Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on 10 March 1997. On 10 March 2023, the show turned 26, and David Boreanaz and Sarah Michelle Gellar marked it in exactly the way you would hope — with a minor, affectionate argument about whether Angel was brooding or grumpy.
Boreanaz posted a throwback photograph to his Instagram Story showing the two of them in character, with the caption: “TBT: This a grumpy moment or brooding moment.” He was, in his own words, asking the question. Gellar shared the post to her own Story and answered it: “Always brooding you were never grumpy.”
This is, of course, a distinction that matters enormously in the Buffyverse. Angel broods — he carries centuries of regret with an appropriate gravity that is by turns attractive and exhausting. Grumpy would imply something more petulant, more reactive, less gothic. Boreanaz was asking the question with the energy of a man who is comfortable enough in his legacy to be gently self-deprecating about it. Gellar’s answer was definitive and correct.
Twenty-six years is a long time for a show to continue to mean something. Buffy premiered as a mid-season replacement on a new network based on a film that had not been a particular success, and it became something that people are still arguing about, celebrating, rewatching, and writing about in 2023. Gellar acknowledged this herself last year for the 25th anniversary: “You believed in us. You made this happen. You are the reason 25 years later we are still celebrating.”
The anniversary also comes shortly after Gellar’s now-famous “When #Mother met #Father” post featuring a young Pedro Pascal, who responded with such genuine warmth that a generation of internet users discovered simultaneously that he had been in the show and that Sarah Michelle Gellar remembered him. Pascal told Access Hollywood it was “a super big deal” getting cast, and that Gellar “was such a kind scene partner.”
Brooding, never grumpy. Twenty-six years old, still going. Happy anniversary.
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