“What are we going to do now?”
After five years on the WB and two more on UPN, it was clear to the Buffy brain trust that the show had run its course. Most of all, its star, Sarah Michelle Gellar, was ready to move on. Despite rumors that the series might continue with Faith or one of the other Slayers created in the finale, season seven would bring Buffy full circle and end the series with a suitably epic conclusion. While Angel would continue for another year on the WB and Dark Horse would extend the series in comic books ad infinitum, this would be the last year Sarah Michelle Gellar would wield Mr. Pointy, and rumors of a feature film resurrection, which Gellar quickly dismissed, have sadly never materialized.
JOSS WHEDON
(creator/executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
The fact is most of the cast not only knew it was the last year but were very glad of it. However, some of the crew did not know, which was totally my bonehead mistake. The actors did know and they kind of sucked up some energy from the crew. They just felt an official announcement should have been made before it was [on] the cover of a magazine, and they’re not wrong. I just was like, “We’ve known this from the beginning of the year.” It was just about paying respect.
MARTI NOXON
(executive producer/show runner, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I definitely feel like we left before we jumped the shark. It really felt right and was the right time. People were glad to be out of the dark pit of despair, so that’s good. Everybody was very positive about the final year, so it felt like a good time to say good-bye. I actually feel we could have gone on. There were fresh ideas. I do think that it would have been harder and harder to make it feel like we weren’t treading over the same territory, but do feel like we could have gone on. I don’t know if it would have been the same people leading the troops, because, speaking for myself, I was ready to do other things.
JAMES MARSTERS
(actor, Spike)
Season seven was a bitch to film. They were trying to convince Sarah to come back for an eighth season, and Sarah would have none of it. We were known as “Buffy the Weekend Slayer” around Hollywood. Most shows film twelve hours a day and not a minute longer than twelve hours, because after twelve hours you have to pay the crew double. Twelve hours was a minimum day on Buffy. It was fourteen, sixteen, eighteen normally. We went up to twenty quite often. So, we would start at 4:30 in the morning on Monday and we would end when the sun rose Saturday morning. There were a lot of people in Los Angeles that would not work on Buffy, because they knew the long hours. And nobody got toasted more than Sarah Michelle Gellar; she was in almost every scene. When you do that to an actor for seven years straight, there’s a good chance that they’re going to want to marry Freddie Prinze Jr. and make cookies after it’s over. No amount of money was going to change that. She was the consummate professional. She was on time all the time, had her lines down without fail, never missed a beat. That woman is a machine; she’s amazing, and she carried that show for seven years.
JOSS WHEDON
The seventh season was a return to girl power stuff, a return to high school, a return to the mission statement of the show. A little less questioning of the meaning and possible evil of her own power and all of their power, and more in their reveling in the usefulness of it. I wanted to see more of a proactive Buffy. She was very reactive season six, though I disagree with people who say it sucked. Our mission statement season six was let’s make things difficult for them, and seventh season it was let’s show them in charge. The grown-up world sort of hit them in the face [in season six], and now let’s see what happens when they hit back.
DAVID FURY
(co–executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
Season seven was nice in that we got to get out of a little bit of the darkness of six, which was entirely about Buffy recovering from being dead. It was a little bit of a downer. And seven marked a chance for us to kind of lighten things a little bit. When we were talking about season seven, trying to figure it out, what I remember was we didn’t really have anything to begin with. We all kind of got together and Joss is looking for what the Big Bad should be and eventually we landed on the First and then tried to figure out what the First’s plan was. I believe I was the one that proposed this idea of, for better or worse, the Potentials.
The seventh season’s nefarious Big Bad is the First, the oldest form of evil in existence. It has no corporeal form, and instead it can take the shape of anyone who has died. Throughout the season, it takes the ghostlike visage of Buffy with the intention of destroying the entire Slayer lineage, which includes Buffy and a reformed Faith as well as all Potential Slayers; ordinary girls next in line to be called to become the Slayer. Once the First destroys the Slayer line, the scales of good and malevolence will be definitively tipped toward evil, so that the First can become all-powerful once more and walk the earth.
DAVID FURY
In Joss’s construction of the mythology of the show, it was very clear—and we had to discuss this—there can be only one Slayer, but obviously when we had Kendra come on and we had Faith come on, there had to be other girls who were aware of the fact that they may be called to be the Slayer and were trained. A lot of the girls wouldn’t know. They’d go through life never knowing they were that. Then there were some who Watchers recognized as being a Potential and “I’m going to train her in case that day comes.” That was not part of the show’s mythology until that point.
Joss works from the point of whatever is serving the story he wants to tell in the moment. Bringing Kendra in was more important than figuring out the logic of how could she suddenly come in and be a Slayer with having to have a Watcher, since she talks about being trained for years. It didn’t quite line up, but he never really gave it much thought. But we had to address it in seven when I made the suggestion, “What if we do a plot that’s kind of like a spy thriller, where all the spies are being murdered all over the world?” The idea of Potentials, any girl that might become the Slayer, being eliminated. That was what we landed on, and I got to write one of the early episodes; I got to introduce a lot of the Potentials who became regulars for the season. For better or worse, because some people didn’t love the idea. Some people felt it took the smallness away from the Slayer to suddenly have all these girls in there. But Joss embraced it when he recognized there was a great statement to be made that all of you have the potential to be Slayers. All girls, all women, have that potential. So the idea of bestowing that and Buffy sharing her powers for mystical reasons to the others, and them all being elevated to Slayer status, was, I think, a very wonderful, empowering message, regardless of whether or not the sticklers for the mythology thought it was good. As a co–executive producer of the show to suddenly give this whole idea of an army of Slayers was fun.
Among the First’s allies are Caleb, a sadistic “priest” played by Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Castle), and the murder of Potentials leads Giles and Willow to seek out the remaining Potentials to bring them to Sunnydale, where they will be trained by Buffy and Faith to battle the First.
JOSS WHEDON
Everybody was tired of being depressed, including us. It was the last season, and we wanted to get back to where we started. Let’s go back to the beginning. Not the word, not the bang, the real beginning—and the real beginning is girl power. The real beginning is, “What does it mean to be a Slayer?” And not to feel guilty about the power, but, having seen the dark side of it, to find the light again. To explore the idea of the Slayer fully and perhaps to see a very grown-up and romantic and confusing relationship that isn’t about power but is actually genuinely beautiful between two people, Buffy and Spike. We were very focused on that.
