Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Welcome to Dear Watchers, an Omniversal comic book podcast where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds that make up an omniverse of fictional realities we all love. And your watchers on this journey continue to be me, the Chosen One.

One gito and me Rob. Like, that's my name. I host this podcast with you. Uh, uh, you knew that already. That was my attempt.

Are you trying to be Valley Girl there? What is that?

No, that was my attempt at, uh, joss xander speak.

Oh, Xander, you were going for I thought you're going for, like, Valley Girl. Buffy speak.

A little look at what we're going to be talking about today. But before we get to that, Guido, what is new in our section of the multiverse?

Not too much. We have a few weeks of TV themed episodes coming into starting with this one. So it's been fun to bring. We've touched on TV shows, our, uh, heman episode, for example, and others where we've referred to TV shows. But this episode, like the heman episode, is uniquely a TV property. And then next week, we'll bring in another TV show, though that started as a comic reverse of what we're doing next week. So we're excited and enjoy these recommendations and our analyses as we dive into other media.

Yes, and please help with our 2023 goal grow our listeners and grow our coffee patron community. So thank you so much. And if you are joining us for the first time, we have three parts of our traveling today. Origins of the story. What inspired this other reality? Exploring multiversity. We dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact and what's followed or coming in the future. And with that, dear watchers, let's journey to, uh, sunnyvale. And welcome to episode 80 81. And let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with today's alternate universe. And today we are asking the question, what if Buffy was the last vampire Slayer 30 years in the future, aka old woman Buffy?

And that is not ageist or sexist. It makes sense, and we'll explain why in a moment. This is an Earth of an unknown designation. There are no designations in the Buffy multiverse, which we will talk a lot more about later in our episode. This Earth has been visited just once, but is soon to be returned, to which we will also talk about more later in our episode. So let's do some background on Buffy, buffy as a TV show and Buffy comics before we dive into our segments today.

Yes. So first, Buffy the Vampire Slayer began life or afterlife as a 1992 film.

Of course, I should have said film, but, um, that's true. Yes, we buffer. Ignore that one.

That's true. Especially at Star is, well, problematic these days. But yeah, it was a 1992 film with Christy Swanson and also some better people like Paul Rubens and Ruckerhauer and the late Luke Perry. And then, of course, what we really know Buffy from is the 1997 television series. Or I should say that series started in 1997 because it ran for a seven episodes, seven seasons and 144 episodes. So a lot ran all the way to 2003 and, of course, had the.

Angel spin off series, which is another gosh, another hundred episodes or so.

Oh my gosh.

Big TV universe.

Yeah. And it even jumped from WB to UPN in its pretty long timeline. It was also created by Joss Whedon, who wrote the film. Also kind of problematic these days, too. Who's not problematic is its star, the amazing Sarah Michelle Geller, who of course not she's perfection. She is. She, of course, played the title character for the whole run. And if you are in the universe and you don't know Buffy the Vampire.

Slayer, then that's a tragedy. But I guess we'll assume some listeners because we have comic book fans and because, for example, I know that Elliott has never watched Buffy. So this two sentence summary you give of what Buffy is as a concept is just for him. Hopefully no one else has neglected their life duty to watch Buffy.

It took me a pretty long time because I didn't watch it.

I rectified that quickly.

So, real quick, buffy Summers is a high school student, later college student, later young adult, who is the Chosen One. She has the power of the Slayer. She's super strong and she is out to kill vampires and stop evil. And she is assisted in that by her best friends, xander Harris, who's kind of the goofball comedic relief normal person. Willow Rosenberg, who is at first kind of the tech nerd, later a, uh, witch, and by Giles, who is her Watcher. We talk a lot about Uwatu the Watcher, but he is a very different.

Kind of Watchers counsel. We know Joss was a huge comic fan and, uh, went on to write a lot of comics. So probably inspired, I would think, M.

And that core four kind of stays on the show for more or less the whole run. But there's lots of other characters that come in for a season or more throughout the whole, and definitely lots of world building there, too.

Into every generation, and a slayer is born. So that gets transformed a bit in the series, which, considering the finale is 20 years old, I think, oh my God. Safely spoil, uh, anything that we need to in the TV show. And we'll try to be more careful with some of the recent comic stuff that we dive into and we'll give a heads up. So that's the TV show, which is the core canon of Buffy. So anyone who is a Buffy fan or refers to, of course, the Buffy verse, that is the core canon. But Buffy has had a huge life in comics, so uh, Dark Horse is publishing comics parallel to the show starting pretty early. So starting in 98 through to 2004, there's about close to 100 issues of stories that occupy that space that tie in comics often occupy where they're set at different moments in the series. There's a series that takes place after she dies at the end of the fifth season and they place the comics in the timeline of the show, but they're not canonical. The things that happen in the comics will never be referred to or show up in the television show. They're fun, though. And there's an ongoing tons of minis. There's even like a spin off because there were some great Buffy video games and Chaos Bleeds had a comic that tied into it. I love that game. It was the only reason I actually owned an Xbox. So there are those comics now considered or called Buffy Classic. Then the Dark Horse series starts publishing in 2007. The I don't know, probably pretty unique and groundbreaking in terms of tie in things canonical series continuation. So they publish series seasons eight through twelve in comic book format from 2007 to 2018. There are nearly 200 issues originally read, written, and conceived by Joss. So they are fully canonical, though he steps away and great writers continue the world, but it all takes place in the universe. The Buffy verse of, um, the show four seasons and tie in Angel Angel and Faith tie in spinoffs like Giles and Willow miniseries. Really cool stuff.

Yeah. I can't think of any other TV show off the top of my head or really any other medium that's really doing this. Jumping from one continued in comic. Yeah. And from a TV show to a comic or even the other way around, it is still pretty unheard of today.

Sometimes you hear like, there was for a few years rumors that Carnival a great show that I like that was going to continue in comics. So sometimes I feel like when things get canceled prematurely, sometimes creators maybe flirt with comics. But this is unique because the show ended when they wanted it to end, with the ending they wanted. But then a few years later, Joss comes along and tells more storyized stories that they could have imagined. And of course, it breaks out of the show. It does things that it couldn't have done on the show, just budget wise.

M transforms things enough of an expert on it. But I think Star Wars has done a lot of that too, where they're taking characters that started in video games or started in some of the films and then kind of spun them off into context. Telling that in universe storytelling, though, I.

Don'T know that all those tieins are canonical. I think they're being mined and then placed in canon. But I don't know that world. Well, anyway, Buffy comics do not end there. So 2018 dark horse loses the license. There's other stuff with angel tieins. They lost the license to angel, went to IDW. But, uh, focusing on Buffy, they lose the license. Boom Studios picks up the license. Of course, Fox is the major, uh, shareholder in Boom Studios, so not a surprise there. And Boom starts publishing from 2019 to 2022, a series that I'll get more when we talk about the multiverse. I'll get more into where that series fits, but it's a total reboot, about 45 issues, few spin offs, including an angel spin off. And then this miniseries comes along that we use as our alternate universe trip today. A few other anthologies. And there is a new ongoing that started in 2022 called The Vampire Slayer, which, again, I'll give a little bit more story background when we get into our segments today.

So Gito, I know the answer to this because I know you are a.

Um, super fan, but I'm so excited for this question.

But what is your background with Buffy and Buffy in comics?

I can say with complete certainty that Buffy is my favorite television show of all time. Ever. Forever and never take that.

The Wire.

I love the wire, too. No, I know.

Just thinking of fancy highbrow shows.

Buffy is fancy and highbrow. And that's where it's a, uh, Trojan horse of a show. I'll try to make this quick, though. Ah, I've loved it for the 26 years it's existed. Well, maybe I've loved it for 25 of the 26 years. First year it's on, I'm in high school and friends start watching it. I make fun of them. Um I'm like that. Seems ridiculous. That's absurd. They're like, no, you should watch it. No, you should watch it. No, you should watch it. Finally, they get me a VHS that they recorded off TV and give, uh, it to me, and I start watching it. I fall immediately in love. That's during the first season. And then I'm in. I watched it forever. I then rewatched it. I made my mother watch the entire series start to finish. I've rewatched it so many times. I've rewatched it making you watch it. I love it. I've seen the movie countless times. I've seen the show countless times. I've read tie in novels, all the official comics, everything there is to absorb about the Buffy verse, I am ready to absorb. I love the world Buffy comics. Like I said, I've read them all. I've liked some, I've disliked some. I've loved some. And I'll talk a bit more about that as we go through this, but I will read them all. You slap Buffy on something and I'm buying it.

Whatever.

Uh, it shows up as I'm there. How about you?

So I never watched the show when it was originally on. I think that was a lot because of gender things at the time. I was a little younger than you.

But I think, uh, you are on the younger side. You, uh, were an age where you might not also want to absorb a high school story, whereas I was in high school.

Yeah, that's probably true. And then I think just because it did have this female lead, I think I thought of it as, oh, this is maybe a show for girls, even though it had vampires and stuff like that. And I was very much into probably those gender roles. And also because it was on the WB and I didn't really watch anything else. All like the 7th Heaven and a lot of the other shows that were charmed, all those other shows that were on, they didn't really yes, I never watched any of those shows, I think because I was a little younger, so I wasn't into high school. And then it was like, oh, this is all soapy. And I wasn't really watching that. So I really did not watch the show. I had not watched the film. And it wasn't until years later when a boyfriend who was also a huge fan sat me down and was like, you have to do what exactly? He was like, you have to watch this show. So we would watch a lot of the series, and we did not get through the whole show. So I had gotten I was then familiar with the character. I think we got through season three or four. And then, of course, when I met you, you, uh, had me watch the whole thing. So I started from the beginning, including angel. We watched angel, including the 1992 film, which I had never seen. So then I got kind of the whole Buffy Digested, the whole series, the TV show, and, uh, then angel as well, which obviously has a lot of tie in characters. And if you don't know who angel is, it's her vampire, on again, off again boyfriend.

