Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the tv series) debuted in 1997. It’s based on the 1992 movie of the same name starring Kristy Swanson but the tv series takes the premise more seriously and expands the mythology of the slayer universe. Buffy lasted 7 seasons and spawned the spinoff series, Angel, which lasted 5 seasons. It’s been a while since I dipped into these waters but I needed a comfort binge and the Buffyverse was calling to me.

The last time I tried to binge both Buffy and Angel in chronological order with all the crossovers, I hit a wall on the Angel side and my binge petered out. I never much cared for Angel (the character) but Angel (the show) was a decent spinoff — except for that one bad season (season 3 or 4, I forget). This time I’m watching Buffy through to the end without the Angel crossovers. If you want to do them both at once, here’s a viewing order list.

If you’ve never watched Buffy, you may have some preconceived notions about the show. You might think its target audience is teenage girls but it has a lot to offer grownups as well. It’s funny and well written. Supernatural horror as a metaphor for teen angst. Even though it’s been 27 years since the show debuted, the references are not as dated as I expected them to be. Buffy is not just a comedy. It gets very dark at times.

There may be spoilers below.

Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is 16 when the show begins. She moves to the fictional California town of Sunnydale for a fresh start after getting kicked out of her LA school for burning down the gym (it was full of vampires). Her mother doesn’t know she’s ‘the chosen one’. She just thinks Buffy fell in with a bad crowd.

Buffy just wants to be a normal teenage girl. She hopes Sunnydale will give her a clean slate. Alas, Sunnydale was once known as La Boca del Infierno — the Mouth of Hell. Not only is it full of vampires, it’s a magnet for other supernatural beings. The first two seasons it’s monster-of-the-week with a variety of demons, fish monsters, evil robots, hyena-possessed teens. Buffy soon develops a reputation for being the weird girl who carries wooden stakes in her bag. But by graduation day, most of the Sunnydale High class of 1999 has experienced some aspect of the supernatural. There’s a sweet moment at the senior prom (S3:E20) when the class awards Buffy the Class Protector Award for them having the lowest mortality rate of any class in Sunnydale history. The season culminates in the satisfying 2-part finale, “Graduation Day”, in which Buffy saves the day again with a little help from her friends.

Buffy is one of those shows whose teen characters straddle high school and beyond. That’s always an awkward thing to pull off. How do you keep your high school pals together after they graduate? In real life, they scatter to college campuses around the country. In Buffy’s case, they all go to UC Sunnydale. Well, not all. Buffy, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Oz (Seth Green) go to UCS, Cordelia (Charisma Carpenter) goes to LA to become an actress and winds up running Angel’s detective agency. Xander (Nicholas Brendon) doesn’t go to college at all and ends up in a series of dead end jobs in Sunnydale. There are a few other characters from Sunnydale High who appear in recurring roles. Cordelia’s bestie Harmony (Mercedes McNab) has a few hilarious guest appearances. She will later join Angel in LA as Wolfram & Hart’s receptionist.

When WB dropped Buffy it was picked up by UPN for two more seasons. WB ended its run by killing Buffy. UPN resurrected her from the grave. In case you thought a change of network would bring down the quality of the show, you would be wrong. Buffy was a strong show across both networks. Some fans don’t like the dour seventh season, in which the First Evil tries to wipe out all potential slayers in the world in order to end the slayer line. But the series finale is really satisfying. Buffy ended in 2003. Angel ended in 2004.

Is Buffy the Vampire Slayer bingeworthy? Absolutely. Is Angel bingeworthy? Yes, except for that one season (4?) I’ll do a blog post on Angel at a later date. Both shows are currently available on Hulu in their entirety. If you don’t have a Hulu subscription, Buffy is also on Tubi, with ads.

The Buffyverse goes beyond the Buffy and Angel tv series. There’s also a whole series of comic books that continue the story after both shows ended. I have the first two volumes of the Season Eight comic book but I haven’t read them yet.

If you want to do a skinny binge instead of watching start to finish, watch S1:E1 to get the premise and meet the characters. Then watch every episode in which Spike (James Marsters) appears. Seriously. He was the best character on the show. Spike first appeared in season 2 as the villain of the moment. He was supposed to die but the character was so much fun, they couldn’t kill him off. He became a regular in seasons 4–7 of Buffy and later joined Angel for its fifth and final season.

Most US tv shows either get canceled after one or two seasons or drag on for years past their relevance. Buffy stayed relevant by allowing the characters to grow and change. Buffy and Willow change a lot over the course of the show. Xander less so, but even he grows up and takes on adult responsibilities.

I was going to do a Buffy essential episode list but it’s too hard to narrow it down. The three episodes that critics talk about are “Hush” (S4:E10), “The Body” (S5:E16), and “Once More With Feeling” (S6:E7). “Hush” involves an epidemic of muteness in Sunnydale, during which some creepy grinning demons (Doug Jones as lead demon) invade the town and cut the hearts out of people who are unable to scream. Most of the episode has no dialog. “The Body” is the most devastating episode of Buffy. It involves a death close to Buffy that has no supernatural origin. It’s just mundane life and death the way normal people experience it. It makes me cry every time I watch it. “Once More With Feeling” is the legendary musical episode. It seems like every show has a musical episode now, but Buffy did it first. The cast’s singing chops are variable. Anthony Head and Amber Benson come off best (Head has a background in musical theater, including a stint as Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show). The demon is played by legendary Broadway dancer and choreographer Hinton Battle.

Here are some rec lists from journalistic sources.

10 best Buffy episodes of all time (Rolling Stone)

20 best episodes of Buffy (The Guardian)

Every episode of Buffy ranked (Vox)

I was looking for a supercut of great moments from Buffy but I couldn’t find one I liked. So here is “Honest Trailers” version, with all the mockery.