ELIZABETH CRAFT
(executive story editor, Angel)
At the end of Buffy, they won. They closed the Hellmouth. Angel ended with a loss—the apocalypse.
DAVID FURY
For a while we didn’t know it was the last season, so it was not one of those things where we immediately knew what the end would be, but I think it made for a great climax of the series to just eternally close up the Hellmouth and essentially Sunnydale being swallowed up. I thought it was great. And the whole question of Buffy, saying, “What’s next?” She now had choices that she didn’t have before. I thought it was a wonderful way to end the show.
SARAH LEMELMAN
(author, “It’s About Power”: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Stab at Establishing the Strength of Girls on American Television)
Before the First Evil’s plan is even set in motion, Buffy realizes that it is important to share what she has learned over her years as a Slayer. She first does this with her younger sister, Dawn, telling her, “It’s about power—who’s got it, who knows how to use it.” In this instance, she is finally training Dawn how to fight vampires, something that Dawn had been desperate to learn for so long, but Buffy believed it to be something that her baby sister should be guarded against.
Buffy guides both Dawn and the show’s viewers to one of the most important teachings of the show: “Power. He’s got it. He’s going to use it. It’s real. It’s the only lesson…” This interaction is more than the power of vampires—it is about the power divides in society, and even though power might be naturally gifted to men, Buffy demonstrates that women can wield it, too.
JAMES MARSTERS
(actor, Spike)
Plan B, in case Sarah could not be wooed into more episodes, they were searching for a replacement for her. They had the idea of the Potentials. I don’t know if there were five or seven wonderful young actresses that they were looking at to see if one of them could be the new Buffy.
DAVID FURY
Not true at all. I love James, but he has no idea what he’s talking about. Potentials was not a network decision. It was my idea that I pitched to Joss, and he wound up buying the idea. I will say there was always talk, I think, from the network of Dawn being somebody, initially in the inception, but I don’t think that ever became serious. It was just a thought in the beginning of, like, “Oh, maybe if Sarah doesn’t come back we can keep Dawn.” But Dawn never landed as strong as a character as we’d hoped. As great as Michelle was, she just didn’t seem to be the character to carry the show. If there was going to be a spin-off, I guarantee you it was always going to be Faith. There’s no reason at all to look elsewhere than Eliza, because Faith was an awesome character. So trust me, the Potentials was not a network plan to spin off the show.
JAMES MARSTERS
It was tough, though; every scene that had the Potentials in them, you had to do coverage on all those actors. So when you’re doing a scene with two people, you do the master shot and then you do the close-ups on each actor, and it takes a certain amount of time. If there’s three people in the scene, it takes a lot longer because you have to do coverage on the third person. If you do a scene with seven people, it takes a long time to finish that scene because you have to do close-ups on everybody. And so with the Potentials you have to do seven extra shots in addition to the regular cast. You’d have like twelve people, and those were long days. Those were backbreaking days. My memory is, “Oh no! A Potentials scene; we’re gonna be here all day.” They were all lovely people, they were all really nice, and they were excited to be doing the show, but it was a lot of shots.
FELICIA DAY
(actress, Vi)
I was a baby actress. I had moved to L.A. two years before. I was just learning what the acting world was like. I had done Bring It On Again and commercials and a few guest stars and was really green. I went in and had auditioned for Amy Acker’s role on Angel the pilot season before. They had liked me for that, but clearly Amy Acker is amazing. But I got called back the next year for this guest star, and I went in and it was an Asian role. I don’t know if they couldn’t find the actress or I actually went in for the guest star of the girl who died in that episode. She was a blond girl who turned out to be a demon posing as a Potential. I read for that and they were like, “OK, can you go out and read these other sides for this other part?” They didn’t even say what it was. It turned out it was supposed to be an Asian girl.
Fortunately, I’m a better cold reader than auditioner, because I get nervous. I’m kind of a bomb in audition rooms until I have to improv or cold read. So it was actually to my advantage. They gave me three monologues, this long audition piece. I came in and was flying by the seat of my pants and that’s what I do the best. I went out thinking I’m never going to get this, and then they called me the next day and booked me, and I was working the day after that. It was a real surprise. They renamed the part Vi, and then they ended up bringing in a girl who played the Asian Potential from Shanghai, Chao-Ahn, but she didn’t speak English. It was a really twisty, weird, windy way to get the role.
SARAH LEMELMAN
In the tenth episode of the season, entitled “Bring on the Night,” Giles arrives to Sunnydale and introduces the first of many Potential Slayers. Along with this, he tells Buffy the First Evil’s master plot to eliminate the Slayer line, and Giles, continuing to stick with what he knows—books—says to Buffy, “I’m afraid it falls to you … We’ll do what we can, but you’re the only one who has the strength to protect these girls and the world against what’s coming.”
Here, it is believed by Giles that Buffy must follow her preordained path and face what is to come, alone, once more. It is the arrival of Kennedy, a new Potential Slayer (who states, “That’s it? That’s the plan? I don’t see how one person—even a Slayer—could protect us”) that prompts Buffy to change her approach in tackling and making decisions. These lines by Kennedy are the commencement of a togetherness and unity for each and every female on the show, despite the differences of being a Slayer, Potential Slayer, witch, or even a human. Each has their own strength, even if it is not physical, and each can contribute in a positive way. No longer will Buffy stand for her life, or the other girls’ lives, as being the pawn of destiny and fate.
It is at this point where the viewers see that although women may have their backs against the wall in society, as Buffy and her army of girls are depicted as in this season, these roles do not have to define who they are as people. There is always a point of fighting, and being fearless, despite all the difficulties and limitations placed on women and girls. It is possible to break out of society’s clutches and create one’s own power. There may be barriers and men who have more power, but working as a single unit can begin a movement for change.
JOSS WHEDON
The seventh season, more than any other, has a lot of single episodes that I’m very proud of, but at the same time we were never more concentrated on putting everything in place to get to the last episode, to really feel as though we’ve wrapped things up. Without ending everything, we wanted to really get the sense of closure. This was always the message.
