Buffy Summers

Buffy Anne Summers is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer franchise. She is portrayed by Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Leader of the Scooby Gang, Class Protector of the Sunnydale High School Class of ’99, one of the longest-lived Vampire Slayers on record, and much more, Buffy Summers has saved the world…a lot.

Early life
In 1996, Buffy Summers was your average Los Angeles-born-and-bred 15-year-old girl: beautiful, popular, and even a cheerleader. That all changed during her freshman year when India Cohen, the Vampire Slayer died, passing her power onto Buffy. During her six months in LA, she met her Watcher, Merrick Jamison-Smythe, boyfriend Oliver Pike, and enemy Lothos. When Lothos killed Merrick, Buffy and Pike confronted the evil vampire and his minions at Hemery High School, which Buffy attended. While Buffy fought (and staked) Lothos, Pike set a trap for the minions, and, on Buffy’s command, set the school gym on fire, destroying the minions and causing the principal to expel her.

Around that same time, her parents, Hank and Joyce Summers, divorced, so when Buffy was expelled, Joyce took her (and, according to everyone's fake memories, her sister Dawn) to Sunnydale, a town some two hours north of Los Angeles, that is also known as Boca Del Inferno, or Hellmouth.

High school
“Stationed” there for seven years, Buffy gained great friends, terrible enemies, and even love. In her first year there, she befriended classmates Xander Harris, Willow Rosenberg, and Cordelia Chase, Watcher Rupert Giles, and started dating Angel, her mysterious guardian shadow. She wound up facing a powerful vampire known as the Master, and his bloodline, the Order of Aurelius. In their final confrontation, the Master bit her and then drowned her, which killed her. However, Xander and Angel were just minutes behind, and Xander was able to bring her back using CPR. Buffy and the Master went on to fight round two, where Buffy threw the Master off the roof of Sunnydale High and onto a big piece of wood, dusting him. She later destroyed his bones to prevent him from rising again.

After a three month vacation with her father, Buffy returned to Sunnydale, just in time to stop Spike and Drusilla, two of Angel’s evil childer, from taking over the world. The balance of power suddenly shifted on Buffy’s 17th birthday, when she and Angel made love, and Angel experienced his moment of true happiness, causing his curse to lift and for Angelus, his evil alter-ego, to be released. He wreaked havoc on her life by siring one of her classmates, and killing Jenny Calendar. Upon discovering that he couldn’t kill Buffy, Angelus settled for using Acaltha to destroy the world, which had Buffy in it. However, Willow managed to recreate Angel’s original curse based off Jenny’s notes, and Angelus was once again locked behind a soul. Unfortunately, Acaltha was activated, and the only way to save the world was to kill Angelus, Buffy had no choice but to kill him, despite the return of his soul. This move, along with the police accusing her of murdering Kendra Young, the Vampire Slayer (though it was Dru who killed her), Snyder expelling her from Sunnydale High, and her mom kicking her out of the house after learning about her night job, caused her to run away to Los Angeles for three months.

After a mission in LA, Buffy had no choice but to come back, and her mom, who hadn’t expected her to run away, welcomed her back. Also, her mom forced Snyder to rescind her expulsion, getting her back in school for her senior year. She then met the new Slayer, Faith Lehane, who came from Boston with a master vampire named Kakistos on her tail. Buffy helped Faith beat Kakistos, and the two worked together for a few months. Around the same time Faith came to town, Angel returned from hell, and the two tried being just friends. However, a speech from Spike in which he said that they’d never be “just friends”, and an encounter with the First Evil which left Angel near suicide, they once again became lovers…without the love making. On Buffy’s 18th birthday, she found out Giles had slipped her a poison that removed her powers on the Council’s orders. But when Buffy beat the task, with Giles’ help, the Council fired him for having a father’s love for his charge, and appointed the young Wesley Wyndam-Pryce to be his replacement. However, that was the beginning of a downward spiral. During a routine patrol, Faith accidentally killed a man, and the unrepentant Slayer then joined up with the Mayor. Also, an undercover mission as Angelus, some cutting remarks from the Mayor, and Joyce Summers’ one-on-one conversation with Angel convinced him to break up with Buffy just before Senior Prom and leave town after Graduation and one last dance, for her own good. Buffy (with the other Scoobies’ help) defeated the Mayor when they blew up the high school with dynamite procured by Xander.