Well, and we'll get into the TV show in a moment. But what about comics? I don't think you ever read any. No, I remember suggesting to you that you try reading the canonical sequel, but I know you never did.

No, I would always see them at the comic book store, and I would see that, oh, some characters looked different than on the TV show. So it was actually a little spoiler because I would see, oh, that character is wearing an eyepatch. So what happens to that character on the TV show? Those little spoilers like that. But it also, like so many comics, it felt so overwhelming because it was like, oh, my gosh, there's 200 issues of this. That is a lot to take in. So that always was very intimidating to me.

So this episode might have been your first Buffy comic.

Yes, this was definitely my first Buffy comic.

What a place to start.

Yes. So let us jump into the Hellmouth and journey into Origins of the Story. Right now on this very show, you're going to get the answer to all your questions our amazing story begins a few years ago.

See, you need to be a bigger fan because I could do the segues. Like, you need to jump into the mouth of the demonicothala. Right. That's where they go when she kills angel. And that's actually a portal to another dimension. Going to need to take some deeper dives on these segues. Maybe I'll be helping you today.

I'll channel my inner Cordelia and say, uh, thanks, Nerd. Go sit at that other table, please.

Both angel and Cordelia does become a classic love story.

That is true.

Okay, go ahead.

So our origins of the story is not a comic, but is instead Buffy the Vampire, the television series. And no, we are not going to talk about the vampires. Yes, she's not a vampire. Yes, we're not going to talk about all 200 episodes, but, uh, we are in broad strokes. Very broad strokes.

Yeah. So we chose this because it is the canonical origin of Buffy. Instead of looking at some of the comics that retell the origin or that, uh, exist as tangential to the universe, I just figured, let's talk about the TV show. Um, I guess I'll start with why I love this show so much. And there are probably countless reasons, and there are reasons that I think you hear a lot. There's a reason Buffy fans are so rabid and united. Right. It's some of the earlier fan conventions I was familiar with. And, uh, there's a whole academy of Buffy studies and people who just obsess over this. And it's such a fun world with great fantasy, comic book action magic rules, all of that stuff. But at its core, it is incredibly fun, funny, moving, and relatable story of human beings and these characters who are humans struggling through things that everyone can relate to in so many ways. And it does it. What is the Giles quote about? The subtext is rapidly becoming text. Right? It does it through this incredible it's not like constant metaphor. I don't know how to describe it. It does metatextual stuff really well. They invented the use of the word Google as a verb, so it really transformed language and pop culture. It's one of the first shows I remember this in a lot of the academic studies. It's one of the first shows to reference other pop culture shows. It was typical that most shows on TV existed in a universe where pop culture didn't exist and they wouldn't refer to other things. But this show refers to Star Wars and Star Trek and X Men comics and so many countless things. So you could really connect with it. I mean, I just love it. And it's the writing, it's the direction, it's the performances, I think. And, uh, we'll talk about it when we get to our alternate universe. But like Sarah Michelle Geller brings a humanity and a funness and a funniness, and at times a, uh, touching. I mean, watching her cry as Buffy in the moment she does. Just thinking about it sometimes makes me a little curious. I find it to be a powerful, powerful show, and it's a great world that I love to be in.

It's interesting because your other all time favorite thing, or one of your all time favorite things, of course, is the X Men. And you could probably say that the subtext becoming text is so true for that show as well, where both of those are comic. That's true for that comic book, but both of them working as an allegory, they both work on both of those levels, right. As Buffy, the coming of age story, but it's also then this vampire story, and the same thing for the monsters.

Of high school and the mutants facing your changing body. Yeah, that's a great concussion. And we know Joss was a huge Xmen fan. Joss wrote an iconic run of X Men that one day we will deal with and is actually going to be showing up in the MCU in bits and pieces in the very near future. So, yeah, I think that DNA is correct, for sure. And I'm sure that's why I love both of these things. As someone who came later, like, what are the things you appreciate about the world? Or what did you like about entering that world?

One of my big problems that I think a lot of that I see happen a lot on TV shows is that you get this great cast of characters sometimes surrounding a fairly boring protagonist. And I think of something like, I think Grant Gustin is like a great Barry Allen on The Flash, but he's pretty normal. And then you have all kind of wackier people around him. And I think you see that on a lot of these kind of superhero shows.

An ensemble pieces.

An ensemble piece. And, oh, the second banana is great, but the lead is the straight man, really. And that's definitely not the case with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sarah Michelle Geller brings so much of the comedy, not just the heart and the romance that often a lead has, but really is a huge source of where the funny comes from on the show. And I can kind of see that.

Uh, sentence was actually a very Buffy sentence saying where the funny comes from. Right. Like, that's what the show did. Words, nouns or verbs that normally aren't anyway.

No. Yeah, well, and then I'm thinking, too, it makes a lot of sense that Joss was also one of the architects of the MCU, because that's what the MCU main characters do, is you have Robert Downey Jr. Providing a lot of the humor. It's not the wacky people kind of around him, which you kind of sometimes see. Yes. But you sometimes see that in other things, where it's like, okay, again, the super serious Superman as great as Christopher Reeve is, he's playing it very straight and Gene Hackman is like doing the humor. So I think you can see that the influence, probably that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had on how they even formulated the MCU. And that tone is it makes a lot of sense that Jocelyn came in as a writer of the first Avengers movie and director.

