What would happen if your Worst Fears Manifest?

Nightmares are terrifying, but at least we wake up and don’t have to face our fears in our real life.

In the episode “Nightmares” Buffy and the Scoobies -and indeed all of Sunnydale begin to face the horror that comes if their worse fears become true.

The story centers on a school age boy “Billy” who is laying in a coma after being beaten by a monster.

Billy was a typical nine year old who was in the Kiddie League. His nickname was “Lucky 19.”

Being in the coma – he is able to affect others and call out their deepest fears and change them from fantasy to reality.

Buffy’s Fears

Facing the Master

Most of Season One focuses on Buffy’s fight with the Master who has the goal of bringing evil to the world.

The Master is the oldest, strongest vampire the world has ever seen. Even though she kills him in the end it comes a huge price, she can’t see how that actually happens until the last episode. So it makes sense that her biggest fear would be facing him and dying at his hands. In this scene he kills her in a horrible way – burying her alive.

This dream is prophetic – Buffy does actually die at the master’s hands, but she is brought back to life in a wonderful way.

That Her Father Doesn’t Love

On a more personal level, Buffy’s biggest fear is typical of many young women. She fears that her parent’s divorce was her fault, and that her father does not love her.

The series starts when Buffy and her mother move to Sunnydale when Buffy caused trouble at her old school. Well, if you call trouble burning down the school gym to kill a vampire’s nest.

Her parents marriage does not survive Buffy’s shenanigans, with neither one understanding her duty as a Slayer and each one blaming the other for her strange behavior.

She is devastated by the divorce of course, and she is naturally separated more and more from her father as she moves to a different town and has to re-establish a new life.

And every girl needs her daddy.

In this part of the episode, Buffy is met up with her father for one of the weekend visits she treasures. In a precognition sequence that reminds me of her betrayal after she makes love with Angel, her father comes to Sunnydale and tells her that she has been a huge disappointment.

Buffy’s father also tells her that Buffy was the reason for the divorce. Just being around her caused the divorce. After saying all those horrible things, he leaves a devastated Buffy crying on a park bench.

Willow’s Fear – Preforming in Public and Not Knowing her lines

Willow was a perfectionist , which had developed both from having pushy but largely absent parents, as well as a long time stigma of being a nerd in a school where being brainy was not honored.

She also had a long history of performing in front of the class and being made fun of by the likes of Queen Bee Cordelia Chase for her clothes or just for being herself.

Therefore it makes lots of sense that that her scary dream sequence would be that she is literally pushed onto a major stage to sing opera in a role that she does not know, to music that she can’t sing, and with words that she doesn’t know.

The sequence ends with Willow being booed off the stage, to her shame.

Cordelia’s bad dream – having bad hair and being pulled into the chess club

Cordelia’s nightmare serves as a little comic relief to the terror in Buffy’s dreams and some of the others.

Cordelia’s nightmare starts with her looking into the mirror in her locker and finding that her outfit is old-fashioned and her hair is frizzy and very unattractive. Apparently her new look makes her a nerd magnet because the next scene shows her fighting with all her might – but ultimately unsuccessfully as nerdy boys drag her into a chess club that she would never go to if she was the popular fashion queen Cordy.

Xander’s Nightmare – A Crazy Clown from His Childhood

Xander’s nightmare is scary, but it is rewarding for two reasons.

To set the stage we are tempted to the scene by a path of Xander’s favorite candy bars from his sixth birthday. They lead him to a crazy clown , who chases him with a knife, laughing manically to what looks like a certain death.

But Xander surprises all of us by actually facing his fear -and winning. He stops running and socks the clown in the face, knocking him down. He tells him: “You are a lousy clown. Your balloon animals are pathetic. Everyone can make a giraffe. “

Xander feels liberated as he stops his nightmare, but the others continue.

He meets up with Giles and Willow and Giles tells us that the only way he knows to restore reality is to wake up more Billy.

But the question is how do they find Buffy to do that?

Giles Nightmare – Buffy Dies and turns into a Vampire

As the episode comes to an end, the Scoobies and Giles search for Buffy and find her beneath her gravestone. And most horribly – Buffy has been turned into a vampire.

But lucky for them all, Buffy had somehow kept enough of her soul to help them on their quest.

Maybe because she was the Slayer she continued to do what was needed – to fight Billy’s monster”the Ugly Man,” and eventually wake Billy up and get them out of their nightmare world.

To free Billy, Buffy has to face a foe that she has previously been unable to defeat – the Ugly Man.

But she has to find him. As well as fighting her hungry vampire belly!

The Finale at the Hospital – defeating the Ugly Man and freeing Bill

To make the horrible manifesting nightmares sequence end, the gang had to resolve where it first begun.

They did that by going to the hospital where he lay in a coma after being beaten by his kiddie league coach who blamed him for the loss of a game.

Whereas before she had been unable to kill him .

The Ugly Man chased Billy around calling him ” Lucky 19,” pushing him on his anxiety button.

But Buffy is finally able to defeat it. Something renewed her slayer vim and vigor and she was able to defeat him.

When she did so, Billy was able to touch him and unwrap this dream to reality.

When the ugly man died, the kiddie league coach came into the room. When he realized that they had figured out that he was the villain of the piece, Giles and Xander are able to catch him.

Eventually he was prosecuted, put behind bars and the balance of the world restored.

“Nightmares” sets the Stage for Some Common Themes in the Series

This episode foreshadows many of the recurring motifs of the series. First of all is that dreams are not just dreams. Buffy often has dreams that foretell the future, and Angel does as well sometimes.

But more importantly it reinforces the theme of the entire series – that we can beat villains against impossible odds.

And watching the children win here – both when Xander conquered the evil clown and when Billy ultimately is able to beat the Ugly Man.

“Nightmares” was sometimes funny, but most a thought-provoking episode that is rewarding and memorable to watch.