Buffy Summers
Buffy Summers | |
---|---|
Waitress in a coffee shop in San Francisco (formerly) | |
Talents |
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Hair Color | Blonde |
Eye Color | Blue |
Buffy Anne Summers is the
Buffy Summers is the
Buffy was created by Joss Whedon to subvert the
Appearances
Film
The character of Buffy first appears in the 1992 film,
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.[9] 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.[10] Studio interest in the project has continued, however. A script was rejected in 2011.[11]
Television
Buffy returned in Joss Whedon's television series
In the show's second season (1997–1998), Buffy continues to come to terms with her destiny, finds forbidden love with benevolent vampire
Season three (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.[16]
In the fourth season (1999–2000), Buffy balances her Slayer duties with her new life as a college student at
In season five (2000–2001), Buffy battles the hell-goddess
Season six (2001–2002) depicts Buffy's struggle with depression after her friends, believing she was trapped in a
In the final season of the show (2002–2003), things start to come around for Buffy when Principal
Following the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the character maintains a presence in the fifth season of Angel (2003–2004), but does not appear onscreen. In the episode "
Between 2001 and 2004, Joss Whedon and
Literature
As the main character of the franchise, Buffy appears in almost all Buffy the Vampire Slayer literature. This includes a
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,[33] 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.[34] 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 six-era Buffy sent back in time to high school, when her mother is still alive but Dawn does not exist.[35]
Post-television "Season" continuations
In 2007, Buffy's story continued on from season seven 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."[36] 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".
In Season Eight (2007–2011), it is quickly established that Buffy is not living with the Immortal in Rome as previously suggested in Angel; this is simply a cover story to ensure her safety as she is now the leader of an army which recruits and trains Slayers to deal with demonic threats worldwide. However, a mysterious group led by the masked villain Twilight believe the Slayers themselves pose a danger to mankind and the natural order. In "Wolves at the Gate", a lonely Buffy shares a sexual encounter with a younger Slayer Satsu; the relationship ends soon after when Satsu accepts that Buffy does not return her romantic feelings. The time travel story "Time of Your Life" acts as a crossover with Buffy spin-off Fray; Buffy is kidnapped two centuries into the future and meets her eventual successor Melaka Fray and Fray's vampire twin brother Harth. These events have been orchestrated by a villainous future version of Willow, whom Buffy reluctantly kills to return home. The tensions between Buffy and Twilight's respective armies eventually erupts into a full-scale war in Tibet; Twilight is unmasked as Angel being manipulated by enigmatic cosmic forces trying to destroy the universe and usher in a new dimension where Buffy and Angel will live together in paradise. However, Buffy rejects Twilight's influence and saves her world by returning to the ruins of Sunnydale and smashing the Seed of Wonder, cutting Earth off from the source of all magic in the process. During these events, Buffy reunites with Spike, Giles is killed by a Twilight-controlled Angel, and the Slayer army is dissolved; Buffy moves to San Francisco with her friends to grieve their losses.
In contrast to the global scale of Season Eight,
Having restored magic to the world, Season Ten (2014–2016) picks up with Buffy and her friends reluctantly responsible for creating the laws governing it; Buffy must guard the ancient grimoire Vampyr in which the new laws of magic are formalized when recorded in the book. Some rules have already materialized without Buffy's input (zompires are extinct and vampires now possess heightened strength and shapeshifting powers) and new rules tend to have unforeseen Monkey's Paw-style consequences. Daunted and tempted by this new-found power, Buffy seeks the advice of D’Hoffryn and his magical council, as well as lobbyists from various mystical and demonic communities pursuing their own conflicting agendas. Meanwhile, Buffy and Spike's decision to pursue an official romantic relationship is complicated by the manipulations of the demon Archaeus and the subsequent assistance by Angel; in the one-shot issue "Triggers", Buffy expresses her repressed trauma over the sexual assault she experienced from soulless Spike back in the television episode "Seeing Red". Following his resurrection in the spin-off series Angel & Faith, Giles reunites with Buffy, and the paternal relationship they share is reaffirmed when Buffy's father Hank excludes her from his wedding. D’Hoffryn eventually turns on Buffy and murders the rest of the council to seize the power of Vampyr for himself; finally accepting the responsibility she has been avoiding, Buffy outsmarts D’Hoffryn, commits to her relationship with Spike, and organizes her own council with whom to codify the laws of magic.
Season Eleven (2016–17) opens in disaster when a huge Shenlong dragon attacks San Francisco, killing thousands. In response to public outrage, the US President Malloy introduces the Supernatural Crisis Act, a set of new policies claiming to "legalize and normalise" the supernatural; this begins with a census and quickly leads to the relocation of magical individuals to the "Safe Zone", an internment camp in the Grand Canyon. Buffy rejects an opportunity to join a Slayer peacekeeping force alongside the antagonistic Jordan, and instead opts to join Willow and Spike at the Safe Zone, where she does her best to maintain peace and protect innocent or harmless inmates. Buffy and Willow eventually agree to have their powers removed to leave the camp and further investigate the Pandora Project, a government conspiracy to drain and abuse magical energy; they expose White House Press Secretary Joanna Wise for summoning the Shenlong in the first place to put her plans in motion. Buffy briefly reabsorbs the power of all the Slayers in the world to battle the magic-infused Wise, but returns the power by the season's final issue, warning a repentant Jordan not to misuse it.
In 2018, it was announced that Dark Horse was losing the license to publish Buffy comics; Joss Whedon's intent for the final season was to "give the Dark Horse era some closure".
Boom! Studios reboot
In 2019, Buffy was reinvented by Boom! Studios in their ongoing comic Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This series is a complete reboot and has no continuity with any previous stories; Buffy is depicted as a teenager in 2019 rather than the 1990s. She is already aware of her destiny as the Slayer and has been living in Sunnydale for only three weeks when the series begins. She befriends Willow and Xander after saving them from a vampire outside Tunaverse, the fast food restaurant where she works.
Concept and creation
An early influence for Buffy was Kelli Maroney's character in the 1984 science-fiction horror film Night of the Comet.[38] 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".[39] 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."[40] 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.' The name may have come from Night of the Comet where Kelli Maroney's character, Samantha calling out her dog Muffy and Joss thought she said Buffy. 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."[41] 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".[42]
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."[43] 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."[44][45][46] 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.[47]
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."[43] 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.[48] 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.[49] 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."[50]
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The origin comic, though I have issues with it, CAN pretty much be accepted as canonical. They did a cool job of combining the film script (the SCRIPT) with the series, that was nice, and using the series' Merrick and not a certain OTHER thespian who shall remain hated.
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