College
With Angel (and Cordelia) now living in Los Angeles, Buffy and Willow were accepted into UC Sunnydale, and lived in the dorm rooms together. At UCS, Buffy met Parker Abrams, an older student who used her for a one-night-stand, and Riley Finn, a US Army officer who became her boyfriend. During her freshman year at UCS, she learned of a rogue branch of the Army which experimented on demons and created Adam, a homicidal demon-human-machine hybrid. Buffy was able to stop Adam with the help of her friends, and a magic spell which increased her strength to the point where she destroyed his uranium-powered cell. She also had to deal with Spike, who, thanks to the Army, couldn’t hurt any human, and Faith, who had awoken from her coma and switched bodies with her. After getting her body back, Buffy tracked Faith to LA, and after a confrontation with Angel and then the Watcher’s Council, Faith turned herself in to the LAPD.

After fighting Count Dracula, Buffy found herself with a new sister: the fourteen-year-old Dawn Summers. Originally a powerful mystical Key, it was stolen by a young Old One named Dagon in the before-time and given to his worshippers, the Brotherhood of Dagon. When Glorificus, a Hellgod who coveted the Key, went looking for it in 2000, the Brotherhood sent it to the Slayer in the form of her sister. Buffy protected Dawn until the very end, sacrificing her life in Dawn’s place, while Giles killed Glory’s human alter-ego. Also that year, Buffy dealt with Riley rejoining the Army, her mom passing away from a brain tumor, and Spike declaring his love for her.

After college
For 147 days, Buffy knew no pain, fear, or doubt, for she was in Heaven. Her friends, Willow, Xander, Anya, and Tara, had assumed that when Buffy died, she was in some unknown hell dimension being tortured in only God-knows-how many ways, and performed a ritual calling upon Osiris, Egyptian lord of the dead, to bring her back. And thus, Buffy was pulled back to Earth, and had to claw her way out of her own grave. As Buffy tried to get her life back together, it just got harder. Giles had moved back to England, Social Services wanted to take Dawn away, the Summers sisters had a hard time making ends meet, and Buffy had even had a sexual relationship with Spike just to feel. It also didn’t help matters that a trio of geeks with delusions of ruling the world had begun to annoy the hell out of the Slayer. However, after Buffy thwarted all of their attempts, Warren, the leader, got fed up and grabbed a gun, and shot Buffy (and accidentally killed Tara). Willow went mad with vengeance and rage, and, after saving Buffy’s life, proceeded to torture and skin Warren alive. Willow then decided to bring down an apocalypse, and not even Buffy, Giles, and Anya could stop her. Luckily, Xander was able to get through to Willow, and she stopped.

However, when Buffy’s friends brought her back, they gave the First Evil the chance it had been waiting for millennia. Using the Harbingers, the First tracked down many Potential Slayers, and had them and their Watchers killed. Also, Caleb, the First’s right hand, bombed the Watcher’s Council headquarters in London, killing everyone inside. After a few battles with the First, on May 20, 2003, Buffy led an army, consisting of a recently-“released” Faith, Willow, Xander, Giles, Dawn, Anya, Spike, Robin Wood, and about two dozen Potential Slayers, to storm the hellmouth. Willow cast a spell to turn all of the Potentials into Slayers, while everyone fought the Turok-Han and the Bringers. Together, they defeated the First, and Spike’s amulet, given to him by Angel, destroyed the town and him.

