THE BUFFYVERSE. Buffyverse Term/Concept/Idea/Intratext.
The Buffyverse may be defined as a series of ever larger concentric circles, rather like the Ptolemaic universe in Dante’s Divine Comedy. The center of the Buffyverse is Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself, from which the term is derived: Buffy + [uni]verse.
Although strictly speaking, the Buffyverse may be said to begin with the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), for most practical purposes it comes into active existence with the television series (1997). From that point on, the Buffyverse includes Buffy’s friends and family, and her home, the imaginary southern California community of Sunnydale and its environs, all created by Joss Whedon and the Mutant Enemy writers. Beneath Sunnydale is a Hellmouth, a nexus of dark supernatural forces, a “portal between this reality and the next” (“The Harvest”), which accounts for many of the show’s plotlines. The world of Sunnydale is both like ours—it includes high-school, malls, cappuccino, police (very ineffective), and cell-phones (in Season Seven)—and also wildly unlike ours in that it also includes vampires, demons, and zombies, and magic that really works—for those who know what they’re doing, and sometimes even for those who don’t: “Don’t speak Latin in front of the books,” cautions Giles, after Xander casually pronounces a spell and sets a book on fire (“Superstar”).
The Buffyverse goes beyond Sunnydale. It acknowledges the existence of Los Angeles from episode one, in a nod to certain events of the movie:
CORDELIA: So you’re from Hemery, right? In L.A.?
BUFFY: Uh, yeah.
CORDELIA: Oh, I would kill to live in L.A. That close to that many shoes? […] Of course, we do have to test your coolness factor. You’re from L.A., so you can skip the written […].
Buffy is shown at Hemery, briefly, in a flashback in “Becominf," Part 1, but Los Angeles definitely become a part of the Buffyverse when Angel: the Series spins off in 1999. Over the next four years, it expands to include the staff of Angel Investigations (Gunn, Fred, Lorne, and Connor, in addition to Cordelia and Wesley, who originally appeared on Buffy), police officer Kate Lockley, and members of the demonic law firm Wolfram & Hart (Lindsey McDonald, Lilah Morgan, Holland Manners, Gavin Park). Angel’s Los Angeles is also riddled with vampires, demons, and other supernatural forces, many of whom seem to blend in with general L.A. laissez-faire.
England also exists in the Buffyverse, as the location of the Council of Watchers and of a “powerful coven of witches” who endow Giles with power to help fight Dark Willow at the end of Season Six, and help rehabilitate her afterward. Scenes of Buffyverse England actually appears in Season Seven episodes “Lessons,” “Beneath You,” and “Same Time, Same Place,” filmed on location near Bath. In Season Seven, we also finally see the Watchers’ Council headquarters, both their meeting rooms and two mysteriously unmatching exterior shots—just before the entire building and the whole Council (except Giles) are blown up by the First Evil’s Bringers in “Never Leave Me.”
A number of world locations become part of the Buffyverse, especially as the history of several of the series’ characters is revealed. Scenes have been set in China (“Fool for Love,” “Darla”), Ireland (“The Prodigal” and other episodes involved Angel’s pre-vampire days), Sweden (“Selfless”), Russia (“Selfless”), France (“Heartthrob”), Africa (“Two to Go” and “Get It Done”), and Mexico (“Sleeper”), to name a few. There are also other-world dimensions such as “Pylea” (“There’s No Place Like Plrtz Glrb”), and the alternate Sunnydale of the “Wish-verse” (“The Wish”), as well as some that are not identified or are only glimpsed through portals, such as “Quortoth” (“Sleep Tight”), and the speculative alternate reality “world without shrimp” (“Superstar,” “Triangle”).
In Buffy’s Sunnydale and Angel’s Los Angeles, Whedon and the Mutant Enemy writers have created what Tolkien describes as a “Secondary World”: “Inside it, what he relates is ‘true’: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside” (60).
This “Secondary World” has been expanded beyond the television series episodes with the production of original Buffy and Angel novels and comic books which add new stories and characters to the Buffyverse. One comic book series, Fray, created and written by Joss Whedon, chronicles the adventures of a vampire slayer of the future. Tales of the Slayers (2 vols.) tells of Slayers in the past.
The Buffyverse extends beyond the canonical diagetical worlds of the Buffy and Angel, however. The term is also applied to various elements of those who watch and study the shows: fans, including internet fan communities and fan-fiction (some devoted to particular characters or ’ships [relationships] between characters), official and unofficial websites, fan conventions, and professional and amateur scholars who produce conference papers, journal articles, books, and analytical online postings. The line between the two groups is not always clear. Thus the Buffyverse expands into the “real” or “Primary World” as Tolkien calls it.
At its furthest reaches, the Buffyverse may be said to include other creative endeavors by Whedon (the television show Firefly) and Mutant Enemy writers such as David Greenwalt (Miracles), Jane Espenson (Gilmore Girls, The O.C.), and Marti Noxon (Still Life), especially since Buffy has ended. Some also consider television shows and movies in which the stars of Buffy and Angel appear to orbit the outer limits of the Buffyverse; for example, David Boreanaz in I’m with Lucy, Sarah Michelle Gellar in Scooby-Doo: the Movie, Alyson Hannigan in the American Pie movies, Marc Blucas in Sunshine State or I Capture the Castle, or Eliza Dushku in Tru Calling.
Tolkien, J.R.R. “On Fairy Stories.” The Tolkien Reader. New York: Ballantine Books, 1966. 33-99.