On Grief and Growing Up in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

In a new Literary Hub essay adapted from her keynote at the eleventh biennial Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, novelist and critic Emily Temple argues the show is fundamentally about grief, more than love, magic, or power. The essay was prompted by the recent death of actor Anthony Stewart Head, who played Giles, and Temple notes he joins two other cast members lost in short order: Nicholas Brendon, who died in March at fifty-four, and Michelle Trachtenberg, who died last year at thirty-nine. As Literary Hub reports, Temple traces how grief repeatedly transforms characters across Buffy and its spinoff Angel, reshaping their identities and driving some of the series' darkest turns.

Listen to this story

Hear this and more stories in a personalized audio briefing.

Open The Chonkerton