Romantic relationships
Buffy's most significant romances in her life were with the vampires Angel and Spike. Angel was her high school sweetheart and first love, but he eventually left her because his immortality and vampiric nature meant their relationship was doomed. Spike was initially her enemy, but he fell in love with her and the pair eventually formed a meaningful connection. Buffy continued to dream about both men, often together, long after the respective relationships ended. She appears to still love both vampires. Giles even made a comment of her truest loves being Angel and Spike. Many of her friends and the fans joke that Buffy has 'a thing for strong vampires' which could also apply to her attraction to Dracula. In one of these dreams, Spike commented that she could no longer tell them apart.

Other important relationships of Buffy's have included Oliver Pike, Parker Abrams, Riley Finn, and Satsu. Pike was her friend and love interest when she first began her journey as the Slayer, but the pair broke up before she came to Sunnydale. In college, she dated Riley in the hopes of having a "normal" relationship, only to discover he was an Initiative soldier. Satsu was Buffy's fellow Slayer, as well as her first and only homosexual liaison.

Powers and abilities
Buffy was arguably the most powerful and successful Slayer to have existed (though Faith Lehane was her rival and considered herself more powerful), as seen through her long-Slayer lived-life and numerous victories.

As a Slayer, Buffy had the normal powers that came with the role: superhuman strength, speed, agility, reflexes, durability, accelerated healing, a limited ability to sense supernatural activity, the collective memories of all past Slayers, and precognitive dreams, the last of which had allowed her to foresee events such as: her temporary death at the hands of the Master, Angel's transformation into Angelus, Jenny Calendar's implication, Faith's devious side, the arrival of the Gentlemen, and the deaths of the Potentials Slayers by the Harbingers of Death. However, Buffy never fully developed the Slayer power to sense supernatural activity and normally relied on her wits to discern demons and vampires from humans. She also possessed a natural proficiency with virtually all forms of weaponry and unarmed combat styles.

Although she was sometimes considered a dumb blonde by herself and others, Buffy frequently showed herself to be quite intelligent, possessing strong leadership skills and having a natural flair for tactical planning. Prominent examples of Buffy's intelligence included her near-perfect S.A.T. score, her defeat of Zachary Kralik by using his dependency on anti-psychotic medication against him, her quick deduction of the Buffybot's true nature, her rapid deduction of Riley's affiliation to the Initiative based on weeks of evidence, and her immediate realization of Katrina Silber's true murderer upon hearing her name at the police station.

Near the end of the Twilight crisis, Buffy gained new special powers. Her strength, speed, agility, stamina, and reflexes were enhanced to vastly superior levels. Her new powers included flight, superhuman hearing, telescopic vision and a level of near-invulnerability. Willow claimed that the source of these new powers was that Buffy has been absorbing the collective powers of all the Slayers that died while they had suppressed their powers, though Angel claimed that they were in fact a reward. According to the higher power that instructed Angel in the use of his new powers, Buffy's powers could only be activated if she was completely focused on her goal, resulting in Angel assuming the disguise of the villainous Twilight in order to provide an enemy for Buffy to fight to trigger her "evolution".

Deaths
Buffy died at the age of sixteen after being bitten and drowned by the Master. This was a clinical death, in which the heart stops beating, but there is still brain activity. People who experience clinical deaths have often been revived. This death activated Kendra Young as the Slayer.

Buffy's second death occurred when she was twenty years old, when she sacrificed herself to save Dawn and the world by hurling herself off a tower and using her own body to close a mystical portal. She was buried in a Sunnydale cemetery, where her body rested for 147 days until Willow, Xander, Tara, and Anya resurrected her.

When Buffy was shot by Warren Mears, she briefly flatlined in the hospital before being saved by Willow, who removed the bullet via telekinesis.

Alternate universes
In one alternate universe, Buffy Summers was sent to Cleveland instead of Sunnydale after her expulsion from LA. These events turned Buffy into a hardened warrior and caused Sunnydale to become a hellish haven for vampires. Buffy was killed at the age of 17 by the Master.