Buffy Showrunner Marti Noxon Acknowledges Problems with Show’s Sixth Season

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is known today as a defining show of the horror and fantasy genre, but it is still not without its detractors. Even hardcore fans of the series acknowledge that the show’s sixth season is less than stellar when compared to episodes of previous seasons. With plot points that include Buffy starting a relationship with former vampire nemesis Spike and Willow getting addicted to dark magic, the season embraced far more morbid themes that turned many viewers off on the show. Most fans of the series blame Marti Noxon, who was the showrunner at the time, for the poor performance of Buffy’s sixth season. Noxon herself acknowledges fan complaints in her Twitter biography, jokingly claiming that she was the one who “ruined Buffy.”

Nevertheless, fan opinion on Buffy’s sixth season has been slowly changing over the years, with many claiming that despite the dark undertones, the season has far more emotional resonance than previous seasons. In a recent interview with Vulture, Noxon defended her work on the season. Specifically, Noxon pointed out the difficulty of trying to meld creator Joss Whedon’s vision of the show with the stories that she wanted to tell from her perspective as a chiefly drama writer. Despite feeling that the sixth season mostly holds up, Noxon acknowledges that in retrospect some of the story choices she chose were poor. Noxon singles out the decision to kill-off Willow’s longtime girlfriend Tara as the worst decision she made for the season. Tara died after being shot by a bullet that was meant for Buffy in a confrontation with Warren Mears, the season’s chief villain. Speaking to Vulture, Noxon said, “I think that killing Tara was — in retrospect, of all the people, did she have to die?” To add insult to injury, Noxon was one of the chief writers that brought Tara into the show in Buffy’s fourth season.

Noxon also points to Buffy’s abusive relationship with Spike and brief slide into drinking as another poor narrative choice. When going into the storyline, Noxon told Vulture that she wanted to show a more human side of Buffy and make her character more nuanced and relatable. The final product, however, ended up being a narrative mess, with Noxon acknowledging that the direction the story went depicted Buffy as a character far more irresponsible than portrayed in previous seasons. Fans of Buffy still regularly pack convention halls and enjoy the continuing adventures of the characters in the Dark Horse comics series based on the show.