Joss Whedon Is Rebooting ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning. It smells like… moral victory. As you know, Hollywood is basically just rehashes and reboots at this point, so of course there’s a reboot of the extremely 1990s television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a show picked up to cash in on the popularity of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess that ended up being a cultural touchstone that far surpassed those shows that itself was a reboot and quasi-sequel to the cult film of the same name from a few years before.

According to Deadline, Joss Whedon has hired Monica Owusu-Breen to be the showrunner and they’re planning on casting an African-American actress as the third Buffy. Of course, I’m sure all the MRAs and general scumbags on the internet are out moaning about how this reboot is going to ruin their childhood or whatever because they can’t accept that the world doesn’t revolve around them.

No, I’m sorry. If they wanna reboot with a different slayer I’m all for it, but don’t redo Buffy, there’s only one

— Ashley (@ashaney334) July 23, 2018

This may be heretical, but Buffy reboot? No, no, no, no. It can only damage the original, by being rubbish and muddling the memory, or being better and making the original and all those happy memories seem tainted. Give me something new and I’ll slay and we’ll party.

— Matt Killeen (@by_Matt_Killeen) July 22, 2018

I just screamed NO at the top of my lungs. WHY. NO. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS. 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 https://t.co/VdkIhI5Eyw

— Anita Sarkeesian ✨ NEW SHOW OUT NOW (@anitasarkeesian) July 20, 2018

Wait a second, those aren’t the MRAs who were complaining that the lady Ghostbusters movie was bad because they hate women, those are the feminists who said the only reason someone would be mad about a reboot of a thing they loved in their formative years are misogynist neckbeards who are probably racist. Not so fun when the childhood ruining reboot is on the other foot, is it?

Now, far be it from me to say that the only possible reason that someone could possibly have a problem with this is that they’re racist, but literally the only thing anyone, even the production team, knows about the show at this point is that it has a black showrunner and a black lead actress, and yet they’re still mad about it and think it will ruin Buffy for them.

Yeah, not so fun when someone ascribed a motive to you and then doesn’t let anything change their mind. And I’m not even saying there aren’t some people who didn’t like Ghostbusters or the newest Star Wars movies because they don’t like the fact that women were in them, of course there are. And there are going to be some people who don’t like the Buffy reboot entirely because it has a black lead. Maybe take the time to think about what your objections to the Buffy reboot actually are and consider that maybe most of the people who didn’t like Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters had legitimate reasons for not liking it, such as having seen it or not enjoying bad movies.

Amid the storm of negative tweets, there was one positive. Shannon Purser, who had a bit of a breakout role in Stranger Things despite only having like, 20 minutes of screen time, said she’s interested in playing Willow.

We don’t actually know that the reboot will have the same supporting characters, though. It might be smart to surround Buffy with new characters to keep the show fresh and tamp down expectations for characters and plots that were introduced much later in the series. And, you know, even if you don’t like the reboot, you can still watch the original series, no one is taking that away from you.