SLAYED: SERIES CREATOR BEMOANS DEATH OF ANGEL
19 MAY 2004. SOURCE: THE BOSTON HERALD

Fans of WB's ANGEL, be warned.

When the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE [SLAYER] spinoff concludes its five-year run tonight at 9 on WLVI (Ch. 56), it will not have a warm, fuzzy, I-decided-not-to-move-to-Paris kind of FRIENDS ending.

"The pain of loss that I felt when [The WB] cancelled the show I'm going to share," series creator Joss Whedon said in a recent telephone interview.

Whedon revealed that at least one character depicted in the opening credits will die tonight.

How did Whedon decide who would take the fall?

"Where can I twist the knife? How do I make a statement and where can I find my pain? Where's the most beauty, where's the most theme and where's the most pain?" he said. "In BUFFY, I had restrictions on who I could kill because I had to go out on a happy ending. I couldn't kill the core Scoobies. I couldn't kill Dawn. ... ANGEL is telling a darker tale, so I have more license to do what I wanted."

But don't call the series finale a "cliffhanger."

"I don't think of it as a cliffhanger at all. It is not the end of all things. It is not a final grace note after a symphony the way BUFFY was. We are definitely still in the thick of it, but it is and was meant to be a final statement about ANGEL. ... The point of the show is, 'You're never done.' Whoever survives the show to get that point will embody it. No matter who goes down, the fight goes on. There will always be the fight. That's the point."

When news of the show's cancellation spread, fans rallied to bring the show back.

"I was obviously enormously touched," Whedon said. "For the fans to react that strongly to what had always been perceived by some people as the bastard child of the BUFFY franchise was really important. Ultimately, I knew we were staring in the face of the brick wall that is a network financial model. And you can't argue love with them, and fan campaigns have gotten shows a second life, but this is a really bad time for television and for television drama. I felt we didn't really have a shot or I would have been outside the WB with my placard and my bullhorn, too."

This is not the end of the BUFFYverse, he said.

"I don't think of the universe itself as having gone away at all. I've been talking with Dark Horse about rebooting the BUFFY comic. ... And then, of course, we talk about the possibility of future spinoffs (and) TV movies. None of those things are definite, none of those things are in the works right now, but I just don't believe the BUFFYverse is dead. I would like to see it come back if I have the manpower to make it. If I have the actors that I love who are enthused to do it, if I have the writers that I need who are prepared to do it."

Whedon stars shooting SERENITY, a big-screen version of his short-lived Fox series FIREFLY, in a couple of weeks.

"It's a very epic tale with the entire cast and much bigger, more expensive world. It's basically built for people who have never seen the show, since there are many of those," he said. BACK TO THE TOP