'''''Buffy the Vampire Slayer''''' is a television series which aired from 1997-2003. It featured the exploits of [[Buffy Summers]] and her [[Scooby Gang|group of friends]] as they protected the [[Hellmouth]] from various [[vampire]]s and [[demon]]s. The show is currently being replayed on the Chiller channel, ABC Family, Logo, and Pivot.
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'''''Buffy the Vampire Slayer''''' is a television series which aired from 1997-2003. It featured the exploits of [[Buffy Summers]] and her [[Scooby Gang|group of friends]] as they protected the [[Hellmouth]] from various [[vampire]]s and [[demon]]s. The show is currently being replayed on the Chiller channel, ABC Family, Logo, and Pivot.
== Season One ==
== Season One ==
Revision as of 23:31, 2 May 2017
↳ Note: This article is about the TV series. For other uses, see Buffy.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a television series which aired from 1997-2003. It featured the exploits of Buffy Summers and her group of friends as they protected the Hellmouth from various vampires and demons. The show is currently being replayed on the Chiller channel, ABC Family, Logo, and Pivot.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a mid-season replacement series and featured only 12 episodes in its first season: 22 were to follow in each of the remaining six seasons. The first season begins several months after the events of the movie, with Buffy Summers arriving in Sunnydale with her mother, Joyce. After moving with the hopes of leaving her born slayer duties behind, Buffy inevitably comes into contact with her Watcher, the librarian Rupert Giles
, who helps convince her to slay again. She also meets social outcasts Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg, her two best friends for the remainder of the series, and snobby cheerleader Cordelia Chase. They soon realize that Sunnydale High is located on a Hellmouth, a portal to demon dimensions, which attracts supernatural phenomena to the area.The first season included mostly standalone episodes, exploring the problems faced by the student population as a result of the centrality of the Hellmouth that it has. Such issues explored include: ignored students turning invisible; witches; demon teachers; and the never-ending supply of vampires.
With the high emphasis on teenage angst and metaphorical nature of the episodes, Buffy's inevitable love interest came in the form of Angel, who frequently turns up with cryptic warnings for Buffy. However, the relationship becomes complicated when the truth about Angel's past is uncovered. Angel is a vampire with a soul that was restored by gypsies many years prior to the series beginning. The emphasis on Angel's inability to become close to Buffy is explored to a greater extent in Season 2.
The overarching plot concerned The Master's attempts to reach the surface. He is an ancient and very powerful vampire who was trapped by an earthquake caused by his attempt to open the Hellmouth decades ago. Buffy and her comrades manage to stop each supernatural threat, typically employing a combination of detective work, frequent physical combat, and extensive research of both ancient mystical texts and computer-accessible records.
Ultimately, The Master recruits a prophesied Anointed One who brought Buffy to her death in The Master's underground prison. He used her blood to escape to the roof of Sunnydale High, but she is quickly revived by Xander, who had tracked her with the help of an unfed Angel. She manages to throw the Master onto a shard of wood, and the Hellmouth is closed.
Buffy returns to the town after leaving her friends bored in Sunnydale to spend the summer with her dad in Los Angeles and interrupts a moment of tenderness between Xander and Willow. She works to overcome her feelings regarding her "death". Season Two continues with many standalone episodes, but the tone soon turns serious along with the relationship between Buffy and her vampire lover. The Anointed One is soon placed in sunlight by Spike, who with his mad lover Drusilla became Buffy's adversaries. Halfway through the season, Buffy loses her virginity to Angel. Unbeknownst to the major characters, Angel's moment of happiness took away his soul and he once again became Angelus -- a vicious killer. This is perhaps the most potent example of the show's metaphoric exploration of adolescent fears. It is an allegory for the girl who sleeps with a man and discovers that he changes completely afterwards. Angelus joins with Spike and Drusilla as they torment Buffy and her friends.
Jenny Calendar, a character introduced in season one, begins a romantic relationship with Giles and reveals herself to be a descendant of the gypsies who cursed Angel. Angelus' torments become more sinister as he kills Jenny, just as she discovers a way to restore his soul, and leaves her body in Giles' bed, as he knew the two were about to become romantically involved. Ultimately, Angelus discovers an ancient demon he can revive to destroy the world by sucking it into hell. The particulars of the ritual dictate that, once Angelus opens the portal, the only way to close it is by killing him. The gang hopes to either kill Angelus or restore his soul before he can perform the ritual. However, in a classically tragic conclusion, they succeed in restoring his soul only after he has performed the ritual.
