“Every Slayer comes with an expiration mark on the package, but I want mine to be a long time from now. Like a Cheeto…”
After twenty years, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is as potent as ever and frequently found on most critics’ lists of the greatest television series of all time. Ubiquitous in its availability on a variety of streaming platforms today (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.), it’s hard to imagine a world in which Buffy will ever go away.
For a generation of young girls, Buffy Summers has been a role model, and the show’s metaphors and allegories of growing up remain timeless. It’s a series that has not only inspired many others and changed the face of television but also encouraged strong roles for women in various mediums.
In addition, a generation of top show runners were mentored through the unofficial graduate program that was Mutant Enemy, ranging from 24’s David Fury to American Horror Story’s Tim Minear to Spartacus’s Steven S. DeKnight to UnReal’s Marti Noxon, among others—like Oscar winner Drew Goddard.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer also launched Joss Whedon himself as a creative force. And Whedon has only grown more successful in the intervening decades, having written and directed two of the highest-grossing movies of all time, The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron while continuing to relentlessly follow his eclectic passions, whether elevating a Nielsen-challenged TV series like Firefly into a major motion picture or adapting Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in his backyard as a movie on a shoestring budget with a variety of familiar faces from the Buffyverse.
However, no matter what Joss Whedon does in the future, it’s unlikely he—or the audience—will ever forget their first love: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And thankfully that moment of perfect happiness won’t turn them evil in the process, either.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
(director, Pacific Rim: Maelstrom)
Joss did something unique. You look at what he did when he started with Buffy. It was a different way of talking. It was a different way of the characters interacting and the way the story would turn, from emotional to funny to emotional. You see the effect it had. To start with, I think it really solidified the WB as its first legitimate hour-long hit and really propelled it into the public consciousness.
KRISTY SWANSON
(actress, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [1992])
I was house hunting, and I went over to Brentwood to look a place over. I walk in, and I look on the refrigerator, and there’s a photo of Joss Whedon and his then girlfriend. I’m going, “That’s weird!” Then I’m looking around the house, and I see some mail sitting out, and it says Joss Whedon on it. And then I see a Buffy the Vampire Slayer script, one of the TV-show scripts, resting on a table. I go, “Oh my God, this is Joss’s house!” Obviously, this was the house he was renting and moved from, or whatever, and here I was innocently house hunting in Joss’s house. It was very strange, a real trip—I just couldn’t believe it.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
Buffy also had the effect, the ripple effect, through the years since it was on; you can see the effect it had on the other shows, especially across the pond in England. I think Buffy had a profound effect on Doctor Who. You really saw that kind of Joss Whedon effect and that show continued on, a very strong influence. Torchwood, the same way. It’s that Joss Whedon touch. You also see it in the Marvel movies, that combination of wit and humor that’s not set-up punch lines. It’s coming from a very different place. I think it is just what he created and how he created it, from an idea that, when you first hear it, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” sounds ridiculous. He almost uses that to subversively slip in the meat and the emotion.
It just really takes you by surprise. I remember even before I was on the show, episodes of Buffy, you’d be sitting there at the end of an episode crying your eyes out, which was very unexpected. When Buffy finally gets Angel back and gets his soul back in and has to kill him. It’s like, “Oh shit, no!”
DAVID FURY
(executive producer, The Tick)
It’s definitely a couple of the most imaginative shows that have ever been on television. It was easier to do Buffy than Angel, but we tried to do it on both, which was telling story through allegory and metaphor. A lot of people don’t appreciate that or think it’s very obvious to do that. But I have to tell you, when you don’t do it, the stories don’t hold up. They don’t last in your brains. You can look at all the external stuff and remember, but people still come up to me today and say how much those shows meant to them and how much they inspired them to become writers or actors. Just the idea that the show tapped into something special. There [were] a lot of shows that tried to emulate it, but they couldn’t quite capture that magic.
Angel was a more difficult show to grab, but we tried to grab meaning in the episodes about the human condition. How to be good in a world that’s not so good. All those things we tried to work into [the show]. I think that’s a huge part of what those shows were, and it’s something that I don’t see in other places. When we talk about them when I’m on other shows, and I talk about those things, people turn their nose up at it. They think it’s like, “Oh, that again.” But I point out that when it doesn’t have that, you’re just telling plots. You’re not telling stories, and there is a big difference. A plot is stuff people do, and a story is what it means and the thing you carry with you and the thing you can relay to somebody. And even as you’re telling me how it felt when you watched Fred die, it’s hard to manage that kind of emotional connection to a show. I don’t feel that emotional connection to other shows often, only the best ones.
