Mixed fortunes, but those stakes remain high…

Even for a mythology known for dramatic twists and Olympic-level angst, the last two weeks have been a turbulent time for fans of what was commonly-known as the Whedonverse…

Though Joss Whedon’s star and its bespoke female empowerment gleam may have fallen from grace given the revelations of his alleged behaviour to some of the cast of his shows over the years, there’s no denying that the productions he helped create and oversee have remained the rare kind of culture milestone tv output that stands the test of time. The likes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly have the fiercest followings even decades after they disappeared from first-run screens. The likes of Dollhouse were arguably ahead of their time and though felled by the timing of their release alongside those Whedon revelations and its wake, even The Nevers had stunning ambition and early promise.

But while streaming, DVD collections, comics and novels have kept the characters and stories alive it’s been some time since anything new was on the event horizon.

But sometimes you have to look backwards and forwards… and watch your step while doing so. Beyond the actual screen, a potential Buffy reboot had long been one of those ideas tinged with excitement and peril for both audiences and studio executives. It’s one thing to catch cultural lightning in a genie’s bottle a single time, it’s an entirely different and harder task to repeat that alchemy. There’s the equal risk of extending success and forever tarnishing the brand, of multiplying the returns or staking the golden goose.  A mixture of skill, timing, understanding of the core elements and sheer luck all play a part. Echoing the maxim that “Nobody knows anything…” no combination guarantees reclaimed greatness ahead of time.

Last year, after decades of murmurings but little momentum, top-level streamer hulu announced that they were now actively hoping to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  This was no idle/idol ambition. After years of deliberately keeping her distance, original star Sarah Michelle Gellar declared she was onboard to reprise her character. Oscar-winning Chloe Zhao was announced as the director and Nora and Lilla Zuckerman (Poker Face) would be writing the script. It seemed like a strong mission statement – we’re taking this seriously.

For several months the runes and portents looked good. The new iteration would be called New Sunnydale and Gellar made some posts and got to release the details about who the new Slayer would be. Ryan Kiera Armstrong, only sixteen years old in real life, would play Nova, a young girl who moved with her father to the now vampire-less Sunnydale after a traumatic past and she would become the new Slayer when the undead returned. She’d have her own ‘Scooby Gang‘ and antagonists… and eventually she’d train with a familiar mentor: Buffy Anne Summers.  Filming began and there was a strong indication that the subsequent series would be commissioned to begin broadcast early in 2027. It all seemed like a foregone conclusion, or at least a prophecy. A ‘when‘, not an ‘if’.

Then the news came like a stake to the heart. Sometimes the industry doesn’t work that way. No resurrection. No series. For whatever reason, hulu would not be pursuing the reboot – at least not in its current plan or incarnation. It was a shock to the system, at least to the fanbase and the questions were imemdiate.

Gellar’s subsequent statement on the hulu decision didn’t really pull its punches. She decried the insensitivity of the decision – coming just as Gellar attended the premiere of her new film Ready or Not 2 and the weekend that Zhao headed back to the Academy Awards. It’s entirely fair to say that the timing sucked like a vampire on steroids, though it was Gellar who technically made the decision public.

Questions demand answers but in their place rumours suffice. Those rumours swirled depending on the source, but Gellar claimed that the decision could mostly be put at the foot of one hulu executive  (believed to be Craig Erwich, head of Hulu Originals) who hadn’t been a passionate fan of the original show and she noted “…that tells you the uphill battle that we had been fighting since day one, when your executive is literally proud to tell you that he didn’t watch (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)…”

So far, so Grrr-Arggh.

However, there are some known unknowns and hard, even uncomfortable truths among the emotional debris.  Though Gellar was on board, her presence in the first draft of the pilot episode is literally one scene and one line, in an epilogue after all the main action…  merely teasing a more generational connection to what we’ve seen in the proceeding hour. (She’s far away from Sunnydale, living under a familiar alias and apparently enjoying a new vampire-free life which would no doubt get upended). It’s the kind of hook that would have guaranteed to bring audiences back for a second episode but would thereafter have had to be far more important to proceedings than mere lip-service and cameos could provide. (It brings to mind the pilot script for the revived Quantum Leap series in which an original version included OG Sam Beckett in an epilogue teaser, until Scott Bakula decided not to return). That reboot only lasted two seasons.

The New Sunnydale location was firmly situated in its title and the narrative remit was intact, but despite the heavily-touted cult factor, it was, in all other respects, a totally new show with a new cast. Note the title. This was NOT Buffy: Season 8.  It was more accurately Nova the Vampire Slayer or even ‘Same Town, Different Vintage‘ and those are genuinely harder sells for something largely greenlighted by nostalgia. Think of any rebooted show that had the tagline or concept of “Next Generation“… it’s hard to immediately think of any drama series other than Star Trek that’s managed to survive the reinvention, never mind win over hearts, minds and critics and compete with the long IP shadow. Now imagine you have to gamble millions of real dollars on the outcome. Erwich may not have been the ideal arbiter and his decision might be entirely wrong, but there was huge pressure to be right in an ever-more competitive market.