Yeah, I think the arc, it's saying architects, the architecture of the storytelling is also very similar as the MCU. And I love that it is such a comic book thing. And I think it's why people love the MCU and it's why I love Buffy also, where it's doing serialized storytelling. But there's plenty of space within that for episodes, for mini arcs, for all these other stories. And that's like the MCU architecture also is there's there's these huge arcs and just like Buffy, actually, Buffy, I think probably it's coined the term the Big bad every season had a big bad. And that was the overarching arc. But there were always all these little stories, plenty of other villains and characters and things that you could watch and access. But it's telling this larger arc. And then especially when you look at the seven year arc, you can really see where these characters go start to finish and everything that changes and that's present in the MCU. And it's a part of comic books, of course. So I love that aspect.

And I think definitely, especially the character moving off of just Buffy. The other character, I think that really stands out and I see Ramifications of now is Xander, because Xander is the one person in the whole gang, really, over the course of the show that never gets any powers. Alexander is just always this normal guy, and he is so much then like the audience surrogate in that way. And he's the one that's able to often comment with jokes and one liners about how ridiculous a scenario is. And I think you can then see that in like a Cat Denning's character in the Thor universe, or the best friend on the, uh, she Hulk show where you have that character who is a little one step removed from the action and is kind of, uh, commenting on it, almost serving as our mirror into this world. So I think that was such a core thing that that character also brought to the TV show.

Well, and of course, then it explores that too, as we all face, he becomes depressed over it, struggles with it, doesn't know what his place is in it. So, again, the meta textual element, mhm, there's no stone unturned in terms of the roles these people play in each other's lives and what that means, and we can relate to it.

And I think also gosh, I'm just thinking of so many MCU connections but like the Spike character who pops up in the comic that we're going to discuss today too. You see that character in Loki, and especially Loki, I mean in the MCU where you have this character that starts again as the big bad, as you said, but then becomes this antihero character, never truly good, but certainly not a villain anymore and so charming. Yeah, definitely. It's almost shocking. And maybe the fact that Joss had Loki as the Big Bad in his movie is not a coincidence.

Yeah, I also just think while Buffy is playing with archetypes, buffy has become the archetype. Because what the whole team of creators who worked on it did is they subverted so much, so many storytelling tropes. Of course, the famous setup of the whole series was Joss saying that he liked this idea of a horror movie girl blonde girl getting cornered in an alley by a big bad, and it turns out she's the thing that you should be afraid of. Um, and so, mhm, the whole series is meant to subvert things, but of course, because it's become iconic and classic and pervaded popular culture, they have become archetypes. And so that's probably why you're able to see so many MCU connections. I'm sure we could see connections to I feel like almost every Ya fantasy novel I read has DNA of Buffy in it.

No, totally.

It really exists everywhere now.

I made another connection, too. There's so many. There's so many. But for this podcast, we went back and I mean, you've seen it probably a million times, but I just rewatched the pilot to Buffy. And the thing that's so interesting about that pilot, which is still very rarely ever done, is that it's not an origin story. That it starts with Buffy going to a new high school, and we just know that something bad happened at the other high school. And then we know then we find out that it was because vampires happened and she blew up the gym, and it's got some connection. You could almost read it as, like, it is a direct sequel to the film, but it's not early Recall, actually.

Uh, yeah, it's a Recall sequel.

Totally. Yeah. So you get that, and then right away she meets Giles, and Giles is like, you're the Slayer. And she was like, I know that there's none of that origin. The originness is kind of Xander and Willow finding out. And what this then reminded me of is the way the MCU then approached Spiderman when they did it, which is mhm, let's cut out the origin story. We all know the origin already. We're just going to have Peter Parker as Spiderman. I mean, it was introduced before his first movie. And then the originness comes in, his best friend finding out, and then eventually his aunt finding out, and his girlfriend.

Learning how to deal with these things. Yeah, exactly. For sure.

All right, so do you want to do the segue, Mr. Expert?

No, you started and I'll add colorful details.

Well, we're going to let's see. We're going to die, and then come.

Back to life exploring countless characters on.

Another comic book connection. Uh, there.

I am, your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question, what if?

And we are discussing Buffy, the last Vampire Slayer mini series that's issues one through four from December 2021 to March 2022. Pretty recent. That's from Boom Studios Comics.

So this is written by Casey Gilley, pencils by Joe Darrow, edited by Elizabeth Bray, colored by Joanna La Fuente and lettered by Ed Dukeshire. So Casey Gilly, uh, is a recent on the scene writer, as far as I could tell. Not too much backwork. Has written a few tie ins for Star Wars and My Little Pony stories, and has written a few tarot decks, including the Buffy Tarot Deck and then Joe. Jose Jarro is also an artist, um, who has a lot of work online, but is new to publishing in indie books, done a few image and other related books. And Firefly is probably the biggest thing, other than this Buffy series, of course. Also a jost.

