The main idea of the series is the opposite of what is the normal Hollywood idea about horror. In traditional Hollywood horror stories, the young blonde girl is always the weakest character. She is always the one that needs to be saved. She is often the first one to die. In "Buffy", Whedon changed that. He changed that girl into the person with all the power. He changed her into the hero. Many of the monsters and storylines on the series are symbols of real-life problems faced by teenagers. As Whedon has said, "Highschool is a horror movie."
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" was first shown on March 10, 1997 on the WB network. It was a very important part of the Warner Bros. television network in its early years.
After five seasons, the series left the WB and went to the United Paramount Network (UPN) for its last two seasons. In the United Kingdom, the entire series was shown on Sky One and BBC2. The BBC showed the series at two different times. A family-friendly version with violence and bad language cut out was shown early in the evening and an unedited version was shown later at night. Sky One did something similar. It showed an edited version in the afternoon and the uncut version in prime time. From the fourth season onwards, the BBC showed the series in anamorphic 16:9 widescreen format, but Whedon said that "Buffy" was never supposed to be watched this way.
The Slayer or Chosen One is a girl who kills vampires. She had superhuman strength and speed. She also heals very fast. It is her destiny to fight evil demons, mainly vampires. When the Slayer dies, a new girl is chosen. That girl gets all of the powers of the Slayer. Potentials (girls who might be chosen - "potential slayers") are trained from an early age by a "Watcher". In this series, Buffy Summers, Kendra Young, and Faith Lehane were the main slayers.
The main character was Buffy Summers. She was played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. Buffy was an ordinary high school student in the fictional city of Sunnydale, California, except for being a "vampire slayer." Buffy's Watcher was a British man named Giles. With the help of Giles and her friends, Xander and Willow, Buffy fought a different monster every episode. (aside from the main villains of each season).
Buffy and her friends went to school at Sunnydale High School. They appear normal to their families while killing vampires and monsters at night.
Not all vampires were evil in the series. One vampire was named Angel. He was given his soul back by a gypsy curse. The curse would make him lose his soul and become evil again if he became really happy. He and Buffy fell in love. The curse took his soul away when they had sexual intercourse for the first time. This caused Angel to become evil (losing his soul). When Angel got back his soul, he knew that he and Buffy could not be together because he might lose it again. Angel left Sunnydale and went to Los Angeles. The television series "Angel" tells the story of what happened to him after he left.
Buffy Anne Summers (played by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is "the Slayer," one in a long line of young women chosen to fight evil. She is blonde and beautiful and she is a normal cheerleading girl at the start of the movie. Being the Slayer gave her increased strength, endurance, agility and healing. She also had greater intuition, and some ability of clairvoyance, usually in the form of dreams that tell the future. She was born January 19, 1981 and grew up in Los Angeles, California. Buffy died two times in the normal series. There have also been magical times that she died in, but these periods of time were stopped and do not affect normal times. The first time she died, she drowned and was brought back to life with CPR. The second time, magic was used to bring her back to life.
Rupert "Ripper" Giles (played by Anthony Stewart Head) is Buffy's Watcher. He was an Englishman. He was Buffy's second Watcher. Her first watcher was killed in the movie version of the story but this fact is not talked about in the series. Unlike most slayers, it was not known that Buffy was a potential slayer at an early age. When she was chosen, the Watcher's council sent a watcher to help her. When he died, the Council sent Giles to Sunnydale to become her watcher. In the past, Giles used magic and had a lot of knowledge about demons and vampires.
Willow Rosenberg (played by Alyson Hannigan) was Buffy's schoolmate and best friend. She was very smart and good with computers. During the series, she learned more and more about magic. She found out that she is very good at magic and became a powerful witch. While in highschool, she had a boyfriend named Oz, who was a guitarist in a local band called Dingoes Ate My Baby, and he was also a werewolf. After Oz left in college, Willow fell in love with another witch, Tara Maclay. When Tara was killed, Willow tried to destroy the world, but Xander stopped her. Later on, at the end of season seven, she developed a relationship with a potential slayer named Kennedy.
Alexander Lavelle "Xander" Harris (played by Nicholas Brendon) was another good friend of Buffy. During season 4, Xander becomes romantically involved with an ex-vengeance demon, Anya (Anyanka), whom he later became engaged to, but left during the wedding in the episode "Hells Bells". It was said many times during the series that Xander was the person in the group who had no special powers at all, but still fought as much as everyone else, and, in season 7 ("Potential") Xander is named the "Seer" because he sees everything that is going on, because he's never actually in the spotlight, just next to it. Xander was often the character the writers used for comic moments. Xander was a major character in the series and saved the world (from Willow) at the end of Season 6, by telling her he loved her repeatedly, accessing the human love inside of her "evil" persona, created by Tara Maclay's death.
Dawn Summers (played by Michelle Trachtenberg) was a magical energy (The Key) that was turned into a person and Buffy's sister. At first, Dawn had the special ability to open the way to a hell dimension (with her blood). After Buffy's death closed that way, Dawn's only special abilities was being very good with languages and a very fast learner. She could have made a very good Watcher.
Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins, or Anyanka, or Aud (played by Emma Caulfield) was an 1100 year old vengeance demon. She was born with the name Aud somewhere in Scandinavia during the 9th century. She became a vengeance demon after casting a magic spell on her lover, Olaf. The spell turned him into a troll. Anya spent the next 1100 years as Anyanka. As a vengeance demon, she would use magic to give a wish to a woman who had been treated wrong by a man. Anyaka lost her powers during a wish she cast for Cordelia Chase. When the wish was ended, Anyanka was trapped in the human body of 17 year old Anya. Anya and Xander got together after graduation and later were engaged. But Xander left her at the wedding, realising he was not ready to get married, but still loved her. She then got her vengeance powers back from D'Hoffryn (head of vengeance) but later lost them again after she realized how unfulfilling maiming human men was (her human side).