FELICIA DAY
I had heard about Buffy in college. I hadn’t really watched the show, although I love fantasy and sci-fi and I was obsessed with Star Trek as a kid. But I never got to watch any of these shows, so I didn’t know who Joss Whedon was. One day at lunch when a lot of the Potentials were there, this dude sits down at the table with us Potentials and starts talking. He didn’t introduce himself. I was like, “Who is this guy sitting at our table?” He starts talking to all the actors, and somehow he says, “Well, most actors just don’t have a college degree.” I, of course, took this as a personal insult. Because I’m very uppity and I was homeschooled, my social skills are low. I said, “Well, I have a music degree and a 4.0 GPA.” I really sounded like an ass. At the end of the meal, I asked one of the girls, “Who is that guy?” They told me he was the creator of the show. So I expected to get killed off. I honestly did, because we were dropping like flies throughout the season anyway and I really laid a poop on the table there. But I think it worked to my advantage, because he does like smart-mouth girls. Thank God he has good taste like that.
SARAH LEMELMAN
The final season of Buffy steps away from the idea that Buffy must grapple with the weight of the world on her shoulders, completely alone. A larger picture is shown, where the First Evil is introduced, with the master plan of killing the entire Slayer line—including all Potential Slayers, who have not yet been called upon. For once, Buffy sees that she is no longer alone and that there are girls across the world who are scared like her, as each of them may one day face the burden of being the Slayer, a life that, as it is written, means death. This bond that Buffy begins to recognize in the final season draws many parallels from the Riot Grrrls of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Returning to don prosthetics again in seventh season was Camden Toy, who had last been seen as one of the Gentlemen in fourth season’s “Hush.” This time he would play Gnarl in “Same Time, Same Place.”
CAMDEN TOY
(actor, Gnarl)
They were so excited by the Gentlemen that they kept saying we’re definitely going to have you back, but as time went on they realized if we bring the Gentlemen back, what do we do with them? It was such a complete stand-alone episode, so that never happened, but I stayed in touch with casting. I constantly was going, “Hey, I heard you’re casting this ‘blah bitty blah’ role. Can I come in and read for it?” and they’d go, “Nah.” They weren’t having me in, and I was wondering what was going on. It wasn’t until seventh season when my acting career had really slowed down and I had gone back to editing that I got a call from casting. They told me they had a role they were having trouble with and she said, “You’re really thin; that’s our memory.” And I said I was, and then she asked how tall I was, since they were looking for short people, which I’m not. She goes, “OK, hmmm. Well, we’ve got this role and we’re really having trouble casting it and we were looking at really short people and nobody is getting it. Would you mind coming in and reading for it?” And I said, “I don’t mind.” And it was Gnarl, the skin-eating demon. He’s literally the Hannibal Lecter of the demon world.
For whatever reason, people would come in and audition as though this was for a normal role. He’s a demon from another realm, so you kind of have to use your imagination in a way that you don’t have to do with a lot of television acting. I don’t think they fully understood what they wanted until I brought what I did and all these different layers kept happening. When I finally got the role, they rushed me into makeup and they had to take a mold of my head, my feet, my teeth, and my hands. They eventually gave me finger extensions to play with as well. I got the teeth ahead of time, which usually doesn’t happen; so often with roles that involve teeth, they would have to postdub the lines, because you put the teeth in and you can’t really understand what they’re saying. I had so much time ahead of shooting with the teeth that I was able to practice and actually able to say all that dialogue with those teeth in. They were shocked. The producers couldn’t believe it. That never happens.
I was very lucky. Rob Hall’s company, Almost Human, were very generous. They made an extra pair for me to take home and they made me an extra pair of the finger extensions, so I was able to really wrap my lips around the dialogue in a way that I would not have been able to if I couldn’t rehearse with the teeth.
At this point, makeup maestro Robert Hall and his company Almost Human had replaced Optic Nerve as the vendor for the show’s many prosthetics as well as for Angel, where Hall and his team, which included Jason Collins and Elvis Jones (now the owner of their own makeup and effects shop, Autonomous FX) created some of the show’s most memorable creatures.
CAMDEN TOY
Up until about the middle of season six it was John Vulich’s company, and Todd McIntosh was the key on the show. Rob [Hall] was already working on Angel, and they really liked what he was doing on Angel, so they decided to say, “Hey, would you mind doing one character?” So he did Sweet, Hinton Battle’s character from “Once More, with Feeling,” and they really liked what he did, because he didn’t do a typical demon. It was different than usual. And, of course, Rob is unusual in that he has a shop, but he’s also in the makeup guild. He can come on set and apply the makeup. I don’t think that that sat well with Todd, since he was the key in makeup and he wanted to control that. He eventually left the show, and Rob took over the entire thing. Rob was actually applying that makeup, but with his shop designing and building it as well, which is unusual.
RAYMOND STELLA
(director of photography, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
We had our problems lighting makeup prosthetics so more is left to the imagination and keeping it from looking like rubber. It was a big show, so they had good people working. They had a lot of good prosthetics and a lot of different characters on that show. Once it started taking off, they started putting more and more money into it. That’s the problem when you become a hit show: it becomes harder and harder, because you have to be a lot more innovative than you were in the start. It’s like being number one; it’s harder to stay there than to get there.
DAVID BOREANAZ
(actor, Angel)
The difficult part is taking it off. You can’t just rip it off, because you’ll rip all your skin off. And that hurts. So it’s difficult. But we had a great crew who did a wonderful job. It’s exciting to see them create stuff. I’ll look to my left and there’s a Frankenstein monster. In one episode I was turned into a demon, so I had to wear a full prosthetic. It’s tedious depending on what you’re in.
One Buffy actor with plenty of experience in masks was Armin Shimerman, whose day job was still across town in Hollywood on Deep Space Nine on the Paramount lot at Melrose and Gower.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
(actor, Principal Snyder)
They didn’t come to me with advice, but I gave advice. Whenever I’d see the vampires or any of the other monsters in prosthetics, I would just smile, thinking, “Thank God I don’t have to do that today.” And tell them to drink a lot of water.
Toy, knowing it was the final season, was ready to say good-bye to Buffy after making his mark again as Gnarl before he got a call to take on the recurring role of the Ubervamp, Turok-Han, who serves the First.
CAMDEN TOY
At that point I thought I was done. Then I got a call from Rob Hall, who says, “You didn’t hear it from me, but they’re talking about bringing you back.” It was the original Ubervamp that shows up for four episodes before they actually have an army of Ubervamps to show up. They were thinking originally if this is just a killing machine, we can cast a stunt person. It was Marti Noxon that said, “We really need an actor to bring it to life when he’s not fighting. Like a Camden Toy.” And Rob piped up at that point and said, “It’s funny you should say that, because we have all his molds. We could actually start building the makeup on his molds today.” I think that seed was planted then.
