The pursuing effort is adapted from a keynote code fixed astatine the Association for the Study of Buffy+’s 11th Biennial Slayage Conference connected July 10, 2026. In lawsuit it needs to beryllium said, this effort contains many, galore spoilers for, and wrong jokes regarding, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
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For the record, I americium not really a Buffy the Vampire Slayer nostalgia case. I didn’t person a tv increasing up, truthful I recovered the amusement arsenic an adult, erstwhile my then-boyfriend (a screenwriter) made maine ticker it. I was charmed but fundamentally unconvinced until we got to occurrence six, “The Pack,” successful which the chill kids, possessed by, checks notes, hyena spirits, devour the schoolhouse principal. They virtually eat him.
RIP Principal Flutie.
Ok, I thought. I’m in.
Now, I emotion what everybody loves astir Buffy and Angel: the language, the metaphors, the characters, the circumstantial pleasance of getting the happening and lampshading the happening successful the aforesaid gesture, the richness of the world, the mode the storytelling begins and ends successful emotion, and the mode it tin beryllium truthful galore things astatine once: comedy, horror, romance, drama, fantasy. I emotion however superior it tin feel, and however scary, and however silly, each astatine the aforesaid time.
Grr. Argh.
Since I americium not an academic, but conscionable a novelist and sometime-critic, I thought I would unpack wherefore novelists successful peculiar look to emotion Buffy and Angel so much. Lots of radical similar Buffy, of course, but anecdotally, everyone I cognize who really loves it besides happens to beryllium a writer of immoderate kind.
I volition speech astir that a bit, but precocious Anthony Stewart Head died, and truthful present I person to speech astir grief.
Daddy’s home.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is, astatine its core, a amusement astir grief. To me, it is adjacent much astir grief than it is astir love, oregon magic, oregon witty remarks, oregon possibly adjacent power, due to the fact that it is astir being a teenager, and being a teen is astir grief.
Wait a second, each the adults with jobs are saying to themselves. Being a teen isn’t astir grief. Teenagers don’t cognize however bully they person it! Which is true. But being a teen is astir grief due to the fact that being a teen is astir change. You’re mourning your childhood, and you’re mourning your innocence, and you’re mourning the information that the radical who are expected to emotion you don’t cognize you anymore, oregon astatine slightest don’t recognize you. Later, of course, the amusement becomes astir trying to become an adult—see Buffy’s doomed time occupation astatine the Doublemeat Palace—and that is an workout successful grief too. Then there’s Angel, which is yet a amusement astir the grief of being an adult, due to the fact that Angel is fundamentally a communicative astir futility.
Life, it turns out, is simply a amusement astir grief, I americium atrocious to report.
It’s been a hard twelvemonth for Buffy fans. Tony Head died astatine 72. Nicholas Brendon died astatine 54, successful March. This is not adjacent to notation Michelle Trachtenberg, who died past year—can you judge it was lone past year?—at 39. I’m not a instrumentality of this pattern. Maybe it has thing to bash with the hellmouth truthful evidently opening nether the full of the United States, if not successful information the world. Maybe we’re conscionable unlucky.
I was peculiarly struck by the outpouring of emotion for Tony Head, and the mode that clips of him were passed astir online arsenic a mode of mourning. Nothing caller for the property of the internet. But these were not clips of him successful his astir caller precocious illustration role, successful different beloved show, Ted Lasso, wherever helium plays a villain (also named Rupert). No, they were each clips of Giles (apart from a fewer of the Nescafé Gold Blend ads). We mourned him arsenic Giles, arsenic the champion begetter fig that ever refused to justice us, that ever did termination Ben (who mightiness cognize Glory) for us, that was ever there, until helium thought it mightiness prevention america for him not to be. Of course, we—I—don’t cognize Tony Head. It helps that by each accounts helium was a large person, that helium was besides the begetter fig connected set, that helium seemed to attraction for others successful his regular beingness and successful his work. But we don’t cognize him. We’ve been mourning Giles.
But of course, Giles is conscionable arsenic live arsenic ever.
Giles exists, whenever we privation to look. We person precisely arsenic overmuch of him arsenic we did before. There’s an full different speech to beryllium had astir parasocial relationships successful the modern era, obviously, but since Buffy isn’t truly from the modern era, I bash deliberation it speaks to the powerfulness of the character, the acting and the writing, and to the beingness of the amusement itself, that the mean instrumentality feels they’ve mislaid something.
The Magic Box: Your one-stop spot to store for each your occult needs.
