Buffy the Vampire Slayer turned 20 this month, and that happened to coincide with my binging of the series the last few weeks.
Buffy was a staple of my teens, even though I wasn’t quite a teen yet when it aired, but thanks to reruns I was able to catch enough glimpses of vampire dusting and demon beheadings to become a dedicated fan. And now that I’ve spent a good amount of time watching nearly all the episodes again, I can confidently say: Buffy still holds up. Thanks to the comforts of the modern age, you’re not beholden to late night reruns like I was, so now’s the best time to give Buffy a gander.
Even if you’ve never seen the show, you at least know that Buffy is about a woman, and thanks to the name, you know she kicks a lot of vampire rear-ends. But it’s not just that Buffy happens to be a girl and strong to boot, it’s that she’s saving the world every day, all while living a normal life. Sure, Buffy is hunting down the “King of Vampires,” but she still has tests to study for and is dealing with a mother who doesn’t quite understand her.
One question that I often asked myself while watching the show is why would people still live in the city of Sunnydale, where the show primarily takes place as it’s on top of a hell mouth—the entrance to hell. The residents may not know that important fact when moving there, but considering the high mortality rate, especially at Sunnydale High (they have an obituary section in their school newspaper that’s never short of names), you’d think eventually everyone would get the message there’s something amiss. But believably not everyone would have the means to just up and leave the only city they’ve ever lived in, and that actually seemed to embolden the show’s cast to want to fight for what’s theirs.
It’s not just that Buffy happens to be a girl and strong to boot, it’s that she’s saving the world every day, all while living a normal life.
Buffy’s best friends, Willow and Xander, are initially frightened by Buffy’s world, “What do you mean vampires are real?” But despite being terrified, and never really letting go of that fear, they stick around and even become part of Buffy’s ‘Scooby Gang.’ And by Season 3's finale, we see how far this mentality has spread: All the students decide to fight back, because this is their school, and demons don’t get to lay claim to it. That type of activism and togetherness, albeit vastly different from fighting giant snakes, is something I see in our world in big and small ways every day.
Speaking of the Scooby Gang, having it made up of normal people to counteract Buffy’s supernatural powers made the show that much stronger. Even though Willow eventually becomes a powerful witch, she started off as just a regular kid wanting to help her friend, and she did so by using her brain as her strength.
For a long time Xander didn’t directly contribute much, a point his girlfriends made sure to remind him about, but he was determined to go out every night on Buffy’s graveyard patrols. Even though he often accidentally stumbled onto his usefulness, it was his emotional support that kept the group motivated, so much so that as part of Season 4’s arc when the group bands together to help Buffy call upon the powers of the first slayer, he takes on the role of “the heart” in the spell.
When it comes to the most human element of the show, it all goes back to the show’s namesake. Buffy knew she was the chosen one, and when times got dire she took that responsibility seriously, even when her prophetical dreams revealed she was risking her life. But she wasn’t just a superhero on a mission every week; she would actually reject her calling—a lot.
She wasn’t just a superhero on a mission every week; she would actually reject her calling — a lot.
When she was in high school, she wanted to do high school things, she didn’t want to be trapped training all the time for the next apocalypse. There’s one episode where she couldn’t go to prom thanks to another new baddie, but she recognized how important prom is as a teenager’s right of passage, so she told everyone to go in her stead while she patrolled, “I'm gonna give you all a nice, fun, normal evening if I have to kill every single person on the face of the Earth to do it.” (This episode has a beautiful ending too).
The show is commended for introducing and handling feminism well, as everyone was treated as an equal on the show both on and off-screen. It also touched on a variety of other subject matters that were sometimes delicate, other times messy, but still respectable and mature: your first love and all that comes with expressing that love, convincing your parents to accept who you are as a young adult, being gay, dealing with heartache, physical and emotional abuse, going to college, cheating, death, etc.
No one was perfect on the show, and it embraced that. And even when the seasons start to waver, Season 6 particularly, they still explored strong themes that have really stuck with me all these years: the concept of the after-life, particularly in a world that deals with death every day.
All that is in tandem to all the good Buffy as a show has done for television. Flipping the trope of a blonde girl being the hero and not the victim in the horror genre? Check! Moreover, Buffy helped solidify the formula of season-long story arcs, where one villain interweaves in all the episodes even though they are minor enemies that are dealt with in a standalone episode or two.
Thanks to this structure you get some fascinating characters, like Glory, and even when they’re not so intriguing (Adam, sigh), the episode-only baddies help keep the show entertaining. You were rewarded as a fan for sticking around and catching the small bits of story revelations, but you could also tune out every now and then because conflicts resolved themselves in their respective episode. That’s exceptionally helpful if you decide to binge watch the show, in a time when there are too many things to watch and not enough time.
In between binging Buffy on the train and at home, I still found myself really investing in the Scooby Gang’s plights, even when I knew the general outcome. Considering that Buffy was often applauded for being ahead of its time, that time is now, thanks to places like Netflix and Hulu that have all the seasons available; plus the gang just got back together for a reunion. As a wise slayer once said, “Seize the moment, ‘cause tomorrow you might be dead.”
Esmeralda Portillo is IGN’s Executive Editor of Custom Content. Follow her on Twitter @EsmeraldaIP to tell her how awesome she is (or if you disagree... still tell her she's awesome).
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