Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This iconic series rocked the television landscape following its debut on March 10, 1997, and though it wasn’t a huge award contender, Sarah Michelle Gellar did receive a nomination for a Golden Globe for Best Actress – Television Series Drama. The premise of the series is simple, Buffy is know as a vampire slayer and though the teenager wants a normal life, she has to embrace her destiny as the chosen one. The Joss Whedon series will forever live in the hearts of fans who watched all seven seasons. However, the culture has changed since the series finale aired on May 20, 2003, does the plot still hold weight in modern times.

This month Buffy the Vampire Slayer celebrates its 25th anniversary. Throughout its run from 1997 to 2003, the series saw incredible critical acclaim, with multiple accolades. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who plays vampire slayer Buffy Summers, is credited with changing the way female protagonists were viewed on television and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work on the show.

The show’s case and crew constantly broke barriers in an otherwise formulaic space. Body swaps, musicals, and an episode solely revolving around the shock and grief experienced the day someone dies: no background music, no sharp one-liners, and no monsters. And it worked.

There are a lot of memorable parts of the Season 3 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, “Graduation Day, Part 2”. From beginning to end, the episode represents some of the show’s best writing and character development. But Buffy’s graduation scene, featuring the climactic battle between the Scoobys and the Mayor and his minions as they try to prevent his ascension is one of the most iconic of the whole series.

Today, Buffy the Vampire Slayer turns 25. This means two things. One, I am officially old, and two, this is a ripe time to look back at the legacy of this cult show. Twenty-five years on, Buffy is much more than disgraced show-runners (more on which later) or even the resurgence of its distinctive nineties fashion. This is a show which utterly redefined the way we view female-led drama and foregrounded a feminism which was remarkably nuanced and subtly game-changing.

We expect death on a show like Buffy, but we expect it by way of vampires, demons and major climactic battles. That Joyce dies from a normal-body failing is shocking. It feels incredibly poignant that the two biggest deaths of the series – excluding the series finale or the death of a certain character who comes back to life – happen in the most mundane, human ways possible. (The other one is Tara, who’s killed by a gun.) Usually a loud and dramatic show, this episode is quieter with sparse background noise and little dialogue, allowing it to slow down and focus on the minute details of the different ways people grieve.

It sometimes feels that there are too many reasons to count why the show means so much to me even though it’s so removed from my own coming of age. For those who watched ‘Buffy’ while it was airing in the late ’90s and early ’00s or came to it later but had lived though that time, there tends to be a great sense of nostalgia, especially for folks who were growing up alongside the characters. While I’m a generation removed from the original viewers of the show, it still resonates with me deeply (and with friends who I’ve converted into fans). It is my belief that you either love ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ or you haven’t watched it yet. For faithful fans and for the uninitiated, here are five reasons ‘Buffy’ still matters today and will for years to come.

Back when I first started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I could not resist the humor, drama, and the monsters. They so often dealt with universal issues with specificity. Now, stuck indoors in New York City as COVID-19 cases increase once again, there’s one particular episode that hits more deeply than in my original viewing. The sixth season episode “Normal Again” explores mental health amid our current isolation and disconnections.

“Hush” fully embraces the monster-as-metaphor template, with the Gentlemen as representations of government officials who restrict speech. Under a censorship regime, messages, especially those perceived as being contrary to the state’s ends, are banned by removing the political voices of both citizens and media. Like the Gentlemen, those who censor often do so to conceal truths. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder writers, “Since the truth sets you free, people who oppress you resist the truth.” Modeling some heads of state both past and present, the Gentlemen don’t care what norms have been established; they’re all about getting their way.

“It’s an invasion of my head, it’s like there are these strangers walking around in there,” Buffy says. And at the time that was just a guess from Joss Whedon and episode writer Jane Espenson about what hearing others’ thoughts would feel like, but now it;s what we deal with every day as we inject the rage and anxiety and bad takes of hundreds, if not thousands of people directly into our brains.

‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Official Grimoire’ is a detailed history of magic and Sunnydale. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Official Grimoire is a treasure…