The 15 Best Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episodes

Almost 30 years ago, Joss Whedon turned the just-okay movie he wrote -- but wasn't happy with -- into an exemplary, game-changing TV show that would influence dozens of sci-fi and fantasy projects to come while also elevating genre TV as a whole. Now Buffy the Vampire Slayer is said to be getting the legacy sequel treatment, with Variety reporting that Sarah Michelle Gellar is in final talks to reprise her role as Buffy Summers in a revival at Hulu.

With this in mind, we’ve decided to revisit the series and pluck out the 15 best episodes of this unexpectedly moving, thrilling, funny, and socially aware series. Debuting on the WB network on March 10, 1997, Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the world that triumphant television could be made from stories featuring a teenage girl battling vampires, demons, and other assorted things that go bump in the night.

The show’s ensemble would help redefine the notion of a ragtag team while giving us teen, and eventually college-age, angst and anxiety amid the backdrop of a perpetually nigh apocalypse.

To celebrate the possible return of this peerless series, we're looking at the best from the original show. These episodes are the cream of the crop when it comes to Buffy and the “Scooby Gang” traversing absurd comedy, stark drama, and everything in between. Note: We cheated a bit here and did the whole "counting two-parters as one" thing. So here's the best o' "beep me, bite me" Buffy!

15. “Doppelgangland” (Season 3, Episode 16)

A ferociously fun follow-up to "The Wish" (which we'll get to), “Doppelgangland” brings Willow's depraved, evil vampire double into the real world after ex-vengeance demon Anya dabbles with magic she shouldn't in a desperate attempt to get her powers back. Considering how dark things get for Willow in later seasons, “Doppelgangland” acts like a jubilant primer.

14. “Chosen” (Season 7, Episode 21)

Buffy's series finale featured a brawl to win it all, a Slayer squad showdown with the First Evil. Sacrifices were made as bodies fell in this final episode, all leading to a glorious victory for Buffy Summers, who'd become overwhelmed and weary thanks to her thankless world-saving destiny. "Chosen" wasn't as strong a showing as series spin-off Angel's finale, with its Hail Mary efforts, but it still made for a strong finish, its pyrrhic triumph offering up more peace and optimism in the face of relentless darkness.

13. “Something Blue” (Season 4, Episode 9)

A rather hilarious episode, "Something Blue" offers up another Willow spell-gone-wrong, this time making every casual snarky thing she says become literally true. As Willow tries to climb out of her depressive shell in the wake of a break up, the Scooby Gang gets thrown into a tailspin as Giles loses his sight, Xander becomes an actual "demon magnet," and the Buffy/Spike ship gets kicked into high gear with an impromptu (magical) marriage proposal.

12. “Tabula Rasa” (Season 6, Episode 8)

All of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's strengths as a series get a fabulous spotlight in "Tabula Rasa," as jokes and japes mix with trauma and torment. Another blundered spell casts amnesia on all our heroes in a strikingly silly episode that shines bright in the midst of a season filled with a lot of weight and darkness. It's a great installment that balances all the characters nicely while also showing how far Willow will go to try to use magic to fix her life -- you know, before she goes way too far with it.

11. “Restless” (Season 4, Episode 22)

One of Buffy's most unique episodes -- made even more bizarre by the fact that it's the Season 4 finale -- "Restless" is a trippy, dream-filled chapter that bucks the trend of having a final "Big Bad" battle. It's a beautiful look at the core characters, filled with both clever callbacks and fun foreshadowing. With its surrealist, self-reflective take, and with super-soldier Adam dispatched the week before, "Restless" focuses on the story's four central heroes as they dream, confronting their specific fears while also being stalked by the world's First Slayer.

10. “Conversations With Dead People” (Season 7, Episode 7)

This spectacular entry from the seventh and final season featured several different stories (though none of them containing Xander or Anya) all taking place during one fateful night in Sunnydale. Buffy ran into an old high school chum (and recently sired vampire) in a graveyard, Dawn communicated with her late mother, Spike picked up some "food" at a bar, and Willow received a frightful message from The First.

9. "The Gift" (Season 5, Episode 22)

Season 5's fierce finale featured an all-out Scooby Gang battle with Hell god Glorificus -- AKA Glory -- and marked the second time that Buffy, who'd previously learned in a dream state that her "gift was death," sacrificed herself for the sake of stopping a cataclysm -- choosing here to die in the place of her retconned younger sister Dawn. Like her epitaph read, "She Saved the World. A Lot."

