Just over a year ago, Millennials around the world rejoiced: Buffy Summers was coming back. A reboot of the much beloved TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer had been approved. Scream queen Sarah Michelle Gellar was reprising her iconic role, and Oscar-winning director Chloe Zhao was on-board, too. Fans were optimistic another hit could be on the horizon.
That was until last week, when the reboot – Buffy: New Sunnydale – was suddenly canned.
With the news delivered shortly before Zhao’s victory lap for Hamnet at the Oscars, and Gellar’s world premiere of her new film Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the creative team was furious. In an interview with People this week, Gellar said the whole thing had been an “uphill battle that we had been fighting since day one”, laying the blame at the feet of one unnamed executive who she says was “not only not a fan of the original, but was proud to constantly remind us that he had never seen the entirety of the series and how it wasn’t for him”.
Meanwhile, The Hollywood Reporter has cited unnamed sources claiming the pilot simply wasn’t good. After a rewrite failed to improve the project, their sources claim, the decision was made to scrap it completely.
Buffy fans around the world are understandably disappointed. The comments section of Gellar’s social media has lit up with fans cursing Hulu and talking about petitions for other networks to pick it up. But whatever the truth is about the exact reasons they pulled the plug – a subpar show, or execs who ruined it in the process – I think we’ve dodged a bullet.
Why? Because the last thing we need is another terrible TV reboot.
Reboots, remakes and legacy sequels have dominated television in the streaming era. Studios, fighting an increasing battle for viewer attention, know that series based on popular IP bring in an existing audience out of nostalgia, familiarity or plain curiosity. And, as a result, we’ve been assaulted with a Rugrats reboot that looked like it was made for PlayStation 1, a sad, Disney-fied version of That ’70s Show set two decades later (That ’90s Show, of course) and a cringe Scrubs resuscitation. There was also the Sex and the City sequel And Just Like That …, which practically assassinated every beloved character from the original, groundbreaking series.
Don’t even get me started on Fuller House. Nothing has made me want to tear my eyes out more.
There’s no end in sight, either. This year alone we’ll see revivals of Malcolm in the Middle, Baywatch and Prison Break. Must we keep beating these dead horses?
History has shown how incredibly rare it is to nail a reboot. Sure, there have been a few. Twin Peaks: The Return comes to mind but that came out nearly a decade ago. Heartbreak High has been a more recent success, though that could be because it follows an entirely new cast. The themes of the show remain consistent but we’re not forced to watch an ageing heartthrob desperately attempt to remain relevant for an entire season.
King of the Hill’s return was also applauded, which makes me wonder whether animations might have it slightly easier. It’s less obvious if they need to recast certain characters, and the nostalgia arguably rests more in how it looks or what it has to say rather than who’s in it.
Beyond these rare gems, however, most reboots fail to launch. And if Buffy had gone ahead it would have faced the same challenges every TV revival tackles: satisfying two distinct audiences. There are the original fans who yearn for a nostalgia trip, and the newcomers who generally want something a little more contemporary.
Take the 2021 Gossip Girl revival, for instance, which was cancelled after two seasons of low viewership. Its heavy focus on the ethical dilemmas associated with wealth smacked far too much of TikTok social warrior commentary. We weren’t watching Chuck Bass lie and cheat back in the day to understand the harm of his actions and privilege; we were watching because it was all deliciously scandalous. In modernising the show, the reboot completely missed the point.
These types of reboots scream of nothing but cash-grab. They’re awkwardly trying to transplant quintessentially ’90s or early-noughties shows into the 2020s, assuming every Millennial will come scrambling for the remote. But they’re forgetting something important: there’s a reason these shows were so popular at a specific time. Full House, for example, was one of few shows at the time to celebrate the beauty of a non-traditional “chosen” family. Meanwhile, Baywatch was all about ’90s eye candy – any new version of its high-cut neoprene swimsuits and voluminous hairstyles could only look like pastiche today.
As for Buffy, it may not have been the first show ever to position a young woman at its centre, but it was one of the first to do so while blending horror, melodrama and comedy. We’ve seen a lot like this since, to varying degrees of success, which would arguably give a modern version less bite (pun intended).
As much as I admire the work of Gellar and Zhao, a modern Sunnydale would likely lack the sharper edge that made the original Buffy so addictive. For now it can continue to be remembered in its original state, undisturbed and at peace.
It’s for the best this reboot had a stake run through its heart.
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Nell Geraets is a Culture and Lifestyle reporter at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.