Even though Buffy's love has been restored and made "good" again, she still must kill Angel to save the world. In the end, having been expelled from school, revealed her demon-fighting life to her mother, and killed her true love, Buffy leaves Sunnydale with the intention of never coming back.
Other new characters this season include Oz, a guitar player and werewolf who becomes Willow's boyfriend; Kendra, a Slayer called when Buffy died; and Ethan Rayne, an evil but weak Warlock who knows Giles from his rebellious youth.
Season Three
See also List of Buffy season three episodes
Buffy returns to Sunnydale after trying to begin a new life in Los Angeles for a few months, leaving her friends to fend for themselves in the still dangerous town. Just when she begins to accept Angel's departure, he returns from a hell after being tortured for probably centuries. The unseen mayor of Sunnydale proves to be a bad guy; indeed, Mayor Richard Wilkins III emerges as the major villain in the third season (once discovered, seasonal villains are known affectionately as the "Big Bad.")
The story is complicated by the arrival of another Slayer, Faith, who was called after Kendra was killed at the end of Season Two. Faith is a unstable, leather-clad bad-girl who had an "unhappy childhood." She takes pleasure in violence and enjoys one-night stands afterwards. After accidentally killing a human being, something that is strictly forbidden for a Vampire Slayer, she turns rogue and joins the evil mayor, who had built the town of Sunnydale "for demons to feed on" over a century ago. He plans to Ascend into pure demon form on graduation day, becoming much larger and more destructive than the demons Buffy is used to facing.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce appeared as a Watcher to replace Giles, who had failed a traditional test given to the Slayer and her Watcher on her 18th birthday. Though Wesley was generally inept and played mostly as a comic fop, he develops into a more heroic figure as a regular on the spin-off series Angel. Jonathan, who would become a major player later in the series, also reappeared while vengeance demon Anyanka, who would later become a series regular, loses her power and becomes a mortal in Sunnydale.
The season ends with Buffy having to stab Faith, putting her in a permanent coma. The Mayor Ascends, but the gang blows up the school with him in it. Knowing that he has no future with Buffy, Angel leaves Sunnydale for Los Angeles and his own spin-off. Though no mention was made of it at the time, Cordelia also leaves for Los Angeles after graduation.
Season Four
See also List of Buffy season four episodes
Season Four begins with Buffy and Willow enrolling at UC Sunnydale, while Xander begins his working life. While the first three seasons dealt metaphorically with adolescent struggles, post-high school life deals with issues of leaving home, redefining relationships, and adapting to more responsibilities and social pressures. UC Sunnydale sits not on a Hellmouth, but a top-secret military installation called The Initiative. Special-ops soldiers pose as teachers, students, and fraternity brothers. The Initiative is headed by Maggie Walsh, Buffy and Willow's Psychology professor. Riley Finn, with whom Buffy eventually finds a loving relationship, is Walsh's teaching assistant by day and her protégé in the Initiative at night. Buffy and Riley strive to protect their secret identities from each other.
Though the Initiative appeared at first to be a well-meaning anti-demon operation, it is soon revealed that tests and operations are performed on supernatural beings. Among other things, the Initiative has combined demons, humans, and cybernetics into a prototype super-creature, Adam. An unwitting Buffy tried to integrate her work with that of the Initiative before finding herself in traps set by Walsh. Adam kills Maggie before escaping the Initiative. He masterminded a plan to create a third race, Frankenstein-ian creatures like him who would replace humans and demons. Riley discovers that the authority figures he had unquestioningly accepted are not so trustworthy after all.
Season four saw the return of the vampire Spike as a regular character, neutered by the Initiative with a microchip in his brain that prevented him from harming human beings. Spike was now one of the most morally ambiguous characters on the show.