The novelist Naomi Alderman has argued that what makes Buffy truthful bully is what she calls “character doubling.” She writes that “every azygous quality contains their other wrong them. It is simply a amusement astir having the consciousness that you person a unusual different lurking inside.” That’s decidedly true—consider Vampire Willow. Xander virtually divided into his bully and atrocious qualities, Faith and Buffy, already foils, swapping bodies, the Buffybot, Joan the Vampire Slayer, and truthful on—and doubling is of people a classical literate trope.
But present I privation to see a precise circumstantial benignant of “strange other” that some Buffy and Angel return to repeatedly: the idiosyncratic you go erstwhile faced with grief. Because successful the Buffyverse, arsenic sometimes successful life, grief makes you a antithetic person. Often literally.
She’s someone.
We spot it archetypal and possibly astir blatantly astatine the opening of Season 3, when, successful bid to woody with her grief implicit sidesplitting her 1 existent emotion and consigning him to hellhole (teenagers!), Buffy has tally distant to Los Angeles. As this occurrence opens, we find that she has virtually go different person: Anne. She’s a waitress astatine Helen’s Kitchen, which, ha ha. And to Alderman’s point, Anne is Buffy’s concealed self, her interior opposite: the mean girl. Powerless adjacent against the astir run-of-the-mill villains, the men casually harassing her astatine the diner.
But of people Buffy finds she can’t truly outrun herself, due to the fact that she’s recognized by a miss she’d saved before, who past went by Chanterelle, and is present going by Lily. The girl’s fellow disappears, and Buffy finds him horribly dead, aged overnight, and though Buffy—reasserting her individuality erstwhile it counts—kills the demon liable and saves Lily from the aforesaid fate, successful the extremity Lily is near to grieve, and truthful she excessively takes connected a caller identity: Lily becomes Anne, and Anne goes backmost to being Buffy, though not rather the Buffy she was before, and not conscionable due to the fact that of the unspeakable chunky highlights.
Of people this isn’t really the archetypal clip grief has changed anyone successful this show. Consider Angel: After centuries of murderous rampaging, Angelus has his psyche returned to him arsenic a punishment—itself a relation of the grief of his victims—and is flooded by that grief, and the guilt of having to retrieve each he’s done. Everything that Angel becomes aft that is simply a response—he is everlastingly trying to atone. But what’s truly absorbing astir Angel successful this discourse is that helium represents the different broadside of the coin, due to the fact that erstwhile helium lives successful grief, if helium experiences a infinitesimal of existent happiness—grief’s opposite—he volition suffer his psyche again and alteration backmost into his evil self. So the rule cuts some ways. Joy excessively tin beryllium transformative. It conscionable doesn’t travel up rather arsenic often.
A shocking twist.
By the way, Angel, oregon truly Angelus, besides shows america different usage for grief: arsenic a weapon. After helium kills Jenny Calendar successful play 2’s “Passion” (a genuinely shocking episode, and the show’s archetypal truly important death), helium stages an elaborate romanticist country with her assemblage to torture and traumatize Giles, with the volition of causing him arsenic overmuch grief arsenic possible. He wants to alteration Giles—to weaken him, and by hold Buffy, and helium does, oregon astatine slightest helium goads him into doing 2 precise un-Giles-like things: caput disconnected unsocial connected a termination mission, and let himself to beryllium tricked by Drusilla’s hypnosis. When she manipulates him into seeing her arsenic Jenny, helium is taken successful capable to archer his enemies everything they request to cognize to extremity the world. (Compare to Wesley’s refusal to fto Illyria beryllium Fred, though that’s each helium wants: “The archetypal acquisition a Watcher learns is to abstracted information from illusion.” But we’ll get to that.)
Of people Angel did the aforesaid happening to Drusilla herself, erstwhile she was a pious pistillate whom helium drove insane by telling her she was evil. Both of these uses for grief work arsenic profoundly perverse, arsenic so they are.
This one’s for you.
But let’s spell backmost to Season 3. In “Bad Girls,” a pivotal occurrence contempt the information that they’re warring the silly bathtub demon, Faith—Buffy’s acheronian double, the Other Slayer, but present inactive connected side—seduces Buffy into breaking the rules, which seems similar it’s moving good until Faith accidentally kills a human, the technically evil but fundamentally non-threatening Allan, the Mayor’s deputy. The occurrence ends with Faith intelligibly upset, and channeling Lady Macbeth, scrubbing astatine bloodstains successful the sink, but erstwhile Buffy comes to cheque connected her, Faith tells Buffy starkly “I don’t care” earlier the amusement cuts jarringly to black.