8. "Graduation Day, Parts 1 & 2" (Season 3, Episodes 21 and 22)

For a series that, initially, had a lot to do with "surviving high school," Sunnydale High surely wasn't going to survive the graduating class of 1999. Not with Mayor Wilkins having dire designs on turning into a massive snake demon and eating everyone at the commencement ceremony. "Graduation Day" Parts 1 and 2 -- whose second half was delayed for two months due to the tragic Columbine massacre -- featured Buffy battling and besting Faith, Willow kissing Oz, Wesley kissing Cordelia, Angel drinking from Buffy (to save his life), and a kickass final battle that incorporated Buffy's besieged classmates.

7. "Passion" (Season 2, Episode 17)

In what would become Buffy's first unsettlingly traumatic episode (of many to come), evil Angel -- in the form of Angelus reborn, playing the role of a demented ex -- methodically stalked the Scooby Gang and ultimately took the life of Giles' love, Jenny Calendar. Giles, out for savage vengeance, then went rogue and took the fight to Angel. "Passion" stands as one of the show's first ventures into truly dark territory, creating a "you'll always remember where you were when you watched it" moment for an entire generation.

6. "The Wish" (Season 3, Episode 9)

A spiraling Cordelia experiences an alternate timeline vampire apocalypse after she meets Anya (a stealth vengeance demon) and wishes that Buffy had never arrived in town. After Cordelia is killed mid-way through her own story, it's then up to Giles to figure out if the reality hellscape he's in was caused by a spell -- a spell that can be undone. "The Wish" took us on a haunting and fun journey filled with evil Sunnydale-2 doppelgängers and a final battle featuring all our main characters killing each other.

5. "Innocence" (Season 2, Episode 14)

In a truly game-changing episode, Buffy receives the ultimate awful birthday gift when she discovers that Angel, having slept with her and experienced a "moment of true happiness," has reverted back to being a soulless, psycho vampire thanks to an age-old gypsy curse. "Innocence" was a relentless and heart-breaking affair that saw a girl experience the mirrored horror of seeing her boyfriend change and become abusive after sex. Oh, and in the "there was still fun to be had" category, Buffy blew up the supposedly "no weapon forged can kill him" Judge with a freakin' rocket launcher!

4. "Hush" (Season 4, Episode 10)

In "Hush," Willow met Tara for the first time -- and it's a good thing she did because their shared-power spells sure came in handy when fending off the TERRIFYING VOICE-STEALING HEART-CARVING GENTLEMEN! Yes, in a mostly dialogue-free episode of Buffy, Joss Whedon gave us a floating, golf-clapping unforgettable quartet of folklore ghouls who magically silence a town before they collect innocent hearts. It isn't the "heaviest" episode of Buffy, but it's one of the creepiest and fun outings the show ever produced.

3. "Once More, With Feeling" (Season 6, Episode 7)

In Season 6, with Joyce gone, Buffy being unintentionally ripped out of heaven, and Willow's obsession with spell-casting crossing certain ethical boundaries, the Scoobies were in a bit of disarray. There was a lot of tension. Many secrets. So what better time to have everyone break into song? Songs that specifically reveal the secrets they were desperately hiding from one another! Well, you can thank Sweet the Songster Demon for this chapter's magical town takeover in a late-in-the-series-run musical episode that became an insta-classic.

2. "Becoming, Parts 1 & 2" (Season 2, Episodes 21 and 22)

In this one-two gut punch of season finale excellence, Buffy had to choose between restoring Angel's soul or saving the world from an awakened demon determined to suck everybody into Hell. Peppered with flashbacks to Angel's early beginnings -- from sired vampire to getting cursed with a human soul -- that would help set the stage for his own eventual spinoff, "Becoming" solidified Buffy's second season as arguably its best. Especially the wrenching finish that featured Buffy having to kill her love just as he was cured of his evilness.

1. "The Body" (Season 5, Episode 16)

In a "very special episode"-styled installment, Joss Whedon drew upon some of his own life experiences for the superb, soul-crushing "The Body," in which Buffy experienced a tragedy of non-supernatural origins. Buffy and her team had experienced death in many ways before, but nothing this random or unpredictable. In other words, nothing this real. "The Body" may be somewhat of an outlier in the Buffy-verse in terms of overall style and tone, but its attempt to capture the shocking and un-romantic nature of mortality was riveting.

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Note: This list was udpated on Feb. 19, 2025, and expanded to 15 episodes. It originally was published way back in 2017.