Tributes pour in as former Buffy and Gossip Girl star passes away at 39

It’s always sad when a face from our childhood passes away, and as someone who grew up watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer every day with my dad 🍎after school, I’m utt🦹erly heartbroken by the sudden death of Michelle Trachtenberg, who starred as Buffy’s sister. 

Well, eventually. Dawn Summers was originally introduced in an in-story retcon moment that saw characters blindly accepting that Buffy had always had a sister, even though she’d never existed before. It was later revealed that Dawn was actually the key to unlocking dimensions. Dawn’s debut as a character came in the first episode of season five, and she continued to be a central star until the ꦍend of the show. 

For many, especially those younger than me, Michelle Trachtenberg is probably more remembered for her role as Georgina Sparks in Gossip Girl. But to me, she will always be Dawn Summers, everything I grew up wanting to be and the make-believe big sister I 🉐never had. 

Buffy was always too much older than me to be a reliable role model, although I’m still shaped by the things I witnessed in the show, but Dawn was just close enough to me in age to be something to aspire to. And when she turned out to be this supernatural thing that unlocked different dim🌺ensions? Well, that made her all the cooler in my eye🔥s. 

Then, when I was a lowly emo going through the throes of adolescence in 2007, she made a sudden and unexpected reappearance in my life in a cameo role in the video for “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” alongside Seth Green, who played Oz in Buffy. The perhaps two-second segment of the video sparked a rewatch of Buffy from the ve𒁃ry beginning,🐼 and I once again adored Dawn. 

Trachtenberg was found unresponsive in her New York City home by her mother on January 26 at the age of just 39. According to ABC News, she had recently undergone a liver transplant, and her death is not being considered as suspicious, but rather more likely due to complications in the aft💯ermath of the procedure. 

In recent months, fans have tak💛en to questioning both Trachtenberg’s physical and mental health, posting comments on her Instagram posts about her “thinning hair” and “yellow eyes”. Of course, these comments are now buried under more recent RIPs after the news of her death, but isn’t that always the way when a celebrity dies?