By Annabelle Newton
Cult series Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s upcoming revival might be high-reward and even higher stakes (pun intended) for long-time fans. The original has been praised as a pioneer of feminist and LGBTQ+ representation on primetime TV, but recent controversies and a charged political climate threaten to muddy its legacy and the upcoming revamp.
Buffy has joined a long line of 90s and early 2000s TV shows being rebooted, spun off or adapted. Whilst TV remakes, reboots and revivals have existed in some capacity since the 1950s, over the past five years we’ve seen more than a few come and go from our screens. By now, many of us are familiar with the frustration around this phenomenon. But there are reasons why studios continue to revive old properties, and why fans continue to show up.
As details surrounding the Buffy reboot are revealed, fans are beginning to debate what they want and don’t want in dedicated Reddit threads and article comment sections. But first, let’s take a closer look at why a return to Sunnydale is so important to fans.
The original Buffy is cherished by an inclusive online community
The revival of beloved old properties are exciting opportunities to return to familiar worlds and learn what’s become of our favourite characters over the past decades. Many fans of Buffy, myself included, have repeatedly watched the show all the way through, so fresh stories about the Scooby Gang will breathe new life into the fandom. The world and its characters are inherently nostalgic, even for fans who didn’t watch the show when it first aired. Gen Zs often experience a kind of ‘vicarious nostalgia’, meaning we develop strong attachments for times we didn’t live through because we’ve seen so much of them in TV, movies and online.
Those who discovered the Buffyverse in the age of social media have also found themselves part of a pre-established online community with a strong appreciation for the same characters and stories. For queer fans growing up without an in-person community, such as myself, there was a powerful sense of belonging within this online community of LGBTQ+ fans who likewise saw themselves in characters like Willow Rosenberg. For a long time, Buffy was one of few teen-centred shows which featured queer, female characters and as such was one of the few fandoms in which this community could flourish.
Fans having such a strong emotional attachment to the original can work in a revival’s favour, but it also means there’s an unavoidable comparison point between the old and the new. In this case especially, the original was original—Buffy Summers was the first teen-girl hero to lead her own show, Willow paved the way for queer representation on primetime TV, and the show tackled complex issues around growing up with a unique sense of humour and flair. Like many fans, I have high hopes that the revival will expand on the work done by the original in representing women and queer people as powerful, witty and complex individuals.
But, Buffy also has a ‘Hellmouth’ of actor controversies
A potential pitfall of reviving old TV shows isn’t just whether the original cast and crew will want to return, but whether they’ll be welcomed back by fans and the studio alike. This is a particularly difficult question to answer for a show like Buffy, with more than one controversial name attached to the original’s production. While it’s been confirmed that creator Joss Whedon will have no involvement in the reboot, the conversation has yet to broach the topic of Nicholas Brendon, who has been in trouble with the law more than once since the show’s finale. Both Brendon’s and Whedon’s allegations involve poor behaviour towards women, endangering the original show’s feminist message and casting a shadow over the revival.
An actor’s effect on their properties has become increasingly apparent in today’s hyper-connected world. News about actors’ behaviours on and off set is widely reported on and accessible to fans through social media, so it’s easy for their actions to become the central conversation around the projects they’re attached to. We’ve seen this recently in reporting surrounding the controversial movie It Ends With Us and how public opinion about the cast has influenced the movie’s reception and message.
Actors and the characters they portray become even harder to separate when they’re involved in longstanding TV shows, especially when their target audience is young and impressionable. Studies show that children and adolescents are prone to developing parasocial relationships with both fictional and real people. As a result, young people form passionate fanbases around actors, supporting whatever they create.
Of course, this can be a double-edged sword. Many Buffy cast members, like Brendon, are still best remembered for their characters on the show, making it hard for audiences to reconcile the beloved character with the problematic behaviour of the actor. Online, Buffy fans discuss the behaviour of actors they’ve previously idolised, describing it as heartbreaking and disappointing.