Uh, yeah. And the question associated with this is what if Buffy was the last Vampire Slayer 30 years in the future, aka old Woman Buffy? And there is no Earth designation for this, as you said.

So the Old Woman Buffy reference, of course, comic fans will get is because of the Marvel very famous Old Man Logan series, which tells the story of Wolverine as an old man toward the end of his life in the future. They then did old man Hawkeye and.

Built on and a Harley, too, right over at DC. I think there was like an old lady Harley as well.

There sure might have been.

Just like, I guess a new trope that we're having. Yeah, I was going to say as the actors age in real life.

Talk about that with this. But we'll get there in our next segment. So let me try to give a summary. And I'm m going to try to build the whole world of the series and not totally spoil it. It has been out for a solid six months, so people, uh, should hopefully have read it. But I want to give enough detail because there's some cool world building here and we need to talk about the canonicity of this series. I'll start there. Actually, it's not clear what canon the series extends from. It pulls in core elements of the TV show that we know, but it doesn't follow the TV show because characters who die on the TV show, such as Tara or Anya or Cordelia are alive.

Spoiler alert. Um, but also, if you did not watch the TV show, though, you'd probably be a little lost because it's definitely rooted a lot in that, even though things are different.

But then similarly, like the Boom Studios comic series, which is a total reboot and refresh. We'll talk about the multiverse in our next segment and get into a. Little bit more of that. But this doesn't extend directly from that either Onya's Alive in that it's a total, total reboot. But this really doesn't seem to extend from that. So it's not clear what this multiverse is. And it's funny. It ultimately matter.

It's a bit like the start of the Buffy TV show. It's like a recall, really.

Yeah, a little bit. It is a little bit of a recall. And so, in this world, the sun is blotted out, the sun has darkened, and we learn that there is a treaty between humans and vampires, so that the vampires can just exist in the world. It also means that slayers are outlawed. And the Watchers Council manages this whole treaty and all of the politics of it, and we find out that Buffy, who's now in her 50s, we're about 25 to 30 years later, she is living on her own and is possibly lost access to her slayer powers, and her nose bleeds every time she is around vampires. We learn through comments or dreams that Giles is dead. We learn that through a terrorist attack on this treaty, xander Cordelia were murdered in this explosion. Uh, Anya was there, but lived. And so Buffy and Anya trained together and are now close friends. Will um, Buffy meets a character named Thessaly, a young woman who seems to possibly be the next Chosen One, possibly of access to slayer powers, but it turns out that is true, and she is also the daughter of Willow and Tara. So Willow and Tara were close friends of Buffy, part of the Scooby Gang, and we find out that Buffy hasn't spoken to them in 13 years. And Buffy reluctantly takes Thessaly under her wing. And we find out that there's a coven of witches who have been trying to reproduce the spell that Willow and Tara ultimately died trying to do, which would restore the sun. And, uh, the story progresses from there. I don't want to spoil too much, because I think we'll get into some of the details of what happens. Spike shows up and joins the fight, and it wraps up with an explanation, um, of what's going on with Buffy's powers, and then a little bit of a tie into thessaly and the sun sort of resetting what would be the status quo in this world. And I think we'll get to some of those details and spoil them, but I'll stop there. What did you think?

I really enjoyed this. It did take me probably until the second issue to really get into it, because I think the first issue kind of even just going off of your summary just now. There's a lot of world building that they need to kind of cram into.

The first issue, though I think the pacing is good. The world building happens through these little bits of information. There's never any sort of exposition that weights down the narrative or anything. So I think it's really well executed world building.

Yeah. I think part of it is the tricky place where this exists, where they're taking some things from the TV show, but also a lot of stuff that has changed. So I think I just had to kind of wrap my brain around that and new things like the status quo of, oh, there's no sun, and that the humans and vampires have some kind of treaty. I almost wish that we had had maybe one more issue in here, or maybe one or two to really explore some of that world building. Especially just kind of the set up of what's happening between humans and vamps and some of this stuff where you can donate your blood and get money. I wanted a little bit of more of that before we kind of get into the plot plot of the issue.

There's the potential for a lot of story there, and we'll talk about what's coming soon when we get through that. But I loved it. I really loved it because I thought it captured the voice mhm really well. And every single Buffy comic has tried to reproduce Buffy speak. And some get it, some don't, and that's fine. It's either fine or great. This one, I think, gets it really well. And it's subtle things where you can just hear Sarah Michelle Geller deliver these lines totally. And Sarah Michelle Geller in a few years will be the age of this Buffy. So I hope we see that one day. Um, but not just it's the interaction she has with thessaly the interaction she has with Spike, the comment she makes to herself. She's got that language down really well. Casey Gilly does a great job, I think, capturing it. Anya is as hilarious as Emma Caulfield playing Anya is in the show, direct and sort of obnoxious, but also really trying to connect and build relationships with humans.

