Dawn was not introduced until season 5 and she was certainly a divisive character, with some fans claiming she was annoying and didn’t fit into the Scooby gang. When I first watched Buffy in 2020, I disagreed completely as I loved the addition of Dawn from the moment she was first introduced. She was never treated as less than important, and the affection that the characters had for her shone through in some truly heartwarming moments.
What truly made the character though was Michelle Trachtenberg. She was such a natural actress and she made the character of Dawn both likable and relatable. She was great with the comedy but also proved herself immensely capable with more dramatic material.
The aforementioned episode Blood Ties is a crucial one for her character, but her most devastatingly real bit of acting comes in The Body. I won’t spoil the episode if you’ve never seen the show, but it’s a brutally honest and hard-hitting exploration of grief and a scene involving Dawn and Buffy is the most achingly emotional moment in the whole episode, almost entirely down to Trachtenberg’s performance which is filled with disbelief, sadness and rage.
Her natural charisma and chemistry with the other characters, played by a cast of adult professionals, proved just how much of a talent she was and, despite her sudden addition to the main cast that threw some fans for a loop, she very quickly proved that she was one of the Scoobies.
But of course, she was not just limited to Buffy: some will know her as recurring character Georgina from Gossip Girl, and she also had starring and supporting roles in many films throughout the late-1990s and 2000s. Ice Princess, Black Christmas, Can’t Be Heaven and EuroTrip are not particularly acclaimed films but they all have cult followings, and Trachtenberg’s skills and versatility helped to give them their popularity.
Sadly on 26th February, Trachtenberg was found dead in her home at the age of just 39, tragically cutting short the career of a person who had so much more to give and so many other things she wanted to do. In more recent years Trachtenberg had spoken about her writing ambitions, and she was expanding her acting range into animated projects and both comedic and dramatic roles.
It’s such a shame that we won’t get to see any more from her, but whether you remember her as Dawn, or Georgina, or any of her extensive film roles, Michelle Trachtenberg will be remembered for a long time.
To close out, I’d like to share one more quote from Buffy, one that Sarah Michelle Gellar used in her tribute to Michelle:
“The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live, for me.”