Do you find that that happens a lot – seeding episodes with ideas that will be exploited later on?
We knew when we were writing Triangle that that troll hammer was going to be important in foiling Glory at the end of the season. We decided on the troll hammer and as we were in the process of writing the episode, Joss said "Let’s keep that troll hammer around - we can use it later."
He is amazing at planting things and realising how useful they’re going to be later on. Tara hiding some magic powder in Season Four - we didn’t pay off until Season Five. There was this huge amount of time. The end of the season came and we all said, "We’re not going to pay that off?". [Joss said] "We’ll pay it off, it’s just going to take a while," so he’s great at making you wait but he’s always going somewhere.
Every now and then he’ll plant something and he doesn’t realise that it’s going to pay off later. In Doppelgängland, Willow is observing Evil Willow and she says, "I think she’s kind of gay". Joss didn’t know that was going to pay off later, that the Willow character in fact was gay but, sure enough, it paid off.
Does that mean there will be consequences for Dawn stealing Anya's earrings in one episode this season?
Dawn stole some earrings. Nothing is ever not paid off. We wouldn’t plant something like that without something coming back later. A lot of people have been saying to me, "So Willow’s getting really really powerful, it seems like there should be consequences," and I just keep saying, "There’s always consequence on Buffy. When are there not consequences?"
