What the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Reboot Can Learn from the Original Series

Long before Joss Whedon was known as a cult television show mastermind, let alone as director of The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, he wrote a screenplay for a movie that would become 1992's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The story was close to his heart: A young and ordinary-seeming woman discovering a great destiny. By defining that destiny as "vampire slayer," he could subvert the classic horror trope of a pretty blonde being attacked and killed by monsters. In Whedon's world, the blonde turns around and kicks the monster's ass. It's the kind of creative genre feminism that Whedon would eventually become known for, but at the time the directors on the project were more interested in making a lighthearted teen horror spoof, and the final product was charming but ultimately forgettable.

So, when Whedon took the wheel of the 1997 TV series based on the movie, he didn't waste the opportunity to return to his original vision. Not only did he fix everything that had been changed from his script, but he built on it with a strong cast and crew and ended up creating seven seasons of a unique show with a lasting cultural impact. It's spawned a spinoff series, stacks of canonical and non-canon comic books and, now, a whole new reboot.

As showrunner Monica Uwusu-Breen has undoubtedly realized, coming into an acclaimed franchise is a lot different from overhauling a might-have-been, and fans are already doubting the need for a new Buffy. It would be too easy to lose those elements that were essential to the show's magic, and anyway, we love the original the way it is -- what is there to fix?

There's plenty. Twenty years might not be long on the grand scale, but it's enough to make the special effects from the early episodes stick out like sore thumbs. The setting is dated, and for a show about modern SoCal teenagers, that matters. Beyond those admittedly cosmetic changes, some legitimate criticisms of the show have surfaced over time: From today's perspective, for instance, the cast looks overwhelmingly white. Not much has been revealed about the reboot so far, but we do know that the title character will be played by a black actress, so it seems that Uwusu-Breen and her team have an eye out for what's worth keeping and what could use an update. With that in mind, here are a few more ideas on fixing Buffy.

Throughout all incarnations of the story of the life of Buffy Summers, nothing has divided the fan base as much as her love life. The tragic, star-crossed romance between Buffy and Angel in the first three seasons turned out to be too powerful for its own good: Left to their own devices, the couple would have ended up in a drama-killing happy ending. Whedon solved this problem by giving Angel the spinoff series that kept him permanently separated from Buffy, which isn't the kind of trick that's going to work twice.

NEXT PAGE: Let Buffy's Next Big Romance Be An Epic Love (Followed By An Epic Death)

It also paved the way for Buffy's other boyfriends, diminishing her character with sitcom-esque dating shenanigans and uncomfortable real-world parallels to abusive relationships. The reboot could use its fresh start to keep the romance from taking over -- let the next epic love have an epic death (one that sticks), or let him enter late in the game so that he can be around until the end.

Whedon likes his things that go bump in the night, but the mythology of the Buffyverse always took a back seat to the storytelling. For the most part, that was great -- characterization is arguably the single greatest strength of the original show, so it's easy to forgive a few retcons or nonsensical lore. Occasionally, though, the rules needed to be clarified for a character's own sake. To this day, nobody knows for sure if a vampire without a soul can ever act altruistically. Analyze the key episodes about Angelus and Spike, and you'll come away with the conclusion that the writers don't know, either.

Readers of the Season 8 comics were surprised to find that Warren Mears had survived his flaying, especially since The First had used his visage in Season 7, which we had been told only works for the dead. Whedon was asked about the apparent change of rules and responded with succinct honesty: "I forgot, okay?" Establishing the terms of the setting from the beginning could eliminate a lot of head-scratching in the future.

The Warren incident was just the first in a series of odd choices in the Dark Horse comic series, which provided a canon continuation of the story until they wrapped up earlier this year. It was instantly clear that the writers and artists were enjoying the "unlimited budget" of the new medium, bringing the characters all over the world and putting Dawn through a series of distracting transformations. It was fun, but no substitute for the characters that couldn't appear due to being licensed under a different publisher, and finding the Buffy that we knew was a lot harder without the touchstone of familiar visuals. The reboot TV show won't be affected by a change in medium, but there's still a lesson in this: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

No version of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been perfect, and the new show won't be either. But much like Buffy learns from the memories she's inherited from generations of Slayers before her, the reboot can turn a critical eye on the past and make its own mistakes instead of repeating the ones we've seen before.

Created by Joss Whedon, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot will be helmed by Monica Uwusu-Breen. The series is predicted to debut in 2019, but an official release date has not yet been announced.

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What the Buffy Reboot Can Learn From Its Predecessors