Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Movie)
Airdate: July 31,1992

Buffy Summers (Kristy Swanson) is introduced as a stereotypical cheerleader at Hemery High School in Los Angeles. She is a carefree popular girl whose main concerns are shopping and spending time with her friends. While at school one day, she is approached by a man named Merrick Jamison-Smythe (Donald Sutherland). He informs her that she is The Slayer, or chosen one, and he is a Watcher whose duty it is to guide and train her. She initially refuses to believe his claims, but finally becomes convinced that he is right when he is able to describe a recurring dream of hers in detail. In addition, Buffy is exhibiting uncanny abilities not known to her, including heightened agility, senses, and endurance.

Meanwhile Oliver Pike (Luke Perry), and best friend Benny (David Arquette), who resented Buffy and her friends due to their social circles, are out drinking when they are attacked by vampires. Benny is turned but Oliver is saved by Merrick. As a vampire, Benny visits Oliver and tries to get him to join him. When Oliver and his boss are discussing Benny, Oliver tells him to run if he sees him.

After several successful outings, Buffy is drawn into conflict with a local vampire king named Lothos (Rutger Hauer), who has killed a number of past Slayers. During an encounter with Lothos' main minion Amilyn (Paul Reubens) and his gang of vampires, Buffy, Oliver and Merrick fight against them in the forest as Amilyn loses his arm. Amilyn flees the fight to talk to Lothos who now has his focus on Buffy. After this encounter, Buffy and Oliver start a friendship, which eventually becomes romantic and Oliver becomes Buffy's partner in fighting the undead.

During a basketball game, Buffy and Oliver find out that one of the players is a minion of Lothos. After a quick chase to a parade float storage yard, Buffy finally confronts Lothos, shortly after she and Oliver take down his gang. Lothos catches Buffy in a hypnotic trance, which is broken due to Merrick's intervention. Lothos turns on Merrick and impales him with the stake he attempted to use on him. Lothos leaves, saying that Buffy is not ready. As Merrick dies, he tells Buffy to do things her own way, rather than live by the rules of others. Buffy becomes emotionally shocked, has a falling out with her friends and starts dropping her Slayer responsibilities.

At the senior dance, Buffy meets up with Oliver and as they start to dance and eventually kiss, Lothos leads the remainder of his minions to the school and attacks the students and the attending faculty. Buffy confronts the vampires outside while Oliver fights the vampiric Benny. After overpowering the vampires, she confronts Lothos inside the school and stabs Amilyn. Lothos hypnotises Buffy again but she uses a cross and hairspray to create a makeshift flame-thrower and burns Lothos before heading back into the gym. Buffy sees everybody recover from the attack, but Lothos emerges again getting into a fight with Buffy, who then stakes him.

The film ends with Buffy and Oliver leaving the prom on a motorcycle, and a news crew interviewing the students and the principal about the attack during the credits.

First Season
Season one exemplifies the "high school as hell" concept. Buffy Summers has just moved to Sunnydale after burning down her old school's gym, and hopes to escape her Slayer duties. Her plans are complicated by Rupert Giles, her new Watcher, who reminds her of the inescapable presence of evil. Sunnydale High is built atop a Hellmouth, a portal to demon dimensions that attracts supernatural phenomena to the area. Buffy meets two schoolmates, Xander Harris and Willow Rosenberg, who help her fight evil through the series, but they must first prevent The Master, an ancient and especially threatening vampire, from opening the Hellmouth and taking over Sunnydale.

Second Season
The emotional stakes are raised in season two. Vampires Spike and Drusilla (weakened from a mob in Prague, which presumably caused her debilitating injury), come to town along with the new slayer, Kendra Young, who was activated as a result of Buffy's brief death in the season one finale. Xander becomes involved with Cordelia, while Willow becomes involved with witchcraft and Daniel "Oz" Osbourne, who is bitten by his young werewolf cousin Jordy and becomes one himself. Buffy and the vampire Angel develop a relationship over the course of the season, but after they sleep together, Angel's soul, given to him by a Gypsy curse in the past, is lost and he once more becomes Angelus, a sadistic killer. Kendra is killed by a restored Drusilla. Angelus torments much of the "Scooby Gang" throughout the rest of the season and murders multiple innocents and Giles's new girlfriend Jenny Calendar, a gypsy who had been sent to maintain Angel's curse. To avert an apocalypse, Buffy is forced to banish Angelus to a demon dimension—right after Willow restores his soul—and leaves Sunnydale, emotionally shattered.

Third Season
After attempting to start a new life in Los Angeles, Buffy returns to town in season three. Angel is mysteriously released from the demon dimension, but is close to insanity due to the torment he suffered there, and is nearly driven to suicide by the First Evil. He and Buffy realize that a relationship between them can never happen; he eventually leaves Sunnydale at the end of the season. A new watcher named Wesley is put in Giles's place when he is fired from the Watcher's Council because he had developed a "father's love" for Buffy, and towards the end of the season Buffy announces that she will also no longer be working for the Council. Early in the season, she is confronted with an unstable Slayer, Faith, who was called after Kendra's death, as well as affable Sunnydale Mayor Richard Wilkins, who has plans to "ascend" (become a "pure" demon) on Sunnydale High's Graduation Day. Although she initially works with Buffy, after accidentally killing a human Faith becomes irrational and sides with the Mayor, eventually landing in a coma after a fight with Buffy. At the end of the season, after the Mayor becomes a huge snake-like demon, Buffy and the entire graduation class destroy him by blowing up Sunnydale High.

