Sarah Michelle Gellar Has Announced If She Will Ever Return As Buffy
Sarah Michelle Gellar says she has no interest in playing Buffy Summers again, saying it is a role for people younger than her.
Sarah Michelle Gellar has revealed that she is not interested in reprising the role of Buffy Summers, professional vampire slayer, in any way. In a recent interview in SFX Magazine (via MovieWeb), the 1990s horror icon said that any plans for a reboot of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer would not include her returning as the character. While she is not against a continuation of the franchise, she said:
“I’m not. I am very proud of the show that we created and it doesn’t need to be done. We wrapped that up. I am all for them continuing the story, because there’s the story of female empowerment. I love the way the show was left: ‘Every girl who has the power can have the power.’ It’s set up perfectly for someone else to have the power. But like I said, the metaphors of [Buffy] were the horrors of adolescence. I think I look young, but I am not an adolescent.”
That all seems pretty cut and dried, as far as Sarah Michelle Gellar and Buffy are concerned. Gellar played the Slayer for seven seasons, beginning in 1997 on the WB and ending in 2003 on UPN; while the show was never an enormous hit in terms of viewership, it was critically acclaimed and developed a fervent fanbase. Sarah Michelle Gellar herself will likely always be associated first and foremost with Buffy, which the actress actually seems pretty happy about.
Along with Sarah Michelle Gellar being firmly against reprising the character, plans to reboot Buffy the Vampire Slayer seem to have stalled. In 2018, Monica Owusu-Breen was announced as the showrunner for a reboot of the show (now that it’s owned by the IP-happy Walt Disney Company), but the reboot was shelved in the summer of 2022. It is unknown exactly why Disney put a pause on the reboot, but it is possible that it had to do with the well-publicized controversies surrounding show creator Joss Whedon.
While Buffy the Vampire Slayer made Joss Whedon a well-regarded writer, it was his work for the Marvel Cinematic Universe that truly made him a Hollywood heavy-hitter. The success of The Avengers (and the subsequent dip of Avengers: Age of Ultron) led him to take the reins of Justice League from Zack Snyder when the latter stepped away due to personal tragedies. The tepid reception of the movie was followed by a number of allegations of on-set bullying and misconduct against the director, which very well may have spooked Disney from reviving Buffy at the moment.
Even if Sarah Michelle Gellar never returns to the role of Buffy Summers (which she seems pretty definitive about), she has her place in the horror genre already firmly in place. She will soon be appearing in the Paramount+ series Wolf Pack (switching from vampires to werewolves). Additionally, Gellar starred in some of the most defining 1990s horror franchises, including I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2.
In short, Sarah Michelle Gellar has horror on lockdown without ever going back to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There have been rumors of a reunion project with her Buffy co-star David Boreanaz, though not necessarily with the two being on-screen together. Gellar also recently starred in the hit Netflix movie Do Revenge with Riverdale’s Camila Mendes and Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke.
While Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have ended nearly 20 years ago, its fanbase remains dedicated, in large part due to the Angel spinoff show and various canon comic book series. The fanbase is not going to get more Sarah Michelle Gellar, but knowing Disney, it will almost definitely get more Buffy in some form or another.
