‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Almost Had a Major X-Men Connection That Would Have Changed Fans’ Perception Of The Series – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the most iconic television shows to ever grace peoples screens. It was truly a trailblazer of a series, and Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is the embodiment of a powerful role idol for young women and men alike. When looking back on the series, though, theres one episode that really stands out. On a personal note, I had to put the show aside for two weeks after this one, because my mind was so blown. Were talking about Season 6s Normal Again. It turns out the ending almost became canon and connected to X-Men. Heres how.

To refresh your memory, Season 6 had a lot going on. That was the season when Buffys friends brought her back to life against her will after she sacrificed herself for Dawn. Its also when Buffy and Spike get together, the musical episode happens, and Dark Willow is the Big Bad in the end.

Normal Again is Episode 17 and premiered in 2002. While Buffy is fighting off a demon, per usual, the monster poisons her with something that makes her have vivid, terrifying dreams. In these visions, Buffy is in a mental hospital, where the doctors and her parents (who are both alive) tell her she actually just woke up from a hallucination that shes a vampire slayer. For six years, Buffy has imagined herself in Sunnydale, fighting vamps and demons, and that, in actuality, shes stuck in a mental hospital.

Now, this seems like a very powerful spell or poison, right? Nothing too out of the ordinary compared to other obstacles Buffy has faced. Except, she starts to convince herself that the hospital is the real world and her life in Sunnydale is fake. And the real kicker? Buffy chooses to save her friends in Sunnydale, rendering her hospital self comatose, for good. The ending shot is of her parents grieving over their catatonic daughter in that hospital.

This episode is never brought up again. Its never revealed if Buffy truly was making everything up and living inside her head throughout the series. The show also never reassures the audience that Sunnydale was the real choice.

While it can easily be pushed aside, it is something that can freak viewers out too. And at San Diego Comic-Con in 2013, Joss Whedon, the creator and showrunner, revealed that he intended to make it canon that Buffy was hallucinating in the hospital during the whole series. And he was going to do it in an X-Men comic.

CinemaBlend reported that Whedon, who wrote parts of the Astonishing X-Men comics, said he wanted to make Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, related to Buffy Summers. They shared the same last name, and while he wasnt going to explicitly name her, Whedon wanted to put a reference in there where Scott has a cousin in a mental institution. Can you guess why shes in there?

Because she thinks shes a demon hunter.

CinemaBlend reported that Whedon couldnt find a way to put it in the comics. But this means fans were immensely close to getting a definitive answer to whether Normal Again was all a dream or not.

The director for the episode, Rick Rosenthal, said in the DVD commentary that the end of the episode was meant to make viewers think. They purposely left it open so that the viewer could decide if Buffy was real or not, within the show. And Whedon has always been a big supporter of Normal Again never having an answer.

How important it is in the scheme of the Buffy narrative is really up to the person watching. If they decide that the entire thing is all playing out in some crazy persons head, well, the joke of the thing to us was it is, and that crazy person is me Personally, I think it really happened.

Others who worked on the show, like Marti Noxon, were more on the side of denying that Buffys hospital hallucinations were real.

It was a fake-out; we were having some fun with the audience, Noxon said. I dont want to denigrate what the whole show has meant. If Buffys not empowered then what are we saying? If Buffys crazy, then there is no girl power; its all fantasy. And really the whole show stands for the opposite of that, which is that it isnt just a fantasy.

While its always fun to have a sort of interactive element with a show, Normal Again delivered the what if aspect so well that you truly dont know what to believe. With the X-Men comic connection never made canon, you can just throw it aside as another demons trick.

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'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Almost Had a Major X-Men Connection That Would Have Changed Fans' Perception Of The Series - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero