When I was in middle school, the WB was one of those channels that just starting to get some traction. It had a lot of shows that people in my age group really liked plus the future was bright with a lot of great shows to look forward to down the road. A lot of my friends liked 7th Heaven and I personally liked Dawson’s Creek for some strange reason. My group of friends really liked Smallville while my sister was a huge fan of Felicity and the original run of Roswell. All the while, arguably the WB’s best show of the time was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
It’s easy to see why Buffy the Vampire Slayer was such a popular show. It’s about a group of high school students fighting vampires. Led by Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the group fights off creatures that threaten their town. Others who help funny include Xander (Nicholas Brendon), Willow (Alyson Hannigan), and Giles (Anthony Head). Together with the help of other friends along the way, they save the world on countless occasions.
My first experience with Buffy the Vampire Slayer was in the 1992 movie. Kristy Swanson played the titular character with Donald Sutherland playing Merrick, the man who tells Buffy she is part of a line of chosen heroes called The Slayer. Merrick trains her to be The Slayer, while Buffy struggles to balance her popular high school life. Make no mistake, the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a cult classic but it’s also ridiculously fun. It was a modest hit but it also has lived in the home market. Whenever my family and I went to Blockbuster Video to rent a movie, this was always sold out. The characters and action were great for the time while sporting a script by a relative newcomer to the film industry Joss Whedon.
In doing some research about the show, Whedon was approached for the show, and the way he pitched it was he wanted to make a show that portrayed high school as the hellscape it actually is. Whedon didn’t love what happened with the movie as his script had promise, but the movie was more of a comedy. It didn’t translate to his original vision, which disappointed him. So when he was asked about turning Buffy the Vampire Slayer into a show, he wanted to make sure to do it his way. A lot of the creatures were metaphors for the issues people face in high school and more importantly, he wanted to focus on how Buffy represents a new crowd of female protagonists.
The late 1990s and early 2000s ushered in a new era of the iconic strong female character on television. Shows like Xena: Warrior Princess, La Femme Nikita, and Dark Angel showed the power of a female lead show that was strong enough to take out the bad guys almost singlehandedly. What set Buffy apart is that she is a teenage girl as opposed to a warrior or a superspy or a genetically engineered soldier. Gellar reached iconic status as Buffy and solidified her status as one of the most talented young actresses of the era. Buffy became synonymous with being a certified badass.
It’s hard to proceed forward with a piece about Buffy the Vampire Slayer without addressing the elephant in the room regarding Whedon. It’s very easy to chalk up the controversy he’s currently enveloped himself in as this was a sign of the times when abusive producers in Hollywood were running amok largely unchecked. However, as much as Whedon deserves credit for his accomplishments with the show, he also deserves the criticism that is coming his way from past cast members like Charisma Carpenter, Ashley Bensen, and Michelle Trachtenberg. Whedon was in charge of a toxic workplace where he was verbally abusive to certain people on set. Accusations like this need to be taken seriously for change to happen, even if it is 25 or so years after the fact. Other properties that Whedon went on to produce also had similar experiences. It seems counterintuitive that Whedon, who prided himself on writing content about feminism, was anything but in real life. As much as Whedon has created Buffy the Vampire Slayer and he ultimately is responsible for what the series ultimately became, we have to acknowledge that his behavior is now an unfortunate part of the story. With that being said, we also shouldn’t discount the hard work of countless others individuals who made the show a success.
Two characters who are also largely responsible for making the series what it is today are Angel (David Boreanaz) and Spike (James Marsters). This was the love triangle that propelled the series with the question of which was right for Buffy. It’s something that follows a lot of vampire shows even to this day from True Blood to Vampire Diaries to Twilight. Setting aside some of the ickiness of both prospective relationships (both men are scamming on a high school girl), it became a question that was a hot topic among fans. If anything it was part of the conversation surrounding the show. In addition, Angel was an iconic enough character to warrant his own spin-off series.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a show that was ahead of its time. It helped shed light on the notion that high school sucks while also propping up strong female characters when it was still cutting edge to do so. It was progressive in the way that it portrayed a lesbian relationship, showing both the first lesbian kiss and the first lesbian sex scene on network TV. Buffy the Vampire Slayer also has a rabid fanbase and tons of expansions into other mediums like comics, novels, and video games. It made rockstars out of the cast while also (perhaps not for the best) propping up Whedon as someone to watch within Hollywood circles. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the most iconic shows of the 1990s while helping to define a generation of shows moving forward that are trying to copy the magic it brought to the screen.
