February 9, 2024

 I have many thoughts about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is why it's currently setting a record for the longest analysis I've ever written for this blog. In part 1, we covered how this whole universe hates love and loves sexual violence. At long last, readers, we can dig into the section of this analysis for which my blog is named.

The Deaths of Girlfriends Boyfriends

Only two of the Buffy Boys die, although they each die twice. Both of them also manage to finish the franchise on their feet, as undead vampires, which is at least a fresh variation on the theme of dead love interests. I'm counting them both as dead rather than using our "both/other" category, because they are in the same state at the end of the canon as they were at the beginning. In other words, they were undead in the first place, and they end up undead, having died in the interim. (Everybody got that?)

As the pie chart shows, this gives her 7 surviving boyfriends and 2 [un]dead ones - making the survivors a clear majority.

Female Cause of Death BINGO

Next, let us consider Buffy's score on Male Cause of Death BINGO, which is not at all a hastily-altered version of Female Cause of Death BINGO, so banish that thought from your mind.

The first deaths of Angel (né Liam) and Spike (né William "The Bloody" Pratt) share both a cause and a narrative connection: a beautiful woman got them alone and then turned out to be a vampire. In Spike's case, that woman had herself been sired (vampirized) by Angel, making Spike and Angel family and possibly explaining why they have such similar taste in women.

We might need to expand this BINGO card to include vampirism someday. For now, let's call having a creature of the night turn you into a fellow creature "murdered by villain." Angel is later on "murdered by heroine," when Buffy stabs him and throws him through a portal to hell (don't worry - hell spits him back out). That one can do double duty as an act of "intimate partner violence," since Angel was opening said hell portal because he'd turned evil after sleeping with Buffy. Finally, Spike performs a heroic sacrifice to save the world in the BTVS series finale (don't worry - he gets magicked back to life on Angel).

Looks like Buffy loses BINGO. For a consolation prize, she can take some wild stories to tell her grandkids!

Culpability

Buffy: You are not going to die.

Riley: Bet you say that to all the boys.

Buffy: No. There is one peroxided pest whose number is up. When I get my hands on Spike, I'm gonna rip his head off.

(Spoiler alert: she doesn't.) "Out of My Mind" (2000-10-17)

Buffy is not responsible for Angel or Spike's conversion to vampirehood, but she is responsible for each of their second deaths. She kills Angel outright, and in Spike's case, she gives him the artifact that will let him use his own soul to power world-saving magic. Spike also draws his courage to die from the fact that Buffy has forgiven him for a sexual assault, and trusts him enough to cuddle with him overnight. So, although she's only responsible for 50% of their deaths apiece, Buffy has some culpability in the deaths of 100% of her boyfriends. I've decided to create a "both" category for this culpability chart, just for her.

Vertical bar chart showing "Would they still have died if they hadn't met the protagonist." Buffy has 2 points for "both" and none for yes, no, or maybe.

In other words, if Angel or Spike had never met Buffy, they still wouldn't be alive, but they'd have fewer interesting stories to tell their vampire friends.

Fertility and Mortality

Surprisingly enough, fertility has no impact on Buffy, who never gets pregnant. That is by her design. 50% of her confirmed sex partners are undead, and a third is specifically shown to practice safe sex. Way to set a good example to the kids watching at home, Riley!

Except the Catholic kids, to whom you're setting 2 bad examples at once. But I digress.

Over on the spinoff, Angel manages to squeeze in 3 mystical pregnancy arcs, 2 of which result in the death of the mother. But that's a different story, which I will likely explore in a future post. At least Buffy is safe.

Phase 2 Research Questions

As we've established, we have two hypotheses to test that are specific to female protagonists.

Are the numbers lower overall?

Guys? There have only been four - three! Three! Three guys. That's barely plural.

- Buffy, fibbing about her sexual body count even while defending it, "Entropy" (2002-04-30)

Yes. With only 2 dead, Buffy is the least cursed protagonist we've ever seen. With only 9 men dated, she's also among the most selective. Even Sam Carter, she of the decade-long will-they-or-won't-they, found time for 12 guys.

