Buffy The Vampire Slayer Reboot Announced With African American Lead

Vampires, beware! Buffy’s back and she’s bringing Joss Whedon with her.

A Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot has been rumored for months now, but it wasn’t till today that THR confirmed all the hearsay, announcing that Joss Whedon will serve as an executive producer, and that Monica Owusu-Breen, an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. alum, has been tapped by Fox Television to be a writer for the show.

Interestingly, current plans are for a black actress to hold the mantle of “slayer” for the reboot. Of course, Buffy at its core is a coming of age tale. It’s about a girl becoming a woman while balancing the grave responsibilities of killing vampires and monstrosities that creep from the dark and the graver, more sinister responsibilities of being in high school. In other words, it’s racially neutral. But the character change may explain why Whedon agreed to the reboot in the first place after previously dismissing one.

In a statement to THR, he said the following:

“You bring something back, and even if it’s exactly as good as it was, the experience can’t be…You’ve already experienced it and part of what was great was going through it for the first time. You have to meet expectations and adjust it for climate, which is not easy. Luckily most of my actors still look wonderful, but I’m not worried about them being creaky. I’m more worried about me being creaky as a storytelling.”

Taking these comments in context of the proposed character change, Whedon may want to bring a new facet to Buffy. He said it himself; he doesn’t want to simply replicate the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer and that he, as a storyteller, needs to spin a yarn that’s reflective of the times. And regardless of your political and social beliefs, you cannot deny that there’s a tragic racial divide in the world right now.

So while Buffy’s central story is a timeless, young adult archetype, Whedon may feel a need to comment on the current sociopolitical climate and therefore may be using the character change to position her to fight demons she never had before.