INTO THE BUFFYVERSE

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE WITH NEW AUDIO DRAMA SLAYERS,

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FEW TV SHOWS HAVE HAD AS MUCH LASTING INFLUENCE as Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The beloved series ran for seven seasons between 1997 and 2003 and, in one swift strike of a wooden stake, changed the way that fantasy dramas looked and felt forever.

Buffy paved the way for more daring and emotional small-screen storytelling, and without it it's hard to imagine shows like Cobra Kai, Riverdale or Russell T Davies's heartfelt reinvention of Doctor Who.

There's little doubt that it's been a rough few years for the show's legacy. A planned reboot was announced in 2018 but remains "on pause", perhaps permanently, while the show's creator and former geek godhead Joss Whedon has spent the last few years mired in controversy. 

It was a surprise and delight, then, when a new Buffy audio drama was recently announced. The nine episodes that make up Audible Originals’ Slayers reunite much of the TV show’s cast in a reality-bending story that Spike actor James Marsters says was “heaven on Earth” to make.

Slayers is co-written by long-time Buffy spin-off authors Christopher Golden and Amber Benson, who also reprises her role as Tara Maclay. That’s perhaps a little surprising given that her character was infamously killed off in the TV show’s sixth season, but Slayers takes place across both the core Buffy universe and a parallel reality, enabling the new drama to put its own spin on the mythology, while still adhering to the canon. How did it come about? canon. How did it come about?