From cheesy beginnings it became a poignant masterpiece of storytelling: over its seven seasons on air, Buffy the Vampire Slayer earned its status as a beloved cult classic. With super strength matched by youthful vulnerability, Buffy rejected trademark femininity and defined what it was to be female for herself. Her coming-of-age story has left a legacy for young girls and women for decades to come.

The show inventively used a supernatural surface to explore female power, emotion and sexuality. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s layered performance as Buffy received universal acclaim and was complemented by a host of accomplished female co-stars. A range of superbly written women included the likes of Alyson Hannigan (Willow Rosenberg), Emma Caulfield (Anya Harris) and Charisma Carpenter (Cordelia Chase). Carpenter played popular girl Cordelia to perfection, her performance was a finely-tuned mixture of intelligence, superficiality and effortlessly stinging comments. She was the farthest thing from a one-dimensional mean girl; Cordelia Chase could have made Regina George fall at her feet.

The opening two minutes of the very first episode of Buffy showed its ingenuity, playing with the viewer’s expectations through its use of gendered tropes and then it dismantled years of sexist televisual tradition entirely. The audiences were met with two teenagers  (a macho, leather-jacket wearing man and a young blonde woman) who had just broken into Sunnydale High School (the show’s central location for its first three seasons), accompanied by appropriately sinister music. Our schoolgirl is the model of apprehension, her timid eyes flitting around, she’s reluctant to follow; she becomes startled as she hears something off-screen. Thankfully, her fearless, muscled companion is there to assure her there is nothing to be frightened of – but that’s before, in the final moments of the scene, she turns to him, revealing herself as a vampire and kills him. In two minutes Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed its intention to change the game for women in television, setting the tone for its next six years.

Buffy did not limit itself to plotlines tied to heterosexuality, as was seen in the beautiful unfolding of Willow and Tara’s love story. The two meet at a Wicca group and develop a relationship interwoven with the practice of magic; this fantasy element, though initially a means of the network avoiding having the pair kiss on-screen, helped to visualise the connection between the two women. The authenticity and longevity of their relationship, which lasted about two and a half seasons, was unprecedented for its time, making Buffy an unlikely pioneer for the LGBT community.

Despite being one half of a pioneering lesbian couple, the way Willow’s sexuality was depicted could perhaps be called in question. One episode suggests that her attraction to women ‘began’ the year she met Tara and throughout seasons four to seven the show seemed to perpetuate the idea that Willow, who had previously been in a long-term relationship with a man, must be either gay or straight. The possibility of her being bisexual is effectively erased – a problem which exists in mainstream media to this day. However, the contextual significance of Willow and Tara’s relationship cannot be ignored. To display a passionate and fulfilling sexual relationship between two women was a deliberately unconventional choice made by Buffy and the artistry with which the relationship was written remains an achievement in itself.

Regrettably, the show has not aged well in all respects. The main cast throughout its run was exclusively white, with only three prominent characters being played by people of colour. The most notable example of which was Kendra Young (Bianca Lawson), another vampire slayer. Killed off before the end of the second season, she was likewise victim to the actress’ unfortunate attempt at a Jamaican accent. The heritage of the vampire slayer is examined in the final episode of season four and it is revealed that the first slayer (played by Jamaican-born Sharon Ferguson) was African. Bianca Lawson’s character served as one of very few present-day allusions to the slayer’s non-western origin story. When the show explores the backstory of Spike (James Marsters), a vampire well-known for having killed slayers, we are introduced to two of his past conquests, both of whom are non-white. Spike originally came to the town of Sunnydale to kill Buffy, but he was unsuccessful. While it was relevant to the story that both of Spike’s victims be killed on-screen – and while Buffy’s inclusion of non-white characters separated it from much of the television produced in the nineties and early noughties– their murder alongside the early death of Kendra Young suggests a troubling pattern wherein the ‘white slayer’ is presented as comparatively better and stronger.

The episode ‘Pangs’ which showed a Native American ghost returning to seek vengeance on Thanksgiving is a particularly clunky example of the show’s apparent cluelessness when it came to issues of race. While the episode seems written in an effort to highlight the horrific lineage of the Thanksgiving holiday, Buffy’s use of the ‘Indian Burial Ground’ cliché continued an American tradition of undermining and misconstruing Native American identity. The simplistic way in which the Chumash tribe is represented lacks thoughtfulness; the show resorted to tropes rather than authentically showcasing any of the tribe’s complex traditions – despite claims from the production team that the episode was “well researched.” For a show which otherwise seemed artfully enlightened, this blindspot is very much a reminder to contemporary audiences of the era of Buffy’s production.

While Buffy provided its audiences with strong, female-oriented plotlines, it also presented the viewer with the uncomfortable and far less poetic presence of the character of Xander Harris – one of TV’s original ‘nice guys.’ Xander’s leering behaviour and clumsy advances toward  almost every major female character put an unsympathetic chauvinist at the centre of this drama about powerful women. In the pilot episode Buffy herself becomes the centre of his infatuations, a plot-point which annoyingly recurs in the show’s early seasons. Though he dates both the queen of Sunnydale High Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter) and the thousand-year-old ex-demon Anya Harris (Emma Caulfield), his quaking insecurity remains. He even uses his envy of Buffy and Angel’s relationship as an excuse to lash out at his closest friends. At one point he casts a love spell – which goes wrong – and Buffy, affected along with every other woman in Sunnydale, begins to sexually pursue him while dressed only in a silk trench coat. Even more disgusting is the fact that he is applauded when he does not return Buffy’s spellbound affections. Xander Harris is a character who resorted to witchcraft in order to control and humiliate his ex-girlfriend (Cordelia). The show’s central male character – excluding the loving, paternal figure Giles (Anthony Stewart Head) – is praised for not having sex with one of his best friends while she is entirely unable to consent. The horrifying dynamics of encounters like this are perhaps less surprising given the subsequent disclosure of creator Joss Whedon’s emotional abuse of his partners as well as his convoluted ‘feminist’ politics following Buffy’s finale.

Equally tragic as it was witty, Buffy will be remembered for its capacity to create great moments of television. The successful deposit of pop culture references, sharp humour and every horror movie cliche imaginable gave it an edge. Popular appeal was met with matching cleverness, a jocular tone equaled by its uncompromising brutality. The unprecedented brilliance of this TV show focusing on the life of a teenage girl showed viewers that the feminine perspective was one to be taken seriously – though aspects of its legacy will remain troubling as its audiences evolve.