Zhao is undeniably a talented director with an Oscar win for Nomadland in 2021 and nominated this year for Hamnet. (The film did well with several wins, though the golden directing statuette went to One Battle After Another‘s Paul Thomas Anderson). But it’s worth noting that she also helmed The Eternals, the MCU film that remains one of the studio’s notable flops, panned by critics and definitely something of a narrative mess. Some rumours suggested Zhao didn’t have a firm handle on the tone for New Sunnydale – either what the studio heads wanted or what audiences likely expected, which might well not have been the same. Was it ‘undershot’, was it too ‘introspective’? The leaked script offers some answers, but without seeing the pilot, it’s hard to tell if any of those rumours of the pilot being ‘unsalvageable’ really hold any water – and even then, as Gellar herself has fairly noted – commissioned pilots rarely make it to screen without some tweaks, changes and even significant reshoots.

The Zuckermans apparently went back and wrote a script that had more Buffy in it and didn’t skew ‘as young‘ as their first attempt, but hulu still ultimately passed and some sources say that hulu‘s desire to have a rebooted Buffy genuinely didn’t balance with what was eventually provided. Likely, if there’s blame to be had – and there’s no shortage of fingers with which to point at it – it’s simply that no-one was on the same page and therefore it was too costly a risk. Fans, frustrated as they rightly are, may have to ultimately weigh which they wanted (or didn’t want) most, a cancelled reboot or one that was made but didn’t soar.

On the flip-side, mere days later, Nathan Fillion started hinting about something linked to Firefly. The original series told the story of a disparate group of smugglers surviving life on the edge of known space in the far-ish future aboard a Firefly-class ship known as Serenity. It was dusty, dirty and far from the gleaming sci-fi of the traditional genre. This was akin to looking at Star Wars and deciding to stay in Mos Eisley for your stories – except there were no aliens – the monsters proved all too human. (I went on-set even before the show aired and the potential was clear to everyone… except Fox). Fox cancelled the show before it could get a ratings-foothold, but the show’s cult status endured and when it was released on DVD, the sales were astronomical.  After only thirteen episodes (sometimes aired out or order) one of modern television’s most trumpeted underdogs got a feature film, Serenity, that tied up some of the show’s loose ends. The cast and crew launched Serenity at the Edinburgh Film Festival and word of mouth was, again, positive. The box-office wouldn’t be great, but it satiated some of the fans’ loss over the original.  Then… well, nothing but the endurance of the idea and occasional nods, in-jokes and a reputation of ‘the one that got away’.

So, what was Fillion hinting at? Almost daily he released videos of him meeting up with other members of the Firefly cast and exchanging cryptic remarks about it ‘…being time..’ No, he insisted to followers, it wasn’t a convention or a podcast. The danger became that whatever it was might feel like a let-down after the teases.

The reveal was that it was a new series of Firefly, though it would be animated. Fillion and the cast, appearing at the Awesome-Con event explained that almost all the practical hurdles had been cleared. They had the surviving cast’s commitment (sadly Ron Glass – Book – passed away in 2017). They had Joss Whedon’s blessing. They had the permission of FOX. They had an animation studio. They had showrunners and a pilot script that would set the show between the events of the show and the film… now, what they needed to start work was a home. That could only be got by convincing a channel, network or streamer that the venture was a viable one. They needed the voice of the fanbase. It answered with thousands of hits in a matter of hours…

While Buffy‘s star may have had ended in a black hole, Firefly‘s metaphorical stars seemed to have been aligned with care and precision well ahead of time. Driven by the passion of the cast and perhaps, ironically, by the bad news about the Buffy revival, it now seems that in Firefly‘s case, there’s every reason to assume it’s full speed ahead.

That being said, it will likely be a while before we get a real sense of Firefly‘s look (beyond the character designs – as seen above and originally debuted as an exclusive on the Deadline industry site) and whether its special place in fandom’s heart can be rekindled. The animation idea has been mooted by fans for a long time, though it never seemed like a real option given what it would take to do so. Fans such as Stephen Byrne showed what it could look like:

(Note, that footage is NOT from the proposed production…)

In an ideal world both Buffy and Firefly would soar back onto screens and receive wholesale acclaim.  But we live in an annoyingly imperfect and often inconvenient world.  As much as any hiccups behind the scenes, many of New Sunnydale‘s problems spring from the public reaction to snippets of private business decisions, even when the throughline isn’t clear (in fact, especially so). But there’s little point in bemoaning fan investment and the degree of their strong opinions (informed or not) when New Sunnydale‘s early marketing actively mined nostalgia and Firefly‘s revival requires and actively demands that same fan engagement, interest, bandwidth and pressure.  With that being true,  we can only wait.

Joss Whedon had a unique voice, one that can’t be reproduced exactly and, as time inevitably moves on, likely shouldn’t be. The modern inflection and cadence will be different, but they can and must succeed on their own merits and, certainly, there’s new voices that deserve to be heard. Hopefully Firefly will light up the screen again.  The signs look good, though the final result is everything and not every fan of sf is a fan of animation. And perhaps a Buffy project (in some form) may yet claw its way out of the grave. After all, she has form.

Burn the land, boil the sea… the sky is still there to aim for.