Buffy the Vampire Slayer was always a show about going against expectations. It’s built into the premise: what if the helpless blonde chased into an alleyway by monsters turns out to be the superpowered hero? Over seven seasons, Buffy would enrich this concept with its coming-of-age metaphors — high school is literally hell, adulthood is hard, your boyfriends are all soulless demons. But it still played by the rules of its world, and the fantasy genre at large. The Slayer was the one girl chosen in all the world. She alone was born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires and stop the spread of their evil.
