Sarah Michelle Gellar Mourns Michelle Trachtenberg With A Heartbreaking Buffy Quote
Sarah Michelle Gellar has likened the loss of Michelle Trachtenberg to the loss of a sister.
On Thursday, Sarah Michelle paid tribute to her Buffy The Vampire Slayer co-star with a poignant line from their hit TV series, in which the two played unconventional siblings.
Michelle — who was best known for her roles in Buffy, Gossip Girl, Harriet The Spy and Ice Princess — was found dead in her New York City apartment on Wednesday, at the age of 39.
Sarah Michelle wrote on Instagram, alongside a slideshow of photos of herself and Michelle over the years: ”Michelle, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. The hardest thing in this world, is to live in it. I will be brave. I will live… for you.”
The quote is a reference to a pivotal scene in the season five finale of Buffy.
In the scene, Michelle’s character, Dawn, learns that her blood is the “key” to opening up portals to other dimensions (which is why Sarah Michelle included a key emoji in her tribute).
When Dawn’s blood is spilled by the season’s villain, several portals from other dimensions open, causing terrifying creatures to inhabit Earth.
Amid the chaos, Dawn comes to the bleak realisation that the only way to stop this apocalyptic threat is to make her blood stop flowing by sacrificing her own life.
When she tells her older sister, Buffy, of her plans, Buffy realises that she shares the same blood as her sister and decides to sacrifice her own life to spare Dawn.
Before Buffy leaps to her death, she imparts a few lines of wisdom to her teenage sister, which act as a reminder to Dawn that although life can be difficult, Buffy wants her to fearlessly embrace every aspect of it.
“Dawn, listen to me. Listen. I love you,” Buffy tells her younger sister. “I will always love you.”
She then tells Dawn that she’s at peace with her decision and that Dawn needs to remain strong for their loved ones.
“Dawn, the hardest thing in this world, is to live in it,” Buffy says. “Be brave. Live. For me.”
In Sarah Michelle’s slideshow of photos of her and Michelle was also an image of the two sitting with the late Shannen Doherty at a Vanity Fair event in 2005.
Shannen, who was close friends with Sarah Michelle, died from Stage 4 cancer last July after living with the disease since 2015. She was 53.
After Shannen’s death, Sarah Michelle posted a collection of photos of her and the Beverly Hills: 90210 alumhanging out throughout the years, much like the tribute she shared for Michelle.
“How do you possibly find the right words to sum up 30 years of friendship?” she wrote of Shannen in her post. “I keep reminding myself it only hurts this much because, there was so much love.”