When I decided that Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be what I wrote about for Retrospecticus for March, I decided to ask someone who knows way more about the show than I do. I’m a fan but I also haven’t watched every episode yet. I immediately thought of my friend Iris, who has been a fan of the show for as long as I can remember knowing her. Iris was a member of the church I grew up in and was semi-involved with my high school youth group. She took a bunch of us to a theater in downtown Chicago called the Musicbox Theater to play midnight movies of some of the most fun movies you can imagine. We saw Army of Darkness, Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, and Brazil, among numerous others. I owe my love of movies to a lot of people, and Iris is one of those people who showed me to care about more than the surface level of what’s on the screen. I’ve known Iris for well over half of my life and she is someone that I have the utmost love and respect for. So special shoutout to Iris, who helped with putting together some of her thoughts and best moments from the series.
I asked Iris to put together some of her best moments from the show. We talked beforehand about if she had top episodes or top moments she wanted to talk about and we decided that moments would be best. Here’s what she had to say about the process of coming up with her best moments:
“A few things that I realized as I looked back on the series, and made this list:
- All but three of these moments come from episodes written and directed by Joss Whedon. A lot’s been said about his behavior onset, and it seems like he was pretty toxic. But the story and characters were his creation, and it’s safe to say that he understood their voices better than anyone else.
- Six of these moments come from season finales. Perhaps this is unsurprising in a series that told an episodic story – both within each season and across all seven seasons. And the finale episodes were generally payoffs that did not disappoint.
- There are a few moments from episodes that would probably make any “best of” list for this show. I’m thinking of “Hush”, “The Body”, and “Once More With Feeling”, in addition to the aforementioned season finales. It’s a testament to those episodes that there are so many resonant moments that different viewers could easily walk away with very different personal favorites.
We talked about some of the problematic aspects of the series. It’s not perfect by any means, and I think that it benefited from being a weekly series ahead of DVD releases, and well before streaming. The writers got the ebbs and flows of episodic television, and so often left viewers desperately waiting for more the next week.”
In honor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiering 26 years ago this year, here are Iris’ 12 best moments of the series. They are listed in chronological episode order. These are her words and list! Spoilers ahead. :
1) Buffy kills the Master (Season 1, Episode 12)
There’s a lot of talk in the first season about a prophecy that the Master will kill the slayer. But Buffy is Buffy, so she faces off against the Master and he defeats her, feeds on her, and leaves her to die in a pool of shallow water. But Xander shows up and performs CPR, which brings her back even though she was momentarily dead. So, with the prophecy fulfilled, Buffy confronts the Master again and prevails. It set a template for the series – if a prophecy is introduced, NEVER take it at face value.
2) Buffy sends Angel to Hell (Season 2, Episode 22)
There are a lot of fans who will loudly proclaim that Season 2 is their favorite, and for many, it’s about the doomed romance between Buffy and Angel. After Angel experiences a moment of true bliss and turns back into Angelus, he becomes the season’s big bad. Buffy and Angelus fight while Willow is working on returning his soul to him. She succeeds, and he is Angel again, but it’s too late. He’s opened a portal to hell, and the only way to close it is with Angel’s blood. Buffy stabs Angel, sending him through the portal to hell, and saves the world. But it’s at a tremendous cost.
3) Buffy fights Faith (Eliza Dushku) (Season 3, Episode 21)
The interplay between Buffy and Faith is amazing throughout the series, and the fight scene that ends with Faith being stabbed and falling off of a roof is just terrific. It’s been a long time coming, and the fight choreography, the dialogue, and the acting do not disappoint.
4) Giles’ presentation about The Gentlemen (Season 4, Episode 10)
In the much-heralded silent episode, everyone in Sunnydale is rendered unable to speak by a spell, and the uber-creepy Gentlemen come gliding into town. They’re utterly nightmarish. The Scooby gang gathers together and Giles explains what they’re up against – using an overhead projector. It’s one of the best bits of exposition I’ve ever seen, and certainly the funniest.
5) Tara is family (Season 5, Episode 6)
Tara’s family shows up in Sunnydale to take her home, talking about a family trait that causes all women in the family to become demons when they reach adulthood. It turns out that this is a lie that has been perpetuated over the years to control women in Tara’s family, and Spike can provide that Tara is, in fact, fully human. The episode is full of a lot of queer-coded languages, and it ends with Tara’s chosen family standing up for her, and sending away the toxic family she was born into.
