Why Buffy the Vampire Slayer Is Still the Best Show of All Time, 20 Years Later

When Buffy first aired in 1997, we had Xena, Wonder Woman, and a handful of other female superheroes sprinkled into fantasy worlds overrun with male leads. And when female superheroes were part of the plot, they were often oversexualized and oversimplified.

Not only did BTVS give us a woman with the whole "superhero package," but it also presented us with a complicated, flawed woman we could both respect as a hero and relate to as a person. Buffy's character proved that strength isn't always just a physical thing. She proves, most importantly, that "vulnerability" doesn't mean "weakness." Despite expertly carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders since she was 15, Buffy is open to love, she experiences deep loss, she falls down and gets back up, and she loves and lives again. And again. And then one more time after that.

She's a unique superhero unlike any — male or female — who came before her, and one who influenced the development of many heroines after her.

BTVS was never subtle about the message it wanted to get across: women are strong, multifaceted badasses.

Buffy has sex. In high school, with a vampire. She has a one-night stand soon after starting college. She saves all of humanity, then brushes the dust off her stylish-yet-affordable boots and does the damn thing in the dating world. Her proclivity for gravitating toward the undead aside, Buffy's love life is pretty successful (minus the whole stabbing her boyfriend in the heart and sending him to hell thing). Still, her love life is never really lacking despite her hefty Slayer duties. See, world? Women CAN have it all.

Willow (played by Alyson Hannigan) is a genius. She loves science, technology, and computers — all things stereotypically dominated by men. She and Hermione Granger would have undoubtedly been the best of friends, because they both are unapologetic about their unparalleled smarts. Willow's also a witch. Oh, and she happens to be gay. See, world? Women CAN be so many things.

Alternatively, one of the only characters without any notable supernatural talents is Xander (a male), whose lack of powers certainly does nothing to diminish his worth to the group. At every turn, the show gave a big "f*ck you" to gender stereotypes.

BTVS wrote feminist female characters with layers (because, spoiler alert, we have layers). One-dimensional female characters and typecasting are a plague on pop culture that the show squashed under its toe — mini Fear Demon-style.

I speak in the language of puns, and it's all Joss Whedon's fault. Buffy and her crew may have been staking vamps professionally, but their stabbing wit is what made them some of the most well-written characters known to TV. Humor goes hand-in-hand with all that is BTVS and acts as a useful juxtaposition against the backdrop of horrors they all experience on a daily basis.

More importantly, the show emphasizes that we can (and must) find the humor in life, even throughout the most difficult times, because at the end of the day, we just have to laugh at how ridiculous it all is. Or sing about it, if a certain demon tap dances into town.

As Buffy once said, "If I was any more open-minded about the choices you two make, my whole brain would fall out." Kind of harsh, yes, but true. Buffy taught us to be open-minded, and to embrace differences in people — because sameness is boring. Going to Sunnydale High on the Hellmouth meant a very unconventional experience for most students, but the high school hierarchies and stereotypes still existed and could have been cloned from our own alma maters.

There are the jocks, the popular kids, the nerds, and the loners. Buffy could've taken a rocket ride to the top of the social ladder if she wanted to. Only she didn't. Because she's different, and she gravitates toward others who accept that in her and who have differences of their own.

Her ragtag group of Scoobies generally remain on the outskirts of high school society because they're, uh, dealing with some bigger issues. They still manage, at one time or another, to encounter and even embrace students from nearly every clique. Being different, in the grand scheme of world-ending scenarios, seems pretty unimportant. That fact highlighted what many parents wisely tell their kids when things get rough during those awkward adolescent years: everything about high school will seem so small once you are older. And it did.

The things that made us different when we were younger (aka the aspects of ourselves that the show taught us to love) only got more important as time passed. Now the parts of myself that make me unique (and the things that may have disappeared if I had quelled them at a younger age) are what I absolutely love most. Buffy gave me, and thousands of others, the confidence to stick it out and hold on to our individuality. I'm so glad I did.

Chokers, combat boots, garage rock, and antiquated technology. Also known as: the '90s. While we have many, many things to thank BTVS for, one that cannot go unmentioned is the fact that the show embodied (and immortalized) an epic era.

Although Buffy continued to air into the early 2000s, the show is still associated with the best (and worst) of the decade that has remarkably since seen a resurgence in modern culture.

Armed with an endless slew of pop culture references and rocking to the tunes of Dingoes Ate My Baby, the show is the epitome of what we love most — and what makes us cringe the most — about the '90s. And seriously, the Buffy soundtracks were everything.

I never thought I'd ship a couple more than Oz and Willow. Then Tara Maclay (Amber Benson) magics her way into Willow's heart (and mine), and Oz is like that nostalgic first love whose photos you pull out, smile warmly at, then tuck away again.

Willow's relationship with a woman is woven so seamlessly into the plot that I didn't even blink at it. This is pretty significant, considering the fact that it was 1999, I was just 11, I was from a very conservative background, and I hadn't even met a member of the LGBTQ community (that I knew of) at that time.

I firmly believe, to this day, that if it weren't for this show and the way that Tara and Willow's relationship was portrayed (as in, no differently than any other relationship on the show), I wouldn't be the person I am today. Their relationship taught me — when no one else in my life was even willing to talk about it — that all forms of love are love. Because of BTVS, I accepted my own sexuality from an early age, and when I began to have experiences with women after only having them with men previously, it felt as if this came to me more naturally than I believe it ever could have (considering my background and where I lived growing up) had I not already gone through the same process with Willow on screen.

In a milestone still referenced 20 years later, Willow and Tara shared one of TV's first onscreen kisses between lesbians. True to Buffy form, however, the kiss wasn't sensationalized or overdone. Rather, it came at such a moment of grief and loss in the highly praised episode "The Body" that to not have included it would have actually felt like a disservice to the characters and their relationship. It's one of the most moving moments I've ever seen on TV.

Buffy taught us about the enduring power of friendship. It taught us that a family member doesn't have to be a blood relative. It taught us that sometimes we will fail, and that's OK. It showed us the many stages of pain, grief, and loss (thanks for killing everyone we loved, Joss). It wasn't afraid to get political, and often used metaphors and plot devices to touch on current issues the world was facing at the time (and ones we are still facing now). The show was brave, bold, hilarious, smart, heart-wrenching, and groundbreaking.

It was like nothing else that had come before it, but influenced so much after it. Twenty years have gone by, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer is still as relevant now as it was then. I'm a diehard fan, and always will be.