Buffy Summers

Appearances

Film

The character of Buffy first appears in the 1992 film, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Kristy Swanson. The film, written by Joss Whedon, depicts Buffy as a shallow high school cheerleader who is informed by a man named Merrick (Donald Sutherland) that she has been chosen by fate to battle the undead. Buffy reluctantly undergoes training in her abilities by Merrick, and as her responsibility as the Slayer causes her to become alienated from her valley girl peers, she finds friendship and romance with fellow outcast Pike (Luke Perry). Merrick eventually comes to respect Buffy's rebellious nature, and she defeats vampire king Lothos (Rutger Hauer) by relying on her own contemporary style as opposed to traditional Slayer conventions. Although this film is not in continuity with the later television series, in 1999, author Christopher Golden adapted Joss Whedon's original script into a comic book entitled "The Origin", which Whedon later confirmed to be "pretty much" canonical.

On May 25, 2009, The Hollywood Reporter revealed Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment would be working with Fran Rubel Kuzui and Kazi Kuzui on a relaunch of the Buffy series for the big screen. The series would not be a sequel or prequel to the existing movie or television franchise and Joss Whedon will have no involvement in the project. None of the cast or original characters from the television series will be featured. Television series executive producer Marti Noxon later reflected that this story might have been produced by the studio to frighten Joss into taking reins of the project. Studio interest in the project has continued, however. A script was rejected in 2011.

Television

Buffy returned in Joss Whedon's television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this time played by Sarah Michelle Gellar for all of the show's 144 episodes. In season 1 (1997), after her parents' divorce and being expelled from Hemery High School after burning a gymnasium full of vampires, Buffy begins to accept the responsibilities and dangers of her calling as the Slayer after moving to the small California town of Sunnydale. She becomes best friends with Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) and Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), and meets her new Watcher, the school librarian, Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head). Together they form the Scooby Gang, and work together to battle various supernatural occurrences which plague Sunnydale High. In the season finale, Buffy battles the vampiric villain known as the Master (Mark Metcalf), and is drowned in the process. She is resuscitated by Xander and rises to defeat the vampire lord.

In the show's second season (1997–1998), Buffy continues to come to terms with her destiny, finds forbidden love with benevolent vampire Angel (David Boreanaz), and clashes with new villains Spike (James Marsters) and Drusilla (Juliet Landau). She also meets her Slayer replacement, Kendra (Bianca Lawson), who was called when Buffy was killed by the Master. Kendra is later killed by Drusilla, and the next replacement is seen in season 3. In the episode "Surprise", Buffy loses her virginity to Angel, an event which triggers the loss of his soul and unleashes his sadistic alter-ego, Angelus. Angelus proceeds to subject the characters to mental and physical torture for the remainder of the season. In the final episode of season 2, Buffy is forced to reveal her identity as the Slayer to her mother (Kristine Sutherland), and send the newly good Angel to hell to save the world. She then leaves Sunnydale for Los Angeles in the hopes of escaping her life as the Slayer.

Season 3 (1998–1999) sees Buffy reconnect to her calling, her friends, and her family after her departure, as well as make difficult life decisions regarding her relationship with the resurrected Angel. She must also deal with the introduction of rebellious new Slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku), who becomes increasingly destructive and disloyal over the course of the season. In the season finale, Buffy stabs Faith in an attempt to save Angel's life, and leads her classmates into a climactic battle against the demonic Mayor of Sunnydale (Harry Groener). Angel then leaves Sunnydale in hopes that Buffy can have a more normal life without him.

In the fourth season (1999–2000), Buffy balances her Slayer duties with her new life as a college student at UC Sunnydale. She experiences some difficulty adjusting to college life, and becomes increasingly disconnected from her friends, who all seem to be moving in different directions. Buffy eventually finds a new love interest in the form of Riley Finn (Marc Blucas), a soldier in the demon-hunting government task force known as The Initiative. She briefly joins forces with Riley's team, until they discover one of the Initiative's experiments, Adam (George Hertzberg), is creating an army of demon-human hybrids. Buffy unites with her friends to defeat Adam in a spell which invokes the power of the First Slayer. During Buffy season 4, Buffy also appears in the first season of spin-off series Angel (1999–2000), guest starring in the episodes "I Will Remember You" and "Sanctuary".

