Hello. My name is Sarah and I’m a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. (Hi, Sarah.) I’ve been crazy about the concept of Buffy since a friend of mine brought over the original movie one Halloween. When I heard they were making a series, I was actually worried, because I wasn’t sure they’d be able to match the quality of the film. Needless to say, I got over that in a hurry.

I’m writing this shortly after the season seven finale, the series finale. Looking back across seven years of Buffy, I think I’ve found the series’ essential underpinning. It’s somewhere in most, if not all, of the stories. It’s certainly been explored at one time or another with each of the regular characters, and most of the incidental characters as well. It’s the idea of the outsider. Who is an outsider? What does it mean that they are “outside”? When is it better to be an outsider than insider?

But there’s been more to it than that. At the beginning of the show the heroes were energized by their status as outsiders. Being distanced from the norm gave them their ability to see clearly, to move freely and to empathize with others. Insiders, those with power and popularity, were portrayed as shallow, self-centered, or blinkered, where they weren’t actually evil.

Once they left high school, however, the status of the main characters changed from all being outsiders to that of being insiders. They are the only ones in possession of  …