This is the enactment that starts turning Faith from a “bad girl” into a atrocious girl. She doesn’t let herself grieve, oregon travel to presumption with the guilt and fearfulness of what she’s done—but whether she accepts it oregon not, the grief is there, and her inability to woody with it is what begins her crook to the existent acheronian side. It’s a subtle echo of what Buffy did astatine the opening of the season—Faith is moving emotionally from the grief and guilt, but she can’t really bushed it without changing herself entirely. Which of people she does, becoming the Mayor’s champion girl. For now.
Interestingly, Cordelia is exempt from this phenomenon, astatine slightest successful Buffy proper. Her romanticist grief implicit Xander does not origin her to go different person, but it does, successful “The Wish,” marque everyone else into different person.
Leather = evil?
Fitting, somehow, for the miss who is the lone 1 saying what she’s reasoning and reasoning what she’s saying astatine each times. This holds existent until we get to the last occurrence of the archetypal play of Angel, successful which a demon opens Cordelia’s caput to each of the suffering of humanity astatine once, and erstwhile she comes retired of it, she’s making everybody sandwiches. “I cognize what’s retired determination now,” she explains, and though she inactive makes the unusual sassy remark, aft this infinitesimal she’s the bosom of the group, and the show, alternatively of the edge. Not her relation earlier astatine all. So successful Buffy, Cordelia’s grief changes the world, but successful Angel, the world’s grief changes Cordelia. A favoritism I deliberation she would like.
Incidentally, it is this aforesaid phenomenon—feeling the symptom of each the world—that turns Dark Willow from simply murderous to afloat apocalyptic, truthful did we truly conscionable observe that Cordelia has a stronger motivation halfway than Willow? But I’m getting up of myself again. Before Dark Willow, we person to speech astir Joyce.
A cheerleader, a princess, and a warrior.
So overmuch has already been said astir “The Body,” which is by immoderate measurement an bonzer occurrence of television. I’m not definite what I tin adhd to the ceremonial conversation, but I volition accidental this. When I watched it to hole for this talk, it was the archetypal clip I’d seen it since my begetter died. Similarly to Joyce, really. Sudden, excessively young. It was hard to watch, which is of people a testament to however bully it is. “The Body,” much than immoderate different creation I’ve encountered, gets astatine the surreality of abrupt death. The large buttons connected the phone, the misaligned camera that doesn’t rather seizure the paramedic talking. The zoom into Buffy’s look erstwhile she realizes that Joyce’s skirt is riding up. The repeated phantasy of everything being each right. It besides illustrates however quickly, contempt the surreality, you indispensable playact that this decease is existent to you. If you’re the idiosyncratic who needs to bash things, you person to enactment similar it’s existent agelong earlier you judge it’s real, and that interruption successful cognition makes it harder to ever judge it astatine all.
She’s astatine the house.
Of course, this is Buffy’s large root of grief successful Season 5, and it’s a turning constituent successful the series. It is arsenic overmuch a reordering of the known satellite arsenic Dawn was. But it’s not erstwhile Buffy becomes an adult. It’s erstwhile she is forced into the shape of an adult, earlier she’s ready. First, however, she is obliterated.
“Everybody wants to help,” she says. “I don’t adjacent cognize if I’m here.” She tries to beryllium beardown and stoic—and again the alteration is reflected successful her hair, that debased choky pony she ever wears erstwhile she’s truly achromatic knuckling it—but successful “Forever,” she yet breaks down with Dawn, who says, “No one’s asking you to beryllium Mom,” and Buffy responds, “Well who’s gonna beryllium if I’m not?” And successful that infinitesimal she does go parent capable for her sister, who has been secretly trying to resurrect Joyce. Dawn ends the resurrection spell successful response, belying her ain statement.
The decease of a genitor is often the catalyst for the extremity of childhood, successful fabrication and successful life. But it has peculiar value present for the forced extremity of Buffy’s childhood, due to the fact that Joyce is the lone 1 who is her childhood’s existent witness. Nobody else—neither her friends nor Giles—actually knew her arsenic a child. Even Dawn has been manufactured arsenic a effect of Buffy’s translation into the Slayer. The decease of Joyce is besides the deletion of immoderate was near of Buffy’s innocence.
But of people the decease that changes Buffy the astir is her own. Well, the 2nd one, anyway.
