In Defense of Buffy’s Later Years

Buffy in the season six episode “Afterlife”

I am currently reading and enjoying Alan Sepinwall’s book, The Revolution was Televised, about twelve TV shows that changed television drama forever. He cites Buffy the Vampire Slayer as one of these shows.

I’m happy that one of my favorite shows of all time is included in a book by a respected television critic that also covers shows like The Sopranos, The Wire, and Breaking Bad. Buffy deserves to be listed among the other game-changers if only because there’s no other show quite like it.

But while I’m happy that Sepinwall enjoys and respects Buffy, I couldn’t help but notice that he, like many fans and critics, thinks the show hit its peak when the characters were in high school.

This seems as good a time as any to finally talk about my unpopular opinion – that the later seasons of Buffy were pretty damn good.

I don’t argue the point that seasons 2 and 3 of Buffy were, in many ways, Buffy at its best. Those were the two seasons where all of the technical aspects of the show fell into place, with great fight choreography and music, and lighting that didn’t have the distracting ultra-brightness of season 6 and 7 but wasn’t so dark that we could barely see the action on the screen (such as in season 1, when they had no money). The writing of each individual episode is the tightest it ever was, with great pacing and strong emotional climaxes, and there are fewer clunkers in those two years than in season 6, which would often give us a fantastic episode followed by a piece of garbage that should never have left the writer’s room (*cough* “Gone” *cough*).

But there was one thing about the show’s later years that interested me even more than it did in the early years: the story of Buffy herself.

I loved Buffy as a character in the first two seasons and the first half of season three. I dug her spunk, her bravery, her struggle at finding the balance between her slaying duties and a normal life, and the loyalty and love she showed her friends and her mother.

Then the writers brought on Faith and needed to set up a spinoff for Angel, and Buffy suddenly felt like a supporting character in her own story, sidelined for the sake of a shiny new slayer and a new favorite lead character, and I forgot what Buffy’s arc was supposed to be in that season.

Then, in season four, the writers told a story that was probably the best-plotted arc of the series, except it was all about stupid soldiers and Buffy was turned into a supporting character that propped up Riley and whooooops I forgot to care.

Season five followed, and it was a hot mess of an arc that involved a whiny hell god stomping around and chewing the scenery for an entire year, and an even whinier little sister who came out of nowhere – but suddenly, Buffy the character mattered again. As she learns about the strange origins of her fake little sister and the oddly sympathetic origins of the vampire she’s supposed to hate, Buffy questions her own origins, wanting to know where the Slayer’s power comes from and if her strength is really rooted in darkness. She worries that embracing her Slayer power will turn her into stone, and as forces on the side of good try to take the only family she has left away from her, she wonders if the war she’s waging is even worth fighting.

In the high school years, the main question Buffy asks herself is, “How do I have a normal life even though I’m the Slayer?” (Except in those middle years, where the main question is, “How do I react to whatever Angel, Faith, and/or Riley are doing this week?”) In season five, her question changes: “How do I fight evil and still retain my humanity?”

That question is what drives Buffy’s actions in Season 6, though after coming back from death, she has even more questions, none of which have easy answers. She wonders how she can trust her friends after they unintentionally betray her. She doesn’t understand how she can be attracted to a soulless creature, or how the soulless creature could actually love her without a soul. She doesn’t understand the point of living in a world with so much pain but still desperately wants to be alive.

All of these questions and all of this confusion prompts Buffy to make some reckless choices and bad decisions, and I’m not sure I’ve ever loved her more than during that time.

Let me be clear: if Buffy’s destructive period had lasted for the entire series rather than during one difficult season, I never would have invested in the show. I don’t need to see a character self-destruct for seven years. But seeing my brave Buffy struggle like she did in the sixth season – well, it felt strangely cathartic and validating, as though the show were saying to me, “See? Even Buffy can be depressed and make mistakes and not know what she’s doing.”

By the beginning of the seventh season, Buffy is reinvigorated, and she learns to appreciate life again – until a group of junior Slayers shows up on her doorstep and she needs to take a leadership role that she’s not ready for. She closes herself off from them because the fear of leading them incorrectly is too much to bear. And suddenly the woman who had to force herself to feel any emotions at all is trying to force herself to feel nothing so her emotions don’t overwhelm her.

Early-years Buffy struggles with balancing her personal life with her call of duty. Later-years Buffy struggles with her very humanity, as she loves her friends but feels isolated from them, as she wants to protect Dawn but resents the responsibility, as she loathes what Spike is but feels drawn to him regardless.

I would not have loved adult Buffy if the teenage Buffy had not come before her, but the adult Buffy owns my heart even more than the girl who stuck a sword in the man she loved to save the world. Despite the flaws present in the later years, I will always be grateful for seasons 5-7 for giving me a woman who constantly pushed others away but still saved the world by drawing on the strength of a community.