SARAH LEMELMAN
(author, “It’s About Power”: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Stab at Establishing the Strength of Girls on American Television)
I was pretty young when I started watching Buffy. I have an older sister, six years older, to be exact, so when the show came out, she was probably around thirteen, which was the audience that the WB was shooting for. I really looked up to my sister then, and I still look up to her now, so I would always watch the show with her, despite my mom’s urging for me to get to bed. Some of the jokes may have been lost on me as a kid, but I appreciated it on a surface level back then—it was a fun drama/fantasy/supernatural show. Plus, I think I was always a feminist. I liked action movies, but I liked them even more when they had a female protagonist. Lara Croft was one of my heroes as a kid. Buffy also became one of them. And now, twenty years later, she’s still one of my heroes, but I appreciate the show on a much more sophisticated level.
The show is filled with all kinds of references to feminism that the casual viewer is likely to miss. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched the show, and each time I find something new to appreciate. Even the most overplayed episodes, like “Once More, with Feeling” or “Hush,” you can’t help but smile while watching it, even if you’ve seen it dozens of times.
JOSE MOLINA
(co–executive producer, Agent Carter)
I am really curious to see what Joss comes back as, because for the longest time he hasn’t really had the full freedom to do whatever the hell he wants. The closest thing he got to doing whatever the hell he wanted was Firefly. Buffy came out of a movie that he hated, because they ruined the script. And so Buffy the series came out of him rescuing that. It’s still very much his, but it was an existing title. Angel, of course, is a spin-off. Dollhouse came as an idea that he pitched over lunch to Eliza Dushku after he went to the bathroom and came up with this idea.
Firefly was the last thing that really came out of him fully formed that he loved. You can tell how much he loved it and loves it still. He’s still involved in the Firefly fandom. He still supports some of the Browncoat charities. And when he went to the feature side to do Avengers and Age of Ultron, again it wasn’t 100 percent his thing. These weren’t characters that he was creating. They were characters that he loved, that he grew up with, but he had a responsibility within the MCU, and, you know, he had a lot of mandates that he probably wouldn’t have chosen to impose on himself.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
I, like many, many other writers, was deeply influenced by Joss and honored to be a part of the Buffy-Angel base. I always consider them like my postgraduate work. It’s where I really learned so much, and I’m so thankful to have been a part of that and to have been able to work with so many amazing people and tell stories that were, especially for the time, batshit crazy. Now you’ve got more of a chance to tell crazy stories, but back then it was very unusual. It was just the high point of my life.
FELICIA DAY
(creator/actress, The Guild)
I don’t think there’s anything like it on TV now. There’s something about Buffy that appealed to people of all ages, and I think right now if you look at examples of characters’ ages, they’re very much narrowly focused on teens. There’s something universal about the point of view and the way that the themes were in the show that just appealed to people from all walks of life. That’s when you really affect people in a bigger way with your art. And I think that’s what Buffy did very singularly.
ARMIN SHIMERMAN
(actor, Principal Snyder)
Usually, I go to Star Trek conventions, so it’s primarily Star Trek people. But since Buffy, and that’s been many, many years now, there’s always a sizable number of people who come up to me at Star Trek conventions and say we loved you as Snyder. And my response always is, you weren’t supposed to love me as Snyder.
JAMES MARSTERS
(actor, Spike)
I kept saying to the cast, you know, I’m a Star Trek fan, guys. If you can provide the audience with a world that is delightful enough to go back to, even when you know what’s about to happen, after the plot stops surprising you and you still go back for it—if we can do that, we could be the new Star Trek. And some of that is performance, so we gotta bring it right now. And if we become the new Star Trek, I’m the new Spock. I claim Spock. Shotgun, right now. Spock-Spike, Spike-Spock, same—so close. Anyway, I get to be Spock.
MERCEDES MCNAB
(actress, Harmony Kendall)
Anything you do, you never expect as an artist that people are still talking about it twenty years later. It’s pretty outstanding. You can never appreciate how popular the show is even to this day and grasp there are millions of people out there that watch and love it and live and die on it until you go to the conventions.
DAVID FURY
That fan base is really extraordinary. People still approach me with their children who are fans. Or some eighteen-year-old will approach me and say my mom and I used to watch the show. And it’s great. Especially when it’s young women, because the show is so important to them. That was something I took for granted. I didn’t realize how empowering it was. As the father of a daughter, I’m grateful I got to be a part of something that moved so many young girls that they are special, that they are all Potential Slayers. The idea that they have the power within.
