On the preview:Whoops, my bad. Anya does say "torture" instead of "future." I agree with others that the scene is probably from Entropy, with Anya trying to get a wish from Buffy.
As for the Dawn scenes... I know I started off with this, but after sleeping on it, I don't know how much we can possibly take from the preview. IMHO, it was designed to attract new viewers to the show, not to foreshadow what was going to happen. Being such, it would naturally highlight the "sexier" aspects of each character -- ie, Buffy and Spike's fighting prowess, Anya's "demonic" nature, Xander's quips, Willow's magic -- and, of course, Dawn's "mystical energy." Does that mean that Dawn's mystical energy will be used anytime soon? Not necessarily, because the promo wants to hook viewers, not tell them what's about to happen.
Forgive me for digressing for a moment -- but from everything I've read (and for some reason reading interviews and hunting down sources for spoilers has become a hobby for me) the "Dawn will get special powers" rumour claims to be from an interview with Michelle Trachtenberg. No interview I have seen with her has contained this remark. So, unless someone sources that properly I think it has to be taken as the same kind of "spoiler" that the "Riley will return from South America as a vampire with Drusilla on his arm" one was. Sorry to be obsessive -- but I'm a history major. If you don't show me a source, you might as well be making it up.
Incidentally, is no one distressed that there's no Tara -- not even in the background -- in this promo? That might have to do with her non-regular status, but still...
On the interview with Marti:
Thank God this isn't an S/B board, because those are turning into pretty vitriolic places at the moment. But I agree -- I actually think it was a pretty smart interview. And for W/Ters, she made the semi-hopeful comment that fans would like where the show was going... MN's not, I think, so naive as to assert that if the end was to hold a dead Tara and an evil-and-depressed Willow. She would have said something to the effect of "This is a dark season, and it will have a dark ending, and in order to achieve what we want to do dramatically we're going to have to annoy a lot of people."
Just my opinion,
Ayl
[This message has been edited by Aylandi (edited March 29, 2002).]