Yeah. And I think the central conflict, aside from the actual superhero kind of conflict, which is the conflict between Buffy and thessaly really or Buffy not wanting to be the caregiver for this young girl, I think feels very natural to the character. And even though Buffy had a sister eventually on the TV show, you kind of saw that there, too. But she didn't really want to be this person's guardian. And part of it was because of the responsibility that she has. She doesn't want to put that she can't deal with one other thing. She's got so much going on in her life. So that, to me, felt really natural with the character.

I think there's so many incredible echoes from the series. It's clear that Casey Gilly was a huge fan of the show and just lived and loved this universe because that central tension, it feels like this could be a sequel to the show. For that reason, even when Onya and her are arguing and Anya thinks she's being really selfish, that happens on the show so many times. There are whole season arcs that are about Buffy's selfishness, when Buffy shuts her friends out, or when Buffy makes the choice to indulge her passions and indulge her more, uh, primal side. Like, all of those conflicts are in the show and they're showing up here, but they're showing up here 30 years later. What would it be like for this person in their fifty S to be faced with these questions? And she'd make the same choices like you're saying. So I think it resonates so well for that reason.

Yeah. And I loved also her relationship with Anya and Spike in this two characters that haven't aged because Anya is a demon and Spike is a vampire. And I do love the idea that Spike would still have The Hotspur Buffy all these years later, and she's kind of saying to him, like, stop putting, uh, this on. I'm a 50 year old woman. I'm not the young girl that you fell in love with. But he's like, It doesn't matter. Like, that's not who I see, and I could be sexy.

I think this does a good job of challenging ageism. Like, even says to her she works out all that because she's losing her powers. She had to overtrain. So she has this, like, jacked, muscular body, and he says, it looks like you've been bench pressing jet engines. And then he says to her, like, stop seeing yourself as Graham. Right. She keeps seeing herself as this useless old woman that has lived her life and is done, and he's like, no, that's not true. So it does a great job of bringing age in and challenging ageism m and age stereotypes that would be present in this narrative, particularly for women, as we know. Uh, yeah. The other relationship I love is the Tara and Willow one. It actually made me teary reading it because what's revealed is that there was no big falling out. They just lost touch 13 years ago. And Buffy explains, it's just people move away. They stay in touch for a while, and then suddenly it's been six months since the last text message, and the silence erects a barrier between you and them. And I think we all, as we age, have relationships like that, and sometimes you return to them and sometimes you don't. And I like that in this, she's sort of justified that distance and imagined that everyone just saw her as a bad friend. And thessaly tells her, like, no, they didn't. They actually, uh, would still watch vampire movies and talk about you being the hero, and they would put chocolate and popcorn because you like to do that, and they thought it was cool. They still thought about her even though they weren't in each other's lives. And I think that also is a very relatable thing as as me in my forty S-I-I feel that with mhm, a lot of relationships and I was so glad to see that and not have it be some dramatic thing that happened.

Yeah, I agree. And it's similarly, I think, Willow and Terra's relationship with each other, which we only see in flashback and we don't get too much of. But I like that Thessaly says sometimes they argued a lot, and then other times we see them on the couch watching the movie, and they're clearly in love. And I think it just is not as someone who's not a parent, but I can see that in this struggle that they're having here, in raising their daughter, and it's like, do they teach her about, uh, the magic or not? And shielding them. And I think, again, like you were saying before, in terms of text and subtext, I mean, there could certainly be, uh, a queer allegory there or something like that, where it's like, okay, I know my child is this thing, but do I want them to really know that now, or do I want them to find it later? So there's a lot of that even in just not too much page time.

One again, that's a great choice, where I think if you let's say you read this and hadn't watched the TV show, which I have no idea what that experience would be like, but you could still appreciate and relate to that story. But of course, watching the TV show and maybe imagining that most of the TV show canon has occurred, we understand why this would happen, because Willow couldn't control her powers. Willow was overwhelmed. So we understand why they're struggling with this choice of of inhibiting their child, because they see it as a necessity, potentially, because Willow in this world, went to Dark Willow that we know, and it relates to the finale. So if you really don't want to be spoiled, go read it and then come back and listen. But now I want to talk about the finale of both the series and the show because I think they're related. And I think that's another really cool thing. So in this, we find out that the way the witches explain to Buffy what's happening is that she's like a battery. And because the charge of the battery can't be expelled, it's being not used because being a slayer is illegal. It combusts. And that's when she bleeds out, which is a cool metaphor, because we've all had batteries that we leave in a device in the attic. And then when you open that device, like the battery has exploded because it's not being used. So, perfect metaphor. And then it turns out that Cecily, if she takes the inhibition pendant off that her mothers gave her, she can actually supercharge Buffy and give Buffy back her powers, which gives Buffy the power to create sunlight in that moment, destroy all the vampires, and then bring the sun back. It actually releases the sun back into the atmosphere. And she's the sunrise. It says and then for that to play out, she's now expended herself. But it's a cool moment, then, where you think she's going to die, but what's dying is actually the Slayer is dying, so the power has been expelled. She sees her mom, which I think is a really touching scene, and her mom tells her, like, she can let herself go and die at human death if she wants, or this is just the end of the Slayer, and Buffy can live on. And of course, we don't know until the final two pages that she chose to live. She's just not the Slayer anymore. The Slayer power has been burnt out, and I think it's cool because the series finale, which it's not clear if it happened in this world or not, is she distributes the power to all of the Slayers. She shares it with everyone, which is, I think, an extremely powerful ending to the series. And it's just cool here. Like, she has to take the power back in order to save the world. So it feels like a nice circle. Whether that happened or not in this timeline, I think it just feels like a great echo. Did you have any feelings about the finale here?