JOSS WHEDON
(creator/executive producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
I would never take all the credit for everything. There are definitely precursors. I don’t think Xena gets nearly enough props for being an extraordinarily daring show. They were crucified, for God’s sake. And credit for [having] an extraordinarily textured, believable, strong character. But it got heaped in genre world and didn’t break through the mainstream in quite the same way. Ultimately, they didn’t have our writing staff. I did. When I started, Buffy was kind of a radical concept, and I was like, “Really? Why?” The idea of a female carrying an action show—well it’s all across the boards now. It’s not even a question now. Even when we were pitching the animated show, they said, “Boys won’t accept it. You need a boy character who’s just as strong as Buffy who’s in it with her,” and we were like, “We really don’t think you’re getting the point.”
That is no longer an issue. Now there will be some backlash, and a lot of shows with empowered women in them suck, because most shows are bad. The cream rises and that’s the thing. But it’s in the mix now, and that’s a good thing.
SARAH LEMELMAN
It’s a shame that many people watch Buffy on a surface level nowadays and either view it as campy, especially since some of the special effects have not held up, and give up on it or they enjoy it but don’t see some of the subtler references to feminism and female empowerment in it, such as Whedon’s turning the girl-in-peril trope inside out.
ANTHONY C. FERRANTE
(director, Boo)
I think the interesting thing about TV vampire series and other creature series is how often they want to be Buffy but miss the point of what made Buffy work. Vampire Diaries, Moonlight, and The Originals are a bit too serious at times—more Twilight than Buffy. They’re romance novels, in essence, instead of allegorical tales. And while Vampire Diaries has done some amazing things, it’s really in a different space than Buffy. I think both Buffy and X-Files created templates. Show runners and networks want to recapture those shows; both of those were lightning-in-a-bottle-type things.
What you need to succeed is having someone like Joss Whedon or Chris Carter, with their own point of view, coming in to subvert the genre and make it their own. If you’re trying to think about, how can I create a show that’s the next Buffy or X-Files?, it’s almost guaranteed to fail or come up short.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
I had a meeting with an unnamed executive at Spelling years ago and they openly admitted Charmed was their stab at doing a Buffy show. I had to respect them, because what they did worked and outlived us all and their ratings were better than ours ever were. It’s what I call the Joan of Arcadia syndrome, which was not a bad show, but it definitely does not work outside the box. You usually don’t go to the superdark places on these shows.
JOSE MOLINA
I left Angel to go to Dark Angel. After Dark Angel, I came back to the Whedon camp for Firefly. It was funny because working on Dark Angel, me and a couple of the members of the staff were still watching Buffy and Angel religiously, and we would come into work and go, “Why can’t our show be as good as that one?” And so we would try to Whedonize our own show, but Dark Angel wasn’t really designed to be that. So our pleas fell on deaf ears until season two of Dark Angel. The studio and the network decided that they wanted us to become Buffy and they wanted us to have the monster of the week, so we had to retrofit or reverse engineer our franchise to be theirs. And that didn’t work, either. But it shows how seminal Buffy was becoming that other networks were starting to notice enough that they were like, “Yeah, we agree we want your show to be as good as their show.”
SARAH LEMELMAN
Buffy has helped the popularity of vampires erupt. I’m only vaguely familiar with The Vampire Diaries, but I remember when it first came out, because my sister was very excited about it and talked about it a lot. The next day in school, I walked into my first class, which was Spanish II, and literally all the girls were talking about The Vampire Diaries. I wished that I watched it the night before, but I had marching band practice, which precluded me from watching it, and I just never jumped on the bandwagon after that.
As far as I know, The Vampire Diaries heavily focuses on the relationship between the lead actress and the vampire, Stefan. Later, Stefan’s brother Damon enters, and we begin the love triangle. This reminds me of what happened with Buffy/Angel/Spike, but the viewers couldn’t see it as drawn out as in The Vampire Diaries, because David Boreanaz left Buffy for his spin-off, Angel. Though we did see Spike always comparing himself to Angel, like in the penultimate episode of Buffy, where Angel has a guest appearance. In the episode, Spike sees Buffy and Angel kiss and gets very jealous.
Also, in season five of Angel, the episode “The Girl in Question” centers on Spike and Angel traveling to Italy upon news that Buffy is in trouble (but turns out, she’s now dating their archnemesis, The Immortal, another vampire). Before the two heard this news, they started competing with each other over who Buffy really loves. The point of me saying all this is that Buffy sort of paved the way, showing that vampire shows can be successful, and other shows have used that and have then turned it into more of a love story as the main feature.