Fans often assume the progressive attitude of the show is shared by its actors, and so experience something akin to cognitive dissonance when they discover that the actors (and, in this case, the creator) aren’t who they expected them to be. The question of Xander’s (played by Brendon) inclusion in the revival is further complicated by the theory that he is Joss Whedon’s self-insert in the Buffy universe. Recently, fans have begun to debate the ethics of including Xander in the reboot at all, and if so, how it should be approached. Whether the revival can be considered feminist media with Brendon, or even a recast Xander, involved is an important one that’ll need to be properly addressed by the team, whichever side they land on, in order for the show to meet expectations.
The original Buffy was a pioneer of queer representation—what about the revival?
Part of Buffy’s legacy is its groundbreaking portrayal of queer love, as it featured the first long-term lesbian couple on primetime TV. Even in 2012, when I first watched the show, there wasn’t much positive queer representation in shows designed for teens. Seeing ourselves represented on screen (possibly for the first time) is incredibly powerful, and is undoubtedly part of the strong attachment many fans formed with these characters. Representation is important for young people, and has been shown to have positive psychological effects on children and teens. This adds another dimension to the Buffy revival conversation. Since lesbian witch Willow was a lead character in the original (though Alyson Hannigan’s involvement is yet to be confirmed), fans are reasonable to assume the reboot will continue to have queer representation as part of its DNA. This is certainly a key expectation of mine, and I doubt I’m alone in that.
Though we’ve seen many more shows representing queer characters since 2003, there’s certainly room for more. There has been a backslide in representation over the past couple of years, caused in part by the cancellation of many queer-centric TV shows such as The L Word: Generation Q—a sequel series to The L Word (2004). This is continuing to happen as the political pendulum swings further right—potentially as a reaction to the perception that TV has become too ‘woke’. Even amongst Buffy fans, arguments can be seen about how ‘woke’ the reboot should be. While few, if any, fans argue that the original wasn’t progressive for its time, many believe that it was artful in the way it presented its politics. As one fan explains in the comment section of a TVLine article, Buffy’s inclusion of diverse characters never ‘felt forced’, unlike newer shows which are sometimes perceived as lecturing their audiences.
It’s clearly important to Buffy fans that the show continues to be inclusive, though many seem concerned that it’ll fall into the trap of creating one-dimensional characters in order to ensure the representation is positive.
The challenge of doing it ‘right’ when the world is leaning right
Online responses to the revival announcement have been largely positive, especially following Sarah Michelle Gellar’s assurances via Instagram that the ‘legendary’ women-led team assembled for the show is committed to doing it ‘right’. Notably, Gellar was once opposed to a revival, reconsidering only after seeing the success of shows such as Dexter: Original Sin, proving to her that ‘there are ways to do it’. However, as stated, Buffy has a strong association with feminist and queer stories, and the political landscape has changed greatly since the airing of the original show.
We’re now experiencing what is certainly the hardest swing right in my lifetime. In the US (where the show is filmed and set), Roe v Wade has been overturned, rights for trans people have been stripped, and there’s a very real fear that steps made in the last 20 years will be walked back. The fear that the revival will be overly righteous is certainly valid, but in this climate I wonder if we should be re-evaluating what appealing to the masses might actually look like. Doing it ‘right’ is extremely hard when the show means so much to so many—and you can’t please everyone.
It’s certainly promising that the team behind the revival are fans themselves, and talented ones at that. Oscar-winning director Chloé Zhao, screenwriting duo Lilla and Nora Zuckerman, and executive producer Dolly Parton are all reportedly on board. This team gives me hope that the Buffy revival will be the feminist, queer, escapist fantasy many of us so desperately need right now. And if not, I’ll simply continue to rewatch the original over and over (and over and over).
Annabelle is a writer, marketing professional, Master of Arts student, and (most importantly) pop-culture enthusiast.
Cover photo by Vikram Nair on Unsplash. Free to use under the Unsplash License
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