Slayer

Reception and analysis

Rhonda Wilcox explains that the First Slayer was violated by the Shadow Men. She contrasts this with Buffy's offer of choice to the potentials. Wilcox notes that despite the message of sharing power around the world, not all women are made slayers. She then equates being a slayer with being a leader. Patricia Pender discusses the potentials and sharing of power as well, noting the cultural aspects and providing a critique of the cultural portrayals.

Pender also analyzes the reception of Buffy as the slayer in early criticism of the show: "the Slayer is celebrated at the expense of the girl, and the composite character is found inexplicably wanting," going on to explain this is a flaw in analysis of the character. Pender goes on to discuss the "struggle to balance the demands of her supernatural duties as the Slayer and her desire to live what she sees as a normal teenage life. As several critics have pointed out, this struggle literalises the challenges many, if not all, adolescents experience when negotiating their entry into the adult world".

Cynthia Fuchs similarly says Buffy's character brought an understanding of teenage life, but that her "'secret identity' as the slayer exacerbates such ordeals and dreams. She explains further, when analyzing a sequence with the First Slayer, "Buffy's perpetual sense of displacement, her sense that she belongs to another "race", apart from her world (which is populated by humans, demons, and vampires, communities into which she never quite fits), is made concrete for her in the First Slayer.

The Chosen One

"In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer."

The First Slayer

Thousands of years ago in prehistoric Africa, after the rise of vampires, a group of tribal elders known as the Shadow Men used powerful magic to infuse a captive girl with the heart, soul and spirit of a pure demon known as the Shadow Demon. This process granted the girl great strength, speed, agility, reflexes, healing, endurance and psychic abilities, though it cost her her sanity and connection to humanity. She became The First Slayer: chosen to destroy the demons that plagued the Earth. The Shadow Men's descendants went on to form the Watchers' Council, an organization dedicated to finding, training, and supporting Slayers.

The Slayer line

Due to the violent nature of the life of a Slayer, their average lifespan is quite short after being called. Consequently, the Shadow Men's spell also created a large number of Potential Slayers—normal girls around the world who may one day be called. When a Slayer dies, one of the Potentials—seemingly chosen at random—gains the powers and abilities of a Slayer. The Watcher's Council tries to identify and train these "Potentials" before they are called, locating some as babies, but are not always able to do so, with some girls only being found after they have been activated as the Slayer. Since then, people reportedly witnessing young women stopping a series of strange grisly murders, including one in the Port of Boston in 1845 and another, in the Oklahoma Territory in 1893.

This process continues through the generations until 1997, when one Slayer—Buffy Summers—is killed in battle (by drowning) only to be revived via CPR. Buffy retains her Slayer powers, but her clinical death is enough for the next Slayer to be called. For the next year there are two Slayers in the world: first Kendra, who was called on Buffy's death, and then Faith, who was called when Kendra was killed by Drusilla.

The mystical "rules" governing the Calling of Slayers change again in 2003, when Buffy discovers a Scythe forged for the Slayer to wield. Willow Rosenberg uses magic to tap into the Scythe's essence at Buffy's request, and performs a spell that calls every living Potential Slayer at once, thus ending the legacy of "one girl in all the world".

After taking the time to find and count them, Buffy states that there are at least 1800 Slayers in the world, 500 of whom are working with the Scooby Gang. Potentials now awaken as Slayers when they reach suitable maturation; for instance, the Slayer Soledad was awakened on her sixteenth birthday.

At the end of Season Eight, Buffy destroys the Seed of Wonder, affecting the magical world; while all active Slayers present on Earth remain, no new Slayers can be called.

At some point in the 21st century, a Slayer faces an army of demons. As a result of this battle, all demons and magicks are banished from Earth's dimension. At this point, the Slayer line becomes dormant—while Potential Slayers still exist, none are called for two hundred years.

Powers and abilities

The powers that are bestowed upon the Slayer are mostly physical enhancements that vary in degree from Slayer to Slayer.

