Morphing Ben and Glory

Clare Kramer spoke to the BBC about the morphing process between Ben and Glory:

Sarah’s shooting schedule

Sarah Michelle Gellar was away for a great deal of time when the end of season five was shot. She was filming Scooby Doo in Australia, which is why the episode The Weight of the World features very little of her. Doug Petrie told the BBC Buffy website about how they thought of a way to overcome the problem:

Alexandra Lee

Alexandra Lee, who played the young Buffy in The Weight of the World, has also been in Alone with a Stranger, Mad TV, CSI: Crime Scene Inestigation, That ’70s Show, Scrubs and ER. Alexandra did not reappear on Buffy, but she is seen in photographs in future episodes as ‘Young Buffy’, such as Normal Again.

Bob Morrissey

Bob Morrissey, who played the crazy guy who talks to Dawn in Real Me, played the same character in Spiral and The Weight of the World. He appeared as Dr. Gregson in the Angel episode ‘Heartthrob‘. He has also been in The Terminal, Northern Exposure and Soul Plane.

Dean Butler

Dean Butler played Buffy’s father, Hank Summers. Dean is famous for his role as Almanzo Wilder in the seventies American drama Little House on the Prairie. Dean appeared in the episodes Nightmares, When She Was Bad, The Weight of the World and Normal Again.

Matthew Lang

Matthew Lang played one of the people at the party in 1880 in Fool For Love, and a ‘High Priest Minion’ in the Buffy episode The Weight of the World. He has also appeared in Target, The Rules of Attraction, We Were Soldiers and The West Wing.

Doc

Doc was a demon who looked human but had a long tail, blue blood, black eyes and a lizard-like tongue. He aided Dawn to try and ressurect her mother (Forever) but later turned on the girl when he discovered she was the Key. Doc worshipped Glorificus. Spike and Xander fought him to retrieve a box he was hiding in The Weight of the World, in which Giles found more information on Glory and the Key. They left Doc for dead but he came back in The Gift and cut Dawn so her blood would open the portal. Buffy killed Doc when she pushed him off the platform.

Hank Summers

Hank was Buffy and Dawn’s elusive father. Divorced from Joyce Summers, he became increasingly distant towards Buffy (for example, standing her up on her birthday in Helpless). Hank failed to attend Joyce’s funeral or contact his daughters after their mother died. Buffy mentioned he had run off with his secretary to Spain. We see Hank twice in Buffy’s flashbacks/hallucinations in The Weight of the World and Normal Again.

Ben’s room

In The Weight of the World, we discover that Ben has a small, bare room in Glory’s luxurious apartment.

Blondie

We discover in Killed By Death that Buffy is not a natural blonde. The girl who represents her as a child is a brunette, but future episodes (such as The Weight of the World) show young Buffy as a blonde.

Get out, get out, get out!

In Older and Far Away, Dawn screams, “Get out, get out, get out!” at Buffy and the gang. She said the same thing to Buffy and Joyce in season five’s birthday episode, Blood Ties. In Lessons, the zombie janitor yells, “get out, get out, get out!” at Buffy.
This phrase is repeated by Glory in The Weight of the World, when Glory is starting to become “more human”:

GLORY: “What’s he doing?”
PRIEST: “I must anoint the key.”
GLORY: “Really don’t. Go.”
PRIEST: “But-”
GLORY: “Out! Get out, get out!”

Perhaps intentionally similar to Dawn’s outbursts?

Hank and Joyce again

Joyce and Hank Summers return in a false memory flashback in The Weight of the World. We see a scene where Buffy’s parents bring baby Dawn home for the first time. This is the first time Hank and Joyce have been seen together since When She Was Bad (though we heard them arguing in Becoming (Part 1)).

Joyce’s age

The date on Joyce’s head stone in Buffy’s mind in The Weight of the World says that Joyce was born in 1958, which means she died when she was 43. When Buffy was born, Joyce would have been between 21 and 23.

Money in arc welding

Xander’s bedroom in his apartment has a poster which reads “There’s money in arc welding!”, seen in The Weight of the World.

Second-hand experience

In The Weight of the World, Willow sees the scene from Intervention in which the First Slayer told Buffy that death was her gift. Willow recognises the Slayer from her dream in Restless.

Blood of Dawn

In The Weight of the World, Giles discovers that Dawn’s blood is the key (no pun intended) to the ritual that will allow Glory to open the dimensional portal to return home. Giles says, “Once the blood is shed at a certain time and place, the fabric which separates all realities will be ripped apart. Dimensions will pour into one another with no barriers to stop them. Reality as we know it will be destroyed, and chaos will reign on Earth.” Just as an aside - If the monks had made Dawn into something other than human (such as a lightbulb or bicycle pump), what would Glory have used?

Magic mojo

Spike worked out in The Weight of the World that Glory had worked a magic spell so that people who witnessed her turning into Ben instantly forgot what they saw:

This explains why Dawn forgot she saw Ben change into Glory in Blood Ties.

Kewpie doll

In The Weight of the World, Spike says, “Kewpie doll for the lady.” The Kewpie doll first appeared in 1912. It’s creator Rosie O’Neill named the doll after its Cupid-like characteristics.

Seen at 15.17 minutes:

In season two’s Killed By Death the young Buffy had dark hair, as did the Buffy in Dawn’s memory in Blood Ties. But in this episode, the little girl playing Buffy has blonde hair.

Seen at 24.17 minutes:

The symbol on Dawn’s forehead disappears when Dawn tells Glory that Buffy is able to handle being human.