By Chris Snellgrove | Published
The dazzling success of Buffy the Vampire Slayer led to the development of a Angel spin-off that focused on the titular vampire with a soul played so memorably by David Boreanaz. Granted, this series didn’t live up to the overall quality of the original series, but Angel It is rightly remembered as one of the best spin-offs in television history. That many Buffy Fans don’t realize, however, that we almost got something even better than Angel: a Faith spin-off focusing on Eliza Dushku’s popular vampire slayer.
The Buffy Faith spin-off
This idea was born from the original idea of Tim Minear, a Angel writer who later became the Emmy-nominated executive producer of American Horror Story. After Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended in 2003, Minear wanted to follow up this show with a separate Faith spin-off that would follow the adventures of this Slayer after her return in season 7 to help Buffy save the world. Originally, Minear envisioned his show as a “Faith Meets Kung Fu.”
This is of course a reference to the amazing 70s TV series starring David Carradine, in which the title character wanders the Wild West, righting wrongs wherever he encounters them. While Buffy Having focused primarily on the fixed location of Sunnydale, Minear wanted Fath’s spin-off to have its main character “probably on a motorcycle, traversing the earth, trying to find his place in the world”. He admitted that this series would “have an arc at some point”, but he felt that “the idea of her rooted somewhere seemed wrong to me” and that “the idea of her constantly moving seemed right to me “.
While she originally appeared in Buffykeeping Faith moving in this spinoff would actually yield one of the biggest storylines in history. Angel. As Minear points out, Faith escaped from prison in this show in order to help stop Angelus (the amoral, sadistic monster that Angel turns into when he loses his soul). She then went to Sunnydale to help Buffy stop the First Evil, but “there would have been people after her” after her jailbreak, which could explain why Faith is constantly moving from place to place in its own spin-off.
Why this didn’t happen
After Buffyfans wanted more, and a Faith spinoff probably would have been a success due to Eliza Dushku’s popularity, so why was this series never made? The main reason is that Dushku felt that Sarah Michelle Gellar left “very big boots to fill” and that “sometimes you have to follow your gut, and my gut was telling me that maybe I should try something else that was just different.” .” In short, she wanted to do work outside of the Buffyverse, which is why she ended up becoming the main character in the supernatural drama. Real call.
Like hardcore Buffy fans know, this Faith spin-off is just one of the many canceled projects in Whedon’s universe. There were also ideas for a Giles spinoff, a Spike movie, an animated spinoff, and even a Slayer School show featuring some of the new Slayers from Buffy’s seventh season. While all of these could have been fun (especially the Giles show), none had the potential of a spin-off featuring Faith. That’s because, as that thug Slayer once joked, fans are always ready to “thank God” for “hot girls with superpowers.”