JAMES MARSTERS
My final scenes were done on second unit with David Solomon, who was one of our best directors. He did some second unit as well as directing some of our better episodes. There had already been tearful speeches made about how we began and how we got through it, but that was all in the scene with the Scooby Gang, so I didn’t have that. But there was something that was kind of right about that, because I never really fit into that gang on screen and that had a reflection in life, too. So there was something kind of apt being in second unit again except the toys were just massive. Oh my God! They pulled out the stops—there was some money there.
ALAN J. LEVI
(director, “Sleeper”)
I enjoyed the show. It was a different kind of a show for me. I enjoyed the girls and working with them. James Marsters came to me and said, “This is an unusual script in that it revolves around me. I don’t get many like this. Will you help me through this? Will you watch me?” I said, I’ll be happy to. I spent a lot of time with him in molding that performance. He cried in a couple of scenes and was very involved in the entire show.
Unfortunately, I spent too much time with him. I went way over almost every day in scenes with him, and so I talked to the producer afterwards and apologized and he said, “We’re at the end of the run and everybody’s tightening down on the budgets,” and he said, “You performed a good show and you did James a good favor, but you didn’t do me a good favor. They came down on me for going over. If I get another show, I’ll be happy to hire you, but I can’t ask you back for Buffy because somebody’s got to get the blame.” He was honest because I was. They would call down at seven o’clock at night and the AD would say, “We have another two hours to go.” From that standpoint, it was not a happy situation.
CAMDEN TOY
Those final episodes were tough, because there was so much fighting and so much choreography that we were constantly running behind. On television, you can’t stop and not start the next episode, so literally we would be coming to the eighth day where we’re supposed to be ending that episode and we’re not done. The next day we had to start shooting the next episode, but then periodically throughout that day the ADs would ask us to go over to stage five, where David Fury would be directing our B unit. Or David Solomon or whoever. In fact, in the episode where Sarah finally takes the Ubervamp’s head off, they actually got in the editing room and realized they hadn’t gotten enough coverage for that last fight scene. They actually had to create that scene again that was shot on a construction site in studio. There was no way we could go back to the location, so Sarah and I filmed with James Contner, who directed all the second-unit stuff that day. James was a focus puller on Jaws. He was lovely and has great stories.
He was one of the few directors where when you got to set you would start working immediately. Usually, I’d often be sitting on set for a good forty-five minutes or longer before they’d actually be shooting. Not in James’s case. James would be like, “OK, get Camden ready.” I’d walk on set, and he took me to work immediately.
JAMES MARSTERS
I tried to get as many stunts as I could. I always had to argue that I come from stage where you don’t get a stuntman, so I can actually do more than you think I can.
JEFF PRUITT
(stunt coordinator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
One thing that Joss and I talked about when I first started was he said, “I don’t want you to do Power Rangers stuff. It’s not like that.” “No, no, no. Just let me gradually start increasing the fights and you’ll see, we’ll have our own style. It will be like, a girl goes down a dark alley, and this little hundred-pound girl starts fighting vampires. It will be cool, but it won’t be flying around on wires like Power Rangers.” I remember Joss had shot the pilot for Buffy, and some executive said they wanted to make an after-school Power Rangers–type show. Buffy would be like Amy Jo Johnson going to school by herself, and she would be the one doing the action. Joss was like, “It’s not that kind of show.” He was trying to convince them to do the kind of show he wanted to do, which they never quite got right with the movie.
Sarah actually recommended me for the job. I met with Joss and he would say, “How would you do this? How would you do that?” I’d jump up, demonstrate, and explain how you’d shoot that. But he said, “I learned from the first season that Buffy can only throw one punch and one kick and that’s all we have time for. We don’t have the budget to do a second unit.” “Trust me, there are techniques we can use. I can shoot three close-ups of Sarah and then do the whole fight with Sophia [Crawford].” I showed him tapes of me fighting in different movies and he said, “That’s the style of Buffy; that’s the style I want. Can you do that?” “Yes, we can,” and then he hired me.
SOPHIA CRAWFORD
(stunt double, Buffy)
At some point Joss decided he only wanted me to double Sarah, whereas at the start there had been three of us. He offered me an exclusive contract to be Buffy’s double and not work on any other show. It was a surprise to me; I’d had no indication that anything was going on, but basically what he told me was that he favored the way I moved, and he had a vision of Buffy and how she fought and her style and her energy, and he just felt I fit the character better. I continued for the next three seasons, having done four seasons all together.
JEFF PRUITT
We had a great time working with the actors. David Boreanaz had actually tried to get on Power Rangers. I met him at a party and he had been an assistant in the prop department on one of the Best of the Best movies. Some of the girls who worked on the movie with him told me that he wanted to get into acting, and since I was directing Power Rangers, they wanted to see if I could get him on the show, because he didn’t have a SAG card yet. So I put him in touch with the casting people and everything. And then later, when I came to Buffy, there was this Angel character and he right away recognized me. Right then I said, “Okay, does your character do some kind of fights?” He said, “I help out sometimes, but then Buffy saves me.” This was in first season.
I could talk to Joss about any Japanese anime I may see, but the one that you don’t mention is called Devil Hunter Yohko. This is the scenario—it starts off like this, unto every generation is born a Slayer. The Slayer goes to high school—Yohko is the Slayer—and she has a Watcher. She has a best friend who’s this nerdy girl who does computers, and the computer girl has a best friend who’s a guy and she has a thing for him, but he has a thing for Yohko. And then there’s this other guy who’s a mysterious demon vampire guy who watches them from the side and brings them information about the underworld. She has to train, through her Watcher, because she’s going to have to pretend to be a high school student while she fights demons. Only her two buddies know she’s a Slayer. I mentioned that to him and he said, “No, no, no, it’s not like that.” I said, “Well if it’s not like that, then that means Angel is not that guy. Angel could be, like I did on Power Rangers, I could make him anything,” because on Power Rangers they wanted to do the cliché thing of the girls falls down, twists her ankle, and the guy saves her. Billy is the nerd who can’t fight as well as the other guys, but pretty soon I started making Billy able to fight as well as anybody. Make the girls fight as good as the guys. Everybody was a team. When I added Kimberly and Tommy fighting together, the fans went crazy over that. So I said to Joss, I know this is a different show, but can’t we do a version of that where I let Angel kick some guys in the head?” “Well, Angel doesn’t kick guys in the head.” “Can’t I try it just a little bit?” “Okay, I’ll let you try it a little bit and we’ll see how it goes.”
