The Forgotten Buffy The Vampire Slayer Hero Who Deserves Their Own Prequel
Buffy Summers enjoyed alliances with lots of other heroes in her battles against evil: watchers, other slayers, reformed vampires, reprogrammed sexbots, witches, and werewolves among others. But the one forgotten Buffy hero I’ve always wanted to know more about–and who would be perfect for a prequel series or movie–is Sid the demon hunter. And yes, I am talking about Sid the ventriloquist dummy demon hunter.
Sid Meets Buffy
Sid lives and dies in the Season 1 Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode “The Puppet Show.” For most of the story, Buffy sees Sid and his handler Morgan as her prime suspects for whatever demon is killing students and harvesting their organs. It turns out that, in fact, Sid is hunting the same demon as part of a quest he embarked on decades earlier.
Buffy‘s Sid was not always a wooden dummy. Voiced by prolific voice actor Tom Wyner (who is best known, fittingly, for voicing The Puppet Master in the 1995 English language version of the anime Ghost in the Shell), Sid reveals he is stuck in the dummy’s form because of a curse cast upon him by the demon group the Brotherhood of Seven.
Ever since then Sid has been hunting the Seven in the hopes of freeing himself of the curse. The demon wreaking havoc in “The Puppet Show” is the only member of the Brotherhood left. When Sid executes the demon toward the end of the episode, he is not only freed from the curse but dies in the process.
The Pre-Buffy Sid
The details Buffy reveals about Sid are pretty sparse. In fact, it’s never made entirely clear whether he started hunting demons before or after he was turned into something Jeff Dunham might use for his act.
Regardless, the few details we do have point toward Sid working as a demon hunter before being dummy-ified. There’s the very fact that the Brotherhood of Seven bothered with the curse at all (hunting demons would presumably make you a tempting target for the beasts).
Sid also mentions that he dated a Korean vampire slayer in the 1930s. Assuming he met the slayer through his demon hunting work–and likewise assuming this slayer didn’t have the most disturbing sexual fetish in the history of the world–Sid was likely working as a perfectly non-wood human demon hunter in the same decade.
It’s also probably not too wild an assumption that Buffy‘s Sid was transformed into a dummy either in the 1930s or early 1940s. Demon hunting is probably best done by younger men and–hoping Sid isn’t too creepy of a guy–the fact that he was dating a slayer in the 1930s would suggest he was in his twenties at the oldest. It’s mentioned often in Buffy that most slayers don’t survive long past their teenage years, if at all.
The lack of info we have about the character’s past is part of what makes a Buffy spinoff about Sid so attractive. With so few details set in stone, it would give the prequel’s creators plenty of freedom.
The prequel would need to be a period story set in or around the 1930s with a demon hunter as the protagonist, and possibly a Korean vampire slayer as a love interest. Beyond that, the creators could do whatever they wanted.
The Buffy the Vampire Slayer one-off hero, Sid the demon hunting ventriloquist dummy, deserves his own spinoff prequel.
One possibility is that the story could bounce back and forth between Buffy‘s Sid as a human demon hunter and Sid as a dummy.
On one hand we could watch as Sid hunts down the other six of the Brotherhood of Seven, and along the way meet the different allies who act as Sid’s cover (i.e. his ventriloquists). Most importantly we could see what would promise to be a cruel, devastating, and no doubt hilarious breakup between Sid and the slayer once he’s turned into a creepy wooden doll.
The Buffy prequel could also show us Sid’s heroics before his transformation. We could learn his motivation for hunting demons in the first place, and considering the era of his origin it’s tempting to imagine him crossing swords with monsters, demons, and warlocks of the Nazi variety.
It would also be wonderful if somehow a connection could be made between Buffy‘s Sid and perhaps the most beloved episode of Angel ever, “Smile Time,” which featured the puppet transformations of Angel .
With de-aging technology, we might even get guest appearances from Buffy mainstays like Angel, Spike, Cordelia, Anya, or Giles. Considering their long lives, there are any number of demons who appeared on Buffy and/or Angel–including The First–who might show up to make trouble for Sid.
I doubt a screen Buffy spinoff for Sid will ever happen. A comic book series might be more realistic. Regardless, if we can get horror movies about shark tornadoes, cocaine bears, and killer sloths, a demon hunting ventriloquist dummy seems magnificently ridiculous enough for a green light from someone.
