The Legendary Slayers Hidden From Buffy Fans
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we get plenty of face time with the title character (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and her fellow Slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku). Generally, though, there are only a handful of Slayers we learn about, including Kendra (RIP to the world’s most forced accent) and Nikki Wood, the second Slayer killed by Spike.
However, what most fans don’t realize is that the WB created promotional clips unofficially titled “History of the Slayer” that introduced some other legendary Slayers from throughout the show’s fictional history.
In these promotional Buffy clips, the first Slayer we are introduced to is Abigail Cole, who is described as a “strange visitor” who came to Plymouth Colony in 1625.
Interestingly, Buffy had multiple promos detailing multiple Slayers, and this was mostly due to the show having more than one pilot. Before “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” the show had an unaired pilot which had major changes, including Willow being played by someone other than Alyson Hannigan (can you imagine?). For that unaired Buffy pilot, the WB created some promotional clips detailing two Slayers that are never mentioned in the main series.
In these promotional Buffy clips, the first Slayer we are introduced to is Abigail Cole, who is described as a “strange visitor” who came to Plymouth Colony in 1625. She helped stop the mysterious deaths from vampire attacks, though locals at the time attributed those deaths to animal attacks. We see a picture of Cole that is actually a painting of Mercy Otis Warren, a political writer of the American Revolution who, to the best of our knowledge, never hunted down vampires in real life.
Next, these Buffy promos introduced us to Belle Malone, a Slayer who came to Dodge City, Kansas, in 1988. Before she arrived, 40 people had suspiciously died, but the mystery deaths stopped once she came to town. Interestingly, the image of perhaps the world’s first cowgirl Slayer (don’t tell the Gorch brothers about her, they’ll have a fit) was that of Elizabeth “Libby” Thompson, someone who was a working girl in Dodge City.
For Buffy fans, these Slayers make for fascinating trivia, but since the show never mentioned them, it’s not clear exactly where or even if they fall into the series canon.
Later promotional Buffy clips introduced us to other warriors, including the Civil War era Virginia-based Slayer Lucy Hanover and Florence Gilbert, a Slayer who traveled to Virginia City in 1897 and helped stop a string of murders. There was also Arabella Gish, a student nurse who visited Brooklin Boarding House in 1912 and stopped a series of murders that had already left 23 victims in its wake.
In these Buffy promos, there were also Slayers who weren’t given names. This includes a Chicago Slayer in 1927 who stopped a string of murders near Union Station and a Boston Slayer in 1845 who ended a killing spree near the Boston shipyards. Amid all the clips of Slayers past, we also get clips from the Buffy pilot that introduces the titular Slayer and her allies while also giving a sneak peek at some of her vampiric foes.
Interestingly, Buffy had multiple promos detailing multiple Slayers, and this was mostly due to the show having more than one pilot.
For Buffy fans, these Slayers make for fascinating trivia, but since the show never mentioned them, it’s not clear exactly where or even if they fall into the series canon. However, if you’re interested in more not-quite-canonical adventures outside Joss Whedon’s shows, you should know that Lucy Hanover appears in a number of different novels and comics.
And if you do accept these Slayers as part of the canon (there’s no explicit reason not to do so), their names and locations help fill in some important gaps in the show’s fictional history, and that’s great if (like Buffy) you have nightmares about failing history tests.