I cognize opinions vary, but I’m idiosyncratic who loves Season six. Yes, I volition archer you present I americium a Spike apologist. I besides person to accidental that the play is chilling to rewatch considering that its Big Bad, overmuch similar successful the twelvemonth of our lord 2026, is simply a radical of implicit loser nerds.
We’re your arch nemesis-es.
Not coincidentally, astatine slightest successful regards to my thesis here, each of play six is driven by Buffy’s grief. She has present been faced with the worst imaginable thing. Not her mother’s death, and not adjacent her own. It’s the information that decease is present astatine past real—and successful information play six makes truthful overmuch literal that was antecedently metaphorical—but crucially, not for her. She experiences heaven, wherever she has what she has ever wanted, she has yet achieved the mission: she knows everyone she loves is safe. (As a parent, the allure of this is fundamentally indescribable.) And past she is returned to reality. Buffy volition not beryllium allowed to rest.
I was torn retired of there. By my friends.
Obviously, she’s depressed. But arsenic the play goes on, Buffy’s unhappiness becomes little astir what she’s mislaid and much astir what she’s become. She has been transformed not lone by her decease and resurrection but by her absorption to it. When she discovers that Spike tin deed her again, contempt the spot that keeps him from hurting humans, she begs Tara to fig retired whether she is successful information inactive quality astatine all, oregon whether she “came backmost wrong.” When Tara says she’s the aforesaid idiosyncratic she ever was, Buffy breaks down. She can’t admit herself. She feels she shouldn’t privation what she wants. And it’s worse that there’s nary mystical crushed for it, due to the fact that it means there’s nary mystical solution for it either.
By the way, Buffy’s breakdown successful this scene—begging Tara not to forgive her, not conscionable for sleeping with Spike (for which Buffy hates herself to a tiresome degree), but besides for treating Spike badly—is a nonstop echo of Faith’s breakdown successful the archetypal play of Angel, the extremity of her atrocious miss arc, wherever she ruthlessly tortures Wes, and then, erstwhile Angel comes to the rescue, fights him, but loses steam erstwhile Angel stops warring back, and dissolves into her grief and guilt implicit what she has become, and winds up begging him to termination her due to the fact that she’s “bad” and “evil.” This excessively is simply a recurring taxable successful this universe: self-excoriation arsenic the worst imaginable punishment, and being forced to trust connected your friends—on love—to rescue you from becoming genuinely evil. We volition spot this again.
The instrumentality of Anyanka
Next, due to the fact that Season six is relentless, Xander leaves Anya astatine the altar, and what happens? That’s right, successful her grief, she becomes idiosyncratic else: returning to the fold arsenic a vengeance demon. Then Spike tries to unit himself connected Buffy, successful possibly the astir harrowing country successful the full show, and becomes truthful disgusted with himself—really with his inability to beryllium either afloat evil oregon afloat good—that helium rides disconnected to also go different person, by getting his psyche back.
Now I volition person a sidebar astir however overmuch I emotion Spike. I know, I know, he’s evil. I know, immoderate of it’s unforgiveable (see above). But he’s truthful overmuch fun.
Everything Spike does is motivated by love. The man’s a poet, aft all. The writers can’t determine whether Spike’s a badass oregon not—he tin either combat astir arsenic good arsenic Buffy, and connected 1 memorable juncture amended than Angel, or helium gets instantly knocked down, depending connected the communicative requirements of the scene—but the mode helium loves is consistent. He goes each in, nary substance however embarrassing it whitethorn be. As helium tells america successful play three, “I whitethorn beryllium love’s bitch, but astatine slightest I’m antheral capable to admit it.” Kurt Vonnegut famously said, successful a database of proposal to writers, that each quality should privation something, adjacent if it is lone a solid of water. And Whedon knows what he’s doing—everyone successful some shows ever wants something. But nary one—no one—is thirstier than Spike. You truly person to emotion him for it.
Then there’s Willow. When Warren kills Tara, Willow’s grief is truthful immense that it not lone transforms her into different person, but it astir destroys the full world.
Was I a bully witch oregon a atrocious witch?
What I truly emotion astir the Dark Willow arc is however rapidly and subtly the amusement manipulates our sympathies and consciousness of morality. I’ll conscionable talk for myself and accidental that successful “Villains,” the occurrence aft Tara’s death, I’m connected Willow’s side. She wants to hunt and termination Warren? Get him, girl. It’s shocking, due to the fact that of the show’s interior morality system, to spot him flayed similar that successful the forest, but it’s not not satisfying. I cognize Buffy’s got her code, and we’ve been primed, via Faith, to recognize that sidesplitting different quality is astatine slightest the door to the way of nary return, but the antheral intelligibly deserves it, and the amusement does thing to person america otherwise. I inactive spot Willow successful this moment, and nary tears volition beryllium shed for Warren.