So I got a stunt double to slow kick a guy in the head, and they started dressing David Boreanaz in black all the time. Then he and Buffy were a team and they were fighting side by side, and the fans loved it. After that, that’s when everything took off. I said to David, “See, I made you a Power Ranger.”
SOPHIA CRAWFORD
Initially I knew very little about the show or what it was. After being there a little while, and watching Sarah on the first few episodes—and the entire Scooby Gang—doing their dialogue, I was listening to it and said, “Wow, this is actually pretty funny.” Then I started getting the scripts and would read them and follow along with everybody else. But it kind of evolved with me.
The fighting became more prominent as the show went on than it was in the beginning, and I think it was also in part too the fear of it taking too much time to shoot what we were sort of planning, because we came in there and initially most of the process was slow. Choreography, getting things done. Maybe from Jeff’s experience of working on Power Rangers, everything having to go so quickly, Jeff was very quick, so we were able to get a bigger amount of work done in the same time. Nothing really changed time-wise.
We weren’t really given more time to shoot scenes in the beginning, but as they saw what the stunt guys were capable of, not just me but the terrific stunt team, once they started seeing their skills, Joss was the one who was like, “I want more of this!” Like I said, everything kind of escalated. They saw more, they wanted more. We were very happy to give them more. In the beginning we were told it wasn’t to be in a Power Rangers style, no wire gags. More than anything it was about gymnastics and Buffy’s fighting power.
CAMDEN TOY
Ryan Watson was my stunt double. He’s just an amazing martial artist. There were things he could do that I couldn’t do. I also have a background in martial arts and I did have to learn all of the choreography, but Ryan was the one who told me, “He’s really a killing machine. He’s an ancient vampire—he’s like a Neanderthal, so we don’t want him to be a typical chop-and-kick vampire. He really needs to be more like an animal. The script says, ‘He’s the vampire that vampires fear.’”
The way I sort of thought of them in my head was sort of Taz, the Tasmanian devil. So Ryan and I kind of worked on that and we kind of came up with a number of things and I was able to learn all of that choreography except for a few minor things here and there that Ryan had to do—it was pretty wild.
JAMES MARSTERS
There’s a scene where Spike is drunk, because he’s depressed about Drusilla leaving him and he passes out outdoors and wakes up in the morning because the sun is lighting him on fire. The scene started with the close-up on the hand igniting and Spike opening his eyes and realizing he’s on fire and going to put it out in some water. I was like, “I can do that. That’ll be great.” They told me, “James, no. This is one of the most dangerous gags in all of stunts; it’s an unprotected fire gag.” Usually when a character’s on fire in film, they’re clothed and it’s not their skin on fire; it’s their clothes that are burning and the actor has many layers of protection underneath so that they don’t get burned themselves. But with an unprotected gag, you dip your hand in a protective gel and then you dip your hand in fuel and they light you on fire. The gel burns off really fast, so you only have about four seconds before you have to put it out or you get really mangled. But idiot James Marsters decided that I wanted that gag to go a little longer, because there was this wonderful moment where Spike’s eyes wake up and he’s looking at his hand on fire and it takes him a while to realize this is not a dream; this is real. And I thought that that would be funnier. Not even thinking about the fact that every second is precious for a television show, especially something like Buffy, that’s so jam-packed with good dialogue that they can’t afford four more seconds of just me staring at my hand.
So I let it go long. We did two takes. I thought that I got away with it the first take, but when they lit me for the second one it was hell. Luckily it was the last shot of the episode and I remember thinking, just get off the set. Don’t let them know that you blew the gag and that you’re hurt, because if they find out that you’re hurt, they’ll never let you do another stunt. And just go to the hospital. Don’t go to the medic on the set. Just get out as quickly as possible and drive directly to the hospital. I just remember walking to my trailer and everyone’s like, “Great job, James! So, glad you were back.” I’m just grinning my teeth as these blisters are forming on my hand. “Thanks so much, so good to be back.” Meanwhile, my entire hand was covered in quarter- and dime-sized blisters all over. It was really bad, but I went to the hospital and got it taken care of. They didn’t find out about it. I guess they will now—too late, though.
RAYMOND STELLA
You could always tell when our stunt double was running compared to Sarah, because she ran more like a girl. I’m not sexist or anything, but they had a different gait. So Sarah would have her gait and then when you see the other one you can tell pretty easily. They did a pretty good job covering the faces and doing the stunts.
FELICIA DAY
It was challenging. I’d never really done stunts, although I was a dancer and I did martial arts lessons as a kid. So that was really fun for me. But it was really taxing, and I remember one of the last episodes, there’s this big monologue Sarah had to do and she didn’t generally come in to block, she would just come in to shoot, because she’d done this a long time. It was a long monologue where she had so many fight moves where she had to throw a weapon up. I’m talking a page monologue. We were like, “Wow, she didn’t even come in for rehearsal.” She came in, and the stunt person showed her one time what they were doing and she nailed it on the first take. I was astonished. I haven’t seen anything since where an actor is just like, boom. Technically precise, but also it was emotional and just really impressive. It was very rigorous, and being on that show really was similar to being on Supernatural, which I was on for several seasons, in that you’d always go to a location and you’d have fans waiting outside, because they found out where you’re shooting and because they love it, and it always becomes a Fraturday [Friday-night shoot that goes into Saturday morning]. You’re shooting until two or three A.M. and yet you’re just loving it, because you know that you’re making something that a lot of people are going to appreciate beyond just the moment.
JAMES MARSTERS
It took me a long time to learn the lesson that stunts take a price on the body. Doing stunts is like playing football; you don’t necessarily have to go to the hospital after every game, but it’s hard to get up out of bed. Some Monday mornings are difficult. If you do that for enough years, your body takes a whack. I didn’t learn that lesson until Angel stopped filming, the show came down, and about a week after that my back just froze up and I couldn’t walk. I just completely broke down.