Literature

As the main character of the franchise, Buffy appears in almost all Buffy the Vampire Slayer literature. This includes a Dark Horse ongoing comic book and a series of novels. Buffy's debut into literature came in the comic Dark Horse Presents 1998 Annual on August 26, 1998, while her first prose appearance was in Halloween Rain by Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder on October 5, 1998. Most of these stories occur between episodes and seasons of the television series, however, some are set outside the timeline of the show to explore in depth other areas of Buffy's history. Christopher Golden adapted the film into a comic entitled "The Origin" (1999) which more closely resembles Joss Whedon's original script. In 2003, Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza wrote a Year One-style run on the Buffy comic book series which filled the gap between the film and the first season of the show. These stories explain how Buffy's relationship with Pike ended, as well as fleshing out events alluded to in the television series, such as the time she spent in a mental institution and her parents' divorce. The novel Queen of the Slayers (2005) by Nancy Holder offers a potential follow-up to the television series; set after season 7, it depicts Buffy living in Italy with the morally ambiguous Immortal.

Buffy also makes appearances in literature outside of her own titular series. In the Tales of the Slayers comic one-shot "Broken Bottle of Djinn" (2002) by Doug Petrie and Jane Espenson, Buffy battles a spirit in Sunnydale High, while the Tales of the Vampires comic book story "Antique" (2004) by Drew Goddard sees her breaking into Dracula's castle to rescue Xander from the infamous vampire. Volume II of the similar series of novels Tales of the Slayer (2003) features two stories about Buffy; the character battles a mummified spirit in Todd A. McIntosh's "All That You Do Comes Back Unto Thee", while Jane Espenson's "Again Sunnydale" sees a season 6-era Buffy sent back in time to high school, when her mother is still alive but Dawn does not exist.

In 2007, Buffy's story continued on from season 7 when Joss Whedon revived Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a comic book, again published by Dark Horse. Whedon differentiated these comics from previous Buffy literature, stating "We could do something and for once we could make it canon. We could make it officially what happened after the end of the show." The continuation series emulates the structure of a television series, with five "seasons" published between 2007 and 2018 and Whedon overseeing multiple writers in the role of "executive producer".

Concept and creation

An early influence for Buffy was Kelli Maroney's character in the 1984 science-fiction horror film Night of the Comet. The character of Buffy was conceived by Joss Whedon as a way of subverting the cliché of "the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror film". Whedon stated "Rhonda the Immortal Waitress" was the first incarnation of Buffy in his head, "the idea of a seemingly insignificant female who in fact turns out to be extraordinary." When asked how he came up with the name of "Buffy," Whedon states "It was the name that I could think of that I could take the least seriously. There is no way you could hear the name Buffy and think, 'This is an important person.' To juxtapose that with Vampire Slayer, just felt like that kind of thing—a B movie. But a B movie that had something more going on. That was my dream." Whedon claims the title was criticized for being too silly, and the television network begged him to change it. He refused, insisting "You don't understand. It has to be this. This is what it is." Jason Middleton feels that Buffy avoids the "final girl" character trope seen in horror films, where the androgynous and celibate heroine gets to outlive her friends and exact revenge on their killer; in Middleton's words, "she... gets to have sex with boys and still kill the monster".

Whedon always intended for the character to become an icon, claiming "I wanted her to be a hero that existed in people's minds the way Wonder Woman or Spider-Man does, you know? I wanted her to be a doll or an action figure. I wanted Barbie with Kung Fu grip! I wanted her to enter the mass consciousness and the imaginations of growing kids because I think she's a cool character, and that was always the plan. I wanted Buffy to be a cultural phenomenon, period." In developing Buffy, Whedon was greatly inspired by Kitty Pryde, a character from the pages of the superhero comic X-Men. He admits, "If there's a bigger influence on Buffy than Kitty, I don't know what it was... She was an adolescent girl finding out she has great power and dealing with it." In a 2009 interview, Whedon revealed he only recently realised how much he saw of himself in Buffy. After years of relating more to Xander, he says, "Buffy was always the person that I was in that story because I'm not in every way." Whedon openly wonders why his identification figure is a woman, but describes it as "a real autobiographical kind of therapy for me" to be writing a strong female character like Buffy.

