On the show’s 26th anniversary, PinkNews has put together a comprehensive look at the seven moments that define Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s queer legacy — and it is well worth your time. You can read the full piece here.
The short version, for those who need it: Willow and Tara’s first kiss in “The Body” was the first lesbian kiss in the show’s television history. The “Once More with Feeling” levitation scene remains one of the most joyful expressions of queer love in mainstream television. The “Family” episode, in which Tara’s family threatens to take her away and “fix” her, deployed conversion therapy as a metaphor at a time when that conversation was barely permitted in primetime. And the show’s seventh season contained the first lesbian sex scene broadcast on an American television network.
PinkNews also highlights something that tends to get lost in the broader discourse: Buffy’s own “coming out” scene to her mother in season two — “Have you tried not being a slayer?” — was written as a deliberate parallel to queer coming-out experiences, and it reads that way twenty years later with absolute clarity.
The complications of the show’s queer legacy are real. Tara’s death remains the most discussed example of the “Bury Your Gays” trope in television history, and Whedon’s admission that Willow was always intended to be bisexual but was pushed into a gay identity by network pressure is a reminder of how much constraint shaped what the show was able to be. But within those constraints, it did more than almost anything else on television at the time.
The full PinkNews list is worth reading in full. Head there for the complete breakdown.
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