In late 2024, someone slide into my podcast’s DMs to tell me there was finally a Buffy revival in the works. After years of rumors, it was happening for real—and Oscar winner Chloe Zhao and the Slayer herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar, were attached. Hulu had ordered it.
This person said they had clients who were working on it. I fully rolled my eyes and thought, “Yeah, yeah, we hear a rumor about a revival every few years.” I took it with a grain of salt and mostly forgot about it until Sarah Michelle Gellar appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show and, for the first time ever, said she’d be into the idea of a revival. She’d spent years saying she’d never go back to the character—and I immediately knew this meant the rumor I’d been DMed was true.
And then, at the start of the new year, it was officially announced by Hulu. Soon after, our new slayer was announced in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew’s Ryan Kiera Armstrong. Everything was moving fast! Things were happening!
Later that year, the pilot was filmed—we got leaked set pics. We even got a leaked script. We got our first look at Sarah Michelle Gellar in a red dress filming her first scene back as Buffy in over 20 years.
A year and a half after getting that first DM, mere days after the 29th anniversary of Buffy's premiere, Sarah Michelle Gellar posted a video announcing Hulu was not moving forward with the revival—they’d passed on the pilot they had ordered. And, with it being a property now owned by Disney, the chances of it being shopped around felt non-existent. Folks speculated that it must have been bad—siding with the streaming service that green lights such high quality shows like Ryan Murphy’s All’s Fair and his 800th season of American Horror Story. But, Sarah Michelle Gellar would later reveal it was one single Hulu executive who made the decision to pass— and that he had never been a fan of the show, and that he made sure Gellar knew that from the jump.
I got into Buffy the Vampire Slayer during the height of the show’s popularity. I walked into my kitchen to see my mother weeping as, on the small box TV on the counter, Gellar’s Slayer Buffy ran her vampire lover Angel (David Boreanaz) through with a sword to save the world, again. A portal to a hell dimension swallowed him whole and the Slayer was left in tears. I couldn’t believe how well acted it was—and that she had to kill her boyfriend. I was in love.
I have a Buffy the Vampire Slayer tattoo on my right thigh. I started a podcast, Slayerfest98, where we rewatched every episode of Buffy and discussed them, in order (and are currently on the 4th season of the spin-off show Angel). To know me is to know I love the show. Every man I’ve dated, every person I’ve been roommates with, has been made to go through the show with me. You can still see Sarah Michelle Gellar’s face all over my room in Buffy paraphernalia. I’ve interviewed a huge chunk of the cast and crew. I even now consider some of those folks my friends (which teen me would think is very cool). I wept when the revival was announced, wishing my mom was still around so we could share in the excitement.
So, to say I was disappointed about Hulu passing on the revival, doesn’t quite do my emotions justice.
I know—folks have revival fatigue. Folks have superhero fatigue. Folks think every new show will be bad. Folks think every revival will be bad. But, this? This I had full faith in due to an Oscar winner directing the pilot and Sarah Michelle Gellar herself coming back as the Slayer and as a producer. Everything was falling into place. We were getting set photos from the recording of the pilot. Folks were clamoring! Folks were excited!
And I let myself feel fully positive about it, because we deserve to have things to look forward to when living in the hell dimension known as 2026. In a world where we all spend countless hours doomscrolling, it felt nice to have this thing to look forward to.
And, honestly, covering the spin-off Angel on my podcast just wasn’t hitting the way the Buffy coverage had. Both numbers-wise and excitement-wise. I had felt stagnant as numbers continued to drop. That is, until the revival had been announced. News of the revival gave me a reason to not fully fold on the podcast—something I’d seriously been considering doing, months before the revival announcement. The little money I make goes into hosting fees, paying my producer, and other podcast costs, which never lead to me making much income on it. Without sponsors, without much of an income with the podcast, I had to keep doing it because I loved doing it. But that love had been dwindling as I hit my 40s and kept thinking, “What am I even doing?”
But the revival gave me hope—I’d have new Buffy content to cover soon. I saw how excited folks were about it and knew it’d be a blast to cover. My audience loves when they can hear I’m truly excited and this would be something I was truly excited over. The revival had, pun intended, revived my energy for the podcast.
But, that doesn’t mean there weren’t voices being negative—so many people said they were "relieved" Hulu passed because the show would be bad. So many people talked about how all revivals are bad. So many people hated the one set photo of Sarah Michelle Gellar in her red dress filming her one scene in the pilot. So many people felt it needed to star the exact same cast as the original show. And all of those people needed to comment on my podcast’s Instagram to let me know why my excitement was bad or wrong. This isn’t unique to the Buffy fandom though—that’s just how online fandom works these days, unfortunately. But, that didn’t stop my excitement. I think revivals (and requels) work best when they don’t just star the same exact cast. I think the best ones tend to star a new cast, with the legacy cast showing up sparingly to pass the torch.
I hate when folks become sentient Facebook comments and say copy-and paste-things like, “this thing you’re excited about will be bad, actually” or “this will ruin the original” or some variation of the two. I also don’t believe anything can “ruin” the original because the original will always exist. I legit stopped watching The X-Files revival because I hated it so much and that did not ruin the original for me at all. If you’re not excited, why would you need to rain on others excitement? Do folks know they are not going to be forced to watch? And, If we automatically assume every new show will be bad then what are we even doing? What can we look forward to? What is there if not new media to look forward to?
But — I do know that Hulu passing on this pilot has created plenty of fan outrage. If you look at their Instagram account, all the comments on their recent grid posts are folks furious at them for passing on the revival. It’s petty, but I’m glad it’s happening.
The rumors are that Hulu is still interested in the IP and wants to try something else. But—this is where I’m an overly negative, sentient Facebook comment—I can’t imagine Sarah Michelle Gellar giving this another shot. This felt like our one and only shot at getting her back into the iconic role... and it was fumbled.
It feels childish and stupid to say this news has me depressed—but this news has me depressed. In a world where Ryan Murphy has 86 new shows a year on Hulu that are all hailed as awful and no one seems to watch, in a world where evil men seem to control every single thing, in a world where every day another company is absorbed by one of the bigger ones, in a world where everything gets a revival (including a possible third go at Firefly), it really felt like now was the perfect time to beep Buffy.
It’s delusional, but I’m still holding out hope some sort of reversal could happen. There are few things more annoying and pushy than a fandom scorned. Maybe Hulu will realize they could make money off a Buffy revival. Maybe they can release the pilot as a one-off movie and see. Maybe they can do the reshoots for the rewritten pilot script. The possibilities are endless when you’re delusional!
But, until then, find me crying into my "Kiss the Librarian" mug while sitting in the crater formally known as Sunndyale waiting for the Slayer to return.
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