Meanwhile, Oz departs as Willow develops a romantic relationship with fellow Wiccan Tara. Faith wakes up and escapes to Angel. As Buffy and her friends grow apart, they eventually must reunite to defeat Adam through a spell that combines all of their powers into Buffy's body. The Initiative is destroyed by the demons during the battle.
Season Four earned the series an Emmy Award nomination for the critically acclaimed episode "Hush".
Season Five
See also List of Buffy season five episodes
Dawn appears in Sunnydale as a younger sister of Buffy. No one finds this strange, but it is soon revealed that the teenager is a mystical energy called The Key that was transformed by a group of monks, using Buffy's essence, into human form. False memories were implanted in all those concerned to protect the fourteen-year-old from Glory, an exiled Goddess from a demon dimension who wants to leave the human body in which she is trapped -- Ben the hospital intern—for her home universe.
While she worked to locate the Key, she creates an army of mental patients as she fed off their brains. Buffy and her friends struggle to discover her plan while protecting the innocent Dawn, who struggled to accept who she is while Spike fell in love with Buffy. Joyce Summers dies after a struggle with brain tumor in an episode which won the series its widest critical acclaim.
Glory eventually discovers the Key's new form and kidnaps her for a ritual that would bring down the walls separating different dimensions. This would bring total chaos on Earth. While Glory cannot be killed in her Deity form, Ben was murdered by Giles to protect Buffy and the world. Once the ritual began thanks to a demon who came to help Glory, Buffy finally understood a cryptic message from the First Slayer. As she shares the same essence with Dawn, Buffy throws herself into the vortex and sacrifices her own life for the world. She leaves Dawn with the message, "The hardest thing in this world is to live in it." Giles departs as a series regular, appearing in 8 episodes in season 6 and 13 episodes in season 7. This season also has the largest main cast.
Season Six was the first of two seasons in which Buffy aired not on the WB Television Network, but on the United Paramount Network (UPN).
Giles decides to return to England months after Buffy's death, but on the same day, her friends resurrect her through a powerful spell, believing that her mystical (as opposed to a natural) death in Glory's portal meant that she might have been sent to hell. The season deals largely with her sorrow at being in fact torn from heaven. Buffy finds a job at the Doublemeat Palace as she finds herself again in the daily grind (almost literally in the episode "Doublemeat Palace"). Buffy eventually begins a violent relationship with Spike, which brings momentary relief from her struggles.
She is consistently tormented by The Trio, three nerds from Sunnydale High who have joined to take over the town in an effort that goes from being inane to truly evil. Jonathan, who featured in earlier seasons mostly as a victim, joins Warren, the architect of a robot girlfriend in Season Five, and Andrew, whose brother Tucker sent hellhounds to the Prom in Season Three.
A persistent subplot involves Willow and her growing abuse of magic. After she is forced to face with the consequences of her addiction, she attempts a difficult withdrawal when her lover Tara is accidentally killed by Warren. Willow descends into darkness and begins a destructive rampage, at first to avenge, but later to relieve her own suffering by bringing on an Apocalypse. Xander's unconditional love brings her back and saves the world.
Spike eventually insists that Buffy admit she loves him. When she refuses, Spike attempts to rape her as a way to resume their no-means-yes sexual affair. He then leaves Sunnydale seemingly in search of vengeance, but is awarded his soul after painful trials instead.
Season Seven
See also List of Buffy season seven episodes.
Buffy's final season revolved around The First Evil, which can appear in the incorporeal form of any dead person. It is more determined than when it tried to convince Angel to kill Buffy and commit suicide in Season Three. A number of young girls who are Potential Slayers are gathered by Giles with the help of seers after the Watchers Council is destroyed. They live in fear of the Bringers, mute wielders of deadly swords who have been killing Potentials around the world. Much of the story takes place at the newly reconstructed Sunnydale High School, bringing the series and its characters back to their roots: The Hellmouth.
Spike now lives with the remorse of a soul. He begins the season driven insane by The First and secluding himself in the school basement. The First also develops a hypnotic "trigger" for him allowing him to eat people again. He has both his chip and trigger removed eventually.
