Buffy Summers

“I may be dead, but I’m still pretty. Which is more than I can say for you.”

Played by Sarah Michelle Gellar

First Appearance: Welcome to the Hellmouth

Buffy Summers was called as the Slayer in 1996, a teenage girl thrust into a destiny she never asked for. After burning down her high‑school gym to stop a nest of vampires, she moved to Sunnydale and found a new family in Giles, Willow and Xander. Together they faced the Hellmouth’s horrors, from the Master to Angelus — the vampire she loved and was forced to kill to save the world. Death became her shadow, following her through battles with gods, cyborgs, rogue witches and the darkest parts of herself. She died twice, saved the world more times than she could count, and still kept fighting.

When the First Evil rose, Buffy forged an army from frightened Potentials and changed the world forever. With Willow’s spell, every Potential Slayer became a Slayer, ending the ancient line and creating a global sisterhood. No longer the lone Chosen One, Buffy relocated to Europe and led the new Slayer Organization, training hundreds of young women while navigating the political, magical and moral fallout of a world suddenly full of superpowered girls. She fought vampires, demons and governments, but also the weight of leadership — a burden she never wanted but carried because no one else could.

As the Slayer Organization expanded, Buffy found herself at the centre of a global conflict. Rogue Slayers emerged, governments turned hostile, and a masked figure known as Twilight manipulated events from the shadows. Buffy lost her headquarters, her privacy and her sense of direction as the world questioned the very existence of Slayers. When Twilight was revealed to be Angel, corrupted by cosmic forces, Buffy was pulled into a higher plane with him — a false paradise she rejected. Their return shattered the Seed of Wonder, ending magic on Earth and plunging the world into a new era of instability.

Stripped of the magical infrastructure that had always surrounded her, Buffy tried to build an ordinary life in San Francisco. She worked mundane jobs, struggled with rent, and faced the consequences of a world without magic: zompires, anti‑magic extremism and the collapse of mystical ecosystems. She confronted the Siphon, fought alongside Spike, and discovered that even without the support of ancient forces, she remained the Slayer because she chose to be. When a new Seed was created, Buffy helped restore magic to the world, though not without cost — friendships strained, alliances shifted and the Slayer legacy grew more complicated than ever.

With magic reborn, Buffy stepped into a new role: shaping the rules that governed it. Working with Willow, Xander, Faith, Spike and others, she helped rewrite the laws of the supernatural, facing threats that exploited the new order — the Mistress, the Sculptor, the Soul Glutton and the rise of rewritten vampires. She confronted her own patterns of isolation and guilt, learning to trust her instincts without carrying the world alone. Through battles, betrayals and reinvention, Buffy grew into a leader defined not by prophecy but by choice.

Across life, death, resurrection, apocalypse and reinvention, Buffy Summers remained the centre of her world — the girl who saved it a lot, the woman who changed it forever, and the Slayer who learned that destiny wasn’t something written for her, but something she could write herself.

Buffy SEASONS 1-TWELVE: THE RECKONING