Buffy The Vampire Slayer Stole A Babylon 5 Monster

This strange tale of Buffy and Babylon 5 crossing over is going to require a bit of context. While Buffy Summers is mostly known for slaying vampires, she fought quite a few other demons over the course of the series. And in “Teacher’s Pet,” the demon in question is a fierce mantis lady.

However, much like vampires can pass for humans when they want to, this “She-Mantis” doesn’t appear overly monstrous.

Instead, she looked like a perfectly normal substitute teacher, and the only thing notable about her is that she seems to be seriously attracted to Xander, the geekiest member of the Scooby Gang.

While this tale of an older teacher grooming a student seems shocking now, the ‘90s were just built different, and Xander keeps blowing off warnings from his friends because he’s just so hot for teacher.

Given that the She-Mantis appears mostly human throughout this Buffy episode (aside from the occasional stunt like turning her head a full 180 degrees), you’ve probably got a big question right now: just where the heck does the Babylon 5 connection come in? By the end of the episode, it’s time for Buffy to do what she does best: square off against the monster of the week. At this point, the She-Mantis reveals her true form, and it’s one that may be pretty familiar to any fan of ‘90s sci-fi.

That’s because the true form of this Buffy monster is represented by the N’Grath prop from Babylon 5. What the heck is N’Grath, though?

Basically, he’s a member of a weird insect alien species, and on that hit sci-fi show, he was a criminal kingpin who, like the same Kingpin that Daredevil clashes with, cloaks his many illegal activities by pretending to be an otherwise legitimate businessman.

In case you were wondering, there aren’t really any similarities between Buffy’s She-Mantis and Babylon 5’s N’Grath: for one thing, she’s a demon and he’s an alien.

For that matter, the Mantis is female and the alien is male. However, it’s a safe bet that Joss Whedon simply made do with what was available, and a prop previously used to bring an insect alien to life was quite effective at bringing an insectoid demon to the sleepy city of Sunnydale.

Given how very different the two franchises are, and that each one aired its series finale decades ago, there isn’t really any hope for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Babylon 5 to ever really cross over.

Because of this, we can only imagine what everyone’s favorite Slayer would do if she had to meet the real N’Grath—like, would she try to kill him on sight, or use him as an information source like Willie the Snitch? Either way, we’d be happy to hear Buffy Summers utter a fun crossover phrase like “if the apocalypse box comes, beep me.”