DAVID FURY
The First afforded us a great opportunity to see all the villains of the past. Knowing at that point that this was it for Buffy, having the First was a way to bring back a lot of characters from the series and being able to see the Mayor, or seeing the Master, or seeing Glory was a perfect way to do that, because it kind of takes the form of anything it wants to and taking those forms was a fun opportunity. I’m of the opinion … things [pulled] from the past of the shows are much richer. Instead of inventing a whole new villain for the season we haven’t seen before, now it’s pulling something from the past. I thought it was a good idea. It gave a lot of faces to evil and that’s what made it work.
HARRY GROENER
(actor, Mayor Richard Wilkins)
Long after Mayor Wilkins is destroyed and gone, it’s the last season and my wife and I got back from New York when we were still living [there and in L.A.]. We’re at a coffee shop having breakfast, and she says, “Why don’t you call and tell them you’re back in town; maybe they’ll put you in a episode.” I said, “They’re not going to do that.” She said, “Don’t be an asshole. Give him a call.” So I call my agent and said let them know. And they indeed did that fantasy with Faith and put me in the episode. It was good to see everyone. It was like old home week.
JAMES MARSTERS
I do have to say one [of my] favorite memories of doing the entire series was doing “Lies My Parents Told Me,” which was an episode I cowrote with Drew Goddard and directed in the latter part of the season. It was a Spike-centric episode. Principal Wood’s mother was killed by Spike, and it was a whole revenge story, but it was just a really fun, glorious experience for me. I had so many different great experiences working on Buffy and Angel, but my last meaningful involvement in Buffy was that episode.
CAMDEN TOY
When I came back to play the Ubervamp, Sarah and I had long nights between takes when we would just sit and chat. We’d certainly worked together before that, but that was the character where we really got to bond and get to know each other. And suddenly that night, she said, “Oh my God. I don’t have any idea what you look like.” So I went, “That must be creepy.”
Sarah was a little bit like the Jewish mother on set, and I mean that in the best possible way. She was like, “Have you got enough to eat? Are you warm enough? You comfortable?” Literally, one night we were shooting one of the Ubervamp episodes, and we’re going way into overtime and it’s really late. They’re serving the second meal in, and she’s like, “They’ve got fried chicken over at craft services.” But I had the teeth and the hands in and I couldn’t eat. I told her I had to wait since we’re shooting the scene right now, and she’s like, “No, no, no. If you don’t grab it now, it’s gonna be gone.” She literally grabs me and kind of drags me over there and starts serving me dinner. She’s like, “What do you want? Do you want a wing? You want a thigh? What do you want?” So she’s preparing this plate for me, because I can’t hold anything with my vampire hands, and she said, “Now we have to hide this somewhere so that you can eat after this scene.” The star of the show was serving me dinner. She was very sweet. She and I had a great time together.
SARAH LEMELMAN
Since season seven is so largely focused on the Potential Slayers and Buffy’s empowerment of them, it is easy to overlook the other women on the program and feel that maybe this message of empowerment does not necessarily apply to everyone or is even relatable at all to viewers. Buffy continues to tackle this idea of enabling women, making sure that the empowerment it advocates can be applicable to all.
FELICIA DAY
I really didn’t understand what was going on. I was so new. They said you were recurring, but I didn’t know how many that meant. Every week, we would get the script and this was back when you got scripts on paper delivered on your doorstep. So you’d grab the script and you’d look at the last page and see if you were alive or not. Many Potentials died over the season and no one would tell you anything. So I always assumed I would die or piss somebody off and get killed or whatever. I was just so incredibly grateful to even get a script every week. It was really formative in my life, because seeing the fandom and the family on set, it really showed me what I wanted to do with my life as an actor. I didn’t want to just show up to work; I really wanted to be on a show that meant something more to people.
SARAH LEMELMAN
The episode “Potential” crushes any doubts that Buffy may not be relatable, as Xander tells Dawn, who falsely thought she was a Potential Slayer, “It’s a harsh gig being a Potential. Just being picked out of a crowd. Danger, destiny … They’re special, no doubt … They’ll never know how tough it is, Dawnie, to be the one who isn’t Chosen, to live so near to the spotlight and never step in it. I saw you last night. I see you working here today. You’re not special. You’re extraordinary.”
It is a touching message that brings Dawn to tears, and defends the idea that any seemingly ordinary girl in the world is important, in her own way. It reminds the audience that even though Buffy is a supernatural show, its characters can still be relatable and have been relatable, all throughout its run, even though the final season overwhelmingly revolves around Buffy and the Potential Slayers. The episode “Potential” gently communicates that a girl need not have powers to be great.
In the series capper, “Chosen,” written and directed by Whedon, the scope felt like a movie with thousands of Ubervamps, the death of some of the series’ most beloved characters, and the destruction of the Hellmouth—and, unfortunately, Sunnydale.
JOSS WHEDON
I feel that I wrote the perfect ending and wrapped everything up exactly the way it should be and really sort of hit the final chord of this beautiful symphony. That, unfortunately, was in season five. So with season seven, I sort of had to shut the door on this was the last episode a little bit, because the weight of that was crushing me. I was terrified. But I so very specifically knew what I needed to say and what I needed to have happen. That was all in there.
JAMES MARSTERS
The finale was fun, but it wasn’t cool. Spike has no idea that he was going be the big hero. He just wanted a freaking necklace. He just didn’t want Angel to have that necklace and he was just proud that he got it and not Angel. It was just very petty on his part and the thing starts glowing and he lights on fire and he’s like, “What the f … oh no!” I played it as it wasn’t a big heroic act. It was a wonderful scene, though, between Buffy and Spike. He could proclaim his love before he was gone. But I don’t think of him as the heroic savior in that; I think of him as the guinea pig hero.
FELICIA DAY
We got along with all the series regulars, who were very friendly to us. But we had our own little clique, because there was, like, seven of us. It was really great. My fondest memory was when Alyson came in one day to the makeup trailer and she was knitting. I was like, “Oh, you’re knitting. That’s really stupid.” I literally said that to her like a little snot. And then a week later I came in with my own knitting needles, and she was like, “Oh, really? You’re going to knit now?” I was like, “Yeah, I’m sorry.” Clearly. I don’t give great first impressions, but we were good friends after that. It spread throughout the other Potentials. Most of the times on set we would sit around at like 2 A.M. on a Friday shooting and we’d all just be sitting in a knitting circle, like fifteen-year-olds knitting. It’s really funny. Believe me, I learned more dirty stories from those other girls than any set with guys on it.
