Culture

Buffy star Alyson Hannigan thinks the slayer ‘should have dated Willow’ and we’re going to need that reboot immediately

Alyson Hannigan and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Willow and Buffy.

Alyson Hannigan and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Willow and Buffy. (20th Television)

“Buffy should have dated Willow,” is the new sacred text.

Some 17 years after Willow helped Buffy close the Hellmouth for good, actor Alyson Hannigan (who played the lesbian witch-turned-goddess) has said out loud what some of us have been saying for decades.

Hannigan weighed in after Georgia politician, organiser and election hero Stacey Abrams gave her two cents on the series’ tangled love affairs.

“Angel was the right boyfriend for Buffy coming into her power. Spike was the right man to be with as she became the power,” said Abrams.

“I’ll vote yes to that,” chorused Hannigan, before adding: “Actually Buffy should have dated Willow.”

J. August Richards, who played Gunn in Buffy spin-off Angel, was one of many to welcome her words.

When one fan suggested romance “would have ruined their friendship”, Hannigan brought up her own marriage to Buffy and Angel star Alexis Denisof (Wesley), explaining that Antony Stewart-Head (Giles) told her the same thing when they first started dating.

Another asked what this would mean for Willow’s true love Tara. Thankfully, Hannigan cleared up that Buffy would come “after, obviously”.

Though many were thrilled, for some, Hannigan had overlooked a simple but important fact: that Buffy belonged with Faith.

Buffy is actually canonically queer.

Though the closest Buffy came to exploring her queerness on screen was that dance with Faith at The Bronze, in the Whedonverse’s larger continuity, Buffy is canonically queer.

After Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended with season seven, create Joss Whedon continued to Scooby Gang’s story in a series of comics.

Back in 2008, a Season Eight storyline saw Buffy fall for, and sleep with, another slayer named Satsu (activated along with thousands of others in the season seven finale).

Tara (left) and Willow were the first lesbian couple to share a kiss on TV in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (20th Century Fox)

Tara (left) and Willow were the first lesbian couple to share a kiss on TV in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (20th Century Fox)

When Satsu asked if Buffy was gay, she replied “not so you’d notice”. Whedon confirmed at the time that he wasn’t “going make her gay, nor are we going to take the next 50 issues explaining that she’s not”.

“She’s young and experimenting, and did I mention open-minded? I wouldn’t even call it a phase. It’s just something that happens,” he told the New York Times.

Satsu broke things off with Buffy because she figured she was always going to be more into men than women – but that doesn’t take away from her queerness.

After a second and final night together, Buffy got back with Angel (who had been masquerading as the villainous Twilight) during a mid-air fight, which abruptly turned into mid-air sex, which then turned into floating-through-space-into-another-dimension sex. Because why not?

A Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot is coming.

A Buffy reboot has been in the works since 2018, with producer and screenwriter Monica Owusu-Breen named as show runner.

It was reported that a Black actor would be cast as a new slayer, something that got Amber Benson (Tara) “so excited”.

“I was so excited because Joss [Whedon] was involved, a woman of colour (Owusu-Breen) was going to be running the show, and Buffy was going to be a woman of colour,” she told Digital Spy in August.

“I thought that was really important.

“So Buffy – it had some diversity. But I feel like it could have had more.”

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