Other Appearances
Joyce appears in four episodes after her death in "The Body", first as a young woman in season five's "The Weight of the World": Buffy has a recurring but false memory of her parents bringing Dawn home as a newborn. The episode deals with Buffy's inability to cope with her mother's death and her inadequacy at protecting Dawn, and explores Buffy's obsession with her failure and guilt. The sixth season episode "Normal Again" posits Buffy's world of Sunnydale as a manifestation of psychopathology: after being stabbed by a demon, Buffy becomes convinced that the world in which she is a hero is an illusion. Her parents, who have remained happily married, visit her in a mental institution and encourage her to fight the seductive world she has imagined and return home with them. Joyce appears twice in the seventh season: she haunts Dawn as a face of the First Evil in "Conversations with Dead People", and makes her final appearance again as an incarnation of the First Evil in Buffy's dream in "Bring on the Night".
Read more about this topic: Joyce Summers
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“The appearances of goodness and merit often meet with a greater reward from the world than goodness and merit themselves.”
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