Buffy the Vampire Slayer revival series
 

Wow! Great.

https://www.darkhorizons.com/gellar-...BRd93AeyRGulXg

This really needed to happen 10 years ago, like around 2014, now I feel everyone is just too old. It seems like Buffy won't be the main character but a new potential slayer, so a new character.

Angel and Spike are supposed to be playing ageless vampires but they're way too old looking now. I don't even think CG would be used to de-age them. The other problem is half the old cast is dead in-canon, so I don't think they would bring them back.

And Nicolas Brendan (Xander), has been in and out of jail and an alcoholic in real life, so I don't think they'll ask for him back. It'd probably just be Willow and maybe Dawn, and Giles actor lives in the U.K.

I'll check it out. But without Joss Whedon, I have very low expectations.

Chloe Zhao is doing the pilot she made that Eternals movie for Marvel

Well, since they can't really ignore the series finale... there's many Slayers out there now. Not an exclusive gig at all anymore. Myself, I would have much preferred a "Faith the Vampire Slayer" spinoff, but THAT should have happened 10+ years ago if it was going to happen. And I'd much rather take this over that LAST Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot that never got off the ground that was supposed to be with an all-black cast and not have anything to do with what's come before.

Sarah Michelle Gellar still looks great for her age. She can pull it off but she's going to need some great scripts.

It sounds like Buffy will be in Giles role in this series with a new current slayer. But I do suspect they'll bring back most of the other old cast, even if just for 1 episode. Really hoping they can undo some of the deaths of the original series, since a lot of the main characters are dead in-canon.

But this if Buffy where characters come back from the dead all the time, so it shouldn't be an issue.

But that's the thing. The series finale blew out the whole "current Slayer" thing... there's many active Slayers now.

Giles is a no-brainer. Willow, for sure. Dawn's actress isn't doing anything anymore so they can get her if they really want her. Anya and Xander can be off living happily somewhere, I guess. Story-wise it'd be easy to imagine Angel and Spike popping in at some point but I don't know if anyone wants to see them doing Data-in-Picard with them.

On Variety now:

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/buf...ot-1236291559/

Part of me feels this is just a decade too late, as I said, 2014 would have been the ideal time as it was a decade since the show ended in 2003 (and Angel in 2004). 20 years worth of time feels like too big a gap, ALL the actors look very different now, even if Sarah and Alyson Hannigan aged the best.

Faith's actress left acting to become a psychologist, and I mentioned Nicolas Brendan's trouble with the law and abuse in real life. Angel and Spike also look much older, I'm not sure how much CG or A.I. tampering would be viable to de-age them.

If we were in 2014/2015 I'd be all over this...but we're in 2025. They're really going to have to have good writing to make this work.

idk... Alyson's not looking so great these days. She's probably aged the worst of all of them, IMO.

I didn't know that. I assumed she was still acting since Dollhouse but it looks like she hasn't been in anything since 2017. That's too bad. Surely she might return for something small?

You're probably right that he's "too toxic" to hire. But it's been a long time since he was walking off Dr. Phil. He's been clean and sober now and out of trouble for like 10 years, hasn't he? Or did he get into trouble again and I missed it?



*edit: Oh. I read his Wiki and it looks like even in recent years he's been getting caught with meth and such. Yeesh. He does have a twin, though, doesn't he? The twin has behaved, right?

It actually wouldn't take that much CGI or deepfakery on either one. It's just a question if they really want them to be a walking, talking special effect in a show that will probably be on a tight budget. Or maybe they could only show up in "vamp-face"?

Also, I was able to dig up a potential nugget. Evidently last year someone came onto the Buffy reddit and said that a new Buffy show with Sarah Michelle Gellar was happening and Chloe Zhao was going to direct. The person was "down voted into oblivion" but that's exactly what's happening now so this person seems retroactively legit. Apparently in the same post they said this:

"Story wise, it will center around Buffy being older, bitter about her slayer life causing her so much life drama for so many years and now being out of touch with the job. A new threat arrives forcing her to face her responsibilities, like a resurrection arc. She will not be some sort of mother figure helping young slayers, at least at the start."

Should have happened eleven years ago, but Geller was never comfortable with Whedon from all accounts and him being involved with the franchise is a big reason she stayed away.

Now that he's fully out of the picture it'll be interesting to see what her vision for the character is.

The Slayers audio also shows many of the original cast are willing to come back if they can help it, and that they can still go.

I would also like them to somehow include the Slayer of the future, Fray

I don't think he was interested in going back to Buffy back then. So it wasn't like she or anyone else was batting him away or anything. And if he had, I bet they'd all have fallen into line just fine -- everything they've done since is negligible.

I've never seen Buffy, is it worth watching for someone with no nostalgia?
I liked Xena type shows as a little kid. Is it action comedy? I don't think I can take seriously a show about vampires unless there's plenty of self aware humor like Hercules type shows

No, it's an action/comedy series with 90's and early 2000's camp. Like all the things you see people say about "Joss Whedon humor" from the MCU or whatever, all basically started with this show. But it worked better here, since the characters start off in High School and the cast has amazing chemistry.

Season 1 is basically like Scooby Doo, it's monster of the week and the show was discovering itself. But Season 2 onward is where the show becomes great.

The girl who played Dawn just passed away.

I thought a neat idea would be when all the potential slayers became active, then that exhausted the powerbase of the slayers, so as they die, they're not replaced. There's your drama/hook. The Vampires just need to throw wave after wave at them.

Didn't Anya die in the Finale and RIP Michelle Tratchenberg



The first 3 seasons are great. I find it to be diminishing returns after that. With Season 6 being the drizzling *****.

It's moving faster than expected:

https://www.darkhorizons.com/buffy-r...n-anticipated/

I KIND OF agree. Season 6 took a loooong time to get going, and 2/3s of it was a lot of those over the top 3 incel/dweebs doing goofy schemes with fake technology. It doesn't get going at all until Tara is killed and Dark Willow bursts onto the scene, which is when it's like, "Ahhhh, OK, that's what they were doing/setting up." But by that point it's been a whole lot of crap and the season is almost over.

Yeah, when it originally aired many people felt Season 5 was the last really great season. The series moved from WB to UPN for the final two seasons as well. Season 6 still has a lot of great stuff in it, but it also has the biggest lows in the series history (Spike almost raping Buffy, Xander leaving Anya at the altar, etc), and Season 7 starts off good but then kinda gets average/rushed by the end.

I think season 7 gets really focused on plot and it loses attention on characters (and then suddenly there's 20 Slayer potentials running around). Except Spike, those writers clearly loved giving him more material. They all seem kind of miserable together in season 7 when they felt like such friends and a team before that. And season 5 had Glory as the big bad -- not a perfect big bad, but a decent one. Season 6 didn't have a big bad at all until Willow's turn like 3 episodes before the end of the season. Season 7's "The First" is OK, but #1, is non-corporeal, and #2, doesn't really get an avatar to fight through until that preacher shows up, who's killed off pretty quickly. Neither of these seasons were remotely as satisfying as seasons 1-5.

Personally I wish they would just revive that animated series we almost got and call it a day.