If, like me, you were a massive fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly back in the day, then have I got a cool, but sad, bit of news about how all these shows were, in fact, the same universe.
So, we all know that Joss Whedon is a pariah in Hollywood now (Google is your friend) but in the late 90s and early 2000s he was a nerd god, giving the world Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s spinoff series, Angel and then the ill-fated, cancelled before its time, Firefly series – from a chosen vampire hunter to a world where the future is basically the wild west wirth spaceships, there was no denying that Whedon had vision and we all loved it.
Now, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we met the vampire Spike, the meanest vamp around, his arc was a big part of the show wherein over the seasons he became a hero (not by choice initially), gained his soul back and eventually sacrificed himself to save the world before being mysteriously resurrected in Angel.. it was a big story and it seems that Whedon had plans for Spike beyond even Angel.
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James Marsters, who played Spike, left, recently revealed that he was to appear in Firefly which means that not only did Spike survive faaaaar into the future but these shows are – gasp! – a shared universe!
“The plan was to put Spike in Firefly, which was another of Joss’ (Whedon’s) shows about space,” the star says in a new interview, below.
“So, he [Whendon] took me over and introduced me to the [Firelfy] cast… and I looked at all the space stuff and I thought it was cool and he introduced me to the cast, they were all really friendly and wonderful; I didn’t know why I was being introduced to them but apparently the idea was that they were going to go into a bar and this vampire would be sitting there, going: “Nothing ever changes. It never changes”.”
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A fun cameo, indeed, but no, Marsters seems to be hinting that the plan was much bigger: “And so Spike is immortal and he would be in the future and and he was going to join the cast but they got cancelled.”
Now, taking the space ships and wild west aspect out of Firefly, what you’re left with is a fairly grounded story without aliens, ghosts or anything of a supernatural slant, so having Spike in the show and presumably revealing himself to be a vampire would have been a real shake-up for the series and, as a big fan of Firefly, I would love to have seen how Ron Glass’ character Shepard Book would have dealt with the reality of vampires, given that he was a holy man.
Ah, what could have been, eh?
Watch Marsters’ comments here:
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Marc
Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….
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