In one among Trachtenberg’s biggest moments on Buffy, Daybreak and Buffy regroup after a combat with the season’s Huge Unhealthy, and Buffy asks if Daybreak is alright. Daybreak asks why Buffy cares, she’s not actually her sister, in any case. She’s simply an object {that a} group of monks made flesh, why ought to Buffy concern herself along with her emotions? Who’s to say she even has them? However when Buffy takes her personal blood and clasps Daybreak’s bloody hand inside her personal, it’s clear that these two ladies are certain for all times. Even with out the Summers blood working by her veins, Buffy loves Daybreak, and no quantity of cosmic intervention might change that.
Whereas Gellar is commonly the point of interest of the scene, Trachtenberg offers such a shocking efficiency, even after her strains have completed. You’ll be able to see as she places up her partitions, preemptively shutting Buffy out earlier than her sister can harm her by insisting that she’s not an individual in any respect. These partitions slowly come down all through Buffy’s heartfelt speech, real love and shock clouding Trachtenberg’s vast, blue eyes. When Buffy lastly hugs her, her face totally collapses, crying into her sister’s shoulder as she lastly admits that she’s only a scared child, going through issues and obstacles far past her attain.
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It’s that admission that defines Daybreak’s arc all through the remainder of the season, elevated by the completely pitch-perfect efficiency given in that second. 9 episodes later, when Buffy tells Daybreak that the toughest factor on this world is to stay in it earlier than she jumps to her personal demise to avoid wasting her sister’s life, it’s that blood-tying second that Buffy flashes again to. After all, it’s to elucidate simply how and why Buffy can sacrifice herself in Daybreak’s place, but it surely’s additionally to remind audiences that Daybreak is, really, only a scared child who doesn’t imagine her life is price saving, particularly over Buffy’s.
Even when Daybreak didn’t imagine she was price Buffy’s sacrifice on the time, Michelle Trachtenberg made us imagine she was. She made us imagine she was the little sister we by no means had, however at all times needed; she made us imagine within the energy of teenage whims and the load of heartache and sorrow on a soul too younger to have gone by a lot; she made us imagine within the magnitude of each being a young person and being a lynchpin in one of many biggest supernatural tales ever advised.
Because the collection goes on, Daybreak turns into additional enmeshed within the canon, regardless of solely showing within the closing three seasons. She turns into Spike’s (James Marsters) odd-couple buddy, she turns into Tara (Amber Benson) and Willow’s (Alyson Hannigan) primary shipper earlier than it was cool, and she or he turns into the narrative’s beating coronary heart, lengthy after Buffy herself misplaced among the gentle that used to shine in her eyes.
Trachtenberg introduced humor, coronary heart, gentle, and relatability to Daybreak that allowed her to change into one of many collection’ most iconic figures, choosing up the baton from Gellar to convey grounded, teenage drama again right into a collection that knew its hero wanted to develop up. Whereas followers have rallied for many years behind their assertions that Daybreak was “annoying” and stilted the present’s evolution, this one-dimensional tackle this finally iconic character diminishes not solely significance of the teenage elements of Buffy to the present’s eternal legacy, but in addition the unimaginable efficiency Trachtenberg delivered throughout 66 episodes.
