Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Cancelled Reboot Had the Chance to Answer a Major Question After 23 Years

We live in the age of the reboot and relaunch, but sadly not for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Starring Ryan Keira Armstrong (of Skeleton Crew fame), Hulu’s Buffy relaunch featured the return of Sarah Michelle Gellar herself. Everything seemed to be going well… until, suddenly, it didn’t. In March, Hulu abruptly pulled the plug. Gellar blamed the reboot’s cancellation on a single executive, “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.” According to Gellar, it had been an “uphill battle… since day one.”

Gellar didn’t name the executive in question, but there have been reports Craig Erwich, Disney Television Group President, who’s responsible for overseeing Hulu Originals. Hulu claimed to be reworking a Buffy reboot, but nobody’s really expecting there to be any success here. For one thing, Gellar herself was famously wary of returning to the iconic role of Buffy Summers. She’s now been burned, and it seems unlikely she’ll ever sign up again. The tragedy is that Buffy is the one franchise where a relaunch is baked into the story, and that the reboot could’ve answered a major mystery.

Buffy Has Always Been a Generational Saga

Most relaunches and reboots face a major problem; how to introduce a new character without doing disservice to the original one. The original show was created as a singular entity, designed to feel like it was complete in and of itself. That’s the very reason it was successful in the first place, and it means any attempt to revisit it sits uncomfortably with the story that inspired it. Over on the big screen, it’s the same reason so few sequels are better than the first movie. It takes skillful writing to make it work, whether you’re relaunching Quantum Leap or writing an Alien sequel.

But here’s the beauty of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: succession is literally part of the story. Buffy is just the latest in a long line of Slayers, because a new Slayer is activated in every generation, called to fight against the vampires and demons. When one Slayer dies, the next is activated. To be sure, Buffy riffed on this – the introduction of Kendra and Faith was genius – but the core idea is central to the show’s mythology. Buffy was never going to be the last word on Slayers, however beloved she may be by viewers. If any franchise is destined for a relaunch, it’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 7 Changed Everything

This is part of the genius of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. By nature, Buffy Summers is something unique in her generation; she stands apart from the rest of the world, carrying the weight of destiny on her shoulders. But, where other Slayers have been trained for this, she has lived as an ordinary teenager. She craves connection and community, things Slayers are denied because of who and what they are. This contradiction drives Buffy‘s drama, and it builds to a climax for the series finale in Season 7. There, Willow changes the Slayer magic to activate every potential Slayer at once.

Looking back, I’m struck once again by the genius of this idea. Buffy the Vampire Slayer ends with Buffy Summers alone no longer, finally in a community of Slayers who share her power and her destiny. Girls all over the world are empowered because of Buffy Summers and her friends, transformed by the Slayer who refused to be bound by the constraints of magic and destiny. It’s breathtaking, but it does pose one major problem; it effectively ends the lineage of the Slayers. They live in a violent world, and sooner or later, they’ll begin to die. When they do… what’s next? Who saves the world after the Slayers?

Buffy’s New Sunnydale Relaunch Could’ve Finally Answered That Question

We don’t know much about the Buffy relaunch, which would’ve been titled “Buffy: New Sunnydale.” After the cancellation, a leaked draft gave us a sense of some of the ideas in play; a world where Buffy Summers was a known entity, where Slayers had become legendary, and where a whole new Slayer was born for her generation. The draft confirmed Buffy had changed the world when she activated all those Slayers, but that they had indeed died out. And then, in a shocking twist, a new Slayer was activated.

Willow’s magic had changed everything about the Slayers, but only for a time. It was safe to assume Buffy would head back to Sunnydale, meeting up with the new Slayer and training her. That’s the logical continuation of her arc, probably the only way to continue it; she still has the experience of sharing what it means to be a Slayer, but in a much more complicated way. Unlike Giles, Buffy would fully understood what she was consigning the new Slayer to; not on an intellectual level, but because of her own experience with that calling. The concept alone is thrilling.

Sadly, Buffy: New Sunnydale was cancelled. That leaked draft is the only glimpse we’re going to get off the show; it was rough and ready, but it was only ever a draft, so that’s fine. The core elements were there, interesting ideas that could easily have been developed in fantastic new ways. Personally, months later, I still consider this cancellation to have been one of the most foolish decisions streaming execs have made.

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