By Sharai Bohannon

As a child of the 90s, it is my birthright to love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was going to rewrite the movie with crayons because I wanted it to be darker. I was a pretentious kid still learning how to read, mind you. The first episode I watched on the WB was a rerun of season 3, episode 3, “Faith, Hope & Trick”.  I then religiously watched every Tuesday night on the WB and made room in my heart for the Angel spin-off. I was a Willow until Anya became a regular Scooby, and my homeschooled ass saw myself in her as she struggled with human emotions that made no sense. I spent numerous winter holidays as an adult re-watching the series and dubbed it my “Buffy and Bourbon” time. I used to be able to tell you an episode title, season, and number from a still of Buffy (or Willow’s) outfit. I’m even listed as a Producer and Story Contributor on Can’t Escape the Moonlight: How Buffy Saved a Generation. 

I’m not sharing all of this to shove my nerd card in your face. I’m a huge fan of Sarah Michelle Gellar because she is my Buffy (with all disrespect to Kristy Swanson). I’m one of the girls who needs a coke cross (even though doing coke once was more than enough for me) because of Cruel Intentions. However, I know what I’m about and mostly catch her when she steps into the horror genre. As a nerd with taste, I am also very into this Radio Silence era and was giddy about her signing on for Ready or Not 2: Here I Come. So, I hightailed my ass to SXSW this year and had the relief of a habitual smoker with their first inhale of the day when I saw just how good the movie was.

One of the things Buffy taught me is that sometimes favorites fail you, and that is (usually) okay. Luckily, all the favorites missed the failure turn this time, and I got one win in this impossibly rough year. I also got to be in the Paramount theater when mother and the Ready or Not 2 crew took the stage. I was still buzzing hours later when I found out some dude, history will not remember, cancelled the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot. I was still figuring out how to feel about the reboot, but knew I would be watching it either way as a card-carrying Scooby. This blow hurt more than I expected. I then found out SMG got the call right before taking the SXSW stage. Which feels ghoulish, but the show must go on, and our slayer is a professional. 

Another thing Buffy, and unfortunately Joss Whedon himself, taught me is that sometimes the biggest bads are the people behind the things we love. An exec at Hulu is the reason this reboot of a beloved show that still means a lot to my generation was canceled before it began. “We had an executive on our show who was not only not a fan of the original, but was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn’t for him.” – Gellar via People Magazine. 

In the interview, Gellar also pointed out that the director of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale pilot was on her way to the Oscars that same weekend. Academy Award winner Chloé Zhao was taking her newest buzzy film, Hamnet, to the award show that Sunday. With the Oscars’ barely veiled disdain for people of color, women, and specifically women of color, Zhao’s going twice is probably some record. In a just world, aka one with less sexism, her Academy Award nominations and wins would get her more respect. Instead, Variety, the home of the Sinners’ hit pieces, is already at the scene with the biased reporting.

Again, this is nothing new and only adds salt to the Buffy-sized wound most millennials are nursing. While mourning our chance to have a dose of nostalgic comfort in these unprecedented times, and feeling overwhelming empathy for those involved who might never see their hard work come to fruition, another blow was dealt to my generation. Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander for the entirety of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, suddenly passed away. Taking a look at social media, it seems as if the parasocial relationships are more important than letting castmates grieve. If they mention who Brendon became and what he did, they’re wrong. If they talk about the person they used to know, they are also wrong. If they try to find a middle ground, then everyone gets to attack them from both sides.

As someone who has had to bury friends and family members with whom I had complicated relationships, I am mortified. The Scoobies, cast members, and fans alike should be allowed to feel all of their feelings. To quote my college mentor, “It’s not the shit that happens to us, it’s how we deal with it.” We all make choices in this life, and it often leads to complicated individuals. This begets strong feelings about us as people and many times various versions of the truth. We can feel mad and hold people accountable for their actions because they did, in fact, whatever they did to elicit those feelings. However, we can also hold space for who they were to people who knew them and/or their part in our nostalgia. The two feelings are not conveniently mutually exclusive. This is yet another thing Buffy is teaching us all these years later.

In Buffy season 2, episode 7, “Lie to Me,” our slayer turns to her watcher for comfort after a particularly rough episode. Giles (Anthony Head), a makeshift father figure for many of us raised by this show, does as requested. He lies to this kid who has the weight of the world on her small and fashionable shoulders. When she asks if life gets easier, he says, “Yes, it’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats. And, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies and… everybody lives happily ever after.”

The reason this particular episode and moment stick out for many of us is that nothing is ever truly black and white. There is a reason we often have complicated feelings about people, situations, and life. Remember season 5, episode 22, “The Gift”?  Buffy turns to her little sister, Dawn (the late Michelle Trachtenberg, whom we are still mourning). Buffy is about to make the ultimate sacrifice (again) out of love for her new sister. She tells her, “The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.” I will be damned if that does not ring truer every month of this hellish decade. 

Another of the many lessons I learned from Buffy is that fandoms are inherently toxic places. I choose to be a fan and stand outside even if I am wearing merch from head to toe. I’m never surprised when people are mean to the actors they claim to love. I’m also sadly never impressed with the infighting between content creators who disagree with each other. However, I do hate that social media has made people so comfortable inserting themselves in someone’s complicated grieving process. I also hate that we live in a world where people are forced to share some of their process online in fear of people misconstruing their silence. 

Buffy’s tombstone at the end of “The Gift” read, “She saved the world a lot.” That’s very true. However, sadly, she cannot save us from the worst versions of ourselves on social media. It is up to each of us to learn and practice empathy, and sadly, too many people are skipping that important lesson. I’m not telling you how to feel about a key but an extremely complicated figure, central to our nostalgia. I am still processing all of my feelings, to be honest. I also am the first to call out male fuckery in all forms and am an award-winning angry person. As someone who still tells people too loudly that I wish my dad had died even sooner, I have no room to judge anyone for how they hold their residual rage. I’m just saying, maybe make your own posts and leave others out of it. Silence is always an option, and if more people remembered that, the internet would be a less shitty place.

Whether you’re sad, mad, confused, or still in shock at all of the hits Buffy fans have taken these last few years, you have my condolences. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and by extension the people who made it what it was, means a lot to all of us. We’re all entitled to our complicated feelings. However, maybe don’t make your feelings everyone else’s problem just because the world is scary, and our nostalgia is burning.

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