If we look at True Blood, there was so much going on there, but the thing that everyone remembers is, Who should Sookie choose? Bill, the “nice” vampire? Or Eric, the dangerous but alluring vampire? Teenage girls eat up love stories, especially when it involves vampires, because it’s fun to fantasize about the dark and mysterious figure swooping you off your feet. It’s why Twilight blew up, despite its source material being quite weak.
HARRY GROENER
(actor, Mayor Richard Wilkins)
I still meet fans who say, “I just started watching Buffy, and oh my God I just love it—it’s great!” And you get stopped every once in a while by a younger generation that is just beginning to discover it. And then some of the older people in my generation … kind of go, “Don’t tell anyone, but I love Buffy.” I enjoy all the fans talking about it, because I like talking about it, too. It was such a good time. It doesn’t always happen that way in television. If you’re doing an episodic, once in a while you get a part that’s really interesting and fun. Most of the time, they’re all primary colors. You’re going to be red today, you’re green, you’re purple—that’s all you are, and you can’t be anything else. Or you’re just information. If you’re in a cop show and you’re on the street and you’re working at the store and they come and they ask you, “You see this guy?” “Yeah, I saw him. He’s around the corner. He was wearing a purple shirt.” That’s it.
MERCEDES MCNAB
No matter how old you are, no matter where you live, where you’re from, there is something for everybody. People can still relate to it. There’s action; there’s comedy. I feel like anybody can relate to that show.
THOMAS P. VITALE
(executive vice president, programming and original movies, Syfy and Chiller)
I’m not saying anything new here when I say that Buffy is definitely a top-fifty show in the history of television … Not just “genre” television, but all television.
HOWARD GORDON
(executive producer, Homeland)
Buffy was a brief experience, but a formative one. I was extremely lucky, because I really do think that Joss and [Breaking Bad’s] Vince Gilligan are the people I’ve worked with who have a voice that is extraordinary and unlike anyone else’s. I’m glad I got a front-row seat to it.
FELICIA DAY
It has a legacy that hasn’t been equaled in female empowerment. There’s a lot of male superheroes on TV right now, not a lot of female ones. Back then, there were other shows like Birds of Prey. There were a couple of others, Charmed even, but Buffy really was the one that stayed apart from the rest, because there was something underneath it that really carries the legacy through. It’s kind of sad that we’re not there yet. We’ve kind of taken a left turn, but everything eventually comes back onto itself, and I’d love to see more shows with that irreverent tone with females in the lead, because the torch is a little bit out right now. But I think always Buffy will be the touchstone to that kind of genre.
JOSE MOLINA
So now that Joss Whedon has two of the top-grossing movies in the universe under his belt and a handful of hit shows, I’m really curious to see what he chooses to do next. If he’s going to stay on the feature side or if he is going to come back to TV. I am of two minds about what I think he will do. Part of me thinks that he’s going to want to do TV, because you get to write it, you get to shoot it, you get to air it, and it’s done and you get to do that thirteen to twenty-two times a season. A lot of us writers thrive in that environment, where you’re constantly up and at it. You don’t have the two-to-three-year turnaround, the slog of getting a movie from pitch to script to production to post to everything else. But I think he may get more freedom and less commitment if he stays in features, and he’s got a couple of kids who are both high school age now, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the feature world allows him a little bit more time to spend with people that he honestly hasn’t had a ton of time to see.
JOSS WHEDON
The thing I miss most is sitting in the writers’ room, because I’ve never been around a group like that and I don’t think I will be again. Just so funny, so dedicated.
DAVID GREENWALT
(executive producer, Grimm)
I’m very proud of the work. Joss used to tease me, like, “Well, doesn’t every pilot go to a show and stay on?” Until he got into Firefly and Dollhouse and stuff that didn’t go that long, but he used to give me a lot of shit. The success of Buffy—and by “the success” I mean the way it reached people of all ages and emotionally—was so satisfying because you worked so hard.
DAVID FURY
I was really proud to start my career in dramas working for these guys and these shows. We all kind of recognized what we were doing was amazing. What Joss was able to do and put together and the way he looked at things was just very different than what we get from other people. I know a lot of people and it’s not there. They’re talented in their own ways, but they don’t know that special something that seems to make a difference in a story that makes you go, “Oh, I get why we’re telling this story now.” We were doing that when we were doing twenty-two episodes a year minimally. Now, shows that have ten or twelve episodes. So when you think about quality control, I’m not saying all the episodes are good or great, but a lot of them are. The average is pretty damn high. In other words, the worst episodes are still worth seeing, and I couldn’t say that for a lot of shows.