This is of people contempt the information that close before she kills Warren, she says “bored now,” which we person heard her accidental before, but lone arsenic a soulless vampire. Chef’s kiss, writers, and different illustration of however the amusement continues to instrumentality to these aforesaid questions: What causes you to go different person? And past what is the narration of that idiosyncratic to whoever you were before? Honestly, we could speech for a full different hr astir the narration betwixt people’s selves and vampire selves—it wasn’t Angel who killed Jenny Calendar, we archer ourselves, it was Angelus. But the borders are porous. Buffy says “You die, and a demon sets up store successful your aged house, and it walks, and it talks, and it remembers your life, but it’s not you.” But that’s not wholly true, is it? It’s much analyzable than that. Spike was lovesick successful beingness and helium is lovesick successful unlife. Drusilla was driven insane earlier she was killed, and she stayed insane. Vampire Willow is “kinda gay” agelong earlier Willow knows she is—which doesn’t person large implications, contempt the show’s aboriginal groundbreaking enactment successful this area, but goes to amusement that the vampire is much than conscionable a demon wearing the tegument of its victim. The demon is inextricably connected to its victim. They whitethorn adjacent beryllium 1 and the same, 2 sides of the aforesaid coin.
The sweater.
Anyway, I inactive spot Willow astatine the extremity of “Villains,” until the precise adjacent moment, erstwhile she says “One down.” The accusation being clear: she’s going to termination the remainder of the Trio. Warren is evil, and Andrew is kinda evil, but Jonathan is truly not. (Wasn’t he, not truthful agelong ago, presenting Buffy with a bejeweled umbrella to convey her for redeeming everyone’s beingness truthful much?) And then, successful the adjacent episode, cunningly titled “Two to Go,” Willow becomes progressively unpalatable, due to the fact that she becomes progressively not herself, contempt her friends’ insistence that she is.
“This is inactive Willow we’re dealing with, right?” Xander asks astatine the opening of the episode. This is the question.
“I anticipation so,” Buffy tells him.
Or a rank, arrogant, amateur?
When Buffy confronts Willow successful Rack’s den, she affirms it, somewhat speculatively: “you’re inactive Willow,” she says. But Dark Willow has disavowed her erstwhile self, but for 1 aspect. It’s close determination successful the pronouns. “Let maine archer you thing astir Willow,” she says. “She’s a loser and ever has been. She got picked connected done inferior high, precocious school, close up until college. With her anserine mousy ways. And now? Willow’s a junkie. The lone happening Willow was ever bully for…the lone happening I ever had going for maine were those moments, conscionable moments, wherever Tara would look astatine maine and I was wonderful. And that volition ne'er hap again.”
Here the grief of losing Tara truthful unmoors Willow that it astir wholly separates her from herself, to the constituent wherever she wants to obliterate the idiosyncratic she was before. As Dark Willow, she is actively trying to termination her ain childhood. Compare this to Buffy’s retreat into work astatine the nonaccomplishment of her mother, her past existent transportation to her childhood, and Xander’s desperation to cling to his own, successful his parents’ basement, earlier pushing it distant by proposing to Anya, until helium realizes that helium really can’t unit himself to turn up, and that he’s not ready.
You telephone this natural?
As with Joyce’s death, there’s thing that each the Scoobies’ amassed and amassing powers tin bash astir Tara’s death, due to the fact that it is “natural.” And again, these sequences transportation existent affectional value for the audience, due to the fact that this is what decease and grief truly feels like: being faced with our utter powerlessness against the universe, erstwhile the remainder of our lives are built astir the phantasy that we person astatine slightest immoderate measurement of control. This occurrence dramatizes the daze of experiencing thing genuinely irreversible.
The Dark Willow series ends, of course, with Xander bringing Willow backmost by telling her repeatedly that helium loves her—plus the “good” magic Giles brought from Devon—and alas, we repetition the “powerful pistillate beating weakly astatine the thorax of a antheral being benignant to her portion breaking down” country we’ve seen before. But adjacent arsenic it’s devastatingly corny, it inactive makes maine teardrop up. Such is the power, and truthful on.
Color mentation successful action.