It is revealed that the army of feral, primitive vampires known as Turok-Han are much more powerful and violent than the part-human variety. The First Evil attempts to use the imbalance created by Buffy's return to amass an army of vampires in the Hellmouth. When that army outnumbers humans on Earth, the First Evil would take corporeal form. In the end, Buffy brings the war to The Hellmouth itself. Willow invokes a magical spell that activates all potential Slayers in the world.
With her army of girls now endowed with full Slayer power, they manage to contain the army of vampires long enough for a powerful amulet worn by Spike to take effect. It vaporizes The Hellmouth and kills Spike in the process. However, Spike returns in the Buffy spin-off Angel as Angel's vampire counterpart. Anya is revealed to have been killed by a Bringer. The empty town of Sunnydale is sucked into a huge crater. "The Hellmouth is officially closed for business," and Buffy no longer fights alone.
Danny Strong (Jonathan Levinson) originally auditioned for the role of Xander.
Ryan Reynolds was originally offered the role of Xander.
Series creator Joss Whedon has said that the idea for Buffy came from all the horror movies he had seen featuring a helpless young blonde who would almost always be the first to die. He felt she needed a better image.
The opening theme for the show was created by Nerf Herder.
The character Jenny Calendar was originally to have been called Nicki. This was changed to Jenny to avoid confusion on the set, Nicholas Brendon being generally called Nicky by his co-stars. (However, in season 7, the character Nikki Wood was added and appears in several episodes.)
The names of buildings and places at fictional U.C. Sunnydale are actual locations and buildings at real-life U.C. Santa Cruz.
The entire first season was filmed before the first episode went to air, giving them the opportunity to go back and re-shoot various scenes. The scene in the library where Buffy states "it's my first day..." was actually filmed on the last day of shooting after they decided her original performance was too forceful and aggressive. Another scene added to the pilot (to fill in time as it was shorter than expected) was the infamous "you have something in your eye" scene where The Master blinds a vampire who had failed him.
The prologue ("In every generation there is a chosen one....") is not used consistently. Two of the first twelve episodes don't use it. During the second season, use of the prologue becomes even more spotty. Anthony Stewart Head intones it only during the second season.
Joss Whedon gave the character Riley the last name "Finn" after hearing executive producer Marti Noxon talking about taking her dog, Finn, to the vet.
Originally, the third member of the sixth season's nerdy Trio was to be Tucker, who appeared in the third season as a student who wanted to kill everyone at the prom. Plans fell through with that, so the writers replaced him with Andrew, Tucker's younger brother.
The character of Dawn was originally intended to have the power to speak to the dead. She was also supposed to be able to move objects with her mind. These powers were later dropped.
Ranked #3 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Top Cult Shows Ever!" (30 May 2004 issue).
In a number of scenes involving the club The Bronze, copies of books from The Destroyer series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir can be seen on book racks in the background.
On Bravo's "100 Greatest TV Characters", Buffy came in at number 13.
Before he was turned into a vampire, Spike's name was William. Angel's real name was Liam, which is the Irish version of the English/British William.
The 'Grrr Arrrg' monster at the end of each episode (i.e. the mascot for Mutant Enemy Inc.) is something that a lot of people watch through the credits to see. But if you watch at the end of 'Becoming', he walks past and says "Boo hoo, I need a hug." At the end of 'Once More With Feeling', he sings his "Grrr Arrrg." In the Episode 'Bargaining Pt. 1' Tara gives Giles a small monster as a goodbye present, "Something to remind you of Sunnydale..." and then goes "Grrr Arrrg...." At the end of Amends, the monster is wearing a Santa hat. At the end of the graduation episode, the monster is wearing a mortar board.
Buffy's chums are regularly referred to as 'The Scooby Gang' which is ironic because Sarah Michelle Gellar actually went on to become an original Scooby as Daphne in Scooby-Doo the movie. Then another Buffy Scooby member (Seth Green) appeared alongside Gellar in the movie's sequel the following year.
Sunnydale High School (seasons 1-3) is the same high school that was in Beverly Hills, 90210 (West Beverly High), and the movie Clueless. Its real name is Torrance High located in Torrance, CA.
Nicholas Brendon, who plays Xander Harris, in real life has a stuttering problem and can overcome it by knowing what he's going to say: e.g. scripted rehearsed material. He said in an interview that he has slowly over the years gotten over the stuttering, but has to work hard at his craft at learning exact lines and rehearsing them over and over again. He doesn't do a lot of live interviews because of this.
