BTVS season 6 is Sarah Michelle Gellar’s least favourite season of the present, and this is why she’s proper in regards to the controversial Buffy and Spike plot.
This text accommodates a dialogue of sexual assault.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is true in regards to the controversial Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 6 storyline which culminated within the tried sexual assault of Buffy by Spike (James Marsters). Buffy season 6 was controversial because of the darkish nature of the overarching storyline, involving Buffy’s makes an attempt to come back to phrases with being introduced again to life after sacrificing herself within the season 5 finale. Buffy went to a darkish place, participating in a problematic sexual relationship along with her former vampire nemesis Spike, a storyline that proved divisive.
Latest interviews selling her new present Wolf Pack have revealed that Sarah Michelle Gellar disliked Buffy season 6. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gellar talked about rewatching Buffy the Vampire Slayer along with her children, saying that they watched seasons 1 to five, however that she has “hassle with six. It wasn’t acceptable for them on the time, and I simply don’t wish to rewatch it.” The THR interview additionally touched on the revelations about Joss Whedon’s alleged conduct on set, and the importance of the sequence in addition to Buffy individually.
Why Buffy Season 6’s Story Did not Work
In an interview with Selection, Sarah Michelle Gellar stated about Buffy’s despair and self-destructive sexual relationship with Spike: “I get going by way of a darkish section or being upset, however she killed her personal love and she or he nonetheless didn’t go that darkish.” Conceptually, Buffy’s darkish section and return from the lifeless would completely result in the dying of Tara (Amber Benson) and the way it turns Willow (Alyson Hannigan) into the villain. In saving her greatest good friend from going darkish, Buffy finally saves herself.
That ought to have been the story of Buffy season 6, however as a substitute, there’s the tumultuous plot line between Buffy and Spike that continues to go in an unsavory route when she lastly rejects Spike. To deal with his rejection, Spike commissions the development of a Buffy intercourse robotic after which makes an attempt to rape Buffy. The present reveals that Spike feels responsible over his actions when he leaves Sunnydale to hunt atonement, which ends up in him turning into a hero, however there have been certainly far much less problematic methods for Buffy villain Spike to show good with out turning him right into a determined sexual abuser first.
Buffy’s Legacy Has Grow to be Difficult (However Not The Character’s)
Inevitably, the Sarah Michelle Gellar interviews flip to the topic of Joss Whedon’s conduct on-set in the course of the making of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For a present that has been rightly adopted as a feminist textual content, it is vastly disappointing that its legacy has been clouded by the alleged misogynistic actions of its male creator. Charisma Carpenter, who performed Cordelia in each Buffy and its spinoff sequence Angel known as Whedon “casually merciless“, and it is also been alleged by Michelle Trachtenberg that there was an “unwritten rule” that Joss Whedon was not allowed to be alone with the actress who performed Buffy’s sister Daybreak, who was underneath 18 on the time.
Spike’s season 6 crimes equally complicate the legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – one thing Sarah Michelle Gellar’s assertion makes clear. Spike’s sexual assault of Buffy was all the time a low-point of the present; nonetheless, understanding the allegations of abuse behind-the-scenes makes the on-screen abuse much more uncomfortable. That stated, it does not taint the legacy of Buffy herself. The legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer finally lives on attributable to Gellar, her standout efficiency, and the remainder of the unimaginable solid and crew outdoors of Whedon, which permits what Buffy represents to be potent to this present day, even when making an allowance for the modified context of the broader present.
