WHY I LOVE: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

It was Willow. It was always Willow. I didn't know it at the time, but then there were a LOT of things I didn't know back then. Imagine growing up as a supposed heterosexual male and latching onto Xander Harris as your 'identity' character. I mean, it fit who I and society THOUGHT I was: nerdy, awkward, weird and off-putting around girls... Of course it was Xander, who else could it be?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer ran for seven seasons, debuting in the US on March 10th 1997, and in the UK on December 30th of the next year. It had originally been attempted as a movie in 1992, but let's just say I'll never cover that on a blog that focuses on things I love. The small screen was much more suited to the concept and it became a huge cult hit. For seven years, running from high school through to college and young adulthood, the titular Slayer fought against meany threats. These were obviously mainly vampires, but the show also found time to include hordes of other demons, the undead generally, a surprising number of robots, much teen angst, at least one God, the patriarchy as represented by British men in tweed jackets, Buffy's own boyfriend, queer subtext, and MULTIPLE giant snakes of varying CGI quality. At its heart it was a very simple show with two very simple twists on convention to make it stand out...

Simple Twist Number One: high school/college/becoming an adult is Hell... But, like, literally. In the very first episode, 'Welcome to the Hellmouth', Buffy finds out that her high school library is an honest-to-goodness portal to Hell itself. This device means that every week something ooky-spooky happens and it usually reflects and magnifies a real teen issue. That girl that no one ever pays attention to in class... What if she became so ignored that she actually turned invisible? Worried that your mom's new boyfriend seems a bit TOO perfect... Could he maybe be a robot serial killer played by US sit-com legend John Ritter? You and your partner just had sex for the first time and you're concerned it might change things... How about he literally turns evil and starts stalking and murdering people you know? It is such a simple and ingenious premise that once things leave the school after Buffy graduates it takes pretty much a whole season to recalibrate. The Big Bad as metaphor wasn't invented by Buffy, but it sure might have perfected it for a generation.

Simple Twist Number Two: the girl running away in the horror film turns around and fights back. Buffy creator Joss Whedon has often said that the initial idea for Buffy the show and character came from watching 'Scream Queens' of classic 70s and 80s horror films and wondering what would happen if the roles were reversed for 'the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror movie'. In fact, the very first sequence in the pilot episode starts with twist on this as couple of teenagers break into school to fool around and the seemingly terrified girl turns out to be a vampire who kills the guy. From the very start we're told not to underestimate petite blonde women, and we haven't even met Buffy yet! There has been and will continue to be debate about exactly how much of a feminist show Buffy really is. But I think the moment I, personally, became a lifelong feminist is when our heroine, in a standout Season Five episode, 'Checkpoint', states about a bunch of the aforementioned men in tweed suits: 'Power. I have it, they don't. This bothers them.' This is not long before she THROWS A SWORD at a guy who tries to interrupt her when she's talking. It's pretty great.

Buffy is not a perfect show, by any means. People much smarter than me have talked about its use of harmful tropes and stereotypes, its lack of diversity in the cast and writer's room, Joss Whedon himself being problematic... But it will always hold a place in my heart as one of my favourite TV shows of all time. I vividly remember watching the third episode 'Witch' for the first time at eleven years old. From then on, it was appointment television. I grew up with it. I used to call my friend Scott after an episode had finished to discuss it with him for hours. I cried when its finale was announced. It was the first show I ever bought a complete boxset of – even if it was a knock-off Korean boxset from somewhere online. It is the show I have rewatched in its entirety the most. I will seek out other shows that people describe as 'Buffy-esque'. I'm currently writing this while wearing a T-shirt bought from the store of a Buffy recap podcast – one of THREE shirts I have from that store. I like the series, is what I'm saying.

I love the characters the most. Running through them they almost seem cliché now: Buffy is the warrior leader who has to balance her duty with her civilian life; Xander is the insecure jokey teenage boy who learns to grow up and take real responsibility: Willow is the shy nerd who blossoms into a powerful young woman and finds her power, even if it nearly consumes her; Giles is the beleaguered mentor who becomes a father figure to the hero... But for me they were the first characters like this that I had seen. Their individual voices - so full of tics and neologisms that the phrase 'Buffy Speak' has its own TV Tropes page – are so crystal clear to me. Their relationships to each other have made me laugh, cry and yell in frustration dozens of times over, each time like it's the first time. The sense of family – in this case 'found family' – is so touching and sweet. The acting is uniformly excellent, with Sarah Michelle-Gellar in particular doing excellent work in the title role. They are all flawed and deeply human – even, or ESPECIALLY, the non-human characters! I love them all! Even Riley! But there's one who has the biggest place in my heart and is probably responsible for the undying love I'll probably always have for the show.

It's Willow. It's always been Willow.

I came to my identity as a queer woman relatively recently – within the past five years. But even before that had crystallised, there was Willow. Introduced as a shy computer nerd with an unrequited crush on fellow geek Xander, she arguably had the largest arc on a show that wasn't afraid to let its characters change and grow. In Season 4, after heartbreak with her high school boyfriend and some complicated werewolf shenanigans, she joins a Wicca group at college and meets a fellow witch named Tara. They slowly grow closer and by the end of the season are established as a couple. In 2020 this kind of development is thankfully not as big a deal, but in the year 2000 it was almost unheard of. To me, raised under Section 28 in Scotland – a government Act that basically prohibited schools from teaching or even really mentioning homosexuality – it was mindblowing. I had literally never knowingly seen a lesbian before. Already my favourite character, Willow's coming out opened up my eyes in ways that wouldn't become clear to me for another 15 years or so. Like I said, my point-of-view character was supposed to be Xander. He was nerdy and insecure and joked around and liked comic books – all stuff that still describes me, by the way – but I was always more drawn to Willow in ways I couldn't begin to fathom. In fact I was nearly always more drawn to female characters, even if I'd never admit it to my friends – one particularly confusing and needlessly embarrassing time where I offered to play the Pink Power Ranger comes to mind... As I grew up and consumed more and more TV, I noticed even more specifically how often queer women were my favourite characters and how I began to seek out queer stories more and more until everything finally clicked with me and the penny dropped. Representation and different stories of queer identity brought me to where I am today as a happily out gay trans woman – one who COINCIDENTALLY now has dyed red hair. And it all started with Willow.

So that's why I love it, all these years later. I'm not alone. Buffy actors are still favourites at conventions around the world. The spin-off Angel became a hit in its own right. Joss Whedon used the success of the show to springboard into directing the literal 8th highest-grossing film of ALL TIME. The podcast I mentioned earlier, Buffering the Vampire Slayer, is just one of dozens that still come out weekly – though its the only one with an original song written for each episode. There have been four 'Seasons' and change worth of successful comics continuing the story. Every year brings new shows that are either explicitly or implicitly inspired by it. There's reboot/sequel series planned for within the year! Buffy's finale aired in the US on May 20th 2003, but the series never really ended. If you have never seen it before, wow have you got a treat in store!

'You think you know. What you are... What's to come. You haven't even begun.'