Buffy expert helps fans get last kicks
May 20, 2003
By Pat St. Germain
Winnipeg Sun
WINNIPEG -- It's like a stake through the heart for fans as Buffy the Vampire Slayer ends a seven-season run this week. But there's consolation for some in knowing the series will never really die.
"I think that people won't move on, I think they'll still be talking about Buffy for years," says Buffy expert Nikki Stafford, who joined fans at Place Louis Riel for a Buffy post-mortem last night.
Stafford, 30, is the Toronto-based author of Buffy bible Bite Me: The Unofficial Guide to the World of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She was a guest at the Pendragon Games & Hobbies-sponsored discussion and screening of old episodes and the series finale. If you haven't seen the finale, be warned, the next paragraph is a spoiler.
Stafford says the impact of Spike's death -- he went out in a blaze of glory in the Hellmouth -- was blunted since everybody knows he'll reappear on The WB spinoff Angel next season. And after building up Angel as Buffy's white knight, it's disappointing that he's out of the picture before the first commercial break. But she gives the writers kudos for an empowering plot that extends Buffy's slayer powers to all of girlkind.
"Her main thing is always that she's completely alone in the world and now she's not alone," Stafford says.
Her book, which covers the first six Buffy seasons and three Angel seasons, makes her a popular guest at sci-fi and fantasy fan events in Toronto and she keeps up with series news, online discussions and e-mail from fans, some of whom were livid that she failed to heap scorn on the show for what many considered the anti-gay killing off witch Willow's girlfriend Tara.
Also the author of TV companions How Xena Changed Our Lives: True Stories By Fans for Fans and Trekkers: True Stories By Fans for Fans, Stafford says she may turn her attention next to ABC series Alias, another girl-power show with a strong mythology.
"The fans will buy the book, the fans of these shows are more analytical, they watch the show to talk about it," she says.
In the meantime, Stafford predicts a Star Trek-like afterlife for Buffy. The first six seasons still air on Space Ch. 39 weeknights at 7 p.m.