Fourth Season
Season four sees Buffy and Willow enroll at UC Sunnydale while Xander joins the workforce and begins dating Anya, a former vengeance demon. Spike returns as a series regular and is abducted by The Initiative, a top-secret military installation based beneath the UC Sunnydale campus. They implant a microchip in his head that prevents him from harming humans. He reluctantly helps the Scooby Gang throughout the season and eventually begins to fight on their side after learning that he can still harm other demons. Oz leaves town after realizing that he is too dangerous as a werewolf, and Willow falls in love with Tara Maclay, another witch. Buffy begins dating Riley Finn, a grad student whom she later realizes is a member of The Initiative. Although appearing to be a well-meaning anti-demon operation, The Initiative's sinister plans are revealed when Adam, a demon/human/machine hybrid secret project, escapes and begins to wreak havoc on the town. Eventually, Buffy - empowered by a spell cast by Willow, Giles and Xander - defeats Adam, and The Initiative is shut down.

Fifth Season
During season five, a younger sister, Dawn, suddenly appears in Buffy's life; although she is new to the series, to the characters it is as if she has always been there. Buffy is confronted by Glory, an exiled Hell God who is searching for a "Key" that will allow her to return to her Hell dimension and in the process blur the lines between dimensions and unleash Hell on Earth. It is later discovered that the Key's protectors had turned the Key into human form - Dawn - concurrently implanting everybody with lifelong memories of her. The Watcher's Council aids in Buffy's research of Glory, and she and Giles are both reinstated. Riley leaves early in the season after realizing that Buffy does not love him and joins a military demon-hunting operation. Spike, still implanted with the Initiative chip, realizes he is in love with Buffy and frequently helps the Scoobies in their fight. Buffy's mother Joyce dies of a brain aneurysm, while at the end of the season, Xander proposes to Anya. Glory finally discovers that Dawn is the key and kidnaps her. Buffy sacrifices her own life to save Dawn's and prevent the portal to the Hell dimensions from opening.

Sixth Season
At the beginning of season six, Buffy's friends resurrect her through a powerful spell, believing they have rescued her from Hell. Buffy later reveals she had been in Heaven and was devastated to be taken back, and falls into a deep depression for most of the season. Giles returns to England after deciding that Buffy has become too reliant on him, while Buffy takes up a fast-food job for income and develops a secret, mutually abusive relationship with Spike. Dawn suffers from kleptomania and feelings of alienation, Xander leaves Anya at the altar (after which the heartbroken Anya once again becomes a vengeance demon), and Willow becomes addicted to magic, causing Tara to temporarily leave her. They also begin to deal with The Trio, a group of nerds led by Warren Mears who use their technological proficiency to attempt to kill Buffy and take over Sunnydale. Warren is shown to be the only competent villain of the group and, after Buffy thwarts his plans multiple times and the Trio breaks apart, he becomes unhinged and attacks Buffy with a gun, killing Tara in the process. This causes Willow to descend into darkness and unleash all of her dark magical powers, killing Warren and attempting to kill his friends. Giles returns to face her in battle and infuses her with light magic, tapping into her remaining humanity. This overwhelms Willow with guilt and pain, whereupon she attempts to destroy the world to end everyone's suffering, although it eventually allows Xander to reach through her pain and end her rampage. Late in of the season, after losing control and attacking Buffy, Spike leaves Sunnydale and travels to see a demon and asks him to "return him to what he used to be" so that he can "give Buffy what she deserves." After Spike passes a series of brutal tests, the demon restores his soul.

Seventh Season
During season seven, it is revealed that Buffy's second resurrection caused an instability which allows the First Evil to begin tipping the balance between good and evil. It begins by hunting down and killing inactive Potential Slayers, and soon raises an army of ancient, powerful Turok-Han vampires. After the Watchers' Council is destroyed, a number of Potential Slayers (some brought by Giles) take refuge in Buffy's house. Faith returns to help fight the First Evil, and the new Sunnydale High School's principal, Robin Wood, also joins the cause. The Turok-Han vampires and a sinister, misogynistic preacher known as Caleb begin causing havoc for the Scoobies. As the Hellmouth becomes more active, nearly all of Sunnydale's population - humans and demons alike - flee. In the series finale, the Scoobies descend into the Hellmouth while Willow casts a spell that activates all the Potential Slayers, giving them Slayer powers. Angel returns to Sunnydale with an amulet, which Buffy gives to Spike. Anya, now human again, dies in the fight, as do some of the new Slayers, but Buffy also manages to kill Caleb. Spike's amulet channels the power of the sun and destroys all the vampires in the Hellmouth, also incinerating Spike himself. This causes the Hellmouth to collapse, and the entirety of Sunnydale collapses into the resulting crater, while the survivors of the battle escape in a school bus. The final scene, of the surviving characters surveying the crater and then talking blithely about trivial day-to-day matters prompts Giles to comment "The world is doomed," echoing the same comment he made in a similar situation in the first season.