Showrunner for Black-Led ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Reboot Responds to Backlash

"It could be time to meet a new Slayer," says Monica Owusu-Breen, writer, executive producer, and showrunner of the newly announced 'Buffy' reboot. Read her full statement about the critical reception to the project.

July 26, 2018

Buffy showrunner — Image via Getty/Kevin Winter
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Last week, news broke that Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which ran for seven seasons from 1996 to 2003, is officially making a comeback with a reboot in development at Fox 21 TV Studios. Now showrunner/executive producer/writer Monica Owusu-Breen (Alias, Charmed, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) has already been pushed to respond to a fair amount of backlash.

In a statement posted on Twitter, she Owusu-Breen wrote “it could be time to meet a new Slayer.”

“For some genre writers it’s Star Wars. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my Star Wars. Before I became a writer, I was a fan,” Owusu-Breen wrote. “For seven seasons, I watched Buffy Summers grow up, find love, kill that love. I watched her fight, and struggle and slay. There is only one Buffy. One Xander, one Willow, Giles, Cordelia, Oz, Tara, Kendra, Faith, Spike, Angel … They can’t be replaced. Joss Whedon’s brilliant and beautiful series can’t be replicated. I wouldn’t try to. But here we are, 20 years later … and the world seems a lot scarier. So maybe, it could be time to meet a new Slayer … And that’s all I can say.”

The new Buffy is expected to be more modern than its predecessor, but still take on the mythology of the original series. The producers told Deadline, “Like our world, it will be richly diverse, and like the original, some aspects of the series could be seen as metaphors for issues facing us all today." With Owusu-Breen at the helm and Whedon back as executive producer, it seems the new series will certainly do the original justice.