7 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Plot Holes That Still Drive Me Crazy

Creating television is a grind, especially on a series with deeply involved lore where nearly every season consists of 20+ episodes. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a great example of just that, a show with complex mythology that sometimes gets in its own way. The program was notorious for introducing lore only to abandon it when said lore no longer served the narrative. As a fan of the series, I am well aware of the show’s tendency to gloss over, or sometimes completely contradict previously established details. With that said, quirks like that are kind of charming and they give us yet another reason to nerd out over a show we love.

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On that note, let’s nerd out a bit and think back on seven different plot holes from the much-beloved program and try to make as much sense of them as we possibly can, shall we?

1) Buffy’s Birthday

Buffy the Vampire Slayer has provided several different birthdays for its titular character. In Season One, Episode 8, “I Robot… You, Jane,” the series lists two different birthdays for Buffy. In one instance, Moloch the Corrupter accesses Buffy’s student records, which show her date of birth as 10/24/1980. A subsequent scene within the same episode later shows her DOB as 05/06/1979. Is that a continuity error, or is Moloch wreaking havoc on the computer system? Fans have posed both as possible explanations. Seeing as altering Buffy’s birthdate doesn’t read as particularly nefarious, my best guess is that this was probably a continuity error.

In Season 2, Episode 1, we learn that Buffy’s birthday falls on January 19th, 1981. The show seems to stick with that timeframe in the episodes that follow, with her birthday episode subsequently transpiring in January.

2) Vampires Can’t Breath, Can They … ?

Series lore reveals that while vampires still have a breathing impulse that carries over from their human days, they do not take air into their lungs or expel it out of their mouths. They are dead, after all. What makes this particular distinction hard to swallow, however, is the notion that the vamps on the show sometimes have visible breath or otherwise show a reliance on oxygen. One such example is the Season 2 finale where Spike chokes Drusilla. If she doesn’t breathe air, why does she react as she does?

Additionally, there’s a similarly inexplicable exchange in the Season 1 finale when Xander has to perform CPR on Buffy because Angel doesn’t breathe. However, earlier in the same episode, we see him out of breath and panting. What gives? Also, I’d like to better understand the mechanics of smoking within the context of the Buffyverse. Isn’t breathing an integral part of smoking?

3) The Vulnerability of the Übervamps

Within series lore, the Übervamps, also known as the Turok-Han, are very, very strong and notoriously difficult to defeat, except when they aren’t. These characters, who are introduced in Season 7, begin life on the series as nearly impossible to defeat. Several episodes make it abundantly clear that the Scooby Gang is up against a very challenging adversary in the Turok-Han. With that in mind, it’s more than a little perplexing when the new crop of Slayers seemingly dispense them with very little effort.

Fans have gone back and forth about why it is that a crop of potential slayers could so effortlessly defeat such worthy adversaries in their first major battle. My best guess is that the show needed an ending and continuity took a back seat.

4) Why Is Spike Able to Fall in Love With Buffy?

Buffy lore dictates that vampires are soulless and incapable of love. The main reason Angel is eventually able to feel love for Buffy stems from a vengeful curse placed on the character. However, Angel isn’t the only vamp to fall for Ms. Summers. In fact, Spike begins to develop an infatuation with Buffy that slowly builds throughout the series, culminating with the realization that he actually loves the Slayer coming about in Season 5.

Although Spike eventually regains his soul closer to the end of the series, he is as soulless as ever when he and Buffy begin to develop feelings for one another. I think that arc is memorable and allows us to see a side of both characters we haven’t previously. With that said it’s never really justified within the context of the series.

5) What Happened to the Sunnydale Coast?

Sunnydale is a coastal town, that is well-established early on in the program when we see the core characters doing all sorts of beach-related activities. Yet, the series finale leaves off with Hellmouth swallowing Sunnydale and no ocean in sight as far as the eye can see.

The show concludes with what used to be Sunnydale as little more than a cavernous crater in the middle of a massive desert landscape. Much of California is comprised of desert, for sure, and Sunnydale is a part of California. However, with the knowledge that the town is in a coastal locale, the absence of an ocean at the very end remains a mystery.

6) Does Buffy’s Home Have Restorative Properties?

We allow movies and TV series a little grace when it comes to resetting back to normal at the end of an episode, however, Buffy often took full advantage of said leniency. One of the many examples of that is the way the Summers household seems to have the ability to regenerate overnight. At many different times throughout the show, the home Buffy lives in gets destroyed, only to return to its typical pristine condition by the following installment.

The Season 3 episode ‘Dead Man’s Party’ is just one example of this persistent trend. The dwelling gets torn to pieces during a house party, yet all is well by the following episode. As I said before, suspension of disbelief is the price of admission, yet it is slightly conspicuous that the Summers home always recovers from malady so quickly.

7) Vampires Don’t Have Reflections, Except When They Do

TV productions are often pretty rushed, leaving less time to address continuity concerns that a feature film might be able to catch before release. In addition to the faster pace, television shows also tend to have smaller budgets, particularly on a network like the now-defunct WB. A lot of the so-called plot holes we’ve referenced here probably stem from a combination of those two factors. One such occurrence that almost undoubtedly exists as a result of too little time and too little money is the presence of vampires with reflections.

There are several points throughout the beloved series where a vamp casts a reflection. One of the most noteworthy is in part one of the Season 2 episode “What’s My Line?”. While we cannot see Angel in the mirror in Buffy’s bedroom, he is later visible in a smaller mirror. That’s likely a detail that the editor missed before the episode went to air.

In all fairness, this beloved series gets far more right than wrong, and the plot holes outlined above give the show character.

Although the original run of the series went off the air in the early ‘00s, there’s more Buffy coming your way in the near future.Hulu is actively developing a franchise reboot. Stay tuned to ComicBook for more details on that as we learn them.

What are some perceived continuity errors that still bug you after all these years? Let us know by dropping your two cents in the comments section below.