Yeah, I think it is really powerful when you see her mother and Giles and Willow, who are all coming back as, uh, ghosts, kind of Star Wars kind of, uh, ghosts to revisit her. And then they point out that Tara is not there. So Tara actually is alive somewhere, thinking.

That Tara might still be alive. Destiny wants to go find her.

And like the TV show, it doesn't really it's not like all evil is vanquished, that it's just this particular challenge is done, but vampires and evil are still out there. And I see now, in the comic at least, that Buffy is going to be taking on that watcher duties over, uh, for Thessacy, and thatsaly thank you. And then you've got Spike there still, so that it all feels very similar to, uh, the television show, where it also was like, okay, the Big Bad is done, but the battle continues.

The fight continues. Yeah. Well, there's a lot more to talk about with, I think, this, how it fits into the world and where we could see it. I will mention real quick, it hasn't been revisited yet, but very soon, in March of 2023, this is going to have a special one shot follow up, which is going to be about the search for Tara. And I think the Solicits also say we'll find out. I think angel will be back, because in this series, of course, we only know that angel came back and Buffy had an affair with him and ended her relationship with Spike. But we don't know anything else. And we do know that they were married because Seth Thessaly finds the marriage certificate on Fed. So there's a one shot coming, and we'll have to cover that down the road, but otherwise this Earth has not been returned to. But there's a lot we could talk about with where this could fit in and the whole Buffy multiverse.

Yes. So let's take this segment it's dusted, uh, and move on to pondering possibilities.

All right, you upped your game. Look at that.

Will the future you describe be averted? So Gito, what are we talking about for our pondering possibilities?

So we're going to talk about the Buffy multiverse and the future of the Buffy story. And so let me just give a little bit of what I know about the Buffy multiverse, and it's actually not well catalogued. You'd think with such a rabid fan base it would be. But even the Buffy verse wiki doesn't have a, ah, great index of alternate universe versions. There are, of course, the alternate universes of the comics, the early comics. The show itself creates a few alternate universes. We could even cover one one day. The famous The Wish episode, where you get the alternate universe from Cordelia making The Wish, where everyone is a vampire. And that's where you first find out that Willow is probably a lesbian because vampire Willow is a lesbian. So there are fun alternate universes in the show. And then the Buffy Boom 2019 series actually has a tiny little bit of a multiverseal story in its maybe second or third to last arc. As it's building towards its finale, it breaks open the multiverse a little bit. Buffy realizes there are other buffies. It doesn't do it that well. I actually am not a fan of that series. I don't think it's great. Um, I really didn't enjoy it. The arts inconsistent, which takes a lot away from it for me. But I also think that it's trying too hard to hold on to pieces of the canon. But it's also a modern reboot and they're trying to set it in current times. And I don't love that series, but that's the first time that there's like, a multiverseal story in Buffy. So there are lots of little Earths that we've gotten glimpses of, and there are a few different versions of Buffy that we could end up encountering if we were to continue to expand the multiverse. The last Vampire Slayer that we just read is obviously its own multiverse and timeline. And then the current ongoing series, which we will cover, is the Vampire Slayer, and that is its own multiverse mhm. And that is my favorite Buffy comic that has ever been written. I think it is extraordinary. I think it does an awesome job telling a new story using the ingredients we know and love. And so I can't wait for us to cover that. I was actually going to have that be the third segment here, but that was one too many alternate universes. So let's stick with what we explored. And why don't we start with the last Vampire Slayer universe we know it'll be revisited in comics? Do you want more comics of it?

Well, I would almost want to go back and have almost, uh, which I think would actually be right for this, which would be a prequel series, because, as I said, I felt like some of that world building was rushed. Like, our big bed, who were kind of introduced here, gets very little page time. And the reason why she's kind of doing what she's doing is not really fully explained. So I would love to kind of take a step back, see that, maybe even go as far back as to the terrorist attack that you mentioned where Xander and Cordelia are killed. So maybe get to explore them living in this universe. And what does that mean? And I definitely think there's a ripeness for seeing, okay, what leads up to the decision for vampires and humans to have this treaty, but this temporary peace. Although, obviously, we know vampires are really secretly, uh, plotting, but I would love to see that world, maybe more so than something coming after it.

