Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Scariest Moment

| October 5, 2021 |

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Sarah Michelle Gellar — *Photo: WB*

Clearly, it'southward the Gentlemen from 'Hush'. Anybody who says in that location's a scarier moment in Buffy the Vampire Slayerthan the Gentlemen from 'Hush' hovering effectually Sunnydale on their invisible skateboards of the damned, gesturing like jewellery models in a trade show booth, is plain wrong. At a push, you could make a instance for the warthog-tusked Der Kindestod sucking the life out of sick kids in 'Killed Past Death'; or for dead-sofa-Joyce getting choked by the gimp demon in 'Conversations With Expressionless People', but really, for scariness, it'southward the Gentlemen isn't information technology?

Isn't it?

That depends. At that place's another moment that, every rewatch, makes my stomach clench in ways that the Gentlemen never do. Those grinning freaks are scary, but they're fun-scary. Exterior of a fan convention or a Rupert Murdoch lookalike contest, you'd never actually have to face them. Unlike the couple of boneheads who catcall Buffy Summers on a nighttime street in 'Helpless'.

(If anybody, past the way, is starting to suspect they've been conned into reading some broad's undergrad essay on women, power and taking back the nighttime instead of an upbeat online listing, then bingo, y'all called it. Stay or leave, where you go is totally upwards to y'all. To quote Buffy Anne Summers – must be nice.)

'Helpless' is the Buffy episode set around the Slayer's 18^th birthday. In it, Buffy's Watcher Giles enacts Watcher's Council rite the "Tento di Cruciamentum' which roughly translates – or at least is supposed to – as the 'Trial of Torment'. It'due south designed to exam a slayer's resourcefulness by making her face an especially dangerous vampire while stripped of her superpowers. Considering that the Slayer is the one girl in all the world who alone wields the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons and other forces of darkness, it's a dick move by the Watcher'south Council, not different to making nurses pay to park at hospitals. As if the Slayer doesn't already have enough on her plate.

To the Watcher'due south Council though, Slayers are substantially dancers in a teen chorus line – one falls and some other takes her place, hence this 'you lot're merely not inenough mortal danger' wheeze. Giles follows protocol, hypnotises Buffy and secretly injects her with a serum that suppress her powers. She loses her Slayer forcefulness, and has no thought why she's suddenly unable to fight. Is it something she's done? Will her powers return? Will she e'er be able to live a normal, vulnerable life, knowing what she knows, having seen what she's seen?

Eventually Giles' conscience gets the better of him and he tries to telephone call the whole thing off, merely by that bespeak it's out of his hands. A powerless Buffy has already entered the fray. She had no choice when the peculiarly dangerous vampire – Kralik, an unhinged series killer even before he became a vamp – kidnapped her female parent.

Using her wits, Buffy survives the ordeal, of course. She's the prove's hero with three and a flake series and a long run of spin-off comics ahead of her, and so was always safe.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 3 episode Helpless screengrab

E'er safe. That's the spell Buffy casts over viewers. Its hero is five anxiety three and too few pounds merely oh, her power. Imagine it. At that place's no nighttime alley Buffy can't walk downward. In that location's no aggressor she can't fight off. No bruise or blood-spill or broken bone that won't heal on her body. She doesn't carry the scars of attack because she's ever new. Always strong. Knocked downward, she gets up. When they kill her, she comes back to life.

Buffy Summers ways the absence of fright of violence. That'due south her promise, the gift that Sarah Michelle-Gellar's graphic symbol gives to girls. Fifty-fifty though she spends more time getting beaten up and sexualised (oft at the same time) than well-nigh whatsoever other female person atomic number 82, watching her fight is cathartic. It's wish-fulfilment. Lord aid the man or monster who mistakes her for just some other brittle one of united states!

That'southward why the Gentleman don't come close to Buffy 's scariest moment for me. Your mileage may vary (lesbians, people of colour and the evidence'due south actors may well have other specific horror moments with this one) merely speaking personally, the near unnerving scene is when the Slayer walks home solitary at nighttime without her powers, and 2 jeering knuckle-draggers ask her for a lap dance. Buffy stops, fix to teach them a lesson, but and so remembers that she's simply a girl now, and so does what a girl has to practice past keeping her caput down, keeping walking and keeping her fingers crossed that they don't follow. That moment breaks the show's spell. Information technology makes Buffy every bit vulnerable as the rest of us. If she's afraid, then we're agape. Once again. Like ever.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is bachelor to stream now on Netflix.