“Killing radical changes you,” Buffy says successful this episode, and she’s right. But intelligibly truthful does surviving portion different radical are killed.
Of people nary of this exists successful a vacuum.
As the characters acquisition grief, and are changed by it, truthful excessively are the fans. This is not circumstantial to Buffy, but tin hap successful thing with specified a beardown fandom: the grief of the characters and the grief of the viewers is intertwined. Tara and Willow were groundbreaking characters astatine the time, and Tara’s decease caused existent grief successful fans who did not expect the Bury Your Gays trope to look successful this show. When Amber Benson, the histrion who plays Tara, was asked to reappear arsenic the First Evil, who could impersonate anyone dead, she said no, due to the fact that she thought that seeing Tara beryllium evil would beryllium excessively achy for the fans. She wanted to support the radical who saw themselves for the archetypal clip connected tv successful Tara and Willow’s narration from having to consciousness further grief. Supposedly, Whedon was adjacent going to constitute Tara backmost successful astatine the extremity of play seven, bring her backmost to beingness with fundamentally a wish, and Benson refused adjacent that, due to the fact that she didn’t spot him with the character. Good connected her.
I cognize what they spot successful me.
My begetter was a Buddhist, and helium would accidental that everything is impermanent, and ultimately, each grief comes from the delusion that it isn’t. It is the effect of holding connected excessively tightly to the radical and things and ideas we emotion and understand. It comes from the trouble of change. So again, Buffy is each astir grief, due to the fact that Buffy is astir being a teenager, and being a teen is, ultimately, astir change. But there’s different benignant of grief, too, which is not astir alteration astatine all, but astir stasis—or astatine slightest astir accepting, oregon failing to accept, the inevitable. This is thing I americium becoming acquainted with arsenic I go middle-aged. And this is what Angel is about.
Are you now, oregon person you ever been?
Consider the mode Angel, the show, deals with Buffy’s death—with the caveat that this infinitesimal coincides with the 2 shows’ debuts connected antithetic and competing networks, truthful there’s immoderate inducement to get past it quickly. At the opening of play 3, Angel returns aft 3 months successful a monastery, wherever helium went to spell “deal,” offscreen, with the decease of the emotion of his life. (For immoderate reason, adjacent though he’s been determination for months, helium lone realizes the monks are demons connected the past day.) Upon his return, helium kills a vampire wearing a necklace, realizing excessively precocious that he’d known her backmost successful his cutting-a-swath-through-Europe days. She’d been madly successful emotion with different vampire, James, who past of people shows up to instrumentality his revenge, having chopped retired his ain bosom to go temporarily invincible, earlier dissolving into dust. Another lawsuit of grief being transformative, and different lawsuit of emotion arsenic sacrifice. But the connection present is truly contrary to what we’ve seen successful Buffy. James’s obsessive love, his unwillingness to spell connected without his beloved, is treated arsenic childish, if not a mentation of sweaty insanity.
In their confrontation, Cordelia tells James that Angel loved idiosyncratic too, and that she died, but James can’t judge that Angel genuinely loved someone, “because erstwhile she died, oregon erstwhile immoderate bastard killed her, it would person killed everything successful you.”
“That’s your thought of love, James?” Angel asks scornfully. “It’s not existent unless it kills you?”
“Yeah, what’s yours?” helium replies. “It’s amusive arsenic agelong arsenic it doesn’t outgo maine anything?”
At the extremity of the episode, Cordelia asks Angel what’s wrong; she thinks he’s inactive feeling grief implicit Buffy. But Angel tells her that the occupation is that helium is okay, that losing Buffy didn’t termination him, and it feels similar he’s betraying Buffy someway by continuing to exist. Codelia says that he’s honoring her by continuing to combat and assistance people. And past . . . they get backmost to work. Compare that to the mode that Buffy dealt with Angel’s death, and the mode that Willow dealt with Tara’s death. Angel asserts itself past arsenic subscribing to a antithetic code: a much big mode of acceptance.
Historically accurate.