6) Spike’s backstory (Season 5, Episode 7)
This one isn’t just a moment. This whole episode is just amazing. Buffy gets Spike to tell her how he killed two slayers, and we see the stories he tells in flashback, along with a flashback to the night that he was turned into a vampire. It’s tragic, and when Buffy says “You’re beneath me,” we feel Spike’s heartbreak. As an aside, there is also a perfect callback to this episode in the Angel series finale, “Not Fade Away”.
7) Willow and Tara’s first kiss (Season 5, Episode 16)
Well, you asked a lesbian for a list of favorite Buffy moments. There’s NO WAY this one wasn’t going to make the list. It’s quick and sweet, and also a lovely moment of support. And it feels like a true, natural moment between two women who love each other. Numerous sources report that Joss Whedon threatened to quit the show if the network forced him to remove the scene. More notable, however, was the fact that there was no fanfare, and no sense of the relationship being the topic of a “very special episode”. It was true to the characters, and it makes for one of my favorite moments across the series’ 145 episodes.
8) The death of Joyce Summers (Kristine Sutherland) (Season 5, Episode 16)
I’m not saying anything new by declaring “The Body” to be one of the series’ very best episodes. In a series where death (and dusting) is ever-present, this one hit hard, and we see the impact on the characters. Directorial decisions, like the one to not include a musical score in the episode, add to a sense of disorientation. And in what was originally planned as the series’ final season, it clearly established that anyone could die as we headed into the last six episodes of the season.
9) Buffy saves the world…a lot (Season 5, Episode 22)
By now, you may have surmised that I have a soft spot for Season 5. This season finale provides brilliant payoffs for setups from earlier episodes that looked like throwaway bits, and an emotional gut punch at the end, when Buffy sacrifices herself to close a portal to a demon dimension. This came at the height of my Buffy fandom, where each week was appointment television, and I had all sorts of fan theories about how it would end. (All of these were just completely wrong.) By the time it aired, we knew that the series would be continuing on a new network. But still…
10) Heaven…I think I was in Heaven (Season 6, Episode 7)
The musical episode, “Once More With Feeling” has its detractors and its die-hard fans. For me, it was a mixed bag with some big, amazing moments. Some members of the cast are more musically adept than others, to be sure, but there’s a moment toward the end of the episode where Buffy is singing and the next line “Heaven…I think I was in Heaven” breaks the melody. The word “heaven” is out of tune with the rest of the music, and it adds this heartbreaking resonance to Buffy’s confession to the rest of the group – the spell that they performed to bring her back from the dead did not save her from torture in a demon realm. They unwittingly tore her out of a blissful afterlife.
11) Xander saves the world (Season 6, Episode 22)
The season six finale has Willow grieving Tara’s (Amber Benson) death, relapsing into her addiction to dark magic, leaving death in her wake and ready to end the world. Willow has defeated Giles and Buffy, and it’s Xander who appears and tells her that he loves her, that if she needs to destroy the world, she needs to destroy him too, and that he wants to be there with her at the end. This brings her back to herself, and she collapses in tears. It doesn’t feel triumphant, but it feels right for these characters, their brokenness, and their love for each other.
12) Spike’s sacrifice to close the Hellmouth (Season 7, Episode 22)
In the great Spike vs. Angel debate, I’m unabashedly Team Spike. I love the way that the series ends, and I love that he dies a hero’s death to save Buffy and everyone else. There’s a lot to love in this final episode, but the moment when Buffy finally tells Spike that she loves him, after all, they’ve been through together, gets to me every time.
Honorable Mention – Buffy and Angel share a perfect day (Angel, Season 1, Episode 8)
During Angel’s first two seasons (which corresponded with BtVS seasons 4 and 5), the network would give us crossover nights during sweeps months. Buffy aired at 7:00 PM, and Angel followed. “I Will Remember You” was the second part of a crossover night, where Angel was temporarily turned human. Angel and Buffy share a perfect 24 hours, and it’s all that they never thought possible. But Angel quickly realizes that being human means he cannot be the champion and defender that Los Angeles needs him to be. He asks to be restored as a vampire, and he is granted this. But the perfect day will be erased, leaving no memories for Buffy or anyone else – except for Angel. It’s a really effective episode and still makes me cry a bit. (And yes, I know it’s a bit of a cheat. But it’s part of the Buffyverse, so I’m claiming it in my Top 13.)
What are some of your favorite moments from Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Let me know in the comments below or message me on Twitter (hilty_mike) or Instagram. Shout out again to Iris for helping me with this list!