JAMES MARSTERS
One of the things that happened at the beginning of a lot of seasons was Joss would come to me and say, “I have no idea what to do with you. I know what the basic arc is for the show; I know how all the other characters have arcs within that. But I just have nothing. I don’t know what to do.” I was like, “Well, you always figure it out, dude. You’re paying me anyway. I’ll be here waiting.” I was never that worried. I think what he did was he kind of plugged the character in as necessary to serve the other characters’ arcs. So I was the disposable bad guy at first. Then I was the whacky neighbor. And then I was the wrong boyfriend. And then I was the guinea pig hero. On Angel, I was the jerk friend who promised to only be on your couch for one week but just won’t leave.
Because the writing was so good, it was stitched together into a journey that makes sense. But because it wasn’t one thought-out arc, it doesn’t have the smooth lines that a normal character trajectory has. It wound around, took a lot of surprising detours on its way, and it’s just this wonderful happy accident. Spike had a very interesting journey, because it was kind of made up on the fly. In lesser hands that would be very haphazard and not very satisfying at all. But in really talented hands, that all stitched it together, and it becomes something that you respond to.
JOSS WHEDON
When you get into actually writing the finale, you’re just like, “Oh God, it’s not good enough.” Then you’re like, “Dude, you’ve got to chill,” because it’s unbearable pressure. You want it to go out with a bang; you don’t want it to dribble out. You want the last episode to mean something that no other episode has. It was fucking large. It was so hard to shoot.
RAYMOND STELLA
That final episode was another fourteen-to-fifteen-day shoot. A lot of characters. A lot of visual effects. But by then I was pretty much going, “I’m out of here. Let’s get this thing done.”
SARAH LEMELMAN
Buffy the Vampire Slayer seems to recognize this oppressive nature of love and romantic relationships and appears to pose the question of the fundamental meaning of love, and if it truly is needed. This occurs with the exploration of its hero’s complicated love life and her involvement with Angel, Riley, and Spike. Each male she is embroiled with has her investigate what relationships mean for a female in a man’s world.
Buffy very clearly strives for this bliss in her relationships throughout the seven seasons of the show, but in the final episode of the series, she points out to viewers that, “I always feared there was something wrong with me. You know, because I couldn’t make [relationships] work. But maybe I’m not supposed to … because I’m not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I’m gonna turn out to be. Maybe one day I turn around and realize I’m ready. Then … that’s fine. That’ll be then. When I’m done.”
It may have taken her 144 episodes to realize that she needs to choose herself and continue to grow, but it is an important lesson to the viewers, many of whom are girls with insecurities about their true worth because they cannot find love. Despite that fact that she is hurt giving up these men, she is better for it in the end. She presents a stronger version of a woman to the world and demonstrates that there is nothing wrong with independence and an uncertain future in love.
DAVID BOREANAZ
We shot [Angel] on a soundstage in a big studio, and going back to Buffy, where they shoot in these little warehouses—that was interesting. The biggest thing for me was the height of the ceiling: it’s really low. As far as getting back to work with Sarah [Michelle Gellar] again, you know, she’s great. We just kind of stepped into the shoes, the characters picked up where they left off, and we kind of rocked it.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
Here’s the thing that pissed a lot of people off is that David was very gracious to go and do a cameo on Buffy toward the end of their series. He didn’t make a big deal out of it and try to extort anybody for a lot of money. He wanted to do it, and I guess he expected the same consideration back, which we did not get. Which is unfortunate, because it would’ve been nice and it would’ve helped our numbers on Angel, but what can you do?
One of the biggest surprises in the finale was Spike’s sacrifice to save the world. However, not unlike a certain pointy-eared Vulcan, audiences already knew this fan favorite would be back since it had already been announced that James Marsters was joining the cast of the WB’s Angel.
DAVID FURY
I don’t know why these things happens. Publicists do it, or networks do it to get people excited about it, but it ruins it to know when you’re trying to give a great emotional death scene to go, “Oh, he’ll be back on Angel.” It’s like, you just ruined it for everybody. I don’t love that, but it is a business. It’s more important to them; they don’t care about spoiling things as much as if they’ll get a few more viewers to watch something because they’re teasing you’re going to see James Marsters as Spike on Angel. That’s more important for them than whether or not they’re destroying a story.
JAMES MARSTERS
Joss was incensed that the WB let the cat out of the bag that I was coming on Angel, because he wanted to break the audience’s heart on Buffy. He was like, “No one’s gonna be sad now; they know you’re gonna come back.” But at that time Buffy was on UPN, and Angel was on a different network, and so there was no loyalty to each other. Angel had no loyalty to Buffy, so they had no reason to keep the secret. I was just like, “Light me on fire, OK? I’m fine.”
SARAH LEMELMAN
For the first time on the show, Buffy is no longer alone in the fight, as she has been for the past 143 episodes. Buffy’s power is now a shared power, as there has been an awakening of girls across the globe. Even though there are causalities in the final fight, and not every Slayer survives, the First Evil is defeated, and Buffy once again rejects the fate that has been laid out before her, just as she had done when she was a young sixteen-year-old, destined to die at the hands of the Master. The show ends on a high note of female empowerment, as Buffy smiles, knowing she has truly defeated destiny and created a feminist revolution. Women and girls alike are free to orchestrate their own future and should not be afraid to do so. Thanks to Buffy Summers, viewers across the world have been graced with one of the greatest activists of girl power, serving as a role model, icon, and source of inspiration for young women.
As Buffy proves time and time again, patriarchy is ever present, but it cannot prevail. The seven seasons of the show depict a world in which institutional, familial, and individual-level patriarchy oppresses and disadvantages women, but it is something that can always be overcome. The fight to end this domination is no easy feat, as there is always a struggle to gain equality and independence. Buffy shows a realistic version of an ideal world: men may try to control women, but their efforts can and will be beaten.
JAMES MARSTERS
I’m a subversive artist by nature. When I produced theater, we did a lot of subversion, which is not about trying to make the audience uncomfortable or angry, but when it happens you know it’s working. One of the things I loved about Buffy is that we were divesting the audience of the idea that women can’t defend themselves. Right up in their face about it. I never thought that I could be part of a subversive art when I came down to Los Angeles, because I didn’t know about Joss. I didn’t know that Joss Whedon existed yet.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
When Buffy was shooting its last episode and I was long since dead, they called me up and said, “Armin, we’d love for you to come down to the set and shoot a picture with the cast and crew on our last day of shooting.” Because I’d always watched the show before I was on it, while I was on it, after I was off of it, I knew that there were hundreds of reoccurring characters. So I assumed it was going to be a large party, a ton of people.
