The one thing the ‘Buffy’ reboot needs most? No terrible men
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is getting a revival! Sarah Michelle Gellar is set to reprise her role, and she’s got a whole group of talented women behind her. But if you’re anything like me, you googled one thing and one thing only when the news broke: “Is Joss Whedon involved with the new Buffy?”
Thankfully, Joss Whedon is not involved with the new Buffy. His career was, luckily, over as soon as serious allegations came out about his behavior on the original Buffy set. Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on the show, was the first to make her feelings clear, slamming Whedon in a social media post and accusing him of mistreating her when she was pregnant, even asking her outright if she was “going to keep it.” For those like me who always hated how Cordelia was treated on the spinoff show Angel, a puzzle piece suddenly slotted into place.
After that, other actresses came forward. Amber Benson, who played Tara, wrote in a now-deleted tweet: “Buffy was a toxic environment and it starts at the top. There was a lot of damage done during that time and many of us are still processing it 20-plus years later.”
But the most chilling statement came from Michelle Trachtenberg, who was only a teenager when she joined Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Dawn. She released a message saying that Whedon’s behavior towards her was “not appropriate” and that she wasn’t allowed to be alone in a room with him during filming of the show.
All this has affected my enjoyment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I know I’m not alone in that. As a teenager, I thought it was very feminist, but now I see that the empowering aspects came from the characters, not the storylines, which usually killed or punished them. Whedon is a man who accidentally created wonderful female characters and then proceeded to do them injury to satisfy his misogynistic desires. It was a hard thing to come to terms with.
But it’s not just Whedon who was and still is problematic—I don’t want Nicholas Brendon (Xander) involved in the new Buffy either. I would say this even if I didn’t dislike Xander as a character. (I shuddered when he ended up with Dawn, a girl he used to babysit for, in the Buffy sequel comics.) Brendon has clear mental health issues, but that doesn’t change the things he’s done. In 2015, he was arrested for allegedly strangling his then-girlfriend, a very serious act of abuse. Two years later, he allegedly assaulted another girlfriend and narrowly avoided a prison sentence.
Now, Brendon paints and makes rambling videos on Instagram where he speaks about his dislike for Buffy co-star David Boreanaz. (Boreanaz may or may not be involved with the reboot: all we’ve got to go on is a comment on Gellar’s Instagram where he declared, “Excited for you and your journey. Enjoy the moments and continue to always give back to the fans.”) It simply wouldn’t be appropriate to employ a man with a history of domestic abuse on a feminist TV show.
I also have serious misgivings about the prospect of James Marsters (Spike) returning for the reboot. Spike was always a fan favorite, and I know a lot of people are dying to see him again, but unfortunately, he partook in some very creepy behavior with Michelle Trachtenberg when the two were working together. When Trachtenberg was still underage, he wrote and performed a love song for her, “Dangerous,” which featured lyrics such as, “One baby, two, maybe three more years/You’ll be a full grown girl, have all your curves.” Marsters seems to have escaped widespread condemnation for that, and Trachtenberg has never commented on it, but it colors all my perceptions of Spike scenes in Buffy.
A post-#MeToo Buffy is simply going to be different from what it was before. It has to be. Here’s to hoping that the women behind the reboot can make it much better by not involving men who have proven themselves to be violent or untrustworthy.
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