Before there was Elena, Stefan, and Damon, there were Buffy, Angel, and Spike
Spoiler Alerts Ahead!
Vampire media targeted at teenage girls has maintained popularity for decades. In 2009 Julie Plec aired her show The Vampire Diaries (TVD) based on the book series of the same title. TVD follows the life of 17-year-old Elena Gilbert in the wake of her parents’ deaths and introduction to vampire Stefan Salvatore and his older brother Damon. A love triangle between the three characters captivated audiences for eight seasons, but before there was TVD there was 1997’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Buffy). Joss Whedon’s Buffy followed Buffy Summers, a 15-year-old girl who is called upon by a higher power and given supernatural abilities to fight vampires and demons. When she moves to Sunnydale, CA in the show’s pilot, Buffy ends up meeting her best friends, Willow and Xander, as well as the only vampire with a soul, Angel. For seven seasons, Buffy battled the forces of darkness and fell in love with both Angel and later, the soulless vampire Spike. The two shows share many similarities that allow audiences of both to draw parallels and offer comparisons. This article will focus on how The Vampire Diaries beat its predecessor in a variety of storylines and situations.
In contrast to the morally righteous vampire love interests of Angel and Stefan, Spike and Damon serve as villains during their introductions to their respective shows before softening into love interests for the heroines. Damon Salvatore begins his arc on TVD as Stefan’s evil older brother who kills at random and is known for his selfishness. However, he eventually falls for Elena and as a result, works to become a better person. He protects Elena’s friends and family, grows closer to his brother, and becomes worthy of a hero role, rebuilding his relationships with those he hurt. Elena’s feelings for him deepen when Stefan is overtaken by bloodlust, and she eventually chooses to be with Damon instead. When Elena is cursed to sleep until her best friend Bonnie dies, Damon saves Bonnie’s life, damning himself to spend the next several decades alone waiting for her and shedding his selfishness. When Elena wakes up, Damon becomes human and the two get married, live out their lives together and find peace in the afterlife.
Damon wins over Spike as the villain turned love interest as Spike’s villain arc went on for far longer and was much more intense. Spike considered himself an enemy of Buffy from his first appearance until the show’s fifth season when he was forced to spend time with her and reluctantly fell in love. However, Spike remained without a soul so he was unable to express his love in a healthy way. Soulless Spike tried to isolate Buffy from her friends and eventually attacked her when she rejected him. After this confrontation, Spike set off to restore his soul, eventually succeeding and returning to Buffy’s life where he became her best friend and she fell for him in turn. In the show’s series finale, Spike sacrifices himself to save the world, cutting off his relationship with Buffy before it could truly start. While Spike may have had the same potential, Damon ultimately showcased himself as a more appealing love interest and wins out over Spike as a romantic lead.
When both shows first aired they each had their own human mean girl character to oppose the heroine. TVD featured Caroline Forbes, a superficial friend of Elena and Bonnie whose insecurities were expressed by insulting those around her. While she was popular, Caroline was side-lined from the main storylines due to her ignorance of the supernatural world. However, in season two Caroline unexpectedly turns into a vampire, cementing her place in the main friend group and growing into one of the most beloved characters. Despite her vampire nature, Caroline continues to prioritize her humanity, always looking out for her friends and keeping them from getting too swept up in the threats that plagued them by coercing them to attend school dances and graduation. As a vampire, Caroline thrives and is able to garner control over her insecurities, becoming an independent, caring and charming main character.
Buffy had a character with just as much potential but unfortunately kept her at arm’s length from the central cast. Cordelia Chase in Buffy ruled her high school with an iron fist, always coming in with a witty and harsh insult and representing everything that Buffy can never be because of her role as the slayer. By the end of the show’s first season, the supernatural world is revealed to Cordelia, looping her into the main storylines. Eventually, Cordelia begins dating one of Buffy’s best friends, Xander, and officially becomes part of the group. However, her polarizing nature continues to isolate her, and after Xander cheats on her, her role in the group is negated. While Cordelia is granted more screen time and the ability to grow on the spinoff show Angel, her role on Buffy was severely underutilized with Caroline functioning as a representation of what could have been.
TVD’s Matt Donavan is the quintessential small-town human ex-boyfriend in the chaotic lives of the vampire love stories. He and Elena ended their relationship shortly before the beginning of the series, negating him to pine after her while she moves on with the Salvatore brothers until being thrown a variety of half-fleshed-out love stories and boring C-storylines. His character only comes in handy as bait for Damon to throw to the villain or as a human blood bag for the vampires that plague the show. For eight whole seasons, Matt stays just as human and just as neutral in the show, never finding a place to fit in and leaving fans to question, “Why is he still alive?” However while Matt may leave viewers fast-forwarding his scenes or laughing a little too hard when Damon jokes about killing him, his closest counterpart on Buffy, Xander, is a whole different story. Xander falls for Buffy the second he lays his eyes on her, but she never returns his feelings, leaving him to openly detest his place in the “friend zone” for most of the series. He goes on to date Cordelia but spends the entire length of their relationship talking about how he would prefer Buffy and ultimately cheating on her with Willow. His character similarly remains human but where Matt was just never interesting, Xander was a genuine nuisance being the undeserving male lead of the show and a cumulation of every misogynistic nerd character from 90’s television. He sexualizes Willow and her girlfriend upon their coming out and is praised for not sleeping with Buffy when she is under a spell that forced her to fall in love with him. No character ages the show more than Xander and his attitude toward women, so congratulations to Matt Donovan for finally winning something!
In many ways, The Vampire Diaries surpassed Buffy the Vampire Slayer, taking the failings of its predecessor and bringing them to their full potential. Damon was given more time to redeem himself than Spike, Caroline was able to escape her side-character fate, and Matt was less difficult to watch than Xander. However, there are just as many characters and circumstances in Buffy that TVD cannot hold a candle to which will be discussed in the second part of this article, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer vs The Vampire Diaries: They Never Stood a Chance.”