Slayers are endowed with strength far greater than that of regular humans, some demons and the vast majority of vampires. Buffy Summers, for instance, has been shown to lift, with great effort, a metal portcullis which an entire group of people were unable to budge. She is also capable of bending a steel rifle barrel with little apparent effort and easily bending open the bars of prison cells with her bare hands. Buffy has been recorded throwing human-sized subjects sizable distances and casually lifting steel girders used in construction building

During a fight, Faith Lehane is able to pick up the vampire Angel with one hand and easily throw him across a room, then lift him over her head and slam him into the ceiling. Once, while fighting Buffy, she punched her fist into a wall. She is also seen picking up a barbell with one hand and hitting a woman in the face with it. Genevieve Savidge once slapped a fellow Slayer so hard that her neck snapped in a fit of rage. Since Slayers can take blows from superhuman beings with little to no injury, this indicates the high-end feats of Slayer strength can go above and beyond what one would expect.

One example of a Slayer being stronger than most vampires is in "The Gift", when Buffy easily lifts Olaf's hammer with one hand when Spike was barely able to do so with both hands in "Blood Ties", and when she defeats the demon Doc easily when Spike is unable to. Angel also remarked in "Sanctuary" that Buffy is "a little bit stronger" than he is, though the humorous tenor of the exchange suggests he may have been understating the difference.

The Slayer's strength appears to be largely metaphysical, as it does not seem to add to their body mass and they remain buoyant enough to swim.

Melaka Fray is able to pick up an overweight vampire several times her own size and body mass, lift him up over her head with both hands and throw him over a distance of presumably over 20–25 feet, with no downward arc to his trajectory (which was only interrupted due to his hitting a metal grate, which was extensively deformed on impact).

Weapons and equipment

Slayers typically use weapons to fight vampires and other demons. Simple wooden stakes, crucifixes, and holy water are commonly used due to their effectiveness against vampires. Swords, axes, and knives are the most common implements used for dispatching demons, though other melee weapons (generally of medieval European design) are also used. Ranged weaponry is usually confined to crossbows. On occasion, more sophisticated weaponry is used; Buffy Summers has used a military-issue rocket launcher to defeat a particularly tough demon. The Slayer Melaka Fray uses weaponry native to her time period, such as rayguns, as well as traditional Slayer weapons. Buffy has a personal dislike for firearms, and has made it a rule that no Slayer in her group use them. On the other hand, the rogue Slayer Simone Doffler and her criminal gang are enamoured of guns.

The Scythe is a weapon resembling a metal lochaber axe with a wooden stake and a flanged mace head built into the handle. Due to its design, the Scythe can be used as an axe, sword or spear, depending on the fighting style of its wielder. The Scythe exhibits some mystical properties. A Slayer who picks it up recognizes it as a source of power, and has an instinctive sense of ownership of the weapon. When Buffy showed the Scythe to Faith, she said that she "felt like it belongs to me", but immediately surrenders it to Buffy, saying that it was hers because she was a Slayer first. When Buffy discovers the weapon, she tracks its lineage to a mysterious woman who explains its origin. Centuries ago, a group of women known as the Guardians forged the Scythe for the Slayer. The Guardians kept the weapon a secret from the Shadow Men, and later the Watchers. The Scythe was used to kill the last pure demon on Earth in what would later become Sunnydale, California. It was lost after that, until discovered by Buffy embedded in stone. Willow Rosenberg is soon after able to harness the Scythe's mystical essence and activate every Potential Slayer in the world.

The Scythe is seen 200 years later in the hands of the demon Urkonn, who passes the weapon on to Melaka Fray. Melaka Fray did not seem to sense anything in particular upon wielding the Scythe for the first time, likely because she is cut off from the slayer's psychic abilities. It is during Fray's time as Slayer that the Scythe was destroyed; during a confrontation with a time-displaced Buffy Summers, the latter smashed it clean in two with a backhanded punch.

The "emergency kit" is a bag found in the possession of Robin Wood. It was given to him by his mother Nikki Wood. When he gave it to Buffy, he claimed that it was a "Slayer heirloom" that should have been passed down to the next Slayer, but he kept it instead, presumably because he did not have much by which to remember her. It is unknown how long this had been passed down, and has not been mentioned by any other Slayers, but it is assumed to be quite old considering its contents. At the time Buffy received it, it was in a brown leather bag, and contained several objects, including a boomerang, a vase, a locked box containing shadow casters, and a mystical book written in Sumerian.