New Buffy audio series brings Cordelia, Spike, and Anya back to life

Ask any Buffy fan and so they can let you know about their favourite injustice. With out even touching the dicier elements of Joss Whedon as an individual, they’ll be fast to let you know in regards to the character he launched within the opening credit solely to kill her off in the identical episode (Tara), or who didn’t make it out of the ultimate battle of Sunnydale however actually fuckin’ ought to have (Anya). Even persevering with the story in an “eighth season” of comics didn’t appear to supply a lot consolation for followers hanging round to see what occurs and hoping to get justice for his or her faves. However Audible, with its new sequence Slayers: A Buffyverse Story, hopes to supply some long-awaited aid for Buffy followers, and possibly even proper a few wrongs alongside the way in which.

And because of the prevalence of the multiverse, everybody can get their simply deserts — and even be alive once more.

Slayers picks up “a few dozen years” after the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Buffy and co. managed to present each potential slayer their slayer powers. The individual explaining this to us is Spike (performed, as all acquainted Buffyverse characters are, by the unique actor, on this case James Marsters). The primary half of the episode is his — principally about him assembly Indira (Laya DeLeon Hayes), a slayer who solely just lately received her powers and is stoked to be right here. (Like “know the entire historical past,” ships Buffy and Spike, will get known as Slayer at college “in like, a mocking method.”)

[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains some light setup spoilers for the end of the first episode of Slayers.]

Simply when it appears the premiere episode is solely establishing one other unlikely buddy pairing with Spike and a plucky younger woman, she exhibits up. No, not Buffy — Cordelia Chase.

Of all of the Buffy injustices, Cordelia’s — and that of Charisma Carpenter, who performs her — ranks pretty excessive. Cordelia is written off in one of many worst Angel seasons, with some thankless plotlines, and introduced again later solely so she may die. Carpenter has said all this was “retaliatory” behavior for her getting pregnant, after years of “hostile and poisonous work environments” working underneath Whedon.

So it actually issues when Carpenter as Cordelia exhibits as much as kick Spike’s ass. And never simply because she’s alive. She’s a slayer, reluctantly coming to this universe due to magic from Anya (Emma Caulfield) to get Spike’s assist with the massive dangerous in her world: Drusilla (Juliet Landau). This Cordelia has all the time been the one chosen one, and she or he has no thought who this Buffy that everybody retains speaking about is. And thus, like 2009’s Star Trek earlier than it, Slayers is free to do because it desires, setting up all-new worlds and relationships between characters we all know and love.

The following story generally is a bit gradual; the Whedonesque banter that so outlined Buffy and Angel is tough to duplicate, and even tougher with out the on-screen presence loads of these actors delivered to the roles. Slayers retains the universe’s penchant for motion, however it’s podcast motion, so it may’t assist however really feel completely different.

However there’s a pluckiness to the entire affair that rings true, notably because it pertains to Cordelia. She’s nonetheless herself — she tells Spike she doesn’t need to kill him, at the very least partially as a result of getting his “vamp mud” in her hair after she simply washed it might be a ache — however she’s additionally extra empowered than she’s ever been. And whereas after just some episodes Slayers hasn’t absolutely shaken the “not absolutely canon” vibes that plagued the season 8 comics run, it’s possibly the closest I’ve come to caring what occurs in that world. As we discover out on the finish of episode 1, Drusilla is working with somebody, and it’s not onerous to guess it’ll be another person who received performed soiled in the primary timeline.

So I’m leaping again into the Buffyverse, longing for as soon as to see how a brand new story can play on the market. However whereas revisiting Buffy or Angel looks like revisiting an entire host of favorites, with Slayers I’m searching for only one. Nothing however respect for my Chosen One, Cordelia Chase.

Slayers: A Buffyverse Story premieres on Audible on October 12.