After the series ended, Nicholas Brendon offered to jump to sister show Angel, but Joss Whedon felt Xander wouldn't fit into Angel's life.
Giles' kettle is used twice as an ironic sound effect to show the tension, first when Buffy returns at the start of Season 3 and again in "Revelations."
As Spike, James Marsters' English accent was so convincing, a lot of crew members weren't aware that he's an American.
Oz's band, Dingoes Ate My Baby, takes its name from the headline of a 1980's Australian newspaper. A woman claimed that dingoes were responsible for the disappearance of her baby and was subsequently accused of murder, but later acquitted.
Joss Whedon also wrote the 1992 "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" film. Because of the dramatic differences between his screenplay and the finished film, he doesn't consider it canon as established by the TV series. In fact, the series isn't based on the completed movie at all: it's based instead on the screenplay Whedon initially wrote.
While Joss Whedon considers the 1992 movie non-canon, two characters were carried over: Buffy herself (obviously), and her first Watcher, Merrick Jamison-Smythe. Merrick only made one appearance on the show, through a flashback, and was played by Richard Riehle; in the film, he was played by Donald Sutherland.
In 2004, Adam Busch (Warren Mears) began dating Amber Benson (Tara Maclay). Ironically, it was Warren who accidentally killed Tara in season 6.
Buffy and Willow were the only characters who appeared in every episode. Because it would have been difficult to incorporate a storyline for him, Xander is missing only from "Conversations with Dead People".
Once Spike appeared on the show, Billy Idol's punk-rocker look became a running gag. Numerous times, Spike claimed that he invented the look, and Idol stole it from him.
Nathan Fillion auditioned for the role of Angel. Fillion later appeared as Caleb in the show's final season, and played Malcolm Reynolds on Joss Whedon's "Firefly."
Before production began, an idea popped up that Buffy would be able to identify a vampire solely by their outdated clothes. While this idea was eventually abandoned, it was toyed with in "Welcome to the Hellmouth" when Buffy sees Willow talking to a vampire in a 70s-style dress with his sleeves rolled up and his collar upturned.
A lot of the Scooby Gang's dialogue was based on how Joss Whedon really talks. As a result, this irreverent style of speech is often called "Buffy Speak".
Buffy's and Faith's prophetic dreams gave several hints about Dawn long before her arrival. In "Graduation Day, Part 2" In Buffy's dream Faith says "Miles to go, Little Miss Muffet counting down from seven three O." The second time Dawn if foretold is in "This Year's Girl" In Faith's dream she says "Little Sis is coming." Then the third time is in "Restless" Buffy looks at the clock and it is 7:30 (seven three 0). Buffy says she has to find her friends and Tara says "Be back before Dawn." In "Real Me" a random crazy person tells Dawn she is all "curds and whey," a reference to Little Miss Muffet.
There have been several lines throughout the series have referred to Tuesday ('There's a demon trying to destroy the world and it's just another Tuesday night in Sunnydale' in Revelations and 'Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday' in Once More with Feeling). These are references to the fact that, in the USA, Buffy was aired on a Tuesday.
Many elements of Xander's dream in 'Restless', season 4, were seen again in the season 6 episode 'Tabula Rasa'. In the dream, Spike wears a tweed suit and tells Xander he's in training to be a Watcher (Giles adds "Spike's like a son to me."), also mentioning 'A shark, but on land. A land shark'. In 'Tabula Rasa' Spike is under threat from a loan shark (literally a shark), disguises himself in a tweed suit and after a spell that went wrong believes he might be Giles' son.
In the episode where we learn about Anya's past, there is a flashback to the "Once More, with Feeling" episode. Just before Anya closes the door, if you listen very carefully you can hear a prequel to the Mustard Song. Once again, it is sung by David Fury, and Marti Noxon sings the female part as a prequel to her parking ticket song and sounds like "Oh no. Mustard on my shirt," "Mustard, I'll never get it out." "My favorite red shirt." "Dry clean it." "How could you serve..." "Mustard."
Joyce's death in season five and Cassie Newton's death in season seven were the only deaths brought about by natural causes.
