How I Finally Forgave (and Fell in Love with) Buffy Season 4

Or It’s Not a Flop Era — It’s a Transformation Arc

Author

Nathan Triffitt
May 03, 2025

Listen. When I was a teenager, Season 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer felt like a betrayal. No Sunnydale High? No cozy library? Riley "Nice Guy" Finn eating up screentime like a human cardboard cutout? It was chaos. It was uncomfortable. It was not my Buffy.

In my 20s, I was kinder but still bitter. I appreciated "Hush" (duh), respected "Restless" (even if I didn't "get it"), but mostly treated Season 4 like an awkward puberty year I'd rather fast-forward through.

Now, in my 30s?

I’m here to tell you: Season 4 hits differently.

Season 4 is a mess—but it’s an honest mess. It's about the fracturing of identity. About how you can love people desperately and still grow apart. About loneliness in a crowd. About how the scariest monsters aren't vampires or demons; they're the shapeless anxieties of adulthood sneaking up on you between dorm parties and cafeteria runs.

“OK, say that I help and you start a conversation. It goes great. You like Buffy, she likes you. You spend time together, feelings grow deeper and one day, without even realizing it, you find you're in love. Time stops and it feels like the whole world's made for you two and you two alone, until the day one of you leaves and rips the still-beating heart from the other, who's now a broken, hollow mockery of the human condition.”

Willow, Season 4, still doing the best monologues

Buffy’s not okay in Season 4. Willow's not okay. Xander is aggressively not okay. Even Giles, bless his vinyl-collecting midlife crisis, is not okay. And watching it now, it feels real in a way it never did when I was younger.

Of course Buffy stumbles through college. Of course Willow clings to new identities like life rafts. Of course they all drift and snap and say the wrong things. Growing up isn’t a montage. It’s a slow, awkward freefall. And Season 4 nails it.

The Initiative still sucks (justice for Adam’s complete lack of charisma), but honestly? It makes sense now. Institutional betrayal. Masculine posturing. Control sold as safety. Riley's arc—bland as a bowl of unbuttered noodles—is supposed to be disappointing. He’s the fantasy of "normal" unraveling in real time.

And the small moments? God, they wreck me now. Tara's shy glances. Willow’s tentative steps into queerness. Buffy’s heartbreak when she realises that being the Slayer doesn't protect you from being profoundly, bone-deep lonely.

"You made me feel like I was special."

Buffy, Season 4, breaking all our hearts

Season 4 isn’t the fall after glory. It’s the necessary descent. The painful, fumbling transition between who you were told to be and who you actually are.

And now, a little older, a little jaded, a little wiser? I see it.

Season 4 didn't fail us. It prepared us.

And honestly? I’d trust Tara Maclay with my emotional safety more than any other character in the Buffyverse, so maybe Season 4 knew exactly what it was doing all along.