Horizontal stacked bar chart showing that for number of love interests, from lowest to highest, our rankings are Dr. Jackson, Buffy, Sam Carter, Sam Winchester, MacGyver, Captain Kirk, Joe Cartwright, James Bond.

This is not to say that Buffy has good taste in men, mind you. We've already established that many of her boyfriends are kinda evil. It is notable, however, that unlike some of our protagonists, she ends up single by choice. This tortured metaphor, in which she asserts her right to work on herself for a while, comes from the finale:

 I'm cookie dough. I'm not done baking. I'm not finished becoming whoever the hell it is I'm gonna turn out to be. I make it through this, and the next thing, and the next thing, and maybe one day I turn around and realize I'm ready. I'm cookies. And then, you know, if I want someone to eat— or enjoy warm, delicious cookie-me, then...that's fine. That'll be then. When I'm done.

- "Chosen" (2003-05-20)

In other words, Buffy ends up doing it for herself. I'm happy for her. Despite running a blog dedicated to chronicling the love lives of promiscuous protagonists, I don't think everyone should be shooting for James Bond levels of womanizing. Sometimes, a person is better off staying single until their cookies are done baking. Go for it, Buffy!

Now for question number 2... 

Do the deaths affect her arc more than deaths affected arcs of her male counterparts?

Yes, oh my, yes. Granted, the competition is not particularly stiff, since a lot of our male protagonists have amnesia when it comes to the women they've lost. For most of our franchises, a dead girlfriend is lucky if she even inspires a one-episode revenge quest, let alone any genuine grief.

Buffy, by comparison, should win an award for how upset she is by needing to kill Angel. She actually runs away from home and changes her name for 3 months, and is shocked speechless when her next boyfriend (Scott) offers her a ring similar to the one Angel gave her. She's also still thinking about it more than 4 years later, when Anya temporarily turns evil and Xander is trying to convince Buffy to give her one more chance.

I killed Angel! Do you even remember that? I would have given up everything I had to be with— I loved him more than I will ever love anything in this life. And I put a sword through his heart because I had to.

- "Selfless" (2002-10-22)

I must offer an important caveat here, though, circling back to how much this universe hates love: all the Scoobies who lose a love interest are affected strongly. After Fred's death, for example, Wes goes a bit insane and befriends the Old One that's possessing her corpse just to keep that last connection alive.

Lorne: It's like he's 2 different people. One is almost catatonic, the guy you see doing the impatient shuffle around the hallways, and the other is just cooped up in his office all day, jittering like a bug on a hotplate.

- Angel "Time Bomb" (2004-04-28)

And when Tara gets shot, Willow goes off the deep end so completely that she becomes a supervillain, flays the shooter alive, and tries to end the world.

Willow: All the pain... It's just too much... I have to stop this. I'll make it go away.

- "Grave" (2002-05-21)

Luckily, Xander talks her off the ledge (or as he puts it, "I saved the world with my mouth"). But it goes to show that dramatic, destructive grief is much more typical in the Buffyverse than it is in most fictional universes we've surveyed. The effects of killing Angel on Buffy's character arc may, therefore, be less of a gender-based difference and more of a narrative choice. I still say that the answer to this research question is "yes," though.

Conclusion

With 22.22% of her boyfriends being [un]dead, Buffy is currently tied for 6th out of 8 contestants.

Chart description: a horizontal bar chart showing the mortality rates of all our protagonists so far.

She is also tied with Daniel Jackson of Stargate for how many of her love interests die multiple times. I'm not going to make a trophy for "most sex crimes survived", because I find that thought too depressing. I can offer Buffy a "most vampires dated" prize, though - which also means she's got Sam Winchester beat for number of demon-possessed corpses she sleeps with.

With her low numbers and mortality, however, Buffy is a data point in favor of my hypothesis that women protagonists don't really suffer from the Cartwright Curse as strongly as men protagonists do. Will that hypothesis stand up to my analysis of Northern Exposure? Stay tuned to find out. Meanwhile, keep your sexy lamps burning.