News broke back in early 2025 that Buffy The Vampire Slayer would be coming back thanks to Sarah Michelle Gellar and Hulu. The streaming service greenlit a pilot order for a continuation to the beloved fantasy series with Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao also behind the project. Almost a year later, Gellar has just shared more details about why she’s making the series.
In a new interview with Evan Ross Katz, Sarah Michelle Gellar spoke in depth about her thoughts on the new series set to be called Buffy The Vampire Slayer: New Sunnydale. In her words:
I always said I would never do it…. and I have learned a very hard lesson in life. There’s a reason why that saying is ‘never say never.’ So I will eat my words, and I am OK with that. I learned my lesson, that’s totally fair. I never saw how to do it. I never saw how and why it could be as good — I’m not trying to be better. I just want to hold up, right? I want to hold and honor the memory and what we created. And I know sometimes that memory is conflicted for people about how they’re supposed to feel about it, but a lot of people put their blood, sweat and tears into making what I think is an incredibly great show, and I’m incredibly proud of it.
Hey, no one can blame Sarah Michelle Gellar for wanting to put the nail in the coffin on Buffy after its successful seven-season run, but she changed her mind about revisiting the series for a very specific reason. As she shared:
Chloé Zhao came to me – and not just her passion, because I’ve seen people with passion before, but she knew how to go into the world. She knew what the world was, and she knew the why. And that was the first time I said, ‘Maybe, could I possibly do this?’ And this went on for three years now of me and Chloé going back and forth…. and really spending the time to develop what it is and why it is. We’re still working on that, why and how.
From May to August of 2025, a bunch of cast members were added to the New Sunnydale cast, including a round of young stars led by The Skeleton Crew’s Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Faly Rakotohavana, Ava Jean, Sarah Bock, Daniel Di Tomasso, and Jack Cutmore-Scott. Chase Sui Wonders was added after she and Gellar were both in the latest I Know What You Did Last Summer. Zhao has also teased more OG characters joining the cast.
Prior to these comments, Gellar has also called Zhao a “true fan that is desperate to revisit the world, not reinvent it” and has said it would be accessible to new and old fans of Buffy. It’s apparently been a “nerve-wracking” process for Gellar to give fans something that they’ll love, but she seems committed. She continued:
And I know we live in a society where we want, ‘Binge it! We want it now!’ I know this seems like it’s taking a long time, and it’s because unless we are sure that it is exactly what we set out to do and it makes sense to do it, we don’t want to sully the legacy by not. When I know it’s perfect, then it will be out there, but I won’t do it unless I know it can be that.
Per these comments, it sounds like Gellar and Zhao are still working out the details of the story of the new Buffy before filming it, but it’s coming along. Gellar also clarified if it’s a reboot by saying this:
It’s not a sequel, it’s not a reboot. It’s a continuation, I think so, because where is she now in this world? And what is this world that Buffy lives in with and without her, you know, kind of exploration? So it’s not a reboot, it’s not picking up with all of the same characters right away. It is not a sequel… That’s why the name was even important to me in Buffy: New Sunnydale. It’s Buffy, but it’s also something else.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ran on The WB from the summer of 1997 to 2001 before switching to UPN for its final two seasons. The finale aired on September 24, 2002, making the last appearance of Buffy Summers being nearly 25 years old. We’ll keep you updated as we learn more about New Sunnydale, but for now we can look forward to Gellar returning to the horror space with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, coming to theaters on March 27, 2026.
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