a run-of-the-mill vampire seriously wounds Buffy with her own stake, she begins to obsess over the deaths of previous Slayers. Desperate for answers, she turns to the only person with firsthand knowledge of how two Slayers fell in battle... Spike.

Riley begins to suspect that Spike has feelings for Buffy, and Spike takes great pleasure in telling Riley about Joyce’s illness – and about the fact that Buffy told Spike first. Meanwhile, Glory is conjuring up a creature that will be able to locate The Key for her, no matter what form it may be in.

A Queller demon lands in Sunnydale in a fiery meteorite and begins killing all the mentally ill people it can find. Meanwhile, Joyce has been diagnosed with a brain tumor, and while she waits to undergo her operation the tumor is making her act increasingly unusual. Buffy must find and defeat the demon before it senses her mother’s madness and makes her its next victim.

At the hospital, the Scooby Gang awaits news from the doctor about Joyce's surgery and they are all relieved when the surgery is a success. Dawn spends the night with Xander and Anya. With the house to themselves, Buffy and Riley spend a romantic evening together. In the middle of the night, Riley sneaks out through the window and Spike follows him into an old building.

While trying to create a new spell to help Buffy with her Slaying, Willow is distracted by an argument with Anya and accidentally releases a troll from a mystical prison. With Buffy in mourning over Riley leaving town, Willow and Anya may need to defeat the troll themselves before it flattens the entire town…

Quentin Travers and a team from the Watchers Council arrive in Sunnydale with information about Glory. However, since Buffy no longer works for the Council, they decide that they must put her and her friends through a grueling set of tests to determine that she is worthy of their trust.

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.

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.

A strange girl arrives in Sunnydale searching everywhere for her boyfriend Warren. She is sweet, pretty, and strong enough to throw Spike through a window when he hits on her. Buffy and the gang decide that they must do something before someone less impervious to injury gets in her way and gets seriously hurt.

Buffy is devastated when she arrives home and finds her mother dead. The rest of the gang try their best to pull themselves out of their own grief so that they can help Buffy and Dawn to deal with the worst day of their lives.

Refusing to accept that her mother’s death is the end, Dawn becomes obsessed with using magic to bring her back. Meanwhile, Buffy receives some much-needed comfort from an old friend who comes to town for the funeral.

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.

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

Despite their best efforts, Glory has succeeded in taking Dawn. This failure after so much effort proves too much for Buffy and she slips into a catatonic state. Willow must use magic to enter her mind and help her work through the trauma before it is too late to save Dawn and the rest of the world from Glory.

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.