The boy who Darla kills in the first scene is played by Carmine Giovinazzo, who currently plays Danny Messer on "CSI: NY." This episode was Gioniazzo's first major acting job in Hollywood.
Brian Thompson played two different characters in Buffy. He also played two roles in the Charmed series.
In the flashback just before Darla kills Liam in order to turn him to Angel, she tells him to "Close your eyes." In "Becoming Pt. 2", just before Buffy kills Angel, she too says, "Close your eyes".
Spike was only supposed to appear in a few episodes and then killed off. But he became so popular with fans, he remained on the show, and eventually appeared on "Angel" as well.
In "The Prom," Sarah Michelle Gellar genuinely couldn't stop crying when they filmed the scene where Angel breaks up with Buffy. They had to close the set for nearly half an hour.
The accent that Giles uses as his teenage self is Anthony Head's natural accent.
The actor who plays Nicholas Brendan's evil twin in "The Replacement" is actually his real life twin, Kelly Donovan. Both the brothers use their middle names when working rather than their real surname, Schultz.
In the second episode of season 5, one of Harmony's minions is played by Tom Lenk who later plays 'the other one' (Andrew) in seasons 6 and 7.
Seeing Red is the only episode where actress Amber Benson is acknowledged in the opening credits. This was done with the intent that the death of her character, Tara, at the end of this episode would be more of a surprise for the audience.
Alyson Hannigan and Michelle Trachtenberg don't have many singing lines during the episode "Once More, with Feeling." This is because Alyson threatened to come down with laryngitis should she get too many lines and Michelle actually did come down with it.
In addition to singing "Rest in Peace", James Marsters also played the song's guitar track.
In the final episode when Buffy, Xander, and Willow are wandering off talking about shopping, Giles turns round and says "The Earth is definitely doomed!" This is a little tribute to the end of the episode 'The Harvest' when Buffy, Xander, and Willow wander off talking nonsense and Giles turns round and says "The Earth is doomed!".
Xander was originally supposed to be the character that died in Chosen. He was supposed to die saving Dawn. Since Emma Caulfield didn't want to be tied to doing any future Buffy projects the script was changed so that Anya would die. The script is the same except the parts at the end written for Anya and Xander were switched as well as the parts for Andrew and Dawn.
Near the end of the final episode, Giles mentions that there is another Hellmouth in Cleveland, Ohio. In "The Wish," in which Cordelia wishes Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, Buffy is serving as the Slayer in Cleveland.
Willow's conversation with a dead person in this episode is with Cassie, of which it is explained that Willow isn't allowed to see Tara because she killed people. In actual fact, the writers did intend for Tara to appear in this episode; however, actress Amber Benson was busy with other filming commitments.
Principal Wood was given the gender-neutral name "Robin" because when the season began production, the producers were unsure about what gender the character would be. So they gave the character a name that could have applied to either a male or a female.
Only five episodes of the show do not feature any Vampires. They are "Witch", "The Pack", "I Robot, You Jane", "The Puppet Show", and "Fear, Itself". All but "Fear, Itself" are in Season One, which was when the show was still working with a monster of the week structure.
Seth Green and Chi Muoi Lo are the only actors to appear in both the original film and the television series. While Green's scenes were not included in the film, his image was nevertheless featured on the original video cover.
When discussing the series to Empire on the show's 20th anniversary, Joss Whedon stated that he wants Buffy "to be remembered as a consistently intelligent, funny, emotionally-involving show that subtly changed the entire world… or a small portion of pop culture. You know, enlightenment is the slowest process this side of evolution. It’s very hard to have come up in the 1970s, to be raised by a feminist and then through the Reagan era and then, God help us, two Bush eras. Feminism, which hopefully will become an obsolete term by the time I’m dead, is a really important thing. Changing the way people think about women and the way they think about themselves is what I want to do with my life. There are other stories I want to tell, but that’s the most important thing to me. If Buffy made the slightest notch in any of pop culture in that direction, well that’s pretty damn good."[1]
All series regulars, except for the five original cast members (Gellar, Brendon, Hannigan, Carpenter, and Stewart-Head), have been guest stars before being promoted to the main cast.
