This marks the final "real" appearance of Drusilla in the TV show as all her future appearances are either in the forms of illusions or flashbacks. She later appears in the canonical comics.
Drusilla's arrival in Sunnydale follows the events of Redefinition (2001). She mentions Angel setting her on fire and still had scars from the incident.
David Fury didn't like the direction the show was going in with regard to Buffy/Spike. To keep viewers from romanticizing their relationship too much, he inserted the line about Quasimodo being unable to truly love Esmeralda, which draws a parallel with Spike being unable to love Buffy without a soul.
David Fury, asked to do "an episode that takes the Buffy/Spike relationship to the next step", decided that it was time for the audience to discover that Spike was in love with Buffy. He says, "...and it then progressed into Buffy finding out, which was something we were saving for later. It turned out to be a good play because we were able to take them to interesting places throughout the rest of the season." According to Fury, the resurrection of Spike and Drusilla's relationship "was really significant in terms of what love means to Spike."
Harmony refers to Drusilla as "Morticia", a reference to Morticia Addams. Mercedes McNab had a role in The Addams Family (1991) and also Addams Family Values (1993).