Movies - TV
Joss Whedon’s Biggest Buffy Challenge Was Sending The Slayer To College
By JENNA BUSCH
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” creator Joss Whedon told IGN in 2003 that moving Buffy from high school to college was the biggest challenge he had to manage during the show’s run.
When asked about transitioning the Scooby gang out of high school, Whedon said, “How do you keep your high school gang together without saying, ‘We're going to 90210 college now?’”
Whedon continued, “[You're] treading the line between the reality of the thing and the fact that you want to keep all your characters in the same place.”
Buffy and Willow ended up at UC Sunnydale, Xander got a local job, Oz left to protect himself from a secret monster-hunting group, and Anya began dating Xander.
Whedon added, “Ultimately, the season became about how fragmented they got and the fact that they didn't all stay in the same place. That was sort of how we dealt with it.”
The writers also devised a storyline around the Initiative, a secret military operation headquartered under the campus of UC Sunnydale, which led to Buffy's romance with Riley.
The shifting around of the main characters and the focus on their split were good moves. Plus, the spinoff "Angel" helped give the heroes another destination, too.