ELIZABETH CRAFT
(co–executive producer, Dollhouse)
I was terrified of Joss. I could barely speak around him. I was just so intimidated. He’s so smart and he’s so charismatic. Thank God I had Sarah, because I could not speak for the first season, which seems funny now, but I was just in awe of him. You know he really is 24-7 the way he is on a panel you might see at Comic-Con. That is how he is all the time, basically. He’s that smart, that on. But he’s also very inclusive. He cares about everybody. One year Sarah [Fain] wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving, and he was like, “You’re coming to my house.”
SARAH FAIN
(co–executive producer, Dollhouse)
Later, I told him how terrified I was, and he thought it was totally absurd, of course. But it was a lovely Thanksgiving.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
Joss has always been incredibly good to me, incredibly kind and encouraging. The last time I saw Joss was at the premiere of Avengers: Age of Ultron. I remember telling him, “I don’t know how you even started to figure out some of that movie, of how to shoot it.” It was so complicated. I know there were a lot of people that didn’t like it and a lot of blowback about Black Widow. I saw the movie, and, in fact, I still watch the movie whenever it’s on. I enjoyed it. Call me crazy. I’ve got to say, when Vision hands Thor’s hammer, I got teared up. I admit it. It was everything I ever dreamed of.
ELIZABETH CRAFT
What was great about also working for Joss was [that] you really felt like you were a part of something that had quality and, I want to say, was a movement. The cult of Joss is a good cult to be in.
CAMDEN TOY
(actor, a Gentleman)
I’m still actually amazed and lucky I’ve been a part of this television history and that it endures. Most shows, once they’re done, even if they were popular at the conventions, they usually disappear. Remember Heroes? It was incredibly hot and those actors were incredibly in demand at conventions for autographs, but as soon as that show was canceled, you weren’t seeing any interest anymore. It was like the shows didn’t even exist anymore. At conventions today, there’ll be three generations of women standing in front of me, and they’ll say, “We love your show. You scared us so much.” And I’m like, “Oh, thank you.”
STEVE BIODROWSKI
(editor in chief, Cinefantastique magazine)
I do see influence on horror and fantasy shows featuring young, somewhat disaffected women who would like to return to their normal lives but cannot do so, because they are stuck in a situation that requires them to act responsibly. I’m thinking of Georgia Lass in Dead Like Me and Liv Moore in iZombie.
SARAH LEMELMAN
Buffy is hugely important for television. In my research, I found that Buffy was really one of the first shows that surrounded itself around a female cast and showed girls can be kick-ass just like boys. Sure, we have the ’70s burst of strong female characters, but Buffy is the modern version of the female heroine. In the shows that came out during the women’s movement in the ’60s and ’70s, we still saw females as being sexualized to hold their ground. Buffy satirizes this, and I think it is the greatest “F you” to the patriarchy that we’ve seen in a long time.
DAVID GREENWALT
There’s been books and there’s been classes on Buffy. The power of that really impressed me, and, again, it’s the power of genre and the power of myth. I meet people to this day that are, “Buffy was so important in my life.” People really connected to it. They were never given a cheap trick or a cheap product or a cheap manipulation. Not a bad day’s work.
SARAH LEMELMAN
Moreover, unlike Xena or Charlie’s Angels, Buffy is about powerful teenage girls, which is something that television really had never explored before. Since Buffy, we’ve seen a good deal of shows and movies that have powerful female leads with a supporting cast of women—Orphan Black, Orange is the New Black, and even Game of Thrones. Younger girls now are used to seeing strong female characters, like Katniss from The Hunger Games, and it’s normal to aspire to be more than just a “girl.” I don’t think this was the case back when Buffy first aired, since a powerful female was an anomaly. Buffy showed the world the true strength of girl power, and we’ve never looked back since then.
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
The last time I saw Joss was at a party for Drew Goddard, who had been nominated for the Oscar for The Martian. Every time I see Joss, I love talking to him. I love finding out what’s going on. He is just such a talent, and I think he has not just inspired and encouraged the immediate people around him but millions of people all over the world with what he’s done.
DAVID GREENWALT
Buffy certainly made a bigger splash, there’s no question about it. It was the first of that kind of thing to be seen. Now I see all of these vampire shows, and I’m like, didn’t we already do that?