Dawn

[Icarium]

That would be throwing away what started out to be a great storyline for Dawn. She came in to the show with originality and mystery. If they had just killed her off it would have defeated the point of her story in the long run.

By treating her like Joyce I meant not having Dawn in every episode. I didn't mean she should have been killed off. Though this would have been a much better finale for S5 than the incredibly illogical one that we got.

It wasn't. How else were they meant to show Dawn maturing?

For starters they should have actually shown the process instead of jumping from "Dawn is a wreck" to "Dawn is the only Scooby who has any grasp on reality and she is better at research than Giles and Willow".

That role had to be filled

It did? Willow and Giles were still alive and kicking, you know.

Other wise we would have had useless screen time filler.

Character development is filler?

I think the writers hinted that Dawn had watched Buffy and the Scoobies more than she let on. She showed that at the end of season 6 when Buffy asked Dawn to help her in the fight against Willow's monster creations.

But that makes no sense - I watch Buffy a lot, does that magically make me a good fighter. Heck, I have watched The Matrix, maybe I should try to fly like Neo too. 😀 It was yet another stupid writing shortcut.

Buffy made an overall right choice to save Spike because she needed him in the fight.

Kind of off-topic but Buffy managed to ignore the fact that Spike was mind-controlled. By her enemy. Ignoring the facts of life isn't all that mature, IMO.

Buffy was prepared to lay her life down for Dawn and actually did it so she could live. That's maturity right there and then.

I don't think so because the plan was idiotic and shouldn't have worked.

We needed to see Buffy mature differently after Joyce died and show that her death made a big impact on Buffy's life. If Dawn hadn't been there Buffy would have probably got over Joyce's death within a few episodes and we'd be back to normality and Joyce would be forgotten about.

Speculation much? The whole point of Joyce's death was to make Buffy depressed for a long time, with or without Dawn. Not to mention that having Dawn around just to make Buffy sadder is exactly what I said above. Dawn barely qualifies as a character, she is pretty much a plot device in the service of Buffy's story.