According to Whedon, Buffy "had been brewing in [him] for many years" before finally appearing in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer film played by Kristy Swanson. However, he was not satisfied with the character's treatment in the film, feeling "that's not quite her. It's a start, but it's not quite the girl." Although Whedon's vision of female empowerment was not as apparent as he would have liked in the 1992 film, he was given a second chance when Gail Berman approached him with the idea of re-creating it as a television series. Adapting the concept of the movie into a television series, Whedon decided to reinvent the character of Buffy slightly. The shallow cheerleader of the original film had grown more mature and open-minded, identifying with social outcasts such as Willow and Xander, and instead, the character of Cordelia was created to embody what Buffy once was. Early in the television series, make-up supervisor Todd McIntosh was instructed to make Buffy "a soft and sort of earthy character." He gave Gellar a soft, muted green make-up and kept her look very natural. However, it was later decided this was inappropriate for the character, and Buffy needed to look more like a valley girl. McIntosh switched her make-up around, giving her frosted eyeshadow and lip colors, bright turquoise and aqua marines, bubblegum colored nails, and bleach-blonde hair, causing the character to "blossom."

Legacy and cultural impact

Thanks to her groundbreaking role as Buffy, Sarah Michelle Gellar, by the late 1990s, had become a household name, as well as one of Hollywood's "It Girls". In 1998, she appeared on Entertainment Weekly's Top 12 Entertainers of the Year and the "Most Beautiful" list by People magazine. In 1999, she signed on to be the face of Maybelline —becoming the company's first celebrity spokeswoman since Lynda Carter in the late 1970s— and was voted number one in FHM's "100 Sexiest Women" of the year. She was featured in the magazine's German, Dutch, South African, Danish and Romanian editions of the list since 1998. Topsocialite.com listed her as the 8th Sexiest woman of the 1990s.

The character of Buffy became a cultural icon, inspiring plenty of other female characters. Marie-Claire Chappet wrote, in an article for Harper's Bazaar, "Her witty comebacks, her high-kicks, her strength. Everything about her was mesmerising. I had seen female warriors before – in superhero cartoons or even Star Wars – but something about the way the show was otherwise grounded in a rather mundane high-school reality, made this startlingly affective," citing Buffy as a feminine icon. CBS News developed a theory called the "Buffy Effect", analyzing the impact of the character on strong woman on television. Lindsay Abrams wrote for The Atlantic, "The 'Buffy effect' posits that strong characters can combat the negative effects of sexual violence in media."

Buffy has been acclaimed by viewers and critics for being badass while still being "girly" and relatable. The Hollywood Reporter placed Buffy Summers at No.3 in "Hollywood's Favorite Female Characters"; the website Digital Spy put her at number one: "But Buffy Summers was the hero in her own story. And if she could be, then I could be too. Throughout its seven-season run, audiences grew along with Buffy and many of its most impactful moments can apply to all sorts of things that real life might throw at you – whatever your age, or your struggle." Vox stated that Buffy "subverts one of pop culture’s most famous tropes. … As comics and YA fans will be quick to attest, Buffy wasn’t pop culture’s first female superhero, not by a long shot. But she was the first to anchor her own TV series, and her success paved the way for others like her." X-Men: Evolution's producer/writer Boyd Kirkland admit that they replicated the dance scene from the episode "Bad Girls" for the episode 5 from season 1 of the show named "Speed and Spyke", letting know that "Buffy had become an influential figure in television in her own right -- even impacting the way characters like X-Men: Evolution's teenagers like Kitty Pryde were portrayed on screen." Julie Plec, co-creator of the show The Vampire Diaries, cited Buffy as an inspiration for the character of Damon Salvatore calling him "our Buffy".