I got to the set, only to see three other people besides myself invited to take the picture. I was really surprised by that. We took the picture, I caught up with some old friends I hadn’t seen in a long time, and when the picture was done and we all said good-bye, I was talking to Joss Whedon. As I was walking back to my car, I posed to him the question “Why were there only four of us?” And he very nicely said, “Armin, the four of you are the only four people that all of us liked.” So, my weaselly character on Buffy, which was my on-camera persona, was not my persona off camera. We got along really very well.
ELIZA DUSHKU
(actress, Faith)
Faith is my girl. She’s always been good to me, and she’s been a good friend to me. I love that character, this show, the places we’ve gone, and all the different emotions we’ve experimented with. I feel like she’s a part of me. It was good to be back on Buffy. Sarah is such a doll. We were like reunited high school friends.
SARAH LEMELMAN
As Willow says in her final line of the show, the future of American television was truly changed after the production’s completion. Not only did shows about teenage feminists begin to sprout but also television programs began to utilize concepts like the normalization of lesbian relationships, long story arcs, and new slang that Buffy the Vampire Slayer both laid the foundation for and helped popularize.
Buffy empowers females on the show, as well as its viewers, who are taught to embrace girl power. By giving its viewers a new female model to look up to in a time when girls were not always taken seriously, Buffy stepped into the limelight and defied traditional depictions of women on television. Vampires, and even the experiences of high school students, may not seem like “serious” topics, but the show demonstrates that a fantasy/action/drama has the ability to both teach a lesson about feminism and be wildly popular and influential, to this very day.
ELIZA DUSHKU
I’ve gotten letters from girls who have said, “I was being abused for six years. Your character came on, and I realized that if Faith could stand up to these guys trying to bring her down, so could I.” That stuff is really intense—cool success stories from people who just watch this character.
SARAH LEMELMAN
What began as a passing thought of an amateur writer became a hugely successful reality and overturned the doubts of critics that young women could hold a commanding presence on screen. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is truly a feminist and popular culture landmark.
FELICIA DAY
Joss gave me some amazing, really great lines, action, and scenes in the finale. In the comics canon, I’m the head of the New York Slayers. We worked together on several things since then, and I will always attribute it to my smart mouth. He invited everyone to the Mutant Enemy strike day during the Writers Guild strike. When I was walking around, I was like, “Hey, did you see my Web series?” In 2007 it wasn’t as annoying, because they didn’t really exist. It was before that. Old-school. He told me, “Yeah, I’m thinking about doing a musical myself for the Internet.” And I’m like, “That’s amazing!” And then two months later I got an email about Dr. Horrible. Then I got to do Dollhouse as well with him. I don’t think there’s another person whose work resonates with me soul-wise in a way, and I’m just really lucky I got to work on so many different things with him.
DAN VEBBER
(co–executive producer, Futurama)
Buffy gave Warner Bros. a network. It certainly gave some actors a career. Now you don’t even think about it anymore when you have a strong female protagonist, but back then it was the only game in town. It’s the type of thing where some pop culture television show or movie will create an idea that then becomes so cliché over the years that when you watch the original thing you think, “Oh, that’s so cliché.” But you have to remember, no, this thing created the cliché. That’s how I feel now watching those Buffy episodes. They feel really charming and retro and ’90s to me—and a little simple in some ways. When you think of it in context, it was a big deal. They were the first one to try it. I’m really happy that I got to be a part of that.
SARAH LEMELMAN
It is perhaps fitting that Xander (a male) believes the Scooby Gang and the Potentials have saved the world, while Willow (a female) corrects him and asserts that the group has changed the world. They may have defeated the First and destroyed Sunnydale’s Hellmouth, but the most important feat the group accomplished was the sharing of Buffy’s power to all Potential Slayers throughout the world. After seven seasons and 144 episodes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer concludes with its most potent message: girls do not need to be afraid but, instead, should be confident in who they are and always stand up for themselves.
JOSS WHEDON
The fact of the matter is that I’ve always identified with female heroes and had trouble finding them. It was great the first time I was watching and realized, “Buffy, she’s my hero.” That’s how I want the show to be remembered. As for some of her sillier outfits and cheesier effects …
KELLY A. MANNERS
(producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
When a crew latches on to a show that’s successful, they never want to move on. Because you’re not out looking for your next show and shooting thirteen episodes and getting canceled and it’s a revolving door. When you create those relationships with the crew, it becomes a great big family.
My dad did Route 66 and my brother, sister, and I traveled with him the first season. By the second season it was twenty-seven kids from the crew traveling from state to state with that show. And then with Nora, who was Shirley Temple’s tutor, we’d go to school three hours a day in bars and that was another real family. Same thing with Buffy and when I did Dukes of Hazzard. That was a family. Now the new thing is if you get a second season, you’re lucky, it seems. With the new cable season, it’s ten and out. It’s not the same. The business has changed.
SETH GREEN
(actor, Oz)
I actually miss arriving at my trailer every morning to find that David Boreanaz had already pooped in it, without fail. It was always that funny thing where I would arrive, and he would be coming out of my door and be like, “Left something for you, buddy!”
JOSS WHEDON
I do have visions of spinning the show off into a Star Trek-kian film franchise, but I also have visions of invading Poland, so we’ll see which one I’ll do. I want the show to be remembered as a consistently intelligent, funny, emotionally involving entertainment that subtly changed the entire world—or a small portion of pop culture. Enlightenment is the slowest process this side of evolution. Three steps forward, nine steps back. It’s very hard to have come up in the ’70s, to be raised by a feminist and then live through the Reagan era, and now God help us.
Feminism, which hopefully will become an obsolete term by the time I’m dead, is a really important thing. Not just feminism, but antimisogyny. Changing the way that people think about women and the way they think about themselves is what I want to do with my life. There are other things I have to say, there are other things I want to do and stories I want to tell, but that’s the most important thing to me. If Buffy made the slightest notch in any of pop culture in that direction, well that’s pretty damn good.