Feature: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Why We Keep Coming Back

When Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered almost thirty years ago, Kelly and I were teens and young adults navigating our own versions of high school hell. We didn’t know then that we’d still be talking about it decades later, that we’d be hosting release parties for Buffyverse novels, or that I’d be counting down the days to meet James Marsters at Fan Expo Cleveland.

But here we are.

Buffy wasn’t just a show we watched. It was a framework for understanding power, grief, friendship, and what it means to keep showing up when the world keeps asking too much. It gave us language for things we didn’t yet have words for. It modeled chosen family before that phrase became commonplace (hello, fellow queers. What’s your relationship to BtVS haha). It insisted that teenage girls were not trivial, that their pain and agency mattered, and that saving the world could happen between algebra tests and heartbreak.

We’ve watched the Buffyverse expand and contract over the years. We’ve seen it criticized, reconsidered, and reclaimed. We’ve cheered for the resurgence of Buffy-inspired fiction, from Kendare Blake’s In Every Generation, to Kiersten White’s Slayer duology, to Lily Anderson’s Big Bad. We’ve written about Ashley Poston’s The Bewitching Hour (and last week Tara and Willow’s kiss turned 25…) and the ways contemporary authors are building on what Buffy started, keeping it alive while making it their own.

The fact that we’re still here, still writing about these stories, still finding new angles and new books that echo what made Buffy matter, says something. More than nostalgia; though there’s plenty of that. It says something about what happens when a story gives you permission to be complicated, to fail and fight and love messily, to believe that one person can make a difference even when the odds are apocalyptic.

Years later, Buffy still holds up because it was urgent and human and unafraid. And maybe that’s why we keep coming back: because we’re still looking for stories that ask us to be brave, that center friendship and sacrifice, that insist the fight is worth it even when it’s hard.

So yeah, I’m meeting Spike. And I’m bringing all of that with me.

Meet James Marsters amongst other fandoms at Fan Expo Cleveland!