With its own built-in mythology and history dating back centuries, it’s no surprise that Buffy the Vampire Slayer sparked a lot of fan theories over the course of its seven-season run. As with any genre show like this, these run the full gamut from believable to bonkers: Drusilla was a potential Slayer, Dracula was responsible for creating Dawn, Willow Rosenberg killed (and then resurrected) all of Slayers in the series finale, and, oh yeah, Rupert Giles was a Time Lord.
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Quite possibly the biggest and most debated, though, is the theory that the events of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were not even real. This is firmly rooted in Season 6, Episode 17, “Normal Again.” This starts with the Trio summoning a demon to use against Buffy, whose venom causes her to hallucinate that she’s in a mental institution, and has been for the past six years. Dawn doesn’t exist, Joyce is still alive, and her parents are still together.
Or, is it her life as the Slayer that’s really being hallucinated? That’s the question the episode very much intends to leave viewers with, sparking lots of theories that the hospital in “Normal Again” is actually the real world, and the show happens inside Buffy’s head.
Does The “Buffy Wasn’t Real” Theory Hold Up?
What’s key to the theory is how the episode ends. While it initially looks as though it’s going to conclude with Buffy killing the demon and going back to normality, it has one last sting as it then returns to the hospital. There, she’s slipped into a catatonic state, lost inside her hallucinations of being the Slayer, and that’s where the episode ends. The disturbing implication is that it’s at least possible this was the case, and technically speaking, nothing in Buffy necessarily contradicts that notion. This is also supported by Buffy claiming, in the “show universe,” that she was actually sent to an institution previously, when she first started seeing vampires.
The idea of it being fake also serves to explain the supernatural goings-on in Sunnydale, and it directly addresses the issue of Dawn suddenly appearing out of nowhere in Season 5. While this was explained away as her being “the key,” the doctor in the hospital tells us that Buffy created her later on, altering the fabric of her imagined reality out of a sense of longing for a familial bond. It’s also possible to fit other characters into the hospital, as laid out by u/theotherghostgirl on Reddit, including:
- Giles was her head therapist, who ended up leaving.
- Willow is a woman with anxiety issues.
- Xander is a nymphomaniac.
- Dru is a homeless woman and addict; Spike is her boyfriend.
- Angel is an orderly or security guard.
It’s clearly a theory you can have some fun expanding out, but there are some problems. While Buffy itself doesn’t contradict it, some parts of the show don’t fully make sense with the theory in mind, because there’s no reason for Buffy to be imagining things disconnected from her own story. Also, the claim of her being sent to an institution before doesn’t fit with what we know of her backstory and life before Sunnydale, nor Joyce’s reaction when she later learns her daughter is the Slayer. Again, it could still fit and be hand-waved away, but it’s not neat.
This is all made much more complicated by Angel. It doesn’t really make sense for her delusions to then spinoff into all of those characters, and there are events that happen on Angel, then crossover into Buffy, and it’s only on the latter that she learns of them. That doesn’t really work if it’s all inside her own head.
The biggest problem, though, is that it undercuts the power of the show: the themes of female empowerment get a little lost if she were making it all up inside her own head. This was supposed by producer Marti Noxon, who, as per the book Slayers and Vampires; The Complete Uncensored, Unauthorized, Oral History of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, said:
“It was a fake out; we were having some fun with the audience. I don’t want to denigrate what the whole show has meant. If Buffy’s not empowered then what are we saying? If Buffy’s crazy, then there is no girl power; it’s all fantasy. And really the whole show stands for the opposite of that, which is that it isn’t just a fantasy. There should be girls that can kick ass. So I’d be really sad if we made that statement at the end. That’s why it’s just somewhere in the middle saying ‘Wouldn’t this be funny if …?’ or ‘Wouldn’t this be sad or tragic if…?’ In my feeling, and I believe in Joss’ as well that’s not the reality of the show. It was just a tease and a trick.”
Still, it is an interesting theory, and just because it’s not real in the main universe of the TV show doesn’t actually mean it’s not real somewhere. We know that there are alternate dimensions out there, and it’s quite possible that what the demon did was break down the barrier between them. So, in one world, the events of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are real. But in another, she really is in an institution. It keeps the tragic power of “Normal Again,” without undercutting the entire show with a trope-y “it was all a dream” twist.
And hey, perhaps that universe is the one All My Children exists in. Sarah Michelle Gellar got her break on the soap opera and returned to it for a cameo in 2011. There, she’s admitted to a hospital… because she’s claiming to see vampires!
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is streaming on Hulu.
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Courtesy of Bones Film
