Netflix is Making a Grave Mistake Losing 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer'
Buffy Summers is leaving Netflix, which is a major bummer.
Vampire slayer Buffy Summers might be the Chosen One, but now someone has made the choice to part ways with Netflix. Whedonverse classic shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are both departing the streaming service in April. To put it the way Buffy would, this majorly sucks.
Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which recently had its twentieth anniversary, is a groundbreaking television show. Buffy was genre television that could still be taken seriously — a precursor to the current Game of Thrones era. It was unabashedly feminist before Wynonna Earp or Jessica Jones were a twinkle in a TV exec’s eye. It was a leader among shows that mix episodic and longform storytelling, and it’s fair to say that modern television simply wouldn’t be the same without Buffy Summers and the Scoobies.
Buffy’s spin-off show Angel is also highly underrated, mixing a detective-noir tone with the moral struggles of early adulthood, complete with one of the best character arcs on modern television (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce). And, for my money, the best penultimate line on modern television. (“Well personally, I kinda want to slay the dragon.”)
Netflix is infamously tight-lipped about what goes on behind the streaming service’s closed doors. In addition to never releasing ratings or viewership data, the company is also loathe to reveal the circumstances around losing or gaining streaming rights. As many networks move to host their backlog of shows on their own services, Netflix tends to lose out — it’s part of the reason why they’re going big with original series like House of Cards and the Marvel shows. Still, though, it’s a bummer for viewers.
In the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers famously put her lovers on the back burner. She explains to Angel that she is cookie dough and isn’t finished baking into the person she’s ready to be. He implied that he would wait however long it took for her to become cookies. Unfortunately, it looks like Netflix isn’t looking for cookies right now.
But don’t get out your stakes just yet — Buffy and Angel are now on alternate streaming service Hulu.