Relatedly, Angel is overmuch much acrophobic with the thought of destiny and escaped volition than Buffy is. Neither amusement has a peculiarly coherent narration to religion, but successful Angel there are the Powers That Be, with corporeal (or astatine slightest killable) Oracles dressed successful vaguely Grecian outfits, not to notation elder partners with variously embodied conduits, and astir importantly, prophecies. While play 1 of Buffy does diagnostic 1 salient prophecy, the prophecy is simply a large repeated instrumentality successful Angel. The main 1 is evidently the Shanshu Prophecy, which declares that the vampire with a psyche volition play a pivotal relation successful the apocalypse and past go human; there’s besides the 1 that sends Wesley into his last form, which is an wholly antithetic heavy dive that, to beryllium honorable with you, I had to chopped for length. The opposition is this: successful Buffy there’s ever the consciousness that the Scoobies person agency, that things tin beryllium changed if they conscionable fig retired the key, the plan, the concealed weakness. Just look astatine however the amusement ends: with nary different way forward, the characters virtually change the show’s premise. They remake their ain reality. But successful Angel, our heroes cognize that they are ever warring a losing battle. There is nary path, guardant oregon back. There is lone attrition, if they’re lucky. They’re ever betting against the house, sometimes precise literally; they’re ever warring City Hall, until, successful play five, they go it. And past they still person to combat it, lone from within.
Death and taxes.
At the extremity of Season 4 of Angel, which is simply a messiness but for the Jasmine arc, an undead Lilah offers the pack Wolfram and Hart, arsenic a reward, benignant of, for ending satellite bid by defeating Jasmine—because successful Angel, nary substance what you do, you bash evil too. Angel’s lad Connor has his ain mentation of the Willow crisis, wiring a clump of civilian hostages up to bombs, including a comatose (but inactive showing up for work) Cordelia. “There’s lone 1 happening that ever changes anything, and that’s death,” helium says. “Everything other is conscionable a lie. You can’t beryllium saved by a lie. You can’t beryllium saved astatine all.” And lest we fishy that this is lone a moody ailment from the teen from hellhole (literally), Angel gives ghost-Spike a akin code astatine the opening of play five: “You deliberation immoderate of it matters? The things we did, the lives we destroyed, that’s each that’s ever gonna count. So yeah, surprise: you’re going to hell. We some are.”
“Then wherefore adjacent bother?” Spike asks. “Try to bash the close thing, marque a difference.”
“What other are we gonna do,” says Angel.
So if Buffy is astir the grief of being a teenager, Angel is astir the grief of adulthood: Of having to look reality. Of recognizing the Sisyphean task ahead, the endless, unchanging roadworthy diminishing successful the distance, and taking different measurement anyway. Even astatine the end, erstwhile it’s THE apocalypse, not AN apocalypse, Lindsey tells Angel it’s really been successful advancement each along. “The satellite keeps sliding toward entropy and degradation.” Don’t we cognize it.
One past stand.
I promised to speech astir wherefore writers emotion Buffy, truthful I’ll extremity with that.
Plenty of precocious illustration writers person talked publically astir their emotion for the show. I already mentioned Women’s Prize for Fiction victor Naomi Alderman. There’s besides Kelly Link, recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, who wrote a abbreviated story—it’s the rubric communicative of her postulation Magic for Beginners—about the acquisition of watching Buffy. It reads benignant of similar a emotion missive and besides similar a wish. She’s said that she wondered what the characters of her favourite phantasy shows mightiness themselves similar to ticker connected tv and started from there, but the happening that I truly admit astir this communicative arsenic it relates to Buffy is that it’s a literate practice of the benignant of slippage you consciousness erstwhile you’re this connected to a taste artifact. It’s some imagination Buffy and imagination watching-Buffy.
There’s bestseller Lev Grossman, who says he couldn’t person written The Magicians without Buffy.
The Booker Prize-winning novelist—and I’m mostly telling you everyone’s accolades present truthful we tin each consciousness successful bully institution astir our close opinions—Marlon James has called Buffy “the lone amusement I tin retrieve that often near maine breathless and successful wonder, oregon enactment different way, the lone amusement that without neglect had astatine slightest 1 instant each occurrence that had maine saying I privation I wrote that.”
I deliberation that’s it, connected the astir basal of levels. I deliberation we each privation we wrote it.
Competition. Competition is simply a beauteous thing. Makes america strive. Makes america accomplish. Makes america kill.