I want both. I think there's potential for both. Ah. As far as I know, the special edition that's coming out soon is a continuation, but maybe it has a story that's short of, like, a prequel. But I would be perfectly happy with both, because after you have Buffy, who's going to still fight the good fight, but is now no longer a slayer, cecily is a slayer and a witch. They're looking for Tara. We have the whole rest of the world. Like, there are so many other people. We don't know what the deal is or what happened. But then the prequel series yeah. I would love especially if there are pieces of the TV show, if this is a proper prequel and it's going to honor the canon of the TV show. The reason the finale of the TV show could exist in this world is that all we know in this world is that 30 years later, buffy's the last slayer, and she talks about all of the potentials that she got killed, which happens in the series also. So it's possible that the series finale happened, but then something reversed it. Something, um, changed the fact that there are all these slayers or they all got killed. I mean, who knows? And so that's a story that could be told. There could be so many stories, not just in the world building here, but in connecting to the series. I even think Anya could easily have been resurrected. Tara could easily have been resurrected. So this series could definitely coexist with the TV show. And I'm glad that this miniseries didn't get weighted down, but prequels could definitely dive in further. And then I think if they do that, this is the TV show that gets greenlit in five years, starring Sarah Michelle Geller.

Yeah. Uh, of all the good kind of going back to our recall conversation, of course, in TV, you've seen all of these shows that have come back after a long time. And in some cases, in many of the cases, I think the question for me is, like, why did they come back? And sometimes it's perfectly fine for the show just to be revisited a few years later and just really nothing has changed, like with Will and Grace or something like that. But I think Buffy was always about the passage of time. It was about this person.

It would have to be real time, passage of time, like Twin Peaks.

Uh, yes, totally. And this character who's going from high school into college, has to drop out of college, has to support her herself and her sister. And then what happens after that? I think that would be so ripe for a series here and now. Having read this, I think, like, wow, this would be great basis material for a return to, uh, Sarah Michelle Geller, to a Buffy series.

I dream, as I'm sure so many people do. I mean, there's been a Buffy project green lit at least twice now with Joss's involvement. So these are now probably the last one was maybe about five years ago. And it really felt like it was moving even into pre production. There was a new there was a woman of color who was going to be the showrunner. And they they even made a big press release and had said that he was involved, but she was leading the show. And it wasn't even clear if it was going to be a continuation or a reboot. It was not totally clear. But that then never went anywhere. We never heard about that again, and I don't think we will now. And I don't even fully understand the rights of Buffy. The rights of Buffy, I think, have always been a little complicated because the original movie producers own part of the rights, which is why it was hard to get redone. And I think ultimately why Joss wanted to do a TV show, because I think he had the right to. But those producers still were involved in the TV show. Um, obviously Fox owns some of the rights somehow, which is now Disney, but I don't know, the WB being a Warner Brothers TV show and then going on to UPN being Paramount. I don't know if they own a piece of this puzzle. Uh, I have no idea. Uh, I don't know. And Joss could have retained even ownership over some of this since the first outing was a movie that he wrote. So I really don't know. It's probably complicated. Obviously, it's not so complicated that they're not releasing material, licensed books, licensed comics, et cetera. But it might be too complicated for a new TV show, especially if there'd be a desire since Joss's persona non grada.

And I think that is a tricky thing because I, uh, know he didn't write the comic. We discussed today, and he left the other comic series. But it is a property that is so associated with one creator, even if he doesn't control the rights. And that does, I think, become tricky because yeah, you have to find someone. And I think this author, um, KC. Gilly, did a great job, but I think you have to have someone who can replicate that and you're going to get fans going. Well, but it wasn't Joss. So I think that is a tricky hurdle to come. And then you also have the actors involved, I think. Do they want to come back to these roles?

Yeah. And Sarah Michelle Geller has been I mean, there was tons of press last year because it was the 25th anniversary, but there was tons of press just this month because she has The Wolfpack new show coming out, and it is the 26th anniversary of the show. The show premiered in January. Buffy's birthday is also in January. So it's Buffy's birthday. And she's been asked a lot of questions. And she has said for the last few years that she feels done with that she's happy for it to go on, and she loves it and loves its creation, but that she feels done. People say that, though, and have their minds changed. She even seems to have softened a little this year. I think last year and the year before, she was reacting to the public knowledge of what the set was like and how tense it was and how much of the conflict had to do with actually her and Joss. And that was where there was a lot of tension. She has said she won't speak about it, that there's no point to her to rehashing that. But this year, she said she's glad people watched the show, that so many people were a part of its creation, that it doesn't matter to her about Joss's involvement, that the show is bigger than him. And that makes me feel hopeful that if someone came along with an incredible vision and that inspired her, that maybe she'd do it, uh, because it is bigger than him. Even though you're right, it's so tied to him. It is bigger than him.

Yeah.

Fingers crossed.

We'll see. Yes.

Yeah. So lots more Buffy multiverse that we will be exploring as it unfolds and as we can revisit some of the older multiverse. But hopefully this inspired you to check out Buffy the Last Vampire Slayer. Check out the Vampire Slayer. Ongoing. And for those of you Elliot who haven't watched a TV show, go watch it. So that's a wrap. Thank you, dear Slayers, for listening. I have been Keto.

And I have been Rob.

And the reading list is in the show notes. You can find us on all social media at dear watchers.

Leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll be back soon with another trip through the multiverse.

In the meantime, in the words of buffy's tombstone. She saved the world a lot. You.