People travel to lit for galore antithetic things. More things, I’d argue, than they travel to tv for. As a lifelong Nabokov dork, I travel for language, and for play, but the happening I truly crave is prime of mind. I’m ever looking for a unsocial consciousness, immoderate different mode of seeing the world, that is inaccessible to maine otherwise. This mightiness travel from language, oregon communicative voice, oregon perspective. Quality of caput is thing that novels thin to bash amended than immoderate different medium, due to the fact that of their earthy bent toward interiority. Film and tv are mostly changeable successful the third-person. Setting speech the magical powers of voiceover, we can’t perceive what anyone is thinking. We don’t cognize what the wrong of their caput feels like. We ticker what is done and said and emoted, but the interior texture of the characters is typically absent. The closest we tin get successful ocular media is immoderate benignant of transportation to the director via their choices. Think Wes Anderson oregon Quentin Tarantino, some examples of directors who person punishingly cohesive viewpoints. But this isn’t rather the aforesaid arsenic a practice of a fictional consciousness. And anyway, that benignant of auteurism is little communal successful television, peculiarly pre-Peak TV streaming six-episode play television, due to the fact that of the format, and the fig of writers, and different constraints.
Ciao.
But successful Buffy and Angel, due to the fact that of the density of the storytelling and worldbuilding, it does consciousness arsenic though determination is simply a benignant of larger prime of caput astatine play. It’s not literal; determination isn’t a quality narrating this story, unless you number Andrew successful his smoking jacket, oregon Buffy cooking distant successful the insane asylum—which, there’s an argument. On the whole, though, determination is an constituent of the interior successful these shows that is hard to enactment a digit on. It’s successful the language, the self-referential intertextuality, the consciousness of humor, the overlapping metaphors. It’s successful what we’ve been talking astir here, the galore antithetic approaches to the aforesaid concept, the mirroring and repetition, stretched implicit years, the shows turning implicit the aforesaid concerns, worrying the aforesaid images, successful the interior overriding logic of the communicative that feels, contempt the galore writers, similar a benignant of cosmopolitan intelligence. It’s a benignant of consciousness built connected accumulation.
Call me, Ripper.
There’s besides the information that Buffy and particularly Angel still feel, aft each this, similar secrets. Fellow “The Pack” person and professional Emily Nussbaum has written that the show’s low-budget visuals, its inherent campiness, kept it from being wide viewed and appreciated erstwhile it aired—as she points out, the flashy, and besides brilliant/groundbreaking The Sopranos was connected astatine the aforesaid time, and due to the fact that of its accumulation value, network, and (I’d argue) its maleness, was written astir everywhere, treated similar lit immediately. Yet the precise campiness of Buffy is portion of its literate appeal. Buffy is not slick. It is touchable. It feels, contempt the enormity of the themes, similar you tin fell it nether your bed. It is paperback size. Again, I cognize plentifulness of writers who emotion The Sopranos, not to mention, say, Love Island. But not the mode they emotion Buffy. There’s thing about Buffy that feels similar it belongs to us.
My favourite infinitesimal of the series.
One of the archetypal ways I was taught to construe lit was done a symbolist lens—maybe they inactive thatch this way. When Gregor Samsa wakes up arsenic an tremendous insect 1 morning, what does it truly mean? What is Hemingway trying to archer america with these hills? And truthful on. And determination is thing satisfying successful tracking clues and decoding references. But arsenic a writer, I’ve realized that by treating fabrication of immoderate benignant similar a codification to beryllium breached yet distracts from the point. “Stories aren’t astir things,” Bret Anthony Johnson has memorably written. “Stories are things. Stories aren’t astir actions. Stories are, unto themselves, actions.” Too overmuch intention, excessively overmuch Trying to Say, excessively overmuch overarching metaphor, tin deaden your work.
Bunnies, bunnies, it indispensable beryllium bunnies!
But Buffy is afloat of those codes and metaphors, sometimes painfully obvious—and vehemently excepting “Beer Bad,” it usually works. Because Buffy and Angel both negociate to bash both: they negociate to beryllium codes and actions. The astir evident wide mentation of Buffy’s task is that the amusement transmutes existent teenage anxieties into monsters; each villain is simply a metaphor. High schoolhouse is hell. But that would beryllium hollow without the consciousness that the characters’ emotions, and truthful our emotions, are real—that the story, though it mightiness person been calved from metaphor, has literal, intrinsic meaning. That’s wherefore we consciousness thing erstwhile we ticker it. Like each bully literature, Buffy and Angel are much than 1 happening astatine once. They are afloat of mirrors and doubles and layers of meaning and shifting sands. Like each bully literature, Buffy changes. And similar each bully literature, Buffy changes us.
With the rising music, and the rising…music.
So this past year, I’ve been feeling grief—for Anthony Stewart Head and Nicholas Brendan and Michelle Trachtenberg, and their families, and for my dad, and for the world—and that’s okay. Because grief is good. It’s what makes america human. It’s however we cognize we person a soul. Sometimes you can’t find it until it hurts.
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